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From: doug@primo.hig.hawaii.edu (Doug Myhre)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle,sci.space
Subject: Re: USSR and the Moon [was "Beyond the Energia crisis"]
Keywords: Soviet/American shuttle comparison
Message-ID: <2735@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 30 Nov 88 19:31:54 GMT
References: <880@cernvax.UUCP> <18263@ames.arc.nasa.gov> <18420@ames.arc.nasa.gov> <7827@ihlpl.ATT.COM> <79302@sun.uucp>
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Reply-To: doug@loihi.hig.hawaii.edu (Doug Myhre)
Organization: University of Hawaii, Honolulu
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In article <79302@sun.uucp>, fiddler%concertina@Sun.COM (Steve Hix) writes:
>Have you ever heard about a fuel/air bomb?  Small charge speads out
>an aerosol of some liquid fuel, then an igniter sets off the cloud.
>Extremely potent for a given weight of bomb.
>
>If the rocket first suffered a small explosion that ruptured its tanks,
>then the resulting fuel/oxidizer cloud gets ignited...it might have
>the described effect.

I would think that the initial explosion would ignite the fuel before
it's had a chance to spread out that fine.
It does remind me of the experiment that the Air Force (I think) did
where they deliberately crashed a plane to test a new jet fuel mixture.
The mixture supposable wouldn't ignite as easily when a place crashed and
the fuel was spread out in a fine spray.  From the news footage, it didn't
look as if it worked very well.

doug myhre 
Hawaii Institute of Geophysics
2525 Correa Rd.
Honolulu, HI 96822