Mike Williams
Senior Airman
- 572
- Oct 19, 2006
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...... I assume nitrogen has its uses as a safe tank purging system.
I'm a bit surprised that high pressure nitrous oxide tanks were so problematic. I'd thought the liquification properties weren't so different from CO2 (or perhaps even propane) let alone potential for compromise with high-pressure near-cryogenic containment to minimize boil-off but still employ a check valve or other regulator of some sort to vent excess pressure.
Nitrogen isn't much like CO2 at all ... as far as physical properties go. Impossible to liquify under pressure at standard temperature (must be cryogenic) with much lower boiling points than either CO2 or N2O.The problem is that Nitrous oxide is a violent oxidant. In certain conditions materials such as stainless steel can be a fuel for nitrous oxide. Nitrogen and CO2 may be similar as liquids in their performance but they are inert, using Nitrous as a fire extinguisher isnt a great move.
<...>if the N2O system was used. <...> I seriously doubt it would ever be used, even in a Mosquito fighter type variant when attacking. It was probably reserved for escaping.
Is one minute of extra power even worth the effort to investigate? If it did any good, we'd hear all about it in rave reports. Late model Merlins were aleady at or slightly over the power level that stock Merlin rods could handle. Adding more was looking for an engine failure.
They solve that Reno by using Allison G-series rods in Merlin blocks to handle the power gain in a racing engine. When they blow, it isn't the rods. Before they tried that it was usually the Merlin rods. In fact, they were above the nominal power level the rods could handle when WWII ended.
The only reason it wasn't rwally addressed is that they were working heavily on jets and simply soldiered on with existing Merlins until jets were developed enough to replace the pistons.