

Danish forum members building manned space rocket (and submarine) - jasonwatkinspdx
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3271649

======
JabavuAdams
Cool stuff, but characterizing NOX as "safe" with respect to LOX is crazy,
IMHO. Witness the Scaled Composites fatal accident, doing a "cold flow" test.

There's a poor safety culture around nitrous because many people have used it
at small scales, or in the racing community, without too many problems.

In part, there's a scaling issue here. If your pipe full of nitrous is less
than some (unknown) critical diameter, then spontaneous decomposition that
happens in the pipe gets quenched. As you scale things up ... oh, you hit your
pipe with a hammer on a hot day. Oops, you're dead.

OTOH, people know LOX can be dangerous, so they treat it with respect. Except
for that barbecue quy on Youtube.

~~~
Zak
Automotive nitrous oxide systems are also fairly safe because they're well-
tested mass-produced consumer products. Homemade, modified or improperly
installed automotive nitrous systems can and do explode. There's a series of
photos well-known on just about any car-related forum of a Nissan Maxima that
had a nitrous bottle explode in a garage; the level of destruction is
impressive.

Oxidizers are dangerous - in many cases far more dangerous than the fuel. Of
course, most people are going to treat something labeled "rocket fuel" with
respect.

------
uxp
They're a non-profit before they are Something Awful forum members. Not trying
to disrespect goons here, I'm one also, but the priorities need to be
straightened.

See RiderOfGiraffe's comment on this same page.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1624552>

------
kmfrk
Would you write a headline saying "X HN member is Y" if I had an interesting
project?

They have no affiliation with SA. It's not a small forum project that turned
into extraterrestrial space flight.

------
ThomPete
The submarine is normally docked right outside my window.

