Questions For Space Shuttles.?

Question

I have some questions

What do they mix with Liquid Hydrogen and Liquid Oxygen because the shuttle will explode if those liquid are pure.

how many percent liquid hydrogen and oxgen are in the external fuel tank, solid rocket boosters and the space shuttle.

How many percent of the substance do they mix with the substance.

I want to know these for my school project because i have to make a small space shuttle and fly it and it should go at least 1 km in the air.

Answer 1

Wow... If I may, first... be really careful with the stuff you are about to handle, if you don't want to end up being awarded a Darwin (the Darwin awards are given to people that died a very silly way, thus kindly removing their genes from the human gene pool, and serving evolution). I wouldn't advise you to even try and produce the amount of hydrogen / oxygen required to propell a model to 1 km. A simple spark in a bottle filled with oxygen and hydrogen could blow up a entire garage (if not a house, depending on the size of the bottle).

Let's still answer your questions. Wikipedia helped me a lot :
-It looks like it's actually LOX and LH2 that they are using in the external tank, but they do not mix them together, and have special protection in the different tanks so that they would withstand the liquids. LOX is kept at 90K, 2.5 bars, and LH2 is kept at 20K, 3 bars.
The solid rockets boosters however, use a different, solid propellant, that uses the oxygen in the air to burn. It provides 83% of the total thrust at liftoff.
The space shuttle main engine also uses LOX and LH2.
-Proportions of fuel in each part :
External tank : LOX : 630,000 kg, LH2 : 106,000 kg
Solid boosters : 499,000 kg of APCP propellant
Main engine : probably less than 5,000 kg of LOX and LH2
-Mixture : as I said before, I do not believe they mix LOX or LH2 with anything.

Answer 2

The two liquids do not contact one another until they reach the main engines, where they are ignited. Ideally the mixture would be 2:1 hydrogen and oxygen, the same as water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. However, I think they probably mix it a bit leaner (more oxygen) in order for the combustion to be complete. The two liquids are not mixed with anything..

I agree that, if you are even to approach one km. in the air with your rocket, you need to use solid rockets, not liquid. Liquid rockets require valves, tubing, pumps, and so on, so are too complex for an amateur only having a short time.

Even with solid engines available over the counter, you'd better count on several stages to reach a considerable altitude. If you had some pure hydrogen peroxide you might be able to design a steam rocket (hydrogen peroxide decomposes rapidly, giving off a lot of heat and steam), but hydrogen peroxide is dangerous, too. The hydrogen peroxide you get at the drug store is only 3 per cent, so would not work. Solid motors are your best bet.

Answer 3

They don't mix anything with the liquid hydrogen and oxygen. You're right; these liquids are dangerous and inconvenient to handle. The Shuttle also has two solid fuel boosters. These contain a mixture of aluminium dust and an oxidising agent, ammonium perchlorate, in a solid cylindrical rubber matrix. The only trouble with this arrangement is that once you turn it on, you can't turn it off. But I suggest you use a solid fuel motor like this for your project. Liquid fuel rocket motors are complicated, expensive and dangerous. For a solid fuel motor all you need is the container, a hole for the exhaust, the fuel and a stick at the back to act as a stabiliser. When I was a kid,we used a commercial product called a Jetex motor, and we bought the lumps of solid fuel ready made. You ignited it with a fuse stuck in the hole at the back. Ordinary firework rockets are solid fuel motors, of course. There are any number of fuels you can use, like ordinary gunpowder, which is a mix of saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur, but be careful, and don't use more than a few hundred grams. SpaceShip2, the commercial rocket that takes tourists up to 100 km. uses an even safer hybrid system. It burns solid fuel with an oxidising gas, nitrous oxide. You can control the thrust by controlling the flow of gas. But stick to an ordinary solid fuel motor for your project; it's much simpler.

Answer 4

Dear Sir:

Please do not attempt to mess with liquid oxygen. I realize that it is for a school project, however, liquid oxygen is very dangerous. Liquid hydrogen is also very dangerous, and highly explosive.

For fear of causing some kind of school fire I cannot disclose the various types of fuel additives and catalysts used in rocket propulsion. For school demos, I highly recommend heated boiling water = steam propulsion, or compressed air = high pressure air exhaust.

Even small solid fuel rocket engines (say 1/2 inch by 2 inches) produce huge amounts of smoke and gas to lift small model rockets to altitudes of 500 or 1000 feet.

Answer 5

You can get most of the information you want off the wikipedia article (its also accurate).

But--this isn't covered. The Shuttle maine engines use LOX and LH in pure forme. That's not what would create a danger of explosion. But an "ideal" mixture would. Here's why:

The "ideal" ratio is 8 parts(by weight) oxygen (LOX) to 1 part hydrogen. The product of the reaction is water (H2O). But that ideal mix will burn so hot that it would simply melt the shuttle engine and explode.

So the shuttle uses a mix with extra LH (about 1/3 extra). This isn't as efficient--the speciic impulse is 453 compared to an ideal of 528. But it cools the combustion to about 6000 degrees (F)--which the engines can tolerate.

Answer 6

They do use liquid hydrogen and Oxygen. They are kept isolated from each other until they are needed to propel the shuttle.The propulsion is generated by the Hydrogen and Oxygen reacting w/ each other (in an explosion. If you want more information on how the shuttle works, visit the space shuttle section of www.nasa.gov/

Answer 7

you're refering to the roll software that positions the return and forth below the tank (relative to the horizon of the earth) using fact the motor vehicle pitches over to fly downrange to the southeast. in case you observe, the return and forth's engines are tilted slightly "upwards" from the centerline of the motor vehicle. while the booster rockets are firing, this tilt balances the off-middle thrust of the boosters (relative to the middle of mass of the return and forth, tank, boosters together). yet after the boosters end and fall away, the return and forth and tank has to proceed to income altitude. If the return and forth replaced into "above" the tank, and its engines have been all on my own in thrusting the return and forth and tank mass together, the motor vehicle could pitch down and lose altitude. yet interior the inverted place, the return and forth needs to pitch so as that altitude is gained. And, using fact the gas pass strains from the tank are on the backside of the return and forth, the gas has an greater handy direction to the pumps and engines if the tank is above the return and forth fairly than below it.

Answer 8

They use pure liquid oxygen and hydrogen

and yes it does explode

Challenger did