Wimpy Red ✒ BALLS

Mixing up some Wimpy Red on a precise scale, with the recipe on the wall of the RocketMavericks propellant lab. It should make for a brilliant red night launch at BALLS this summer.

The red Fe2O3 in the tupperware is a burn rate catalyst, making it a bit less wimpy, and coloring the propellant red. This is unrelated to the red flame that it will produce. That comes from the Strontium Nitrate, a metal salt that becomes SrCl during the burn, and after the Sr ions become excited in the plasma, they drop to the ground state emitting a photon of a precise wavelength, in this case, a brilliant red.

(I wrote a beginner’s primer on propellant chemistry for ScienceBlogs)

The rocket fuel is a traditional powdered aluminum mixed with Ammonium Perchlorate for the oxidizer.

The binder is combination of Hydroxy-terminated Polybutadiene (HTPB) with Isodecyl Pelargonate as the plasticizer, and a little CAO-5 Antioxidant to extend the shelf life.

Mixed as a thixotropic fluid in a paint can shaker under vacuum (photo of that setup below).

If this wasn’t wild enough, Toma has four tons of graphite for turning custom nozzles for the high-ISP propellant under development. And after helping us with this last night, he then drove 6 hours to BlackRock, and is testing an P motor with some purple woodie propellant this morning (here’s a video of the M motor test… 1/8 the size of a P motor and 1/16 the ultimate Q… and Clotho will have four of these special Q motors… so 64x that test in total impulse)