Mixing And Casting Rocket Propellant - Simplex Ep 2

This is insanely interesting content. No intention of making a solid rocket, but still here to watch

The safety precautions you stress so much are absolutely valid! When I was 20 (13 years ago), I also made solid rocket propellant (Amonium perchlorate) with my friend who is chemistry PHD today. I mixed the aluminium powder with the amonium perchlorate powder when they were still dry powder. Dust must have settled in the air and a spark must have been generated somewhere. There was a huge explosion and my right hand was completely destroyed, my left hand only partly. My eardrums were ruptured and I had chips of the ceramic mortar we used in my eyes. As it came close to a fragmentation grenade the chips also went into my chest and almost killed me because they came close to my lungs besides the extreme blood loss I had. 10 surgeries and 4 months inpatient later I was in my rehabilitation phase and I am just so grateful to this day that I survived, that I can hear and see and that I can still enjoy this amazing life. Btw today I am an aerospace engineer :)

As a baker who has scraped down many a mixing bowl… consider getting a bowl scraper to clean the sides! It’s much easier to use and much more through than an actual spatula. 15:00

Every time I see that void filled finocyl my eye lets out a single tear... Next mix we're gonna nail the density!

One more nuance to the propellant making legality: in the US, transporting a live motor on the road and transporting a motor across state lines can expose you to new and exciting regulation like the DOT and rules around interstate commerce. If possible, making the rocket at your launch site can dramatically simplify the legal framework.

Your a good man making sure to go over safety as in depth and thoroughly as you did. It shows you care and understand the value of a life. Well raised young man right there. Parents did a good job. 👍

If making again in the future, maybe having a massage gun or something similar nearby, for if it becomes a packable motor. Could vibrate the casing like when casting concrete, to help liquification and reduce bubbles around the more complex geometry.

It’s super weird to see something you’ve been doing for 4 years explained so eloquently. Awesome video Joe! Can’t wait for you to discover more about the mixing process!

I've been building my own APCP motors for a while now, this was great to watch. It's kind of funny watching you go through all the same hurdles that I went through, like the intended pourable fuel that turned into a packable fuel, the PITA vacuum process of trying to keep the fuel off the vacuum lid, the voids in the finocyl and the liner OD not matching the case ID, it's all part of the learning process lol. If your fuel is only packable, i found that its necessary to vacuum fill the case, where you make a vacuum chamber that the case fits into, and at the top you have a funnel and ball valve which you pour your fuel into, then once the chamber has been evacuated you open the ball valve to allow the fuel to start pouring in. Once it is fully filled, any voids in the fuel will collapse after releasing the vacuum, and you take it one step further by inducing vibration into the tube as it fills to allow better settling.

cherry limade sounds so good, i mean, its literally just cherry, lime, and lemonade mixed together. its also really hot.

As a Baker, when you only have a dough hook, put all dry in first and add the liquids in slowly. In your case, make sure that any " Grinding " of the dry ingredients will not ignite the mix as you are adding in the liquids, curing agent last.

When I was an intern for ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) they used TDI (Toluene Di-Isocyanate) as the curing agent and was treated the most carefully out of all the chemicals. It reacts violently with moisture to solidify so if you inhale it it solidifies in your lung and windpipe. (So yeah pretty bad) Tho it can be neutralized using ammonia so everyone had a bottle of ammonia and water mixture (they called it Anti-TDI) and another intern there dropped the bottle and the whole room smelled rancid for a week, and the cleaning staff was not pleased.

It's so cool to see this process with all the stumbles and learning points rather than just a cleanly-edited highlight reel!

I'll note that space-shuttle SRBs are made with PBAN as the binder, because it cures a LOT slower than HTPB. They could literally commence a pour on Friday, have the booster sit over the weekend, and then continue the pour on Monday. PBAN is also marginally cheaper.

When I was a senior in high school my chemistry teacher decided to sponsor our student rocketry club. He was one of these old-timers who wasn't fazed by much, and just wanted us to have fun learning. And he let us do all sorts of cool stuff with static thrust tests and airframe designs, and casting our own Sugar/KNO3 motors. But the whole club had shut down when we blew our test stand (a tree stump) in half because of voids in the propellant grain.

Well done. I'm really enjoying this series. Personal note: In the mid 90's I worked for a company that produced software for visualizing 3D volumetric data. We received an inquiry from NASA asking if we would be willing to do an analysis of a phantom (non reactive) rocket motor CT scan that was part of a study they were performing. The goal of the study was to identify effective non-destructive testing techniques for man rated solid fuel rocket motors. The data set was from a test article that had experienced a malfunction in the thermal controls while the propellent analog was curing. This resulted in massive stresses building up in the fuel that literally tore it apart. They wanted measurements of the tear surface area and volume of the open space. This was a really neat project and got me a trip to Huntsville AL to demonstrate how we did the analysis.

Cooking with Joey B is a lot darker than last time I watched it!

As part of the Rocket Test Group (a mutual aid society for rocket propulsion safety) I got a VIP tour of ATK's Promontory facility where they were making space shuttle SRBs. The major casting rooms had emergency escape slides that were in deadly earnest purpose, and frankly terrifyingly steep- and I'm a guy who has jumped out of planes, off a building, and flown aboard a rocket plane. I'll stick with my liquid rocket engines, thank you. We didn't have to manufacture our propellants and could reload them in just minutes, our team even flew the X-Racer seven times in one day.

Well done, guys! I had commented on a prior video about using a wagon wheel design we used long ago, 56" diameter 25-30' long, and we had to use 2 forklifts with everyone finding a place on the forklift to try and pull out the forms. All 12 of them. We used pressurized LOx (from pressurized helium) as the oxidizer, and polybutadiene+carbon as the fuel. Your work here brought back memories as this was in the mid-1980's. Thanks! Great job.

Joe your content paired with several others who produce educational content has inspired me to commit to a higher education, i'm finishing my finals in my second semester of my freshman year at uaptc, ive wanted to do these type of projects for over 4 years and now i'm on a path to a stable career in the discipline of computer science as well as a path that allows me to do these cool projects and hobbies. Thank you.