Posted on 09/06/2022 5:02:31 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Hydrogen is extremely useful as a rocket fuel. It’s readily available, clean, lightweight, and, when combined with liquid oxygen, burns with extreme intensity.
To keep it from evaporating or boiling off, rockets fueled with liquid hydrogen must be carefully insulated from all sources of heat...venting is necessary to prevent the tank from exploding..liquid hydrogen can leak through minute pores in welded seams.
When tanking SLS, the sudden influx of cryogenic hydrogen causes significant changes to the rocket’s physical structure. The 130-foot-tall (40-meter-tall) hydrogen tank shrinks about 6 inches (152 mm) in length and about 1 inch (25.4 mm) in diameter when filled with the ultra-cold liquid, according to NASA. Components attached to the tank, such as ducts, vent lines, and brackets, must compensate for this sudden contraction. To achieve this, NASA uses connectors with accordion-like bellows, slotted joints, telescoping sections, and ball joint hinges.
But hydrogen—the smallest molecule in the universe—often finds its way through even the tiniest of openings. The fuel lines are particularly problematic, as they cannot be hard-bolted to the rocket. As their name suggests, the quick disconnects, while providing a tight seal, are designed to break free from the rocket during launch. This seal must prevent leakage under high pressures and ultra-cold temperatures, but it also needs to let go as the rocket takes flight. On Saturday, a leak in the vicinity of the quick disconnect reached concentrations well beyond the 4% constraint, exceeding NASA’s flammability limits. Unable to resolve the leak, NASA called the scrub.
That NASA has yet to fully fuel the first and second stages and get deep into the countdown is a genuine cause for concern. The space agency has dealt with hydrogen leaks before, so hopefully its engineers will once again devise a solution to move the project forward.
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
“the smallest molecule in the universe”
That was my first guess before I even read the article.
This hydrogen thingy is super high tech—hope the woke zombies at NASA can figure it out...
;-)
This is something to keep in mind when folks dream of hydrogen powered cars.
built by lowest bidder contracts?
Doesn’t say much for NASA’s testing regimen.
The 130-foot-tall (40-meter-tall) hydrogen tank shrinks about 6 inches (152 mm) in length and about 1 inch (25.4 mm) in diameter when filled with the ultra-cold liquid
The guys who built the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle got this to work.
Apparently it’s now a lost art.
I grew up with the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.
60 years later and we’re still using rockets.
Sigh.
It’s not like NASA has been using liquid hydrogen as a fuel for more than fifty years or anything.
Never worked with liquid hydrogen but liquid helium is difficult.
I guess diversity teams...never mind.
Are we even capable of completing a manned moon mission anymore? I have doubts.
If hydrogen (H2) is like helium, it will leak out of everything, even a steel tank.
Because $4.1B is not enough, need another $5B. Or you could just give Elon $1B and be done with it.
Rockets have to carry two or three as much oxygen by weight as fuel, when it’s freely available in the atmosphere. NASA should be spending its money on SCRAMJET research until we have a space plane that can at least match the cost per kilogram of cargo to orbit. It has the potential to far exceed that of rockets.
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