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Author	Topic: estes rockets
m3nth Frequent Poster	posted January 18, 2000 04:08 PM is anyone aware of what these are usually made out of? estes rockets are the model rockets with sizes a/b/c/d etc. also does anyone know what bottle rockets are made out of? i have a friend who claims bottle rocket powder is more powerful than gunpowder so i am trying to get some concrete info for them (not "duh of course gunpowder is more powerful"). can anyone tell me what the burn rate of bottle rocket powder is in comparison to loading powder or what the exact composition is? below is a url of burn rates for different loading powders. http://www.gunsites.com/burn.html thanks for any composition or burn rate info you may have on either estes or bottle rockets. any url's that would help search further beyond this forum are also appreciated. ~m3nth~
Blaze Frequent Poster	posted January 18, 2000 08:10 PM estes rockets are (all?) made with blackpowder compressed into a single grain. bottle rockets?? what are they? fireworks fired out of neck of bottle? if so they would use a blackpowder equivalent. gunpowder (aka smokeless powder) will be more powerful than any fuel oxidiser mixture especially when used for purposes of propulsion. reason - when blackpowder burns it turns into 1/2 gas 1/2 solid residue/smoke whereas smokeless turns almost entirely into gas, do the equations if you want. also if confined smokeless powder burns even faster than blackpowder. conclusion - smokeless powder (aka "loading powder/powder on site you linked to") burns cleaner, providing more power than blackpowder (aka estes/bottle rocket powder)..
m3nth Frequent Poster	posted January 19, 2000 07:50 AM thanks blaze, that was very helpful. ~m3nth~
catch22 Frequent Poster	posted January 19, 2000 11:10 PM Well blaze... you got the first part of your post correct estes motors do use black powder as their propellant(and yes all estes motors use black powder). Bottle rockets are also black powder, but they are faster because they are much smaller and the "POP" at the end is flash powder. The last part of your post was absoloutly wrong, in a rocket motor the size of a bottle rocket or even the size of an estes "D" motor, black powder will burn much faster and be much more useful as a propellant. Reason... smokeless gunpowder (nitrocellulose) requires a much higher chamber pressure to function as a descent propellant. Enven in larger motors nitrocellulose doesn't work very well as a propellant, however mixed with ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder will make one hell of a propellant compared to black powder. The solid particles formed from the burning of black powder that you mentioned don't make as big of a difference as you think because they are still in the form of a gas when they exit the exhaust nozzle of the motor. In a fire arm, nitrocellulose is a far superior propellant, due to the pressures required to push the bullet out of the shell case and into the barrell. How ever in rockets and mortar projectiles, black powder wins. Mark
1 unregistered	posted January 22, 2000 08:32 PM what the fuck! "The solid particles formed from the burning of black powder that you mentioned don't make as big of a difference as you think because they are still in the form of a gas when they exit the exhaust nozzle of the motor." is that chemically possible?
Ho ju Moderator	posted January 22, 2000 10:14 PM yeah, i am assuming the particles form as the gas cools so when it is still hot and being blown out of the engine it will not be deposited. but say if you take an open pile of BP and light it then they will form on the surface you light it on ------------------ -Knowledge is power, power leads to corruption, corruption is a crime, crime doesn't pay. So if you know to much you will go broke!!!
Ho ju Moderator	posted January 22, 2000 10:15 PM that or the particles could be formed fromt he actual burning and not just the cooling gas. in that case the actual flame/gas that is produced fromt eh burning fromt he engine will blow them out so you will see little to no deposit ------------------ -Knowledge is power, power leads to corruption, corruption is a crime, crime doesn't pay. So if you know to much you will go broke!!!
1 unregistered	posted January 22, 2000 11:01 PM your two posts contradict each other..
Ho ju Moderator	posted January 22, 2000 11:39 PM yes i know they do i was just trying to...cover my ass if you will. i was not sure which one it was so i threw both ideas out in the open... ------------------ -Knowledge is power, power leads to corruption, corruption is a crime, crime doesn't pay. So if you know to much you will go broke!!! [This message has been edited by Ho ju (edited January 22, 2000).]
VeHeMT Frequent Poster	posted January 23, 2000 10:07 PM Think about a burning candle with a sheet of aluminum foil suspended a foot or two above the flame. After a while there is a black carbon residue on the aluminum foil. ------------------ VeHeMT's Armoury
Ho ju Moderator	posted January 23, 2000 11:55 PM i think that is completely diffrent. the carbon that froms on the aluminum foil is a result of the candle flame burning the whick. but when burning BP you get a residue because the BP turns into something else after being consumed ------------------ -Knowledge is power, power leads to corruption, corruption is a crime, crime doesn't pay. So if you know to much you will go broke!!!
VeHeMT Frequent Poster	posted January 24, 2000 01:37 AM It is indeed the same thing as BP burning. And in the candle situation, the very large majority of the carbon formed on the aluminum is from the burning wax. ------------------ VeHeMT's Armoury
catch22 Frequent Poster	posted January 28, 2000 02:35 PM "is that chemically possible?" Of course it is, to explain it take ice as an example, at 0 deg celcius its a solid but at 100 deg C its a gas. The solid particles will become a gas at a high enough temperature, and then they resublime into solid particles. Catch 22
Fjp92 Frequent Poster	posted January 28, 2000 04:50 PM I think blaze is correct. The solid particles from black powder is if i am not mistaken potasium carbonate. The carbonate wont go to gas form upon heating, it is simply extreamly fine particles that is distributed though the gas. It does not add to the presure in the engin. Some thing like NC Totaly goes to gas form upon burning. So same vol. bp and NC : NC gives more gas Thus better rocket fuel because more gas will propell the rocket further. Well this is sortoff how i see it.
catch22 Frequent Poster	posted January 29, 2000 02:41 PM Well Fjp, you would think so... but you would be wrong, NC does have a higher gas volume per mass of propellant, but in motors as small as this one, there is absoloutly no way a person like you or me would be able to get a motor using NC alone as the propellant to out preform a motor of the same dimensions using black powder. Above the G size range... maybe but the density of those solid particles is a good thing. If you know anything about physics you'd know that according to Newtons Third Law of Motion, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction... meaning that if a heavier molecule is expelled from the nozzle its going to have more effect on the motion of the rocket motor it self than an equal number of less dense molecules. If you look at the professionals i.e. NASA you'll see that the propellant they use in their boosters (composite propellant) produces a large amount of smoke (solid particles) per mass of propellant. To get those much smaller gas particles formed from the burning of NC to have the same effect as the more dense particles they would have to be moving a hell of a lot faster... to get them to do that you would have to have a huge Ai: An ratio (initial area of combustion chamber: area of nozzle ratio) it would have to be atleast 13:1 or you would need a very very high internal pressure. For both cases your going to need a combustion chamber that is capable of holding up to those pressures which means thick metal which means very high weight which means more propellant, which means bigger motor, which means more weight...etc. So making a motor with NC propellant is just going to be way too improbable, and difficult. Now where as NC alone is useless as a propellant, mixed with ammonium nitrate and aluminum and soichiometrically balanced produces a very high power propellant used by the military in some of their missles. By the way Potassium Carbonate (K2CO3)will become a gas at high pressure and temperature. It is only upon mixing with the atmospheric gasses at a much much lower pressure and temperature that it "Resublimes" (you might want to write that word down) into a solid. Catch 22

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