Extracting Power from Nuclear in Space

Mercury is much easier to store, but has a lower ISP. Since most NTRs require certain sustained flow characteristics one does not want to employ something like chromium or iron which might gum up the works.

For chemical rockets reductants can be anything. For example Fe0 (Cast iron) is a reductant, so is sodium metal. Can you imagine the piping system required to turbopump cast iron. lol.

Basic energy. https://labs.chem.ucsb.edu/zakarian/armen/11---bonddissociationenergy.pdf and find the bond energy for

Take the energy and divide by the weight.

H-H is 436 kJ per mole. O=O is 498 kJ per mole. O-H is 460 kJ/mole. 872 + 498 (it takes 1370 kJ/rxn-mole to take them apart) -----> (1840 Kj/rxn-mole recieved to put them back together) = 470kJ per mole. .004 + .032 kg/mole. This means 470kJ/0.036 kg 13MJ per kg. A joule is a Newton of force accelerated over a length. Suppose a rocket nozzle is 3 meters in length then on can accelerated at 4.3 Ma. T = 0.00118. Ve =5079 ISP(sec) maximum of 517 sec. However this is not what you get from the reaction. Approximately 5-10% of the energy is bled off to run turbo pumps, generators, in H2/02 rockets energy is bled to evaporate the cryoliquids. Then there is heat within the nozzle that is lost and finally there is differential heat in the rocket gas (since the flow from the nozzle is not perfectly laminar).

C-H is 4 @ 431 kJ per mole. 2 @ O=O 498.7 -----> C=0 2 @ 749 + O-H 4@460. 3338 - 2724.1 = 613.9 kJ/rxn-mole. (.016 + 0.064 = 0.080 rxn-mole per kilogram) = 7673 Mj/kg. Once again 3 meter nozzle. a = 2.557Ma T = 0.00153. Ve = 3916 ISP is 399. This means that no methane powered rocket can ever produce more ISP than 399 sec. Take note of the fact that CH4 produce more energy per reaction mole than H2, but it adds an additional 0.012 kg/mole of reductant weight and an additional .032 kg/mole of oxidant. . . .its the light weight of the H-H bond that makes all the difference.

Benzene or coal are very poor choices for fuel because they both have resonance energy stabilization due to 4n+2 pi orbital arrangement. Also because the C-H C-C ratios are lower. kerosene is some where between Methane and Benzene in terms of performance. Note that gasoline has alot of benzene in it, for this reason it gets lower mileage than diesel fuel. You don't want to use gasoline as rocket fuel, but you could use paint thinner or hexane, pentane, pentanes, butanes, propanes, ethane, and methane. . . .from lower to higher ISPs

Hydrogen MAY someday be the choice chemical reductant for long range space craft, but there are many issues that need to be solved.

1st. The weight of fuel tanks need to come down.

2nd. While reducing the weight of tanks, the leakage rate also needs to come down.

3rd. Durable gas refrigeration needs to evolve and the weight needs also to come down.

4th. The weight of secondary containment needs to come down.

This may also involve light movable solar shields that protect the cryogenic fuels in flight from latent-heat evaporation.Extracting Power from Nuclear in Space

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