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Hydrazine Rocket Fuel & Nitrogen Tetroxide Oxidizer: "Toxic Propellant Hazards" ~ 1966 NASA Training Film KSC-6
🕑 Added 2019-08-24 23:10:31 +0000 UTCmore at http://quickfound.net/
'This NASA safety film demonstrates the dangers of rocket fuels, including hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, and instructs workers in their safe handling.'
Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrazine
Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Hydrazine is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula N2H4. It is a simple pnictogen hydride, and is a colorless and flammable liquid with an ammonia-like odor.
Hydrazine is highly toxic and dangerously unstable unless handled in solution as e.g., hydrazine hydrate (NH2NH2 · xH2O). As of 2015, the world hydrazine hydrate market amounted to $350 million. Hydrazine is mainly used as a foaming agent in preparing polymer foams...
About two million tons of hydrazine hydrate were used in foam blowing agents in 2015. Additionally, hydrazine is used in various rocket fuels and to prepare the gas precursors used in air bags. Hydrazine is used within both nuclear and conventional electrical power plant steam cycles as an oxygen scavenger to control concentrations of dissolved oxygen in an effort to reduce corrosion...
Hydrazine was first used as a component in rocket fuels during World War II. A 30% mix by weight with 57% methanol (named M-Stoff in the German Luftwaffe) and 13% water was called C-Stoff by the Germans. The mixture was used to power the Messerschmitt Me 163B rocket-powered fighter plane...
Hydrazine is used as a low-power monopropellant for the maneuvering thrusters of spacecraft, and was used to power the Space Shuttle's auxiliary power units (APUs). In addition, monopropellant hydrazine-fueled rocket engines are often used in terminal descent of spacecraft. Such engines were used on the Viking program landers in the 1970s as well as the Phoenix lander and Curiosity rover...
In all hydrazine monopropellant engines, the hydrazine is passed over a catalyst such as iridium metal supported by high-surface-area alumina (aluminium oxide), which causes it to decompose into ammonia, nitrogen gas, and hydrogen gas...
Other variants of hydrazine that are used as rocket fuel are monomethylhydrazine, (CH3)NH(NH2) (also known as MMH), and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine, (CH3)2N(NH2) (also known as UDMH). These derivatives are used in two-component rocket fuels, often together with dinitrogen tetroxide, N2O4. These reactions are extremely exothermic, and the burning is also hypergolic (it starts burning without any external ignition).
There are ongoing efforts in the aerospace industry to replace hydrazine and other highly toxic substances. Promising alternatives include hydroxylammonium nitrate, 2-dimethylaminoethylazide (DMAZ)[23] and energetic ionic liquids...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinitrogen_tetroxide
Dinitrogen tetroxide, commonly referred to as nitrogen tetroxide, is the chemical compound N2O4. It is a useful reagent in chemical synthesis. It forms an equilibrium mixture with nitrogen dioxide.
Dinitrogen tetroxide is a powerful oxidizer that is hypergolic (spontaneously reacts) upon contact with various forms of hydrazine, which has made the pair a common bipropellant for rockets...
Nitrogen tetroxide is used as an oxidizer in one of the most important rocket propellants because it can be stored as a liquid at room temperature. In early 1944, research on the usability of dinitrogen tetroxide as an oxidizing agent for rocket fuel was conducted by German scientists, although the Nazis only used it to a very limited extent as an additive for S-Stoff (fuming nitric acid). It became the storable oxidizer of choice for many rockets in both the United States and USSR by the late 1950s. It is a hypergolic propellant in combination with a hydrazine-based rocket fuel. One of the earliest uses of this combination was on the Titan family of rockets used originally as ICBMs and then as launch vehicles for many spacecraft. Used on the U.S. Gemini and Apollo spacecraft and also on the Space Shuttle, it continues to be used as station-keeping propellant on most geo-stationary satellites, and many deep-space probes. It is also the primary oxidizer for Russia's Proton rocket.
When used as a propellant, dinitrogen tetroxide is usually referred to simply as nitrogen tetroxide and the abbreviation NTO is extensively used...
