chiaraviglio@husc2.UUCP (lucius) (11/21/86)
_ Has anyone ever thought about using liquified ozone (O[3]) as an oxidizer for rockets? It has a higher energy of formation (unfortunately I don't remember how much higher) (thus it is less stable, and decays to normal oxygen (O[2]) at temperatures found in Earth's atmosphere), and thus its reaction with hydrogen (or anything else) would give more energy per weight of reactants used. It seems reasonable that its decay rate would be much lower at the temperatures needed to liquify it than at temperatures naturally occurring on Earth -- is this decay rate sufficiently lower to allow storage of large amounts of it in liquid form? The other problems I could see with its use are that it might be too toxic, even allowing for the fact that it would eventually decay (I don't know how long this would take) after escaping from storage; also, I don't know how hard it is to produce ozone in large quantities (doesn't have to be pure -- some O[2] mixed in with it shouldn't hurt performance too much). Does anyone have more complete information on the chemistry involved? -- -- Lucius Chiaraviglio chiaraviglio@husc4.harvard.edu seismo!husc4!chiaraviglio Please do not mail replies to me on husc2 (disk quota problems, and mail out of this system is unreliable). Please send only to the address given above, until tardis.harvard.edu is revived.
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (11/23/86)
> Has anyone ever thought about using liquified ozone (O[3]) as an > oxidizer for rockets? ... It's been looked at a bit, I believe. It's not that hard to make. It is toxic, but nitrogen tetroxide -- already in large-scale use as a rocket oxidizer -- is much worse, comparable to most WW1 poison gases. The performance improvement from using ozone rather than oxygen is modest, but it might be worthwhile, were it not that liquid ozone is dangerously explosive. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry