Liquid rocket propellant
[citation needed] Konstantin Tsiolkovsky proposed the use of liquid propellants in 1903, in his article Exploration of Outer Space by Means of Rocket Devices.
[3][4] On March 16, 1926, Robert H. Goddard used liquid oxygen (LOX) and gasoline as propellants for his first partially successful liquid-propellant rocket launch.
[clarification needed] In Germany, engineers and scientists began building and testing liquid propulsion rockets in the late 1920s.
[citation needed] The major manufacturer of German rocket engines for military use, the HWK firm,[8] manufactured the RLM-numbered 109-500-designation series of rocket engine systems, and either used hydrogen peroxide as a monopropellant for Starthilfe rocket-propulsive assisted takeoff needs;[9] or as a form of thrust for MCLOS-guided air-sea glide bombs;[10] and used in a bipropellant combination of the same oxidizer with a fuel mixture of hydrazine hydrate and methyl alcohol for rocket engine systems intended for manned combat aircraft propulsion purposes.
Large strategic missiles need to sit in land-based or submarine-based silos for many years, able to launch at a moment's notice.
As the military was willing to handle and use hazardous materials, a great number of dangerous chemicals were brewed up in large batches, most of which wound up being deemed unsuitable for operational systems.
The addition of a modest amount of nitrogen tetroxide, N2O4, turned the mixture red and kept it from changing composition, but left the problem that nitric acid corrodes containers it is placed in, releasing gases that can build up pressure in the process.
Propellant combinations based on IRFNA or pure N2O4 as oxidizer and kerosene or hypergolic (self igniting) aniline, hydrazine or unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) as fuel were then adopted in the United States and the Soviet Union for use in strategic and tactical missiles.
The self-igniting storeable liquid bi-propellants have somewhat lower specific impulse than LOX/kerosene but have higher density so a greater mass of propellant can be placed in the same sized tanks.
Petroleum-based fuels offered more power than alcohol, but standard gasoline and kerosene left too much soot and combustion by-products that could clog engine plumbing.
During the early 1950s, the chemical industry in the US was assigned the task of formulating an improved petroleum-based rocket propellant which would not leave residue behind and also ensure that the engines would remain cool.
Steam reforming of natural gas is the most common method of producing commercial bulk hydrogen at about 95% of the world production[13][14] of 500 billion m3 in 1998.
[15] At high temperatures (700–1100 °C) and in the presence of a metal-based catalyst (nickel), steam reacts with methane to yield carbon monoxide and hydrogen.
[citation needed]) The Soviet rocket programme, in part due to a lack of technical capability, did not use liquid hydrogen as a propellant until the Energia core stage in the 1980s.
[citation needed] The liquid-rocket engine bipropellant liquid oxygen and hydrogen offers the highest specific impulse for conventional rockets.
The highest-specific-impulse chemistry ever test-fired in a rocket engine was lithium and fluorine, with hydrogen added to improve the exhaust thermodynamics (all propellants had to be kept in their own tanks, making this a tripropellant).
In NASA's Mars Design Reference Mission 5.0 documents (between 2009 and 2012), liquid methane/LOX (methalox) was the chosen propellant mixture for the lander module.
[29] As of January 2025[update], liquid fuel combinations in common use: The table uses data from the JANNAF thermochemical tables (Joint Army-Navy-NASA-Air Force (JANNAF) Interagency Propulsion Committee) throughout, with best-possible specific impulse calculated by Rocketdyne under the assumptions of adiabatic combustion, isentropic expansion, one-dimensional expansion and shifting equilibrium.
