Remember when you were a kid and you would wrap yourself up in foil
believing that it made you a space man?
Well, aluminum is helping you become a space man... just not in the way you think.
Purdue, NASA, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Pennsylvania State University
are all working together on a new rocket propellant called ALICE.
Not named for anyone's girlfriend or mother,
the name ALICE comes from what the propellant is made out of: frozen mixture of water
and "nanoscale aluminum" powder. Get it? AL-ICE? Yeah.
The idea is that it is even more environmentally friendly than conventional propellants
and could be made on other planets or moons that have water.
The key to the propellant's performance is the tiny size
of the aluminum particles, they have a diameter of about 80 nanometers.
The nanoparticles combust much faster than larger particles and enables
better control over the reaction and thrust.
And the best part?
It's pretty much a green propellant,
producing hydrogen gas and aluminum oxide as exhaust.
For those rocket scientists out there,
it works very much like the solid rocket boosters we now have.
The mixture starts as a paste and gets molded into a cylinder
with a rod in the middle.
Then once frozen the rod is removed.
During use there is an igniter rocket that sends the hot gasses
down the hole where the rod used to be, in order to ignite the propellant evenly.
A chemical reaction between the water and aluminum
provides the thrust in the ALICE propellant.
As the aluminum ignites, the oxygen and hydrogen provided by the water
fuels the combustion until all of the aluminum powder is burned.
It's being said that ALICE might replace some liquid or solid propellants,
and, when perfected, might also have a higher performance.
And it's also very safe for transport because while it's frozen
it's difficult to accidentally ignite.
For more information and to continue the conversation
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