🚀 go-pugleaf

>Bruce Dunn writes:
>        This I like!  Molten aluminum (melting point 660 C) can be kept in
>steel tanks.  Using molten aluminum will give a higher Isp than aluminum
>metal. 

How's liquid Al going to work in the combustion chamber?

--forming fine droplets will require a new injector plate--how did that 
work for the Li-F rocket Bruce mentioned?  What kind of surface 
tension does LAl have?  How small would we have to get the droplets to 
be?

--will the LAl burn with LOX directly or will it solidify first and then 
react?  The rocket's performance will be very sensitive to the 
proportion of Al that's burned, by the calculations I ran.  I don't know 
how having a mix of liquid and solid aluminum would affect combustion.  

--the injector plate is going to need an internal heater to keep the LAl 
from solidifying as it passes through and to keep it clean for restarts.  
That's definitely going to be an imported-from-Earth item with all its 
other requirements.


Karl
sold my soul to Uncle Sam . . . now marked down for resale.