Russia Lights Rockets with an Oversized Wooden Match | Hacker News Reader

Russia Lights Rockets with an Oversized Wooden Match

popularmechanics.com

132 pointsvenomsnake26 comments

Copenhagen Suborbitals have a good blog post[1] (albeit in somewhat stilted English) explaining how they ended up using a similar device (visible here[2] in a slo-mo video of an unsuccessful engine test).

1: http://copenhagensuborbitals.com/to-make-fire/

2: https://youtu.be/f-4n-2MtECE?t=25s

That slo-mo video is so good it can win on some short art-house films festival.

I hope then that you have seen this classic Saturn V footage then:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKtVpvzUF1Y

The Apollo 11 launch features prominently in Godfrey Reggio / Philip Glass's _Koyaanisqatsi_ [1], so most art house theater-goers will have seen it, I would think.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koyaanisqatsi#Synopsis

Thanks for the link, powerful footage.

Was everything supposed to catch fire, or was that part of the failure? Either way, I'm amazed the camera survived.

Nope! Everything wasn't supposed to catch fire. And yes, it's amazing the camera survived.

This some great, Russian engineering right here. I can't believe I didn't hear of this before. Only thing I didn't like about it was the brass wire. Might be too simple. These days, we have highly-reliable, cheap chips with RFID built in. They might put one or more of those on each pyro-charge with reliable system listening to each one's, unique signal. When they all die, cheap cameras (esp phone variety) at useful angles confirm the fires were lit or spot individual problem. Then, if all are lit, IGNITION!

Alternatively, a few wires acting as a circuit on each charge in different, physical places attached in a way they won't come loose. Monitoring circuit sees all of them go down in an instant suggests fire is lit. Either that wire goes to control room directly to keep things simple, where they see disappearance, or they go to on-site rig that watches all of them to create a signal for control room that says all the circuits are dead. Pick whichever is simplest since that's usually most reliable and cheap.

Thoughts?

I heard an unverified apocryphal tale about the Chinese Long March rocket back in the '80s. The story was that, instead of an automated system, they put a person very near the rocket to activate something just seconds before T=0. Once activated, this person would run for their life, jumping into a tube/slide that would take them to an underground shelter where they would seal the hatch before the rocket flames came pouring out.

The punchline: the tube ended in a coffin. Cheaper!

I worked with a company that did work on an installation where they made rocket / missile fuel, but beyond all the security checkpoints and terrifying NFPA Diamonds (4 4 4 Explosive) were a series of buildings where the actual production happened. Every building had huge earthen berms along side with escape slides for employees to use in case of emergency. No real point but I could completely see the Chinese military making similar use of theirs.

I mean... to be fair didn't our Shuttle basically use giant Bic lighters? Mischmetal starters and all?

If you are talking about the sparks sprayed towards the engines, then that wasn't the ignition system.

Igniting a rocket engine like that would cause the flame to travel backwards into the combustion chamber and the engine to spontaneously disassemble.

The sparks merely burned off the excess hydrogen that might escape from the engines and avoid unplanned conflagrations around the pad from it.

Actual ignition was done by ignitors inside the engines themselves.

TIL! So... the ignitors inside the engines were... electronic? Chemical?

On the SSME there's something called a Augmented Spark Igniter located in the center of the injector. It burns fuel and oxidizer to make a jet of flame which ignites the whole mess.

The details are in here:

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2011/ph240/nguyen1/docs/SS...

Thanks very much.

This seems like a good idea to me, provided you only need to fire the engine once (which, admittedly, is normal for the first stage). Given the amount of trouble rocket companies have had with igniters over the years a match seems like just the ticket.

Russian Scientists Announce Six-Month Delay In Carving New Space Station

http://www.theonion.com/article/russian-scientists-announce-...

Since properly treated wood is becoming acceptable skyscraper structural material this as well may be a foot meet mouth article couple of years down the road.

And if it is stupid and it works, than it is not stupid.

There's an ongoing back-and-forth between russian and american space program.

Exemplified by the tale about how america spent millions of dollars developing a pen that writes in space, while russians simply used pencils.

On it's surface you think, silly americans! Supposedly though, americans expressly rejected pencils, because graphite fragments could get caught in critical places (remember it's electrically conductive!)

So we are left with the very cheap, probably perfectly functional approach. And the extremely expensive, objectively most safe approach.

Which wraps up what I understand as a core difference between the two programs nicely.

Except that the space pens were developed with private funds and the Soviets bought the same pens from the same manufacturer. There are some interesting philosophical differences between the programs, but "the Russians jerry-rigged everything while the Americans used careful and conscientious engineering" isn't one of them.

Yes, I know it's not accurate, which is why I called it a tale.

Neither was I saying russians jerry-rigged everything. What it does seem, is they used more simplifying approaches to control costs & complexity (possibly at the cost of some amount of additional risk)

Its always funny that people talk about how the US reduces risk by complexity but in reality the Space Shuttle was the unsafest vehicle ever, and caused the most deaths.

Not to mention how expensive this overly complex design was.

Even when the built a space plane (for political reasons) they had the good sense to make it unmanned (in the beginning) and to not put the main engines on the vehicle itself. The also design in a ground abort system.

Yes, the problem with complexity is eventually you go too far and the complexity makes it worse.

The Chinese made a heat shield out of oak:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14619738-300-space-od...

I believe that Mercury/Gemini heat shields included cork and/or balsa wood.

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