Re: Re: LOX clenliness (was: peroxide compatibility question)

On Sun, 28 Mar 2004 [email protected] wrote:
> My understanding is that under GOX or LOX flow within piping, anything 
> organic will instantly combust...

Not quite.  With oxidizers like fluorine or ClF5, that's what will happen.
With oxygen, there may not be any action at all right away... but the
combination of LOX or high-pressure GOX and a liquid or finely-divided
combustible is a powerful explosive, which may go off immediately or may
wait until the least convenient time.  (Two or three of the early X-planes
were lost to mysterious in-flight explosions, including at least one
fatality, before they finally had one explode on the *ground* where the
pieces could be recovered easily for analysis, and they discovered that
using treated-leather gaskets in the LOX plumbing was a really bad idea.)

The unpredictability makes this a worse problem for LOX than for the
fluorine oxidizers, in many ways.  With the latter, if the hardware
behaves itself in one test, it will go on doing so.

> which will cause *any* metal plumbing next to it to also
> burn, which will instantly rupture the piping and cause a bad day.

With LOX, it's not so predictable.  Some metals are prone to ignition in
LOX, but some (e.g. copper and some stainless steels) are quite resistant
to it. 

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       [email protected]