The Best Performing (and most dangerous) Chemical Rocket Ever Tested: Rocketdyne Tripropellant

PhD chemist here. Whenever I find a mistake, I will write it into this comment. 7:15 You made a mistake saying that the reaciton between hydrogen and oxygen follows the formation of ions first. The reaction is in fact using a radical chain mechanism. 17:50 It doesn't decompose back into fluorine. It gets deprotonated, turning into F-, and then reacts with calcium to form CaF2, which is basically insoluble in the environment of the body. So basically, it pulls calcium out of everything that needs calcium, including your bones and the synapses of your nerves. That's why you treat a HF injury with calcium gluconate injections into the affected area. To give the fluoride something to attach to instead of, you know, the calcium you actually need. 32:40 You refer to the experiment being done at Aperture Science. This is in fact wrong. Tests like this were performed in the Black Mesa research facility. 33:20 At my old university, we would discard of pyrophoric old chemicals also by shooting them. We had a concrete block in the courtyard of the building, and hit them from a safe distance with a pellet rifle. Typical substances were things like tert-butyllithium. In small scales, this is actually pretty safe. 35:50 Regarding LiF's impact on the enviroment. It's likely that the fluoride will just precipitate as CaF2 once it hits water. The little bit of calcium dissolved in water, limescale for example, is enough to precipitate it. As to the lithium, it's basically harmless in small concentrations. 37:10 "A couple of drops to your skin might be fatal", is actually depicting it in a too harmless way. The chemist you're talking about was killed by it after less than 1 drop of it soaked through a protective glove. HgMe2 is one of the chemicals I will ever refuse to work with, and I've so far seen some weird dodgy shit already. 42:50 Uranium hexafluoride isn't gaseous at ambient conditions, it's a white solid. Those gas centrifuges operate under a partial vacuum at slightly elevated temperature. Tungsten hexafluoride is gaseous at ambient though. Additionally, UF6 usually isn't made using F2, instead, ClF3 is used. 49:20 Are you sure the radial cutting torches use thermite? My bet would be that they're a form of thermal lance, using oxygen gas and a metal. That concludes my list of mistakes found. Here's a few extra comments: 1. Your opinion about the square cube law showing up everywhere is the truest statement ever made. 2. I wonder if we could use the exhaust heat of an radioisotope generator, RTG, in a deep space mission to keep the lithium molten. Or, alternatively, use a lithium-sodium-potassium alloy to reduce the melting point. EDIT: Typo and correction from "glucamate" to "gluconate". That was an error caused by autocorrect I think. Or a brainfart of mine. Thanks for the correction anyway.

I have a few personal rules I live by. As an Air Force program manager, my number one rule is "Never let an engineer get bored" Please dear god, if you work with or around engineers take this to heart. This video is the kind of stuff that happens when you let engineers get bored.

When asbestos is one of the least alarming components of your setup, you've accomplished something truly amazing.

I can just see the project review meetings. NASA management: what the hell did you guys do? We could never use any of this! Rocketdyne engineers: well you said to make the engine with the highest ISP ever, you never said make the engine with highest ISP ever that DOESN’T kill everyone in a 5 mile radius

That rap was so fire, it burned through 10 inches of steel reinforced concrete and then 6 feet of gravel.

Fluorine: "Yo dawg, I heard you got electrons."

Dimethyl mercury? I momentarily lost my ability to control YT, accidentally closed the window and just sat there saying "wtf" for a minute. That infamous nightmare fuel poisoning case wasn't on the skin, it was through a latex glove.

I am currently pursing a chemistry degree while working as a part-time firefighter. This video seems to be designed entirely to scare me.

I'm a military systems engineer, former infantryman, and parachutist & jumpmaster. Your comment about reduicng dangerous operations to tedium really hit home. Boring is often very good ...

the issue of pumping molten lithium through a rocket in-flight is left as an exercise to the reader...

32:33 "The nuclear reactor, laser research facility, plutonium lab, and other experiments at Aperture Scien-uuuhhh I mean S.S.F.L." I'm rolling... XD

I love the barely contained laughter as he's narrating. I kinda find it mind blowing that there were a group of folks that thought actually taking this concept from a thought experiment to building a test article was even a reasonable idea. Awesome video.

You know it's cool when an asbestos cladding is the safest part.

TL;DR, a tube of unimaginable violence with a rocket nozzle on the end

The intro music was perfect. Mid-century super-science was fucking insane. "Welp, this can kill ya in 20 or 30 different, horrifying ways. Bound to give you at least 5 types of cancer just from staring at it. Really amazing specific impulse if you mix it with this other elements that is committing active warcrimes inside his heavily reinforced container as we speak. So anyway; we're going to need a few million liters of both in holding for our testing of this highly explosive rocket engine that's going to get us to Alpha Centaury within the next century by my calculations. I've got a 150,000 dollar grant which is basically one trillion in stupid iPad Kid money so we're just gonna smack these two things together right over there and see what happens. Gotta tell you, I sure do love the US of A!"

Nothing could have possibly prepared me for that Rocketdyne safety rap

When the meltdown occurred I was 2 months old and my family lived 1/2 mile from the reactor. Rocketdyne did not notify the residents nearby, there was no evacuation. My sweet grandmother died of stomach cancer from drinking the well water. We found out about the meltdown and other crimes 20 years later. I've had severe undiagnosable health problems most of my adult life, while Rocketdyne continues doing business! What a world we have made for each other!!

I think the PPE that was recommended in "Ignition" was a good pair of running shoes.

this whole video reads like a billy mays ad: "but wait, it gets WORSE!"

The description of the "burn pit" to the clip at 33:35 is amazing haha