Need help with a rocket motor ID

[Dave Kearton]

I've just received a few pics of a small rocket motor, from a friend of
mine.



It's about 2Kg and about 45cm long with a 10cm wide nozzle. It's a
liquid fuel motor and doesn't look like it has any electrical connections.


We're all guessing it could be some form of reaction nozzle for (maybe) a
Gemini or Apollo capsule.



Can I buy a vowel please ?





--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[William R Thompson]

While playing "Stump the Bland," "Dave Kearton" wrote:

> I've just received a few pics of a small rocket motor, from a friend of
> mine.

> It's about 2Kg and about 45cm long with a 10cm wide nozzle. It's a
> liquid fuel motor and doesn't look like it has any electrical connections.

> We're all guessing it could be some form of reaction nozzle for (maybe) a
> Gemini or Apollo capsule.

It doesn't look like a Gemini or Apollo article. They had ablative
nozzle linings and assorted electrical components attached to the
top of the unit. The spiral exterior of the casing suggests that this
rocket uses a regenerative cooling system, which I don't think
appeared on Gemini or Apollo.

My best guess is that an amateur rocketeer built it. Failing that, it
*might* be a secondary propulsion motor from an Agena upper stage
or--remotely--a midcourse correction motor from a Ranger/Mariner
test article.

(I'd suggest asking Henry Spencer on sci.space.history, but
jeeze, who wants to despoil ssh with something on-topic?)

--Bill Thompson

[William R Thompson]

While playing "Stump the Bland," "Dave Kearton" wrote:

> I've just received a few pics of a small rocket motor, from a friend of
> mine.

> It's about 2Kg and about 45cm long with a 10cm wide nozzle. It's a
> liquid fuel motor and doesn't look like it has any electrical connections.

> We're all guessing it could be some form of reaction nozzle for (maybe) a
> Gemini or Apollo capsule.

It doesn't look like a Gemini or Apollo article. They had ablative
nozzle linings and assorted electrical components attached to the
top of the unit. The spiral exterior of the casing suggests that this
rocket uses a regenerative cooling system, which I don't think
appeared on Gemini or Apollo.

My best guess is that an amateur rocketeer built it. Failing that, it
*might* be a secondary propulsion motor from an Agena upper stage
or--remotely--a midcourse correction motor from a Ranger/Mariner
test article.

(I'd suggest asking Henry Spencer on sci.space.history, but
jeeze, who wants to despoil ssh with something on-topic?)

--Bill Thompson

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 18:38:32 +1030, "Dave Kearton"
> wrote:

>
>I've just received a few pics of a small rocket motor, from a friend of
>mine.
>
>
>
>It's about 2Kg and about 45cm long with a 10cm wide nozzle. It's a
>liquid fuel motor and doesn't look like it has any electrical connections.
>
Well, I have looked at my share of rocket stuff, and you sure have me
stumped.

First thing I notice is that the combustion chamber seems quite long.
That is always a compromise but usually they wind up being shorter too
much shorter than this.

Second is the helical wrap of the flow passage in the thrust chamber
wall. It is obvious what they are doing there, but I never saw one
like it, except maybe on the back of an envelope.

The nozzle looks to be maybe a 25 to one expansion ratio, so it is
designed for vacuum conditions.

The lip on the nozzle skirt looks very thick to me. Usually
spacecraft nozzles are very thin at the lip. I have been much exposed
to nozzle lips that were maybe a meter in diameter that were not that
thick.

It looks American, not Russian, but sometimes that is hard to tell.
No. xx495 has some writing in it. Looks to me like part of it says
"Sy6xx". So, it isn't Russian, I guess (they get along without those
letters). The "y", if that is what it is, is very funny shaped.

Any writing is very important for ID's.

(I remember many years ago there was a paper in some technical journal
which was written by some Australians in which they described an
object found in the "outback". They considered whether it might be a
bit of reentered space debris. Part of the description was an ink
stamp of a small circle with "CVA263" inside it. That is a "Convair
Astronautics" inspector's stamp. I was convinced already.)

The tube fittings are typical AN, American "Army/Navy" standard ones.

The propellant lines are about the same size, probably lox something
or hypergols, no hydrogen.

It might produce a thrust of a few hundred pounds, a bit large for
reaction control.


>
>We're all guessing it could be some form of reaction nozzle for (maybe) a
>Gemini or Apollo capsule.
>
>
I am not familiar with all the thrusters in those spacecraft, but I
will bet that this is not one of them.

For one thing, just as a general observation, "the further up the
stack" you go, the bigger the "dollars/pound" trade factor becomes,
and the more "sophisticated" the hardware looks. Even if it saves no
weight, the designer will try to make his part look more expensive so
that it goes with the surroundings. But, sometimes, a "boat anchor"
manages to sneak onboard. This think looks to me like a piece of GSE
or a test article that may have flown on some "primitive" vehicle.

I will also say with some certainty that it doesn't belong to an
Atlas, Thor, Delta, or Saturn vehicle.

The Atlas had a Rocketdyne thruster somewhat similar in size; it
didn't look anything like this.

And, I don't think it is from Rocketdyne.

>
>Can I buy a vowel please ?


My first suggestion would be an "A".

As in "Aerojet". They built a lot of stuff I don't know about. But it
doesn't really look Aerojettish, either.

RMI? TRW?

I am very interested in what you find out.


Henry H.

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 18:38:32 +1030, "Dave Kearton"
> wrote:

>
>I've just received a few pics of a small rocket motor, from a friend of
>mine.
>
>
>
>It's about 2Kg and about 45cm long with a 10cm wide nozzle. It's a
>liquid fuel motor and doesn't look like it has any electrical connections.
>
Well, I have looked at my share of rocket stuff, and you sure have me
stumped.

First thing I notice is that the combustion chamber seems quite long.
That is always a compromise but usually they wind up being shorter too
much shorter than this.

Second is the helical wrap of the flow passage in the thrust chamber
wall. It is obvious what they are doing there, but I never saw one
like it, except maybe on the back of an envelope.

The nozzle looks to be maybe a 25 to one expansion ratio, so it is
designed for vacuum conditions.

The lip on the nozzle skirt looks very thick to me. Usually
spacecraft nozzles are very thin at the lip. I have been much exposed
to nozzle lips that were maybe a meter in diameter that were not that
thick.

It looks American, not Russian, but sometimes that is hard to tell.
No. xx495 has some writing in it. Looks to me like part of it says
"Sy6xx". So, it isn't Russian, I guess (they get along without those
letters). The "y", if that is what it is, is very funny shaped.

Any writing is very important for ID's.

(I remember many years ago there was a paper in some technical journal
which was written by some Australians in which they described an
object found in the "outback". They considered whether it might be a
bit of reentered space debris. Part of the description was an ink
stamp of a small circle with "CVA263" inside it. That is a "Convair
Astronautics" inspector's stamp. I was convinced already.)

The tube fittings are typical AN, American "Army/Navy" standard ones.

The propellant lines are about the same size, probably lox something
or hypergols, no hydrogen.

It might produce a thrust of a few hundred pounds, a bit large for
reaction control.


>
>We're all guessing it could be some form of reaction nozzle for (maybe) a
>Gemini or Apollo capsule.
>
>
I am not familiar with all the thrusters in those spacecraft, but I
will bet that this is not one of them.

For one thing, just as a general observation, "the further up the
stack" you go, the bigger the "dollars/pound" trade factor becomes,
and the more "sophisticated" the hardware looks. Even if it saves no
weight, the designer will try to make his part look more expensive so
that it goes with the surroundings. But, sometimes, a "boat anchor"
manages to sneak onboard. This think looks to me like a piece of GSE
or a test article that may have flown on some "primitive" vehicle.

I will also say with some certainty that it doesn't belong to an
Atlas, Thor, Delta, or Saturn vehicle.

The Atlas had a Rocketdyne thruster somewhat similar in size; it
didn't look anything like this.

And, I don't think it is from Rocketdyne.

>
>Can I buy a vowel please ?


My first suggestion would be an "A".

As in "Aerojet". They built a lot of stuff I don't know about. But it
doesn't really look Aerojettish, either.

RMI? TRW?

I am very interested in what you find out.


Henry H.

[Dave Kearton]

Thanks Bill & Henry,


It's sounding more interesting all the time.


--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[Dave Kearton]

Thanks Bill & Henry,


It's sounding more interesting all the time.


--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[Dave Kearton]

wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 18:38:32 +1030, "Dave Kearton"
> > wrote:
>
> It looks American, not Russian, but sometimes that is hard to tell.
> No. xx495 has some writing in it. Looks to me like part of it says
> "Sy6xx". So, it isn't Russian, I guess (they get along without those
> letters). The "y", if that is what it is, is very funny shaped.
>
> Any writing is very important for ID's.
>
> (I remember many years ago there was a paper in some technical journal
> which was written by some Australians in which they described an
> object found in the "outback". They considered whether it might be a
> bit of reentered space debris. Part of the description was an ink
> stamp of a small circle with "CVA263" inside it. That is a "Convair
> Astronautics" inspector's stamp. I was convinced already.)
>
> >
> Henry H.



Having a closer look at the original pics, before I resized them, these
are the only views could find with text.


It's a possiblity that we can trace the pics back to the article itself if
you need more details.




--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[Dave Kearton]

wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 18:38:32 +1030, "Dave Kearton"
> > wrote:
>
> It looks American, not Russian, but sometimes that is hard to tell.
> No. xx495 has some writing in it. Looks to me like part of it says
> "Sy6xx". So, it isn't Russian, I guess (they get along without those
> letters). The "y", if that is what it is, is very funny shaped.
>
> Any writing is very important for ID's.
>
> (I remember many years ago there was a paper in some technical journal
> which was written by some Australians in which they described an
> object found in the "outback". They considered whether it might be a
> bit of reentered space debris. Part of the description was an ink
> stamp of a small circle with "CVA263" inside it. That is a "Convair
> Astronautics" inspector's stamp. I was convinced already.)
>
> >
> Henry H.



Having a closer look at the original pics, before I resized them, these
are the only views could find with text.


It's a possiblity that we can trace the pics back to the article itself if
you need more details.




--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[Q]

On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 18:38:32 +1030, "Dave Kearton"
> wrote:

>I've just received a few pics of a small rocket motor, from a friend of
>mine.

Long shot - but I think that text is 'SN634' on IMGP0495 right hand
side - speck of dirt at top left of the 'N' making it look like 'iY'.

Looking for more now - and the writing looks Aussie :-)

[Q]

On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 18:38:32 +1030, "Dave Kearton"
> wrote:

>I've just received a few pics of a small rocket motor, from a friend of
>mine.

Long shot - but I think that text is 'SN634' on IMGP0495 right hand
side - speck of dirt at top left of the 'N' making it look like 'iY'.

Looking for more now - and the writing looks Aussie :-)

[powaybob]

Q wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 18:38:32 +1030, "Dave Kearton"
> > wrote:
>
>
>>I've just received a few pics of a small rocket motor, from a friend of
>>mine.
>
>
> Long shot - but I think that text is 'SN634' on IMGP0495 right hand
> side - speck of dirt at top left of the 'N' making it look like 'iY'.
>
> Looking for more now - and the writing looks Aussie :-)

Are bolts metric or SAE? SAE would probably mean US; metric would be
inconclusive.

The mounting bracket appears interesting- is it rusted, coated, or
eroded in some way?

My guess is that is not US military or NASA since an assembly this size
would have a part label with part number. Unless of course it was made
by the aliens at area 51...

Hope you find the answer...

[powaybob]

Q wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 18:38:32 +1030, "Dave Kearton"
> > wrote:
>
>
>>I've just received a few pics of a small rocket motor, from a friend of
>>mine.
>
>
> Long shot - but I think that text is 'SN634' on IMGP0495 right hand
> side - speck of dirt at top left of the 'N' making it look like 'iY'.
>
> Looking for more now - and the writing looks Aussie :-)

Are bolts metric or SAE? SAE would probably mean US; metric would be
inconclusive.

The mounting bracket appears interesting- is it rusted, coated, or
eroded in some way?

My guess is that is not US military or NASA since an assembly this size
would have a part label with part number. Unless of course it was made
by the aliens at area 51...

Hope you find the answer...

[William R Thompson]

"Dave Kearton" wrote:

> Thanks Bill & Henry,

> It's sounding more interesting all the time.

One obvious question--can you find out if those
nuts are metric or SAE?

--Bill Thompson

[William R Thompson]

"Dave Kearton" wrote:

> Thanks Bill & Henry,

> It's sounding more interesting all the time.

One obvious question--can you find out if those
nuts are metric or SAE?

--Bill Thompson

[Dave Kearton]

William R Thompson wrote:
> "Dave Kearton" wrote:
>
>> Thanks Bill & Henry,
>
>> It's sounding more interesting all the time.
>
> One obvious question--can you find out if those
> nuts are metric or SAE?
>
> --Bill Thompson



I'll ask the question and see what happens, if it's a confused mixture of
metric and imperial, does that mean it's a NASA rocket ?.


;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)



--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[Dave Kearton]

William R Thompson wrote:
> "Dave Kearton" wrote:
>
>> Thanks Bill & Henry,
>
>> It's sounding more interesting all the time.
>
> One obvious question--can you find out if those
> nuts are metric or SAE?
>
> --Bill Thompson



I'll ask the question and see what happens, if it's a confused mixture of
metric and imperial, does that mean it's a NASA rocket ?.


;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)



--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[William R Thompson]

"Dave Kearton" wrote:

> William R Thompson wrote:

>> One obvious question--can you find out if those
>> nuts are metric or SAE?

> I'll ask the question and see what happens, if it's a confused mixture
> of metric and imperial, does that mean it's a NASA rocket?

Only if it's from a project that NASA wanted to kill.

NASA has recently announced (see

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/08jan_metricmoon.htm

that all manned operations on the moon will use metric measurements.
This is probably NASA's way of telling the American public that
we won't return to the moon after all, not if we have to go without
our 3/8 inch socket wrenches.

--Bill Thompson

[William R Thompson]

"Dave Kearton" wrote:

> William R Thompson wrote:

>> One obvious question--can you find out if those
>> nuts are metric or SAE?

> I'll ask the question and see what happens, if it's a confused mixture
> of metric and imperial, does that mean it's a NASA rocket?

Only if it's from a project that NASA wanted to kill.

NASA has recently announced (see

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/08jan_metricmoon.htm

that all manned operations on the moon will use metric measurements.
This is probably NASA's way of telling the American public that
we won't return to the moon after all, not if we have to go without
our 3/8 inch socket wrenches.

--Bill Thompson

[jc[_2_]]

On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 18:38:32 +1030, "Dave Kearton"
> wrote:
>
>I've just received a few pics of a small rocket motor, from a friend of
>mine.
>
>It's about 2Kg and about 45cm long with a 10cm wide nozzle. It's a
>liquid fuel motor and doesn't look like it has any electrical connections.
>
>We're all guessing it could be some form of reaction nozzle for (maybe) a
>Gemini or Apollo capsule.
>
>Can I buy a vowel please ?

Dave,
Not much of a vowel but here's the stuff I got from a bud
who's pretty heavy into rocketry (I am not). He didn't know
what it was, specifically, but here's a bit more info you
can add to the stew.

One other note, Q is correct about the "SN63(4??), which is
preceeded by what looks like a part #, which looks to me
like it may be " ?07705"
Cheers,
jc

"About all I can add to this discussion is that I'd agree
it's probably designed for hypergols since there's no
provision for ignition. Hypergols are binary propellants
that use 2 liquids that spontaneously combust on contact.
The only 2 I can name are furfuryl alcohol with hydrogen
peroxide and the WW2 German bstoff and cstoff. That was the
stuff used in the ME163 Comet rocket plane, I'm pretty sure
one of the stoffs was hydrazine. That's some nasty stuff, it
dissolves flesh. I've heard stories about accidental leaks
and human soup. Yuck!

Looking at the pictures a couple of other things strike me.
Obviously there's no gimbal on the nozzle so it's not a
manuvering jet. I'd guess either a seperation motor for a
really big stage or possibly some kind of retro-fire thing.
The other thing is the way the fluid lines wrap around the
can looks like preheat to me. That either means a fuel that
doesn't vaporize easily, like kerosene, or a cold soaked
environment. That goes along with the idea that it's
designed for vacuum.

Where did the guy get it? Looks like government surplus to
me. Hope my input helps."

[jc[_2_]]

On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 18:38:32 +1030, "Dave Kearton"
> wrote:
>
>I've just received a few pics of a small rocket motor, from a friend of
>mine.
>
>It's about 2Kg and about 45cm long with a 10cm wide nozzle. It's a
>liquid fuel motor and doesn't look like it has any electrical connections.
>
>We're all guessing it could be some form of reaction nozzle for (maybe) a
>Gemini or Apollo capsule.
>
>Can I buy a vowel please ?

Dave,
Not much of a vowel but here's the stuff I got from a bud
who's pretty heavy into rocketry (I am not). He didn't know
what it was, specifically, but here's a bit more info you
can add to the stew.

One other note, Q is correct about the "SN63(4??), which is
preceeded by what looks like a part #, which looks to me
like it may be " ?07705"
Cheers,
jc

"About all I can add to this discussion is that I'd agree
it's probably designed for hypergols since there's no
provision for ignition. Hypergols are binary propellants
that use 2 liquids that spontaneously combust on contact.
The only 2 I can name are furfuryl alcohol with hydrogen
peroxide and the WW2 German bstoff and cstoff. That was the
stuff used in the ME163 Comet rocket plane, I'm pretty sure
one of the stoffs was hydrazine. That's some nasty stuff, it
dissolves flesh. I've heard stories about accidental leaks
and human soup. Yuck!

Looking at the pictures a couple of other things strike me.
Obviously there's no gimbal on the nozzle so it's not a
manuvering jet. I'd guess either a seperation motor for a
really big stage or possibly some kind of retro-fire thing.
The other thing is the way the fluid lines wrap around the
can looks like preheat to me. That either means a fuel that
doesn't vaporize easily, like kerosene, or a cold soaked
environment. That goes along with the idea that it's
designed for vacuum.

Where did the guy get it? Looks like government surplus to
me. Hope my input helps."

[Dave Kearton]

"jc" > wrote in message
...

>
> Dave,
> Not much of a vowel but here's the stuff I got from a bud
> who's pretty heavy into rocketry (I am not). He didn't know
> what it was, specifically, but here's a bit more info you
> can add to the stew.
>
> One other note, Q is correct about the "SN63(4??), which is
> preceeded by what looks like a part #, which looks to me
> like it may be " ?07705"
> Cheers,
> jc
>
> "About all I can add to this discussion is that I'd agree
> it's probably designed for hypergols since there's no
> provision for ignition. Hypergols are binary propellants
> that use 2 liquids that spontaneously combust on contact.
> The only 2 I can name are furfuryl alcohol with hydrogen
> peroxide and the WW2 German bstoff and cstoff. That was the
> stuff used in the ME163 Comet rocket plane, I'm pretty sure
> one of the stoffs was hydrazine. That's some nasty stuff, it
> dissolves flesh. I've heard stories about accidental leaks
> and human soup. Yuck!
>
> Looking at the pictures a couple of other things strike me.
> Obviously there's no gimbal on the nozzle so it's not a
> manuvering jet. I'd guess either a seperation motor for a
> really big stage or possibly some kind of retro-fire thing.
> The other thing is the way the fluid lines wrap around the
> can looks like preheat to me. That either means a fuel that
> doesn't vaporize easily, like kerosene, or a cold soaked
> environment. That goes along with the idea that it's
> designed for vacuum.
>
> Where did the guy get it? Looks like government surplus to
> me. Hope my input helps."
>


Thanks, every little bit helps.




I'm currently trying to get comparision pics of the Rocketdyne LR64-NA-4
from the AQM-37. It was a fairly common engine - over 5K in service
and possibly matches the size of the engine with the airframe.




--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[Dave Kearton]

"jc" > wrote in message
...

>
> Dave,
> Not much of a vowel but here's the stuff I got from a bud
> who's pretty heavy into rocketry (I am not). He didn't know
> what it was, specifically, but here's a bit more info you
> can add to the stew.
>
> One other note, Q is correct about the "SN63(4??), which is
> preceeded by what looks like a part #, which looks to me
> like it may be " ?07705"
> Cheers,
> jc
>
> "About all I can add to this discussion is that I'd agree
> it's probably designed for hypergols since there's no
> provision for ignition. Hypergols are binary propellants
> that use 2 liquids that spontaneously combust on contact.
> The only 2 I can name are furfuryl alcohol with hydrogen
> peroxide and the WW2 German bstoff and cstoff. That was the
> stuff used in the ME163 Comet rocket plane, I'm pretty sure
> one of the stoffs was hydrazine. That's some nasty stuff, it
> dissolves flesh. I've heard stories about accidental leaks
> and human soup. Yuck!
>
> Looking at the pictures a couple of other things strike me.
> Obviously there's no gimbal on the nozzle so it's not a
> manuvering jet. I'd guess either a seperation motor for a
> really big stage or possibly some kind of retro-fire thing.
> The other thing is the way the fluid lines wrap around the
> can looks like preheat to me. That either means a fuel that
> doesn't vaporize easily, like kerosene, or a cold soaked
> environment. That goes along with the idea that it's
> designed for vacuum.
>
> Where did the guy get it? Looks like government surplus to
> me. Hope my input helps."
>


Thanks, every little bit helps.




I'm currently trying to get comparision pics of the Rocketdyne LR64-NA-4
from the AQM-37. It was a fairly common engine - over 5K in service
and possibly matches the size of the engine with the airframe.




--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[David E]

well this is a mixing chamber for a chrop duster. looks like its a old
grummend agcat around the 1960 design, the corossion has me worried...
"Dave Kearton" > wrote in message
...
> "jc" > wrote in message
> ...
>
>>
>> Dave,
>> Not much of a vowel but here's the stuff I got from a bud
>> who's pretty heavy into rocketry (I am not). He didn't know
>> what it was, specifically, but here's a bit more info you
>> can add to the stew.
>>
>> One other note, Q is correct about the "SN63(4??), which is
>> preceeded by what looks like a part #, which looks to me
>> like it may be " ?07705"
>> Cheers,
>> jc
>>
>> "About all I can add to this discussion is that I'd agree
>> it's probably designed for hypergols since there's no
>> provision for ignition. Hypergols are binary propellants
>> that use 2 liquids that spontaneously combust on contact.
>> The only 2 I can name are furfuryl alcohol with hydrogen
>> peroxide and the WW2 German bstoff and cstoff. That was the
>> stuff used in the ME163 Comet rocket plane, I'm pretty sure
>> one of the stoffs was hydrazine. That's some nasty stuff, it
>> dissolves flesh. I've heard stories about accidental leaks
>> and human soup. Yuck!
>>
>> Looking at the pictures a couple of other things strike me.
>> Obviously there's no gimbal on the nozzle so it's not a
>> manuvering jet. I'd guess either a seperation motor for a
>> really big stage or possibly some kind of retro-fire thing.
>> The other thing is the way the fluid lines wrap around the
>> can looks like preheat to me. That either means a fuel that
>> doesn't vaporize easily, like kerosene, or a cold soaked
>> environment. That goes along with the idea that it's
>> designed for vacuum.
>>
>> Where did the guy get it? Looks like government surplus to
>> me. Hope my input helps."
>>
>
>
> Thanks, every little bit helps.
>
>
>
>
> I'm currently trying to get comparision pics of the Rocketdyne LR64-NA-4
> from the AQM-37. It was a fairly common engine - over 5K in
> service and possibly matches the size of the engine with the airframe.
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Cheers
>
> Dave Kearton
>
>

[David E]

well this is a mixing chamber for a chrop duster. looks like its a old
grummend agcat around the 1960 design, the corossion has me worried...
"Dave Kearton" > wrote in message
...
> "jc" > wrote in message
> ...
>
>>
>> Dave,
>> Not much of a vowel but here's the stuff I got from a bud
>> who's pretty heavy into rocketry (I am not). He didn't know
>> what it was, specifically, but here's a bit more info you
>> can add to the stew.
>>
>> One other note, Q is correct about the "SN63(4??), which is
>> preceeded by what looks like a part #, which looks to me
>> like it may be " ?07705"
>> Cheers,
>> jc
>>
>> "About all I can add to this discussion is that I'd agree
>> it's probably designed for hypergols since there's no
>> provision for ignition. Hypergols are binary propellants
>> that use 2 liquids that spontaneously combust on contact.
>> The only 2 I can name are furfuryl alcohol with hydrogen
>> peroxide and the WW2 German bstoff and cstoff. That was the
>> stuff used in the ME163 Comet rocket plane, I'm pretty sure
>> one of the stoffs was hydrazine. That's some nasty stuff, it
>> dissolves flesh. I've heard stories about accidental leaks
>> and human soup. Yuck!
>>
>> Looking at the pictures a couple of other things strike me.
>> Obviously there's no gimbal on the nozzle so it's not a
>> manuvering jet. I'd guess either a seperation motor for a
>> really big stage or possibly some kind of retro-fire thing.
>> The other thing is the way the fluid lines wrap around the
>> can looks like preheat to me. That either means a fuel that
>> doesn't vaporize easily, like kerosene, or a cold soaked
>> environment. That goes along with the idea that it's
>> designed for vacuum.
>>
>> Where did the guy get it? Looks like government surplus to
>> me. Hope my input helps."
>>
>
>
> Thanks, every little bit helps.
>
>
>
>
> I'm currently trying to get comparision pics of the Rocketdyne LR64-NA-4
> from the AQM-37. It was a fairly common engine - over 5K in
> service and possibly matches the size of the engine with the airframe.
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Cheers
>
> Dave Kearton
>
>

[William R Thompson]

"jc" wrote:

> "About all I can add to this discussion is that I'd agree
> it's probably designed for hypergols since there's no
> provision for ignition. Hypergols are binary propellants
> that use 2 liquids that spontaneously combust on contact.
> The only 2 I can name are furfuryl alcohol with hydrogen
> peroxide and the WW2 German bstoff and cstoff. That was the
> stuff used in the ME163 Comet rocket plane, I'm pretty sure
> one of the stoffs was hydrazine. That's some nasty stuff, it
> dissolves flesh. I've heard stories about accidental leaks
> and human soup. Yuck!

Manzo Zeigler's "Rocket Fighter" describes C-stoff as
"thirty percent hydrazine hydrate solution in methyl alcohol"
and T-stoff as "forty-eight percent concentrated hydrogen
peroxide and a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds." Some
brilliant and possibly pro-Ally designer placed extra fuel tanks
inside the cockpit.

A few years ago I listened to a lecture by a rocket engineer
who had known one of the Komet's engineers. When asked
about the Komet's lethality the German said "It did not kill
half its pilots! It killed no more than one in three!"

--Bill Thompson

[William R Thompson]

"jc" wrote:

> "About all I can add to this discussion is that I'd agree
> it's probably designed for hypergols since there's no
> provision for ignition. Hypergols are binary propellants
> that use 2 liquids that spontaneously combust on contact.
> The only 2 I can name are furfuryl alcohol with hydrogen
> peroxide and the WW2 German bstoff and cstoff. That was the
> stuff used in the ME163 Comet rocket plane, I'm pretty sure
> one of the stoffs was hydrazine. That's some nasty stuff, it
> dissolves flesh. I've heard stories about accidental leaks
> and human soup. Yuck!

Manzo Zeigler's "Rocket Fighter" describes C-stoff as
"thirty percent hydrazine hydrate solution in methyl alcohol"
and T-stoff as "forty-eight percent concentrated hydrogen
peroxide and a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds." Some
brilliant and possibly pro-Ally designer placed extra fuel tanks
inside the cockpit.

A few years ago I listened to a lecture by a rocket engineer
who had known one of the Komet's engineers. When asked
about the Komet's lethality the German said "It did not kill
half its pilots! It killed no more than one in three!"

--Bill Thompson

[Dave Kearton]

"Dave Kearton" > wrote in
message ...
> >
>
>
>
> I'm currently trying to get comparision pics of the Rocketdyne LR64-NA-4
> from the AQM-37. It was a fairly common engine - over 5K in
> service and possibly matches the size of the engine with the airframe.
>






As Esmarelda whispered to Quasimodo "It's only a hunch, but I can't ignore
it"





I'm pretty sure the beast we're looking at is an LR64 variant, leastways
that's close enough for me. I've sent a pic off to PWR and hopefully
they'll own up to it as well.




http://www.aeroconsystems.com/motors/lr64.htm




Thanks to everyone for their thoughts - except for the retard on
sci.space.history who told me to do my own research. I think my way
was a lot more educational.



--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[Dave Kearton]

"Dave Kearton" > wrote in
message ...
> >
>
>
>
> I'm currently trying to get comparision pics of the Rocketdyne LR64-NA-4
> from the AQM-37. It was a fairly common engine - over 5K in
> service and possibly matches the size of the engine with the airframe.
>






As Esmarelda whispered to Quasimodo "It's only a hunch, but I can't ignore
it"





I'm pretty sure the beast we're looking at is an LR64 variant, leastways
that's close enough for me. I've sent a pic off to PWR and hopefully
they'll own up to it as well.




http://www.aeroconsystems.com/motors/lr64.htm




Thanks to everyone for their thoughts - except for the retard on
sci.space.history who told me to do my own research. I think my way
was a lot more educational.



--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[William R Thompson]

"Dave Kearton" wrote:

>> I'm currently trying to get comparision pics of the Rocketdyne LR64-NA-4
>> from the AQM-37. It was a fairly common engine - over 5K in
>> service and possibly matches the size of the engine with the airframe.

> As Esmarelda whispered to Quasimodo "It's only a hunch, but I can't ignore
> it"

> I'm pretty sure the beast we're looking at is an LR64 variant, leastways
> that's close enough for me. I've sent a pic off to PWR and
> hopefully
> they'll own up to it as well.

> http://www.aeroconsystems.com/motors/lr64.htm

> Thanks to everyone for their thoughts - except for the retard on
> sci.space.history who told me to do my own research. I think my
> way
> was a lot more educational.

I think you have it. Here's another picture, from

http://www.astronautix.com/engines/p41ainer.htm

--Bill Thompson

[William R Thompson]

"Dave Kearton" wrote:

>> I'm currently trying to get comparision pics of the Rocketdyne LR64-NA-4
>> from the AQM-37. It was a fairly common engine - over 5K in
>> service and possibly matches the size of the engine with the airframe.

> As Esmarelda whispered to Quasimodo "It's only a hunch, but I can't ignore
> it"

> I'm pretty sure the beast we're looking at is an LR64 variant, leastways
> that's close enough for me. I've sent a pic off to PWR and
> hopefully
> they'll own up to it as well.

> http://www.aeroconsystems.com/motors/lr64.htm

> Thanks to everyone for their thoughts - except for the retard on
> sci.space.history who told me to do my own research. I think my
> way
> was a lot more educational.

I think you have it. Here's another picture, from

http://www.astronautix.com/engines/p41ainer.htm

--Bill Thompson

[Dave Kearton]

"William R Thompson" > wrote in message
link.net...
> "Dave Kearton" wrote:
>
>>> I'm currently trying to get comparision pics of the Rocketdyne LR64-NA-4
>>> from the AQM-37. It was a fairly common engine - over 5K in
>>> service and possibly matches the size of the engine with the airframe.
>
>> As Esmarelda whispered to Quasimodo "It's only a hunch, but I can't
>> ignore
>> it"
>
>> I'm pretty sure the beast we're looking at is an LR64 variant, leastways
>> that's close enough for me. I've sent a pic off to PWR and
>> hopefully
>> they'll own up to it as well.
>
>> http://www.aeroconsystems.com/motors/lr64.htm
>
>> Thanks to everyone for their thoughts - except for the retard on
>> sci.space.history who told me to do my own research. I think my
>> way
>> was a lot more educational.
>
> I think you have it. Here's another picture, from
>
> http://www.astronautix.com/engines/p41ainer.htm
>
> --Bill Thompson
>
>
>


The Stromberg twin barrel carbie on that one would make it go like a cut
cat.




--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[Dave Kearton]

"William R Thompson" > wrote in message
link.net...
> "Dave Kearton" wrote:
>
>>> I'm currently trying to get comparision pics of the Rocketdyne LR64-NA-4
>>> from the AQM-37. It was a fairly common engine - over 5K in
>>> service and possibly matches the size of the engine with the airframe.
>
>> As Esmarelda whispered to Quasimodo "It's only a hunch, but I can't
>> ignore
>> it"
>
>> I'm pretty sure the beast we're looking at is an LR64 variant, leastways
>> that's close enough for me. I've sent a pic off to PWR and
>> hopefully
>> they'll own up to it as well.
>
>> http://www.aeroconsystems.com/motors/lr64.htm
>
>> Thanks to everyone for their thoughts - except for the retard on
>> sci.space.history who told me to do my own research. I think my
>> way
>> was a lot more educational.
>
> I think you have it. Here's another picture, from
>
> http://www.astronautix.com/engines/p41ainer.htm
>
> --Bill Thompson
>
>
>


The Stromberg twin barrel carbie on that one would make it go like a cut
cat.




--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[William R Thompson]

"Dave Kearton" wrote:

>>> I'm pretty sure the beast we're looking at is an LR64 variant, leastways
>>> that's close enough for me. I've sent a pic off to PWR and
>>> hopefully they'll own up to it as well.

>>> http://www.aeroconsystems.com/motors/lr64.htm

>>> Thanks to everyone for their thoughts - except for the retard on
>>> sci.space.history who told me to do my own research. I think my
>>> way was a lot more educational.

I'm guessing that you were answered by Oswald Mosley, a man
with nothing to say and no trouble proving it.

>> http://www.astronautix.com/engines/p41ainer.htm

> The Stromberg twin barrel carbie on that one would make it go like a cut
> cat.

According to astronautix.com at

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/aqm37.htm

the AQM-37 can do up to Mach 3 or 4, depending on the version.
It's a target drone, and the article in your pictures is probably the
sustainer engine (the bigger thrust chamber must give it the initial
boost up to speed, but it would burn a lot of fuel). Propellants are
identified as liquid oxygen and kerosene. At least five thousand of
these drones have been manufactured since 1959. Even allowing
for the number that must have splashed into the oceans, it seems
likely that one of them could have landed in the Skylab Parking Lot.

--Bill Thompson

[William R Thompson]

"Dave Kearton" wrote:

>>> I'm pretty sure the beast we're looking at is an LR64 variant, leastways
>>> that's close enough for me. I've sent a pic off to PWR and
>>> hopefully they'll own up to it as well.

>>> http://www.aeroconsystems.com/motors/lr64.htm

>>> Thanks to everyone for their thoughts - except for the retard on
>>> sci.space.history who told me to do my own research. I think my
>>> way was a lot more educational.

I'm guessing that you were answered by Oswald Mosley, a man
with nothing to say and no trouble proving it.

>> http://www.astronautix.com/engines/p41ainer.htm

> The Stromberg twin barrel carbie on that one would make it go like a cut
> cat.

According to astronautix.com at

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/aqm37.htm

the AQM-37 can do up to Mach 3 or 4, depending on the version.
It's a target drone, and the article in your pictures is probably the
sustainer engine (the bigger thrust chamber must give it the initial
boost up to speed, but it would burn a lot of fuel). Propellants are
identified as liquid oxygen and kerosene. At least five thousand of
these drones have been manufactured since 1959. Even allowing
for the number that must have splashed into the oceans, it seems
likely that one of them could have landed in the Skylab Parking Lot.

--Bill Thompson

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

> wrote:


I see that there was a lot of discussion I didn't read. I am glad to
see that the source was tracked down. But, I am I bit surprised to see
it was from Rocketdyne.

>"jc" wrote:
>
>> "About all I can add to this discussion is that I'd agree
>> it's probably designed for hypergols since there's no
>> provision for ignition.

It is hard to tell anything about an engine based on ignition
provisions or lack of them. In "the old days" LOX/RP engines had
pyrotechnic igniters (the Atlas ones were called "ROFIs". That was
"Radially Outward Firing Igniters". They were a can that screwed into
the injector plate. You wouldn't find them on a recovered engine.
Almost everyone forgot what a "ROFI" was, and called all pyrotechnics,
specifically the axially firing ones around the base of the Shuttle,
to prevent hydrogen accumulation, "ROFIs".)

In the early 1960s, hypergol "leads" were developed for and were used
for the Atlas and all similar Rocketdyne engines. Like the H-1, F-1
and RS-27. The usual one was "TEA". Triethylaluminum. (Now, you talk
about NASTY….) That was placed in a cartridge some were in the
propellant lines, like the parts missing from this one. So, you
wouldn't see that, either. Only LOX/Hydrogen engines usually have
spark plug ignition.

>Hypergols are binary propellants
>> that use 2 liquids that spontaneously combust on contact.

In the early 1940s the Navy had a program to develop "RATO" headed by
Bob Truax, just out of the academy at the time. They used aniline and
concentrated nitric acid. That started a whole branch of rocket engine
development, which are what is usually meant by "hypergols".
Successive generations used fuels like hydrazine hydrate, then
hydrazine (and UDMH and MMH.) The acid was "spiked" by adding nitrogen
oxides, NO2/N2O4 to get WFNA and then RFNA and finally, the acid was
dispensed with and the straight oxides were used. Chemically, you can
think of this as starting with the "NH2-" part of the aniline and
eliminating hydrocarbon bits until you get straight hydrazine
"H2N=NH2" (or a few methyl groups) and combining that with the
oxidizer which started as the nitrogen oxides plus water and
progressively eliminating the water.

One reason for the progression was availability of the chemicals
involved. In the early 1940 there was no industrial production of
hydrazine and hydrazine hydrate was mainly, if not exclusively
produced in Germany. Likewise, nitrogen oxides were widely produced
but were not handled in the pure form. All that required development.

(For airplanes, RATO lost out to the army developed "JATO" solid
propellant "boosters.")

>> The only 2 I can name are furfuryl alcohol with hydrogen
>> peroxide

While Truax and the boys were doing RATO, the Germans were busy too.
At the time, Germany had the world lead in chemistry and particularly
in the production of hydrazine hydrate and hydrogen peroxide. They
especially loved schemes that used hydrogen peroxide in some way. In
the US, peroxide was always looked on with great suspicion as
something infernal and demonic and eliminated as quickly as possible
(One can see this sort of thing still going on. The Russians use UDMH
and Peroxide but no hydrazine. That has been an on going problem with
the ISS and the Russians wouldn't even talk about replacing their
monoprop systems with hydrazine where as we wouldn't consider using
anything else.)

There are several ways that you can use peroxide. One is as a
monoprop. Usually to do that, you use a catalyst and permanganates are
traditional. You can either use that as a solid, impregnated into some
ceramic, say. Or as a water solution. In the WW II era, the Germans
had a hard time making a good solid catalyst.

To get better performance, you can add use fuel with the peroxide
making a biprop. One way is to use the decomposed peroxide exhaust
oxygen and steam at high temperature. That works great. The other way
is to use unreacted peroxide with a fuel, just as would be done with
LOX.

At various times, the Me163 used water solution catalyst and biprop
both (one at a time). And maybe monoprop too.

I always like to say that "Fuels that are not hyperbolic with peroxide
are not even worth talking about (and probably don't deserve to be
called "fuel")" but when say that, I have in mind the hot peroxide.
With cold peroxide, furfuryl alcohol might be an ignition enhancer.
But the only actual use of it that I know of was on the Nike Ajax in
the "days of yore." The Nike main propellants were aniline and acid
(RFNA I think.). Those are hyperbolic, but not quite as reliably as
was desired, sometimes you could get a little lag which might cause a
"pop." Not good. So furfuryl alcohol was used as a "hypergol lead"
just as I described for TEA>

This was explained to my tour group (of aspiring ordnance officers) by
a many-striped NCO at a Nike battery just outside DC.

"They use to have this stuff, and they called it furfuryl alcohol. So,
they worked on it, and worked on it, and improved it, and improved it,
and now they call it 'UDMH'".

I thought that was a really great explanation.

>and the WW2 German bstoff and cstoff.

The Germans had a lot of "stoff" but "C-stoff" and "T-stoff" were the
most common.
>That was the
>> stuff used in the ME163 Comet rocket plane, I'm pretty sure
>> one of the stoffs was hydrazine.


Not even the Germans had hydrazine in quantity in the WW II era, but
they did have the hydrate.

Someone on 'sci.space' said that

T-Stoff, was a mixture of 80% hydrogen peroxide plus
oxyquinoline or phosphate as a stabilizer. [most of the other 20
percent would have been water. _hh]

And that

C-Stoff was a mixture of 57% methanol + 30% hydrazine hydrate + 13%
water, with
traces of either cupro-potassium cyanide or copper oxide (probably as
a
stabilizer).

I accept those as being correct. Methanol the kind of stuff you would
want as a fuel. The hydrazine hydrate would be added to provide
"smooth combustion" and the water may have resulted from using the
highest concentration of hydrazine hydrate that was available, or
possibly it was just added as coolant.

(Usually wiki is a really good place for this kind of stuff, but I
didn't find the exact numbers there)

>That's some nasty stuff, it
>> dissolves flesh. I've heard stories about accidental leaks
>> and human soup. Yuck!

All those things may have happened in Germany in WW II. I don't know.
All I do know is that if you do the tests now, nothing like that
happens.

If you pour peroxide on yourself, or your buddy, even high strength
stuff, it may find some catalyst in your clothing, like a dye, say. In
that case, the peroxide will decompose, setting clothing (and then
flesh) on fire.

If you have compatible clothing, just ordinary clothing, not "space
suits" usually nothing happens. Nothing. Well, maybe a little skin
rash.

For long-term exposure, peroxide probably has less actual data about
ill effects than city air or water. One source I recall stated "not a
toxin" in the usual sense. Lately I understand there has become a fad
of "shooting up" peroxide, medium strength stuff, for what purpose I
can't say. Not recommended by me.

Hydrazine, in any strength or quantity, probably has similar effects
to a gasoline spill. If it doesn't catch fire there won't be prompt
effects. Read the safety manuals; there are probably more toxic
warnings about gasoline than hydrazine.

Rocket Research (one of the leading hydrazine thruster suppliers) had
their expert search the medical literature. He found zero cases of
prompt death from hydrazine exposure. Long term effects were debatable
when I was involved.

At one time, the main commercial use of hydrazine hydrate was for
deoxidizing feed water for steam boilers. The "Stationary Engineers"
that did this sort of thing were, it seemed to me, a good test case
for this, as they didn't seem to be all that meticulous. One confused
the beer bottle he was carrying his deoxidant in with the one he was
drinking his Carlsberg out of. He not only didn't die; he didn't seem
to have any long term effects. There was another guy though, who
eventually did die, but only after what were said in the medical
report of years of habitual careless exposure.

Hydrazine (and UDMH and MMH) are often used in conjunction with N2O4
so they "get tarred with the same brush." You are not going to tell
propellant handlers "be really careful with this stuff but you don't
have to worry so quite as much about that stuff."

N2O4 is at least 10 times as toxic for prompt effects as hydrazine. It
scares the heck out of me, and I am a "rocket scientist". And everyone
knows we rocket scientists don't have good sense.

One thing I read said that persons exposed have this symptom and that
symptom and in a couple of days they get better. And, then in a couple
of more days, they die.

It is hard to find people in the rocket biz that have had long term
exposure to hydrazine that have not also be exposed to N2O4 so when
there are stories about long term effects, you don't know which to
blame. But I will take the alternative to "in a couple of more days,
they die." Better chronic than prompt.


I have heard all those scare stories, many times.(Probably told some,
too.) I was the program manager of some hydrazine thruster
development programs for the ISS at one time. The NASA world was split
between the hydrazine advocates and the O2/H2 advocates. There got to
be a bit of mud flying there, and I got my share.



(NASA couldn't decide between the options, or rather they did choose,
several times, but the kept switching back and forth. Finally, when
the Russians got involved, and were going to provide the propulsion
for free, I heard no objections to their use of UDMH/N204, even from
the same people that had objected t hydrazine as too toxic and too
contaminating. UDMH/N2O4 is much worse on both counts.)


>
>Manzo Zeigler's "Rocket Fighter" describes C-stoff as
>"thirty percent hydrazine hydrate solution in methyl alcohol"
>and T-stoff as "forty-eight percent concentrated hydrogen
>peroxide and a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds."

I have read that book, and everything I could find when I was
proposing "cuddly" propellants to NASA about 20 years ago.

Do not mix hydrocarbons with peroxide! Leave that to the terrorists
who intend to be human bombs, because you are likely to be one
intended or not.

I have no explanation of the many descriptions of Me163 explosions. I
don't think any of them sounded like they had to be "chemical yield"
explosions. I think that some may have been mechanical propellant tank
ruptures.

(In ordnance circles, I got into this thing of distinguishing between
"high order" explosions or "detonations and "low order" explosions or
deflagrations. Then there are "no yield" ones, like tank ruptures. I
use to rankle when people talked about auto gas tanks exploding, or
example. Then I read some dictionaries. The "sufficient" definition of
an "explosion" seems to be some event in which a noise was heard.)

One thing that was more hazardous on the Me163 than the exotic (for
then) propellants was the operational scenario. Take off, climb to
combat altitude, run out of propellant, glide to a landing spot, and
be stuck on the ground on the landing skids.

The allied pilots quickly figured that out, and that there was little
to be done about powered flight, so they just waited and followed them
down and nailed them on the ground. It is a wonder that anyone had any
stories about explosions, they should have all been killed.

My conclusion from trying to find out what happened was that the
Luffwaffe was totally negligent in keeping any useful accident reports
in the WW II era, at least that I found.


> Some
>brilliant and possibly pro-Ally designer placed extra fuel tanks
>inside the cockpit.
>
>A few years ago I listened to a lecture by a rocket engineer
>who had known one of the Komet's engineers. When asked
>about the Komet's lethality the German said "It did not kill
>half its pilots! It killed no more than one in three!"


I like that story.

But, I don't consider it "evidence."


Designers are often told that "You have t listen to what the user
says, they were the ones that know what is going on.

I agree that you should listen. But you should evaluate what you hear.
Anyone's "eye witness account" is likely to be highly biased and
frequently just imaginary.

One of my "non rocket" interests armored warfare. (I had a slight
professional involvement, back in the knight errant days.) In WW II,
"as every school boy knows" (but I want evidence) German armor was
overwhelmingly superior to US armor.

And the US tankers would often tell you those stories themselves
(although all eye witness accounts are prone to flip back and forth
between "we were helpless" and "we got them all" modes.).

I found one detailed account of an independent tank battalion written
by the son of one of the unit members. It was largely based on the
stories the survivors said at reunions. Man, those guys had no chance
against German tanks. Period.

But, the account included a description of nearly every loss of US
tanks. Many, many times it is impossible to know just what the cause
of a loss was. You don't know if you were hit by an opposing tank, an
AT gun, or a passing asteroid. But, many of the losses did have known
causes. And in many cases it was not enemy tanks, for sure. Like the
guy that inadvertently drove his M-4 off a bridge and it sank in the
river.

Likewise, you don't always know if you really killed enemy tanks or
not. Over claiming is very frequent.

But, when I added it all up (which the author did not) these poor
guys, who were completely overmatched, lost only something like a
third of their tanks to German tanks. Yet, by their own count, they
destroyed more German tanks than they lost, to all causes. A kill
ratio of something like four in their own favor.

The Germans, OTOH seldom admit losing any tanks to anything at all.
Hey, something went with them.

Part of the explanation was the resupply situation. If the ash trays
in your M-4 filled up and you took it to Ordnance, they were likely to
say "Well, park it over there with the rest of the scrap and take one
of the backlog of unused ones parked over there."

The Germans (say post d-Day in Northern France) were not getting any
more tanks, so they weren't scraping any, no matter what. So, even if
the hull was in one village and the turret had been blown to the next
one, they still counted it as "being repaired" no matter that they had
no parts or equipment to do that.

The Germans were said to have about 1800 AFVs in northern France on
D-Day.

I have seen accounts that said that the RAF destroyed 1800 German AFVs
in the Falance pocket on the last day of the collapse.

I have also seen accounts that essentially buy the German version and
ascribe all the losses to "envelopment."

It is no wonder that people cite phenomenal kill ratios. Take your
pick.

On the Me163 I have seen a lot of German accounts of them
spontaneously exploding, but I don't recall one single one of a loss
to enemy action. There are many stories by the allies of blasting
Me163s on the ground, but of course, they wouldn't have known about
spontaneous explosions.

Another possible explanation is structural failure, or materials
compatibility problems.

I have never found a real explanation of how the Me163 worked, but it
had to be a pressure fed system. I have never seen or heard of a
peroxide pump. That means there were large pressurized tanks, which
probably were not all that conservatively designed. A bit of a bump on
landing and the tank pops, spraying residual propellant, peroxide or
alcohol/hydrazine about.

And, what were those tanks made of. There was only one material that
would be considered a "structural material that was available to the
Germans in WW II that was peroxide. Pure (and therefore dead soft)
aluminum. Well, that is not consistent with having a flying
pressurized tank, so the material was incompatible. Usually that means
that it sits around for a shorter or longer period of time, depending
on how incompatible the material is. Then the peroxide starts to
decompose a bit; temperature goes up a bit. Vicious circle ensues.
Boom. But that is not usually really "peroxide explosion" either.
Just a tank overpressure ("Not to worry, there was no nuclear yield".)

And, what were the seals and all the other bits made of. I was once
reading a report on the X-1 which was very like an American Lox Me163
and at about the same time. There was something about an explosion and
a fire. The report said they weren't sure what happened, but they
though it might have involved a seal. (I think maybe it was in a check
valve and lit off when the valve closure slammed on it.) They then
started to discuss what sort of special, proprietary LEATHER (!) the
seal was made of. I quit reading.

All I can say is, old war stories may be interesting. I have told a
few myself. But, one has to interpret them in light of other stuff,
like facts.



>--Bill Thompson

Henry H.

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

> wrote:


I see that there was a lot of discussion I didn't read. I am glad to
see that the source was tracked down. But, I am I bit surprised to see
it was from Rocketdyne.

>"jc" wrote:
>
>> "About all I can add to this discussion is that I'd agree
>> it's probably designed for hypergols since there's no
>> provision for ignition.

It is hard to tell anything about an engine based on ignition
provisions or lack of them. In "the old days" LOX/RP engines had
pyrotechnic igniters (the Atlas ones were called "ROFIs". That was
"Radially Outward Firing Igniters". They were a can that screwed into
the injector plate. You wouldn't find them on a recovered engine.
Almost everyone forgot what a "ROFI" was, and called all pyrotechnics,
specifically the axially firing ones around the base of the Shuttle,
to prevent hydrogen accumulation, "ROFIs".)

In the early 1960s, hypergol "leads" were developed for and were used
for the Atlas and all similar Rocketdyne engines. Like the H-1, F-1
and RS-27. The usual one was "TEA". Triethylaluminum. (Now, you talk
about NASTY….) That was placed in a cartridge some were in the
propellant lines, like the parts missing from this one. So, you
wouldn't see that, either. Only LOX/Hydrogen engines usually have
spark plug ignition.

>Hypergols are binary propellants
>> that use 2 liquids that spontaneously combust on contact.

In the early 1940s the Navy had a program to develop "RATO" headed by
Bob Truax, just out of the academy at the time. They used aniline and
concentrated nitric acid. That started a whole branch of rocket engine
development, which are what is usually meant by "hypergols".
Successive generations used fuels like hydrazine hydrate, then
hydrazine (and UDMH and MMH.) The acid was "spiked" by adding nitrogen
oxides, NO2/N2O4 to get WFNA and then RFNA and finally, the acid was
dispensed with and the straight oxides were used. Chemically, you can
think of this as starting with the "NH2-" part of the aniline and
eliminating hydrocarbon bits until you get straight hydrazine
"H2N=NH2" (or a few methyl groups) and combining that with the
oxidizer which started as the nitrogen oxides plus water and
progressively eliminating the water.

One reason for the progression was availability of the chemicals
involved. In the early 1940 there was no industrial production of
hydrazine and hydrazine hydrate was mainly, if not exclusively
produced in Germany. Likewise, nitrogen oxides were widely produced
but were not handled in the pure form. All that required development.

(For airplanes, RATO lost out to the army developed "JATO" solid
propellant "boosters.")

>> The only 2 I can name are furfuryl alcohol with hydrogen
>> peroxide

While Truax and the boys were doing RATO, the Germans were busy too.
At the time, Germany had the world lead in chemistry and particularly
in the production of hydrazine hydrate and hydrogen peroxide. They
especially loved schemes that used hydrogen peroxide in some way. In
the US, peroxide was always looked on with great suspicion as
something infernal and demonic and eliminated as quickly as possible
(One can see this sort of thing still going on. The Russians use UDMH
and Peroxide but no hydrazine. That has been an on going problem with
the ISS and the Russians wouldn't even talk about replacing their
monoprop systems with hydrazine where as we wouldn't consider using
anything else.)

There are several ways that you can use peroxide. One is as a
monoprop. Usually to do that, you use a catalyst and permanganates are
traditional. You can either use that as a solid, impregnated into some
ceramic, say. Or as a water solution. In the WW II era, the Germans
had a hard time making a good solid catalyst.

To get better performance, you can add use fuel with the peroxide
making a biprop. One way is to use the decomposed peroxide exhaust
oxygen and steam at high temperature. That works great. The other way
is to use unreacted peroxide with a fuel, just as would be done with
LOX.

At various times, the Me163 used water solution catalyst and biprop
both (one at a time). And maybe monoprop too.

I always like to say that "Fuels that are not hyperbolic with peroxide
are not even worth talking about (and probably don't deserve to be
called "fuel")" but when say that, I have in mind the hot peroxide.
With cold peroxide, furfuryl alcohol might be an ignition enhancer.
But the only actual use of it that I know of was on the Nike Ajax in
the "days of yore." The Nike main propellants were aniline and acid
(RFNA I think.). Those are hyperbolic, but not quite as reliably as
was desired, sometimes you could get a little lag which might cause a
"pop." Not good. So furfuryl alcohol was used as a "hypergol lead"
just as I described for TEA>

This was explained to my tour group (of aspiring ordnance officers) by
a many-striped NCO at a Nike battery just outside DC.

"They use to have this stuff, and they called it furfuryl alcohol. So,
they worked on it, and worked on it, and improved it, and improved it,
and now they call it 'UDMH'".

I thought that was a really great explanation.

>and the WW2 German bstoff and cstoff.

The Germans had a lot of "stoff" but "C-stoff" and "T-stoff" were the
most common.
>That was the
>> stuff used in the ME163 Comet rocket plane, I'm pretty sure
>> one of the stoffs was hydrazine.


Not even the Germans had hydrazine in quantity in the WW II era, but
they did have the hydrate.

Someone on 'sci.space' said that

T-Stoff, was a mixture of 80% hydrogen peroxide plus
oxyquinoline or phosphate as a stabilizer. [most of the other 20
percent would have been water. _hh]

And that

C-Stoff was a mixture of 57% methanol + 30% hydrazine hydrate + 13%
water, with
traces of either cupro-potassium cyanide or copper oxide (probably as
a
stabilizer).

I accept those as being correct. Methanol the kind of stuff you would
want as a fuel. The hydrazine hydrate would be added to provide
"smooth combustion" and the water may have resulted from using the
highest concentration of hydrazine hydrate that was available, or
possibly it was just added as coolant.

(Usually wiki is a really good place for this kind of stuff, but I
didn't find the exact numbers there)

>That's some nasty stuff, it
>> dissolves flesh. I've heard stories about accidental leaks
>> and human soup. Yuck!

All those things may have happened in Germany in WW II. I don't know.
All I do know is that if you do the tests now, nothing like that
happens.

If you pour peroxide on yourself, or your buddy, even high strength
stuff, it may find some catalyst in your clothing, like a dye, say. In
that case, the peroxide will decompose, setting clothing (and then
flesh) on fire.

If you have compatible clothing, just ordinary clothing, not "space
suits" usually nothing happens. Nothing. Well, maybe a little skin
rash.

For long-term exposure, peroxide probably has less actual data about
ill effects than city air or water. One source I recall stated "not a
toxin" in the usual sense. Lately I understand there has become a fad
of "shooting up" peroxide, medium strength stuff, for what purpose I
can't say. Not recommended by me.

Hydrazine, in any strength or quantity, probably has similar effects
to a gasoline spill. If it doesn't catch fire there won't be prompt
effects. Read the safety manuals; there are probably more toxic
warnings about gasoline than hydrazine.

Rocket Research (one of the leading hydrazine thruster suppliers) had
their expert search the medical literature. He found zero cases of
prompt death from hydrazine exposure. Long term effects were debatable
when I was involved.

At one time, the main commercial use of hydrazine hydrate was for
deoxidizing feed water for steam boilers. The "Stationary Engineers"
that did this sort of thing were, it seemed to me, a good test case
for this, as they didn't seem to be all that meticulous. One confused
the beer bottle he was carrying his deoxidant in with the one he was
drinking his Carlsberg out of. He not only didn't die; he didn't seem
to have any long term effects. There was another guy though, who
eventually did die, but only after what were said in the medical
report of years of habitual careless exposure.

Hydrazine (and UDMH and MMH) are often used in conjunction with N2O4
so they "get tarred with the same brush." You are not going to tell
propellant handlers "be really careful with this stuff but you don't
have to worry so quite as much about that stuff."

N2O4 is at least 10 times as toxic for prompt effects as hydrazine. It
scares the heck out of me, and I am a "rocket scientist". And everyone
knows we rocket scientists don't have good sense.

One thing I read said that persons exposed have this symptom and that
symptom and in a couple of days they get better. And, then in a couple
of more days, they die.

It is hard to find people in the rocket biz that have had long term
exposure to hydrazine that have not also be exposed to N2O4 so when
there are stories about long term effects, you don't know which to
blame. But I will take the alternative to "in a couple of more days,
they die." Better chronic than prompt.


I have heard all those scare stories, many times.(Probably told some,
too.) I was the program manager of some hydrazine thruster
development programs for the ISS at one time. The NASA world was split
between the hydrazine advocates and the O2/H2 advocates. There got to
be a bit of mud flying there, and I got my share.



(NASA couldn't decide between the options, or rather they did choose,
several times, but the kept switching back and forth. Finally, when
the Russians got involved, and were going to provide the propulsion
for free, I heard no objections to their use of UDMH/N204, even from
the same people that had objected t hydrazine as too toxic and too
contaminating. UDMH/N2O4 is much worse on both counts.)


>
>Manzo Zeigler's "Rocket Fighter" describes C-stoff as
>"thirty percent hydrazine hydrate solution in methyl alcohol"
>and T-stoff as "forty-eight percent concentrated hydrogen
>peroxide and a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds."

I have read that book, and everything I could find when I was
proposing "cuddly" propellants to NASA about 20 years ago.

Do not mix hydrocarbons with peroxide! Leave that to the terrorists
who intend to be human bombs, because you are likely to be one
intended or not.

I have no explanation of the many descriptions of Me163 explosions. I
don't think any of them sounded like they had to be "chemical yield"
explosions. I think that some may have been mechanical propellant tank
ruptures.

(In ordnance circles, I got into this thing of distinguishing between
"high order" explosions or "detonations and "low order" explosions or
deflagrations. Then there are "no yield" ones, like tank ruptures. I
use to rankle when people talked about auto gas tanks exploding, or
example. Then I read some dictionaries. The "sufficient" definition of
an "explosion" seems to be some event in which a noise was heard.)

One thing that was more hazardous on the Me163 than the exotic (for
then) propellants was the operational scenario. Take off, climb to
combat altitude, run out of propellant, glide to a landing spot, and
be stuck on the ground on the landing skids.

The allied pilots quickly figured that out, and that there was little
to be done about powered flight, so they just waited and followed them
down and nailed them on the ground. It is a wonder that anyone had any
stories about explosions, they should have all been killed.

My conclusion from trying to find out what happened was that the
Luffwaffe was totally negligent in keeping any useful accident reports
in the WW II era, at least that I found.


> Some
>brilliant and possibly pro-Ally designer placed extra fuel tanks
>inside the cockpit.
>
>A few years ago I listened to a lecture by a rocket engineer
>who had known one of the Komet's engineers. When asked
>about the Komet's lethality the German said "It did not kill
>half its pilots! It killed no more than one in three!"


I like that story.

But, I don't consider it "evidence."


Designers are often told that "You have t listen to what the user
says, they were the ones that know what is going on.

I agree that you should listen. But you should evaluate what you hear.
Anyone's "eye witness account" is likely to be highly biased and
frequently just imaginary.

One of my "non rocket" interests armored warfare. (I had a slight
professional involvement, back in the knight errant days.) In WW II,
"as every school boy knows" (but I want evidence) German armor was
overwhelmingly superior to US armor.

And the US tankers would often tell you those stories themselves
(although all eye witness accounts are prone to flip back and forth
between "we were helpless" and "we got them all" modes.).

I found one detailed account of an independent tank battalion written
by the son of one of the unit members. It was largely based on the
stories the survivors said at reunions. Man, those guys had no chance
against German tanks. Period.

But, the account included a description of nearly every loss of US
tanks. Many, many times it is impossible to know just what the cause
of a loss was. You don't know if you were hit by an opposing tank, an
AT gun, or a passing asteroid. But, many of the losses did have known
causes. And in many cases it was not enemy tanks, for sure. Like the
guy that inadvertently drove his M-4 off a bridge and it sank in the
river.

Likewise, you don't always know if you really killed enemy tanks or
not. Over claiming is very frequent.

But, when I added it all up (which the author did not) these poor
guys, who were completely overmatched, lost only something like a
third of their tanks to German tanks. Yet, by their own count, they
destroyed more German tanks than they lost, to all causes. A kill
ratio of something like four in their own favor.

The Germans, OTOH seldom admit losing any tanks to anything at all.
Hey, something went with them.

Part of the explanation was the resupply situation. If the ash trays
in your M-4 filled up and you took it to Ordnance, they were likely to
say "Well, park it over there with the rest of the scrap and take one
of the backlog of unused ones parked over there."

The Germans (say post d-Day in Northern France) were not getting any
more tanks, so they weren't scraping any, no matter what. So, even if
the hull was in one village and the turret had been blown to the next
one, they still counted it as "being repaired" no matter that they had
no parts or equipment to do that.

The Germans were said to have about 1800 AFVs in northern France on
D-Day.

I have seen accounts that said that the RAF destroyed 1800 German AFVs
in the Falance pocket on the last day of the collapse.

I have also seen accounts that essentially buy the German version and
ascribe all the losses to "envelopment."

It is no wonder that people cite phenomenal kill ratios. Take your
pick.

On the Me163 I have seen a lot of German accounts of them
spontaneously exploding, but I don't recall one single one of a loss
to enemy action. There are many stories by the allies of blasting
Me163s on the ground, but of course, they wouldn't have known about
spontaneous explosions.

Another possible explanation is structural failure, or materials
compatibility problems.

I have never found a real explanation of how the Me163 worked, but it
had to be a pressure fed system. I have never seen or heard of a
peroxide pump. That means there were large pressurized tanks, which
probably were not all that conservatively designed. A bit of a bump on
landing and the tank pops, spraying residual propellant, peroxide or
alcohol/hydrazine about.

And, what were those tanks made of. There was only one material that
would be considered a "structural material that was available to the
Germans in WW II that was peroxide. Pure (and therefore dead soft)
aluminum. Well, that is not consistent with having a flying
pressurized tank, so the material was incompatible. Usually that means
that it sits around for a shorter or longer period of time, depending
on how incompatible the material is. Then the peroxide starts to
decompose a bit; temperature goes up a bit. Vicious circle ensues.
Boom. But that is not usually really "peroxide explosion" either.
Just a tank overpressure ("Not to worry, there was no nuclear yield".)

And, what were the seals and all the other bits made of. I was once
reading a report on the X-1 which was very like an American Lox Me163
and at about the same time. There was something about an explosion and
a fire. The report said they weren't sure what happened, but they
though it might have involved a seal. (I think maybe it was in a check
valve and lit off when the valve closure slammed on it.) They then
started to discuss what sort of special, proprietary LEATHER (!) the
seal was made of. I quit reading.

All I can say is, old war stories may be interesting. I have told a
few myself. But, one has to interpret them in light of other stuff,
like facts.



>--Bill Thompson

Henry H.

[Dave Kearton]

wrote:
> > wrote:
>
>
> I see that there was a lot of discussion I didn't read. I am glad to
> see that the source was tracked down. But, I am I bit surprised to see
> it was from Rocketdyne.
>
<incredibly cool stuff snipped>

> Henry H.


Thanks Henry, I'm going to have to read that a few times more before I can
file it away.

This has got to be one of the most surprising and enjoyable threads on this
newsgroup (for me anyway) in years.


--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[Dave Kearton]

wrote:
> > wrote:
>
>
> I see that there was a lot of discussion I didn't read. I am glad to
> see that the source was tracked down. But, I am I bit surprised to see
> it was from Rocketdyne.
>
<incredibly cool stuff snipped>

> Henry H.


Thanks Henry, I'm going to have to read that a few times more before I can
file it away.

This has got to be one of the most surprising and enjoyable threads on this
newsgroup (for me anyway) in years.


--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[Dave Kearton]

William R Thompson wrote:
> "Dave Kearton" wrote:
>
>>>> Thanks to everyone for their thoughts - except for the retard on
>>>> sci.space.history who told me to do my own research. I think my
>>>> way was a lot more educational.
>
> I'm guessing that you were answered by Oswald Mosley, a man
> with nothing to say and no trouble proving it.
>


I think you've scored a direct hit with this one. Why anybody would
select the identity of a Facist as his screen presence escapes me...


"OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you need [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[ "





>
> the AQM-37 can do up to Mach 3 or 4, depending on the version.
> It's a target drone, and the article in your pictures is probably the
> sustainer engine (the bigger thrust chamber must give it the initial
> boost up to speed, but it would burn a lot of fuel). Propellants are
> identified as liquid oxygen and kerosene. At least five thousand of
> these drones have been manufactured since 1959. Even allowing
> for the number that must have splashed into the oceans, it seems
> likely that one of them could have landed in the Skylab Parking Lot.
>
> --Bill Thompson



Unfortunately, the motor is still in the US. The current 'owner' is
quite happy with his purchase, and is fairly sure that it's legal - but
until he's totally sure, he wants to keep quiet about it.

Through the wonders of the Internet, we could assemble a quick think-tank
to sort it out. There has to be something to counterbalance the porn
and get rich quick schemes.


Once again, thanks to (almost) all who put their oar in.


--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[Dave Kearton]

William R Thompson wrote:
> "Dave Kearton" wrote:
>
>>>> Thanks to everyone for their thoughts - except for the retard on
>>>> sci.space.history who told me to do my own research. I think my
>>>> way was a lot more educational.
>
> I'm guessing that you were answered by Oswald Mosley, a man
> with nothing to say and no trouble proving it.
>


I think you've scored a direct hit with this one. Why anybody would
select the identity of a Facist as his screen presence escapes me...


"OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you need [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[ "





>
> the AQM-37 can do up to Mach 3 or 4, depending on the version.
> It's a target drone, and the article in your pictures is probably the
> sustainer engine (the bigger thrust chamber must give it the initial
> boost up to speed, but it would burn a lot of fuel). Propellants are
> identified as liquid oxygen and kerosene. At least five thousand of
> these drones have been manufactured since 1959. Even allowing
> for the number that must have splashed into the oceans, it seems
> likely that one of them could have landed in the Skylab Parking Lot.
>
> --Bill Thompson



Unfortunately, the motor is still in the US. The current 'owner' is
quite happy with his purchase, and is fairly sure that it's legal - but
until he's totally sure, he wants to keep quiet about it.

Through the wonders of the Internet, we could assemble a quick think-tank
to sort it out. There has to be something to counterbalance the porn
and get rich quick schemes.


Once again, thanks to (almost) all who put their oar in.


--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

On Sat, 03 Feb 2007 02:47:10 GMT, "William R Thompson"
> wrote:

>"Dave Kearton" wrote:
>
>> William R Thompson wrote:
>
>>> One obvious question--can you find out if those
>>> nuts are metric or SAE?
>
>> I'll ask the question and see what happens, if it's a confused mixture
>> of metric and imperial, does that mean it's a NASA rocket?
>
>Only if it's from a project that NASA wanted to kill.
>
>NASA has recently announced (see
>
>http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/08jan_metricmoon.htm
>
>that all manned operations on the moon will use metric measurements.
>This is probably NASA's way of telling the American public that
>we won't return to the moon after all, not if we have to go without
>our 3/8 inch socket wrenches.
>

In 1963 I was designing ducting for the Saturn V/S-1C.

"Everyone knows" that for the same bolt cross sectional area the
weight goes down as you increase the number of bolts. (I. E. use a lot
of small bolts for light weight.)

I used 1/4" but I was told that "our Germans" in Huntsville didn't
like that, they liked 3/8 inch. Being the kind that asks, asked.

Two reasons.

1) 3/8 is the "same" size as a 10 mm bolt and they knew how big that
was.

2) 3/8 big enough that the mechanics couldn't break them when they
ovr torqued them.

I am willing to meet people half way (sometimes). I used 5/16s
exclusively.

(I later heard that at P&W the jet engine shop rebelled and they got
the chief engineer to agree to send every designer out on the foor
where they had a rig set up with 10-56 screws, which was what everyone
wanted ot use for case flanges and stuff.

They said anyone who could torque them without wringing them off could
design with them. No one could. )

This is not the first time that NASA "metricated." And, if fact, I am
not sure that NASA has evre been any different than the US as a whole.
Congress authorized (but did not require) the use of the metric system
in the mid 1800s. That is the same as NASA always was. (One time
Congress was going to require my MOTHER to learn how much a kilo of
butter was. That was going TOO far. )

The Saturn V had 10 meter (first and second stages) tanks, for
example.

The first time NASA put out rules that said that everything had to be
expressed in "SI" I happened to have wandered off and was working on
AF programs.

When I started back on NASA proposals I was told SI was off. I asked
what happened and I was told "Isp choke.".

What?

They said that we went to NASA for a presentation and the program
manager was livid when he found that the charts did not have thruster
Isp on them. He said "Isp on ALL charts." Our guys said "Isp is not a
SI unit." NASA said "well, put it on in SI units." Our guys said "Isp
is not an SI concept." He said "No more SI on this program." And they
withdrew the everything SI rule.

When I got to the ISS that was a hot debate. I said "Show me where
this rule is written down, I want to see what it says. BUt I could
never find it. There was a "everyone knows" rule that said that "for
astronaut safety" you couldn't do anything thta made the astronauts
talk about SI units. At least in our end of the station.

When we got to talk to Russians we found out that they had about as
many opinions per person as we did. All there data had Isp in seconds
adn they didn't know exhaust velocites. Other stuff was in all sorts
of "*******ized" units. I never saw a presure in pascals, for example.
I think they mostly used "kilobar" or "kg/cm**2."

One guy was very adamant that the program should use SI and I told him
I would support him on that if they would agree to convert too.And at
the design review for the FGB I challanged them on that, and they
produced a document (the originals, actually. They were not big on
coping machines.) that gave evreything on the whole program in SI. BUt
I couldn't find anyone at the working level that knew that the
document existed or what it said.

I could go on, but I won't. I am the only person in the world
completly happy with both systems, and who thinks they are both
equally screwed up.

Henry H.










>--Bill Thompson
>

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

On Sat, 03 Feb 2007 02:47:10 GMT, "William R Thompson"
> wrote:

>"Dave Kearton" wrote:
>
>> William R Thompson wrote:
>
>>> One obvious question--can you find out if those
>>> nuts are metric or SAE?
>
>> I'll ask the question and see what happens, if it's a confused mixture
>> of metric and imperial, does that mean it's a NASA rocket?
>
>Only if it's from a project that NASA wanted to kill.
>
>NASA has recently announced (see
>
>http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/08jan_metricmoon.htm
>
>that all manned operations on the moon will use metric measurements.
>This is probably NASA's way of telling the American public that
>we won't return to the moon after all, not if we have to go without
>our 3/8 inch socket wrenches.
>

In 1963 I was designing ducting for the Saturn V/S-1C.

"Everyone knows" that for the same bolt cross sectional area the
weight goes down as you increase the number of bolts. (I. E. use a lot
of small bolts for light weight.)

I used 1/4" but I was told that "our Germans" in Huntsville didn't
like that, they liked 3/8 inch. Being the kind that asks, asked.

Two reasons.

1) 3/8 is the "same" size as a 10 mm bolt and they knew how big that
was.

2) 3/8 big enough that the mechanics couldn't break them when they
ovr torqued them.

I am willing to meet people half way (sometimes). I used 5/16s
exclusively.

(I later heard that at P&W the jet engine shop rebelled and they got
the chief engineer to agree to send every designer out on the foor
where they had a rig set up with 10-56 screws, which was what everyone
wanted ot use for case flanges and stuff.

They said anyone who could torque them without wringing them off could
design with them. No one could. )

This is not the first time that NASA "metricated." And, if fact, I am
not sure that NASA has evre been any different than the US as a whole.
Congress authorized (but did not require) the use of the metric system
in the mid 1800s. That is the same as NASA always was. (One time
Congress was going to require my MOTHER to learn how much a kilo of
butter was. That was going TOO far. )

The Saturn V had 10 meter (first and second stages) tanks, for
example.

The first time NASA put out rules that said that everything had to be
expressed in "SI" I happened to have wandered off and was working on
AF programs.

When I started back on NASA proposals I was told SI was off. I asked
what happened and I was told "Isp choke.".

What?

They said that we went to NASA for a presentation and the program
manager was livid when he found that the charts did not have thruster
Isp on them. He said "Isp on ALL charts." Our guys said "Isp is not a
SI unit." NASA said "well, put it on in SI units." Our guys said "Isp
is not an SI concept." He said "No more SI on this program." And they
withdrew the everything SI rule.

When I got to the ISS that was a hot debate. I said "Show me where
this rule is written down, I want to see what it says. BUt I could
never find it. There was a "everyone knows" rule that said that "for
astronaut safety" you couldn't do anything thta made the astronauts
talk about SI units. At least in our end of the station.

When we got to talk to Russians we found out that they had about as
many opinions per person as we did. All there data had Isp in seconds
adn they didn't know exhaust velocites. Other stuff was in all sorts
of "*******ized" units. I never saw a presure in pascals, for example.
I think they mostly used "kilobar" or "kg/cm**2."

One guy was very adamant that the program should use SI and I told him
I would support him on that if they would agree to convert too.And at
the design review for the FGB I challanged them on that, and they
produced a document (the originals, actually. They were not big on
coping machines.) that gave evreything on the whole program in SI. BUt
I couldn't find anyone at the working level that knew that the
document existed or what it said.

I could go on, but I won't. I am the only person in the world
completly happy with both systems, and who thinks they are both
equally screwed up.

Henry H.










>--Bill Thompson
>

[Dave Kearton]

> wrote in message
...
> On Sat, 03 Feb 2007 02:47:10 GMT, "William R Thompson"
> > wrote:
>
> I could go on, but I won't. I am the only person in the world
> completly happy with both systems, and who thinks they are both
> equally screwed up.
>
> Henry H.



We all understand the difficulty of migrating from one system to another.

Australia's change to metrics started on the 14th Feb '66 with the change to
decimal currency - dollars and cents. All Aussies over 45 can still
remember the TV jingle. A currency based on multiples of 10 makes more
sense than one based on 12s (unless your family tree doesn't branch)
Once that was achieved, switching to Celsius from Farneheit in the mid '70s
wasn't such of a chore.

At one point, for a couple of years in the early '80s, as I recall, it was
illegal to posess for sale rulers with imperial units on them. It was
a ridiculous and draconian measure - but effective in getting some of the
older farts to consider using metric units.

Road signs and speeds followed next, closely followed by weights and
measures in general. All up, the conversion for the general public
was completed by the mid '80s, I'd imagine it was completed a lot faster in
specialist industries.


One thing that I find quirky with the US metric experience is your parochial
spelling of metric units. Whereas the rest of the world has adopted
the original spelling of Litre, Metre etc, why does the US prefer to use
the 'er spelling ?




--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[Dave Kearton]

> wrote in message
...
> On Sat, 03 Feb 2007 02:47:10 GMT, "William R Thompson"
> > wrote:
>
> I could go on, but I won't. I am the only person in the world
> completly happy with both systems, and who thinks they are both
> equally screwed up.
>
> Henry H.



We all understand the difficulty of migrating from one system to another.

Australia's change to metrics started on the 14th Feb '66 with the change to
decimal currency - dollars and cents. All Aussies over 45 can still
remember the TV jingle. A currency based on multiples of 10 makes more
sense than one based on 12s (unless your family tree doesn't branch)
Once that was achieved, switching to Celsius from Farneheit in the mid '70s
wasn't such of a chore.

At one point, for a couple of years in the early '80s, as I recall, it was
illegal to posess for sale rulers with imperial units on them. It was
a ridiculous and draconian measure - but effective in getting some of the
older farts to consider using metric units.

Road signs and speeds followed next, closely followed by weights and
measures in general. All up, the conversion for the general public
was completed by the mid '80s, I'd imagine it was completed a lot faster in
specialist industries.


One thing that I find quirky with the US metric experience is your parochial
spelling of metric units. Whereas the rest of the world has adopted
the original spelling of Litre, Metre etc, why does the US prefer to use
the 'er spelling ?




--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[William R Thompson]

Henry_H@Q_wrote:

> I see that there was a lot of discussion I didn't read. I am glad to
> see that the source was tracked down. But, I am I bit surprised to see
> it was from Rocketdyne.

It looks like someone issued specs that said, basically, "make it
reliable and simple, and don't worry too much about the weight."

> (For airplanes, RATO lost out to the army developed "JATO" solid
> propellant "boosters.")

I can see why. RATO could be throttled and restarted, but I think
the only application anyone saw for that was in seaplane take-offs.
JATO looks a lot less maintenance-intense than RATO (see attached
picture).

> T-Stoff, was a mixture of 80% hydrogen peroxide plus
> oxyquinoline or phosphate as a stabilizer. [most of the other 20
> percent would have been water. _hh]
>
> And that
>
> C-Stoff was a mixture of 57% methanol + 30% hydrazine hydrate + 13%
> water, with
> traces of either cupro-potassium cyanide or copper oxide (probably as
> a stabilizer).

> I accept those as being correct. Methanol the kind of stuff you would
> want as a fuel. The hydrazine hydrate would be added to provide
> "smooth combustion" and the water may have resulted from using the
> highest concentration of hydrazine hydrate that was available, or
> possibly it was just added as coolant.

> (Usually wiki is a really good place for this kind of stuff, but I
> didn't find the exact numbers there)

Those are the same figures in Sutton's "Rocket Propulsion Elements."
I figure that Mano Zeigler gave different numbers in "Rocket Fighter"
due to conditions in Axisland--with the Allies bombing their plants
and supply lines, they may have had to settle for anything that could
flow through the lines and burn.

> It is hard to find people in the rocket biz that have had long term
> exposure to hydrazine that have not also be exposed to N2O4 so when
> there are stories about long term effects, you don't know which to
> blame. But I will take the alternative to "in a couple of more days,
> they die." Better chronic than prompt.

As I recall, Vance Brand passed out from exposure to dumped fuels
during the Apollo-18/ASTP descent, and the crew was taken to the
hospital afterward. They didn't seem to suffer any long-term effects.

> (In ordnance circles, I got into this thing of distinguishing between
> "high order" explosions or "detonations" and "low order" explosions or
> deflagrations. Then there are "no yield" ones, like tank ruptures. I
> use to rankle when people talked about auto gas tanks exploding, or
> example. Then I read some dictionaries. The "sufficient" definition of
> an "explosion" seems to be some event in which a noise was heard.)

I know people who think that a proper footnote is anything with
an asterisk. (Sorry, but citing a newspaper gossip column isn't
quite the same as citing, say, a trial transcript.)

> One thing that was more hazardous on the Me163 than the exotic (for
> then) propellants was the operational scenario. Take off, climb to
> combat altitude, run out of propellant, glide to a landing spot, and
> be stuck on the ground on the landing skids.

> The allied pilots quickly figured that out, and that there was little
> to be done about powered flight, so they just waited and followed them
> down and nailed them on the ground. It is a wonder that anyone had any
> stories about explosions, they should have all been killed.

> My conclusion from trying to find out what happened was that the
> Luffwaffe was totally negligent in keeping any useful accident reports
> in the WW II era, at least that I found.

That was a typical condition in the Reich. And, given how hard it was
to find self-confessed Nazis after the war, the condition persisted.
Albert Speer's "Inside the Third Reich" is a classic example.

> Designers are often told that "You have to listen to what the user
> says, they were the ones that know what is going on.
>
> I agree that you should listen. But you should evaluate what you hear.
> Anyone's "eye witness account" is likely to be highly biased and
> frequently just imaginary.

That's what I was taught when getting my degrees in hysteria, er, history.
My favorite example has to do with the "Nuts!" event at Bastogne.
There are several accounts of exactly what was said; the accounts
come from people who were there--and they don't match up.

(Although the military historian SLA Marshall claims that the
Germans did, indeed, get the "Nuts!" message. Marshall interrogated
Manteuffel and his staff after the war. At one session Manteuffel
kept blaming his mistakes on his staff. At last one of his subordinates
leaned forward, waggled a finger in Manteuffel's face and shouted
"Nuts! Nuts!")

> And, what were the seals and all the other bits made of. I was once
> reading a report on the X-1 which was very like an American Lox Me163
> and at about the same time. There was something about an explosion and
> a fire. The report said they weren't sure what happened, but they
> though it might have involved a seal. (I think maybe it was in a check
> valve and lit off when the valve closure slammed on it.) They then
> started to discuss what sort of special, proprietary LEATHER (!) the
> seal was made of. I quit reading.

The Ulmer leather gaskets, which if memory serves were treated with
tricresyl phosphate. The accounts I've read said that the treated gaskets
didn't react with the liquid oxygen--but in the presence of lox, the gaskets
became *very* sensitive to mechanical shock, making them "slightly"
explosive. I think the losses of the X-1A, X-1D and second X-2 were
blamed on that.

--Bill Thompson

[William R Thompson]

Henry_H@Q_wrote:

> I see that there was a lot of discussion I didn't read. I am glad to
> see that the source was tracked down. But, I am I bit surprised to see
> it was from Rocketdyne.

It looks like someone issued specs that said, basically, "make it
reliable and simple, and don't worry too much about the weight."

> (For airplanes, RATO lost out to the army developed "JATO" solid
> propellant "boosters.")

I can see why. RATO could be throttled and restarted, but I think
the only application anyone saw for that was in seaplane take-offs.
JATO looks a lot less maintenance-intense than RATO (see attached
picture).

> T-Stoff, was a mixture of 80% hydrogen peroxide plus
> oxyquinoline or phosphate as a stabilizer. [most of the other 20
> percent would have been water. _hh]
>
> And that
>
> C-Stoff was a mixture of 57% methanol + 30% hydrazine hydrate + 13%
> water, with
> traces of either cupro-potassium cyanide or copper oxide (probably as
> a stabilizer).

> I accept those as being correct. Methanol the kind of stuff you would
> want as a fuel. The hydrazine hydrate would be added to provide
> "smooth combustion" and the water may have resulted from using the
> highest concentration of hydrazine hydrate that was available, or
> possibly it was just added as coolant.

> (Usually wiki is a really good place for this kind of stuff, but I
> didn't find the exact numbers there)

Those are the same figures in Sutton's "Rocket Propulsion Elements."
I figure that Mano Zeigler gave different numbers in "Rocket Fighter"
due to conditions in Axisland--with the Allies bombing their plants
and supply lines, they may have had to settle for anything that could
flow through the lines and burn.

> It is hard to find people in the rocket biz that have had long term
> exposure to hydrazine that have not also be exposed to N2O4 so when
> there are stories about long term effects, you don't know which to
> blame. But I will take the alternative to "in a couple of more days,
> they die." Better chronic than prompt.

As I recall, Vance Brand passed out from exposure to dumped fuels
during the Apollo-18/ASTP descent, and the crew was taken to the
hospital afterward. They didn't seem to suffer any long-term effects.

> (In ordnance circles, I got into this thing of distinguishing between
> "high order" explosions or "detonations" and "low order" explosions or
> deflagrations. Then there are "no yield" ones, like tank ruptures. I
> use to rankle when people talked about auto gas tanks exploding, or
> example. Then I read some dictionaries. The "sufficient" definition of
> an "explosion" seems to be some event in which a noise was heard.)

I know people who think that a proper footnote is anything with
an asterisk. (Sorry, but citing a newspaper gossip column isn't
quite the same as citing, say, a trial transcript.)

> One thing that was more hazardous on the Me163 than the exotic (for
> then) propellants was the operational scenario. Take off, climb to
> combat altitude, run out of propellant, glide to a landing spot, and
> be stuck on the ground on the landing skids.

> The allied pilots quickly figured that out, and that there was little
> to be done about powered flight, so they just waited and followed them
> down and nailed them on the ground. It is a wonder that anyone had any
> stories about explosions, they should have all been killed.

> My conclusion from trying to find out what happened was that the
> Luffwaffe was totally negligent in keeping any useful accident reports
> in the WW II era, at least that I found.

That was a typical condition in the Reich. And, given how hard it was
to find self-confessed Nazis after the war, the condition persisted.
Albert Speer's "Inside the Third Reich" is a classic example.

> Designers are often told that "You have to listen to what the user
> says, they were the ones that know what is going on.
>
> I agree that you should listen. But you should evaluate what you hear.
> Anyone's "eye witness account" is likely to be highly biased and
> frequently just imaginary.

That's what I was taught when getting my degrees in hysteria, er, history.
My favorite example has to do with the "Nuts!" event at Bastogne.
There are several accounts of exactly what was said; the accounts
come from people who were there--and they don't match up.

(Although the military historian SLA Marshall claims that the
Germans did, indeed, get the "Nuts!" message. Marshall interrogated
Manteuffel and his staff after the war. At one session Manteuffel
kept blaming his mistakes on his staff. At last one of his subordinates
leaned forward, waggled a finger in Manteuffel's face and shouted
"Nuts! Nuts!")

> And, what were the seals and all the other bits made of. I was once
> reading a report on the X-1 which was very like an American Lox Me163
> and at about the same time. There was something about an explosion and
> a fire. The report said they weren't sure what happened, but they
> though it might have involved a seal. (I think maybe it was in a check
> valve and lit off when the valve closure slammed on it.) They then
> started to discuss what sort of special, proprietary LEATHER (!) the
> seal was made of. I quit reading.

The Ulmer leather gaskets, which if memory serves were treated with
tricresyl phosphate. The accounts I've read said that the treated gaskets
didn't react with the liquid oxygen--but in the presence of lox, the gaskets
became *very* sensitive to mechanical shock, making them "slightly"
explosive. I think the losses of the X-1A, X-1D and second X-2 were
blamed on that.

--Bill Thompson

[William R Thompson]

"Dave Kearton" wrote:

> One thing that I find quirky with the US metric experience is your
> parochial spelling of metric units. Whereas the rest of the world
> has adopted the original spelling of Litre, Metre etc, why does the US
> prefer to use the 'er spelling ?

Prefer, hell, let's see *you* win an argument with a Microsoft spellcheckre.

--Bill Thompson

[William R Thompson]

"Dave Kearton" wrote:

> One thing that I find quirky with the US metric experience is your
> parochial spelling of metric units. Whereas the rest of the world
> has adopted the original spelling of Litre, Metre etc, why does the US
> prefer to use the 'er spelling ?

Prefer, hell, let's see *you* win an argument with a Microsoft spellcheckre.

--Bill Thompson

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

On Sun, 4 Feb 2007 12:28:20 +1030, "Dave Kearton"
> wrote:

> wrote in message
...
>> On Sat, 03 Feb 2007 02:47:10 GMT, "William R Thompson"
>> > wrote:
>>
>> I could go on, but I won't. I am the only person in the world
>> completly happy with both systems, and who thinks they are both
>> equally screwed up.
>>
>> Henry H.
>
>
>
>We all understand the difficulty of migrating from one system to another.

So, don't migrate, use what suits, which is what people do, anyway.

At least in the U. S. and to my observation, a lot in Europe, too.

I use to be involved with some standards activity. (in ordinary
language, you could have said I was a mermber of a ISO working group).
Some one once told me that the nice thing about standards was that
there were so many everyone could have one of their own. After a
while, I concluded that the result of having more standards ws that
there were more choices, because the old ones don't go away.

So, I went away.

>
>Australia's change to metrics started on the 14th Feb '66 with the change to
>decimal currency - dollars and cents. All Aussies over 45 can still
>remember the TV jingle. A currency based on multiples of 10 makes more
>sense than one based on 12s (unless your family tree doesn't branch)

The US has had decimal currancy for a while.

>Once that was achieved, switching to Celsius from Farneheit in the mid '70s
>wasn't such of a chore.

The question of temperature scales (very near and dear to me, a
mechanical engineer who is suppose to know about thermodynamics) is
really quite seperate from the "Metric" issue. The original Metric
system didn't even include temperatrue, as the concept was not really
established at that time.

In promoting the Centegrade scale, the proponents tried to paint
Farneheit as being stupid. Who would make a scale that went from 32 to
212 for Gods sake.

Well, he didn't. He had variations as the progresed in his work, but
basiclly he intended to go from zero to 96 degrees. The zero he had a
bit of trouble standardizing, but he intended it to be the coldest
temperature that would be expernced. The 96 was suppose t be avrage
human body temperature. (Why 96? A bit of numerology, apprently, but
it was at least three times a power of two. A power of two is very
handy when you are laying out scales. 100 has no advantage.)

The fact that water freezes at about zero is handy, maybe. But you
have to use negative numbers for ordinary temperatures. Not good in
Farneheit's day.

Water boiling is not really very relevant.

Neither the freezing point or the boiling point have actually be the
definitions of the scale for almost almost as long as the scale has
existed.

The actual definitions now are that there is only one refernce point
and that is zero, absolute. The "Celsius" scale is defined in terms of
the "Kelvin" or "degree" to ordinary people. The only difference in
that and Farneheit now is that a Farneheit degree is 1/1.8 times the
size of a Kelvin. Big deal.

What is the boiling point of LOX? Who cares what the scale is?

>
>At one point, for a couple of years in the early '80s, as I recall, it was
>illegal to posess for sale rulers with imperial units on them. It was
>a ridiculous and draconian measure - but effective in getting some of the
>older farts to consider using metric units.


Ridiculous and draconian measure, I say. The law is a fool, I say.



>
>Road signs and speeds followed next, closely followed by weights and
>measures in general. All up, the conversion for the general public
>was completed by the mid '80s, I'd imagine it was completed a lot faster in
>specialist industries.

Specialist industries in the US converted any time they wanted to, and
many, like the drug industry, have been metric forever.


The US had a fit of metrication fever about the same time. It got as
for as putting up a few speed limit signs. And "kilometer" posts.


When people saw those, the said what the F*** is this, and when they
figureed out how much money this was going to cost, most states said
"Forget it."

That was one of those "unfunded mandates" (that is not the right term,
maybe). The Federal government mandated it, but the states were going
to have to pay for it.

I live near the state of Deleware. They not only have mile posts on
their turnpike, they have kilo posts, too. In fact, they have HALF
kilo posts! Deleware is so small you can almost see all of them at
once. There are about 20 or 30 of them.

(I am not really sure about the mile posts. They may have the speed
limit signs in mph and kph also. They can if they want to.)
>
>
>One thing that I find quirky with the US metric experience is your parochial
>spelling of metric units. Whereas the rest of the world has adopted
>the original spelling of Litre, Metre etc, why does the US prefer to use
>the 'er spelling ?


I don't really remember. That has been going on for at least 150
years.

I think it has something to do with the idea that we speak, more or
less, English here. And we couldn't pronounce "metre."

I think that the US was the first country other than France to adopt
the meter/metre. A long time before the British. We just didn't make
it mandantory.

A few years ago, the inch was redefined so that it is now 2.54 cm,
EXACTLY. You just don't have to say it in cm. When that happened, the
US shrank by 20 feet. No big deal except to those with beach property.

In the metrication exercise, there was one part of it that did "catch
on." That was that the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, tobacco and Firearms)
did mandate compulsory metric bottle sizes for all Alcoholic
beverages.

Of course, they completly screwed it up. Actually, they jsut made
brand new metric sizes for the old bottle sizes. So they are metric,
but wierd metric.

The main size is 750 ml, which is very close to the old 4/5 US quart
size (746 ml, IIRC). Not worth the effort. "Twice" that is not 1.5 l.,
as you might suppose, but accordign to the BATF is 1.75 l. Beats me.
Just makes it hard to compare prices.

The people who squeeled the loudest? The French wine industry, who not
only had to change bottle sizes, they had to have STANDARD sizes. 200
years and there was not a standard size for wine bottles!

The French said that was because the wine bottle was a standard in its
self, the perfect size for two people to consume at a meal! Known to
them, even if not to you.

There are several "funny" thing about the liter/litre. It has driven
the SI guys, who have a lot of time on thier hands, in to various fits
of stupid.

It is not as simple as I once thought, but the liter got "double
defined" like a lot of other stuff in the orginal metric system.

The kilometer was the orignal "base" unit, and was 1/40000 the Earths
circumference, (Paris meridian, of course. )

Before they even got the survey done, the scratched lines on a bar for
a "practical standard". Of course, those don't agree, and on, and on.

The kilogram was based on the weight (or mass, take your pick) of
1/1000 of a cubic meter.

The liter was either 1/1000 o f a cubic meter or the volume of one
kilogram of water, it fluctuated. And, those were not the same, of
course.

Just a few years ago, the SI banned the liter entirely. No matter how
you spelled I think maybe it was out for 6 years.

Then they let it back in, with the cobic meter definition.

The other oddity of the liter/liter is that the SI says you cannot
abreviate it except as "l.". Even though that is very confusing to
read often. "L." is not allowed because capitals are resereved for
units that are named for people.

Some genius tried to fix that by submitting a bio of Andre Litre, the
great physicist who was a the son of a wine merchant. The Si woudn't
by it. No sense of humor.

After haveing been following measurement issues for about 100 years, I
got a big surprise lately when I discovred the explanation for the
size of the US gallon. I always thought it was just dumb. 231 cubic
inches. I had read somewere that the people responsible for the
British standars at one time just happened to have a nice cup that
size.

Not so. In Queen Anne's day, there were several gallons, various
sizes, used for various things in various parts of Britian. So , Queen
Anne, or her agents, decided to have a new standard, so that there
would be one more gallon, "Queen Anne's Wine Gallon."

In order to demonstrate their scientific talents they defined that as
exactly the volume of a cylinder seven inches in diameter and six
inches hight. They picked those numbers because using them, you get an
exact whole number for the volume. 231 cubic inches! They also defined
the gallon as just that, 231 cubic inches.

Problem was, those are only the same on days when pi is equal to 22/7.
Most days, pi is closer to 355/113/

That is a differnence of 0.1 cubic incehs, or something. OH, well.

Later, after we ran them off, the British tried to catch up with the
French by defining yet another gallon, This one equal in volume to 10
pounds of water, at some conditions.

Well, happy metrication, and have a good 1/365.24 of a mean solar
year.

Henry H.

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

On Sun, 4 Feb 2007 12:28:20 +1030, "Dave Kearton"
> wrote:

> wrote in message
...
>> On Sat, 03 Feb 2007 02:47:10 GMT, "William R Thompson"
>> > wrote:
>>
>> I could go on, but I won't. I am the only person in the world
>> completly happy with both systems, and who thinks they are both
>> equally screwed up.
>>
>> Henry H.
>
>
>
>We all understand the difficulty of migrating from one system to another.

So, don't migrate, use what suits, which is what people do, anyway.

At least in the U. S. and to my observation, a lot in Europe, too.

I use to be involved with some standards activity. (in ordinary
language, you could have said I was a mermber of a ISO working group).
Some one once told me that the nice thing about standards was that
there were so many everyone could have one of their own. After a
while, I concluded that the result of having more standards ws that
there were more choices, because the old ones don't go away.

So, I went away.

>
>Australia's change to metrics started on the 14th Feb '66 with the change to
>decimal currency - dollars and cents. All Aussies over 45 can still
>remember the TV jingle. A currency based on multiples of 10 makes more
>sense than one based on 12s (unless your family tree doesn't branch)

The US has had decimal currancy for a while.

>Once that was achieved, switching to Celsius from Farneheit in the mid '70s
>wasn't such of a chore.

The question of temperature scales (very near and dear to me, a
mechanical engineer who is suppose to know about thermodynamics) is
really quite seperate from the "Metric" issue. The original Metric
system didn't even include temperatrue, as the concept was not really
established at that time.

In promoting the Centegrade scale, the proponents tried to paint
Farneheit as being stupid. Who would make a scale that went from 32 to
212 for Gods sake.

Well, he didn't. He had variations as the progresed in his work, but
basiclly he intended to go from zero to 96 degrees. The zero he had a
bit of trouble standardizing, but he intended it to be the coldest
temperature that would be expernced. The 96 was suppose t be avrage
human body temperature. (Why 96? A bit of numerology, apprently, but
it was at least three times a power of two. A power of two is very
handy when you are laying out scales. 100 has no advantage.)

The fact that water freezes at about zero is handy, maybe. But you
have to use negative numbers for ordinary temperatures. Not good in
Farneheit's day.

Water boiling is not really very relevant.

Neither the freezing point or the boiling point have actually be the
definitions of the scale for almost almost as long as the scale has
existed.

The actual definitions now are that there is only one refernce point
and that is zero, absolute. The "Celsius" scale is defined in terms of
the "Kelvin" or "degree" to ordinary people. The only difference in
that and Farneheit now is that a Farneheit degree is 1/1.8 times the
size of a Kelvin. Big deal.

What is the boiling point of LOX? Who cares what the scale is?

>
>At one point, for a couple of years in the early '80s, as I recall, it was
>illegal to posess for sale rulers with imperial units on them. It was
>a ridiculous and draconian measure - but effective in getting some of the
>older farts to consider using metric units.


Ridiculous and draconian measure, I say. The law is a fool, I say.



>
>Road signs and speeds followed next, closely followed by weights and
>measures in general. All up, the conversion for the general public
>was completed by the mid '80s, I'd imagine it was completed a lot faster in
>specialist industries.

Specialist industries in the US converted any time they wanted to, and
many, like the drug industry, have been metric forever.


The US had a fit of metrication fever about the same time. It got as
for as putting up a few speed limit signs. And "kilometer" posts.


When people saw those, the said what the F*** is this, and when they
figureed out how much money this was going to cost, most states said
"Forget it."

That was one of those "unfunded mandates" (that is not the right term,
maybe). The Federal government mandated it, but the states were going
to have to pay for it.

I live near the state of Deleware. They not only have mile posts on
their turnpike, they have kilo posts, too. In fact, they have HALF
kilo posts! Deleware is so small you can almost see all of them at
once. There are about 20 or 30 of them.

(I am not really sure about the mile posts. They may have the speed
limit signs in mph and kph also. They can if they want to.)
>
>
>One thing that I find quirky with the US metric experience is your parochial
>spelling of metric units. Whereas the rest of the world has adopted
>the original spelling of Litre, Metre etc, why does the US prefer to use
>the 'er spelling ?


I don't really remember. That has been going on for at least 150
years.

I think it has something to do with the idea that we speak, more or
less, English here. And we couldn't pronounce "metre."

I think that the US was the first country other than France to adopt
the meter/metre. A long time before the British. We just didn't make
it mandantory.

A few years ago, the inch was redefined so that it is now 2.54 cm,
EXACTLY. You just don't have to say it in cm. When that happened, the
US shrank by 20 feet. No big deal except to those with beach property.

In the metrication exercise, there was one part of it that did "catch
on." That was that the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, tobacco and Firearms)
did mandate compulsory metric bottle sizes for all Alcoholic
beverages.

Of course, they completly screwed it up. Actually, they jsut made
brand new metric sizes for the old bottle sizes. So they are metric,
but wierd metric.

The main size is 750 ml, which is very close to the old 4/5 US quart
size (746 ml, IIRC). Not worth the effort. "Twice" that is not 1.5 l.,
as you might suppose, but accordign to the BATF is 1.75 l. Beats me.
Just makes it hard to compare prices.

The people who squeeled the loudest? The French wine industry, who not
only had to change bottle sizes, they had to have STANDARD sizes. 200
years and there was not a standard size for wine bottles!

The French said that was because the wine bottle was a standard in its
self, the perfect size for two people to consume at a meal! Known to
them, even if not to you.

There are several "funny" thing about the liter/litre. It has driven
the SI guys, who have a lot of time on thier hands, in to various fits
of stupid.

It is not as simple as I once thought, but the liter got "double
defined" like a lot of other stuff in the orginal metric system.

The kilometer was the orignal "base" unit, and was 1/40000 the Earths
circumference, (Paris meridian, of course. )

Before they even got the survey done, the scratched lines on a bar for
a "practical standard". Of course, those don't agree, and on, and on.

The kilogram was based on the weight (or mass, take your pick) of
1/1000 of a cubic meter.

The liter was either 1/1000 o f a cubic meter or the volume of one
kilogram of water, it fluctuated. And, those were not the same, of
course.

Just a few years ago, the SI banned the liter entirely. No matter how
you spelled I think maybe it was out for 6 years.

Then they let it back in, with the cobic meter definition.

The other oddity of the liter/liter is that the SI says you cannot
abreviate it except as "l.". Even though that is very confusing to
read often. "L." is not allowed because capitals are resereved for
units that are named for people.

Some genius tried to fix that by submitting a bio of Andre Litre, the
great physicist who was a the son of a wine merchant. The Si woudn't
by it. No sense of humor.

After haveing been following measurement issues for about 100 years, I
got a big surprise lately when I discovred the explanation for the
size of the US gallon. I always thought it was just dumb. 231 cubic
inches. I had read somewere that the people responsible for the
British standars at one time just happened to have a nice cup that
size.

Not so. In Queen Anne's day, there were several gallons, various
sizes, used for various things in various parts of Britian. So , Queen
Anne, or her agents, decided to have a new standard, so that there
would be one more gallon, "Queen Anne's Wine Gallon."

In order to demonstrate their scientific talents they defined that as
exactly the volume of a cylinder seven inches in diameter and six
inches hight. They picked those numbers because using them, you get an
exact whole number for the volume. 231 cubic inches! They also defined
the gallon as just that, 231 cubic inches.

Problem was, those are only the same on days when pi is equal to 22/7.
Most days, pi is closer to 355/113/

That is a differnence of 0.1 cubic incehs, or something. OH, well.

Later, after we ran them off, the British tried to catch up with the
French by defining yet another gallon, This one equal in volume to 10
pounds of water, at some conditions.

Well, happy metrication, and have a good 1/365.24 of a mean solar
year.

Henry H.

[Dave Kearton]

> wrote in message
...
> On Sun, 4 Feb 2007 12:28:20 +1030, "Dave Kearton"
> > wrote:
>
> Well, happy metrication, and have a good 1/365.24 of a mean solar
> year.
>
> Henry H.
>


If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!



- Rudmetre Kipling (1865-1936)




--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[Dave Kearton]

> wrote in message
...
> On Sun, 4 Feb 2007 12:28:20 +1030, "Dave Kearton"
> > wrote:
>
> Well, happy metrication, and have a good 1/365.24 of a mean solar
> year.
>
> Henry H.
>


If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!



- Rudmetre Kipling (1865-1936)




--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

On 3 Feb 2007 00:12:02 -0600, jc > wrote:

>On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 18:38:32 +1030, "Dave Kearton"
> wrote:
[snip]

>

>The other thing is the way the fluid lines wrap around the
>can looks like preheat to me. That either means a fuel that
>doesn't vaporize easily, like kerosene, or a cold soaked
>environment. That goes along with the idea that it's
>designed for vacuum.

Well, yes. It does preheat the propellant.

But that is not the main idea, or usually isn't.

Almost all liquid propellant rockets are "regen" cooled. That keeps
them from melting down and burning through.

All your usual engines are like thta. Atlas, Delta, F-1, SSME, etc.

American LOX/RP engines use RP cooling. the temp rise is fairly small,
doesn't have much effect on combustion. Note that the engine has to
start so it has to run on "cold" propellant.

It is a bit different with LOX/LH2 engines. In fact, AFAIK, there are
NO "LH2" engines. The hydrogen picks up enough heat in the jacket so
that it enters the combustion chamber as a gas.

One of those engines, the P&W RL-10, the Centaur engine runs the H2
thru a turbine which drives the turbo pump. They call it the "expander
cycle."

At one time, there was a great series of studies of new engine
designs, and P&W was pushing "their" expander cycle. One of the
advantages they claimed was that the expander cycle has "graceful
degradation." Say you get a hot sopt in the jacket and it starts to
burn through (just the inner wall). That cuts the flow to the trubine
which reduces the heat flux and stops the burn through.

That sounded good. As as vehicle design team participant in the study,
I backed them all I could. For my own vested interests.

It turned out that P&W could find no other mode that the expander was
more graceful at than the competing "GG" cycle, And, the GG cycle was
not at all prone to burn thru. So it was something like a protection
agains a problem that you were causing.

P&W and I gracefully degraded, together.

Henry H.



[snip]

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

On 3 Feb 2007 00:12:02 -0600, jc > wrote:

>On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 18:38:32 +1030, "Dave Kearton"
> wrote:
[snip]

>

>The other thing is the way the fluid lines wrap around the
>can looks like preheat to me. That either means a fuel that
>doesn't vaporize easily, like kerosene, or a cold soaked
>environment. That goes along with the idea that it's
>designed for vacuum.

Well, yes. It does preheat the propellant.

But that is not the main idea, or usually isn't.

Almost all liquid propellant rockets are "regen" cooled. That keeps
them from melting down and burning through.

All your usual engines are like thta. Atlas, Delta, F-1, SSME, etc.

American LOX/RP engines use RP cooling. the temp rise is fairly small,
doesn't have much effect on combustion. Note that the engine has to
start so it has to run on "cold" propellant.

It is a bit different with LOX/LH2 engines. In fact, AFAIK, there are
NO "LH2" engines. The hydrogen picks up enough heat in the jacket so
that it enters the combustion chamber as a gas.

One of those engines, the P&W RL-10, the Centaur engine runs the H2
thru a turbine which drives the turbo pump. They call it the "expander
cycle."

At one time, there was a great series of studies of new engine
designs, and P&W was pushing "their" expander cycle. One of the
advantages they claimed was that the expander cycle has "graceful
degradation." Say you get a hot sopt in the jacket and it starts to
burn through (just the inner wall). That cuts the flow to the trubine
which reduces the heat flux and stops the burn through.

That sounded good. As as vehicle design team participant in the study,
I backed them all I could. For my own vested interests.

It turned out that P&W could find no other mode that the expander was
more graceful at than the competing "GG" cycle, And, the GG cycle was
not at all prone to burn thru. So it was something like a protection
agains a problem that you were causing.

P&W and I gracefully degraded, together.

Henry H.



[snip]

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

On Sun, 04 Feb 2007 03:40:31 GMT, "William R Thompson"
> wrote:

>Henry_H@Q_wrote:
>
>> I see that there was a lot of discussion I didn't read. I am glad to
>> see that the source was tracked down. But, I am I bit surprised to see
>> it was from Rocketdyne.
>
>It looks like someone issued specs that said, basically, "make it
>reliable and simple, and don't worry too much about the weight."

As I said, it doesn't look like it goes to far "up the stack". I
though about it being an "airplane" but I couldn't imagine which one.

But, it looks better, "all dressed up."
>
>> (For airplanes, RATO lost out to the army developed "JATO" solid
>> propellant "boosters.")
>
>I can see why. RATO could be throttled and restarted, but I think
>the only application anyone saw for that was in seaplane take-offs.
>JATO looks a lot less maintenance-intense than RATO (see attached
>picture).

Hey, looks simple to me! I have done my tour on both the liquid and
solid fronts. Both have advantages, both have problems. I will take
the liquid problems any day. But, I am in the minority it seems.

I think it turns out that rockets are much to expensive for general
use whether they are liguid or solid.

I meant to say that although Truax didn't have the right answer for
airplanes, that work lead drrectly on to the whole world of hypergols
in the US, many, many vehicles and engine/motors.

>
>> T-Stoff, was a mixture of 80% hydrogen peroxide plus
>> oxyquinoline or phosphate as a stabilizer. [most of the other 20
>> percent would have been water. _hh]
>>
>> And that
>>
>> C-Stoff was a mixture of 57% methanol + 30% hydrazine hydrate + 13%
>> water, with
>> traces of either cupro-potassium cyanide or copper oxide (probably as
>> a stabilizer).
>
>> I accept those as being correct. Methanol the kind of stuff you would
>> want as a fuel. The hydrazine hydrate would be added to provide
>> "smooth combustion" and the water may have resulted from using the
>> highest concentration of hydrazine hydrate that was available, or
>> possibly it was just added as coolant.
>
>> (Usually wiki is a really good place for this kind of stuff, but I
>> didn't find the exact numbers there)
>
>Those are the same figures in Sutton's "Rocket Propulsion Elements."
>I figure that Mano Zeigler gave different numbers in "Rocket Fighter"
>due to conditions in Axisland--with the Allies bombing their plants
>and supply lines, they may have had to settle for anything that could
>flow through the lines and burn.


If I remember the book, and I am pretty sure I do, it was sort of a
"quick and dirty" account based on very limited sources. I think I
first read it myself only a couple of years after the war, so it has
been around a while. A lot of documentation dhowed up later that the
author didn't have then.

>
>> It is hard to find people in the rocket biz that have had long term
>> exposure to hydrazine that have not also be exposed to N2O4 so when
>> there are stories about long term effects, you don't know which to
>> blame. But I will take the alternative to "in a couple of more days,
>> they die." Better chronic than prompt.
>
>As I recall, Vance Brand passed out from exposure to dumped fuels
>during the Apollo-18/ASTP descent, and the crew was taken to the
>hospital afterward. They didn't seem to suffer any long-term effects.


I remember somethign about tat, but I don't even know as much as you
said.
>
>> (In ordnance circles, I got into this thing of distinguishing between
>> "high order" explosions or "detonations" and "low order" explosions or
>> deflagrations. Then there are "no yield" ones, like tank ruptures. I
>> use to rankle when people talked about auto gas tanks exploding, or
>> example. Then I read some dictionaries. The "sufficient" definition of
>> an "explosion" seems to be some event in which a noise was heard.)
>
>I know people who think that a proper footnote is anything with
>an asterisk. (Sorry, but citing a newspaper gossip column isn't
>quite the same as citing, say, a trial transcript.)
>
>> One thing that was more hazardous on the Me163 than the exotic (for
>> then) propellants was the operational scenario. Take off, climb to
>> combat altitude, run out of propellant, glide to a landing spot, and
>> be stuck on the ground on the landing skids.
>
>> The allied pilots quickly figured that out, and that there was little
>> to be done about powered flight, so they just waited and followed them
>> down and nailed them on the ground. It is a wonder that anyone had any
>> stories about explosions, they should have all been killed.
>
>> My conclusion from trying to find out what happened was that the
>> Luffwaffe was totally negligent in keeping any useful accident reports
>> in the WW II era, at least that I found.
>
>That was a typical condition in the Reich. And, given how hard it was
>to find self-confessed Nazis after the war, the condition persisted.
>Albert Speer's "Inside the Third Reich" is a classic example.


You have to be careful about testimony of participants. You have to be
ten times more careful when they are under duress. And, being a POW
after having lost a war is a LOT of duress.

But there are all to many examples of people thinking up stories and
then feeding them to people just like that to get them to play them
back.

The worst one I think of off hand was some guy who was on the
interrogation team of the Japanese Navy participants in PH. His own
personal theory was that the Japanese should have left the ships alone
and gone for the oil tanks. So he asked that question over and over
again until all the Japanese got the answer right.

There was a similar deal about the pre war demands, whch are totally
unclear as to whether they mean "China" or IndoChina" or both. Some
different guy (I guess he was different) got all sorts of people to
say it would have been entirely different, "If they had only known"
what we said.

The Japanese were unusually eager to cooperate, be everyone is eager
in those circumstances.
>
>> Designers are often told that "You have to listen to what the user
>> says, they were the ones that know what is going on.
>>
>> I agree that you should listen. But you should evaluate what you hear.
>> Anyone's "eye witness account" is likely to be highly biased and
>> frequently just imaginary.
>
>That's what I was taught when getting my degrees in hysteria, er, history.
>My favorite example has to do with the "Nuts!" event at Bastogne.
>There are several accounts of exactly what was said; the accounts
>come from people who were there--and they don't match up.


I have read many of those accounts. And there are very different
versions of what General McAuliffe initally said. Some say it was
profane, othere say that people heard what they wanted to hear, and
that McAuliffe never used profanity and that is exactly what he would
have said.

"It is very true, and if it is not, it should be."

Some stories are so well known and are so much a paart of what
happened they are as important as "facts."


But, there is another aspect of the "Nuts" story. In about 1950 the
National Archives put togetner an exibition on a train and it toured
the country. It had really "heavy weight" stuff on it. Including the
Constitution and the Declaration of Independnce, the originals (I
think!). Hard to imagine doing that now.


I toured the train. I was there. I SAW the piece of paper that
McAuliffe wrote it on.

Just like the Germans to file that away.

SO, although there can be debate about what he SAID, I KNOW what he
wrote, because I saw it.

However, I can't find any discussionof anyone else knowing that.

>
>(Although the military historian SLA Marshall claims that the
>Germans did, indeed, get the "Nuts!" message. Marshall interrogated
>Manteuffel and his staff after the war. At one session Manteuffel
>kept blaming his mistakes on his staff. At last one of his subordinates
>leaned forward, waggled a finger in Manteuffel's face and shouted
>"Nuts! Nuts!")


Another sub plot to that story that I have seen in one account was
that there was some junior officere there who was an English language
expert. He thought up the idea of the surrender demand. And wrote it
and got permission to deliver it. But, when he got the answer, he
didn't know what it meant.

The officer who escorted him back to the German lines explained it in
terms the German understood. He may have used any of the expressins
that have been suggested.

It was also said that when they parted, the German made a last plea
"you must accept or many people will die." the escort was said to have
said "this is war and that is what it is all about. Many will die and
they won't all be on our side."

Now, that is a REAL fairy tale.


>> And, what were the seals and all the other bits made of. I was once
>> reading a report on the X-1 which was very like an American Lox Me163
>> and at about the same time. There was something about an explosion and
>> a fire. The report said they weren't sure what happened, but they
>> though it might have involved a seal. (I think maybe it was in a check
>> valve and lit off when the valve closure slammed on it.) They then
>> started to discuss what sort of special, proprietary LEATHER (!) the
>> seal was made of. I quit reading.
>
>The Ulmer leather gaskets, which if memory serves were treated with
>tricresyl phosphate. The accounts I've read said that the treated gaskets
>didn't react with the liquid oxygen--but in the presence of lox, the gaskets
>became *very* sensitive to mechanical shock, making them "slightly"
>explosive. I think the losses of the X-1A, X-1D and second X-2 were
>blamed on that.


I have though about that a lot. The correct process for making leather
LOX compatable doesn't leave ANY leather in the leather. Or as I told
a guy once "Send me that (polyethelyne bottle) to be LOX cleaned and
I will send you back an empty bag with a tag on it."

In those days, I gather, they hadn't come up with impact testing. And
such events were how they got the idea.

In one sense, most things are "compatible" with LOX, as there is no
"attack' in the absece of impact.

RP won't react with LOX until you hit or subect it to an ignition
source. That is what makes it so dangerous, you can get an
accumulationt that will blow the back end of the vehicle into the next
county. "Static" compatibility is meaningless for LOX.

"Low order" reactions to impact are also pretty meaningless since even
a small pop can do a lot of damage, including possibly stuff like
igniting some surrounding stuff, like aluminum valve housings, say.

It is somewhat hard to see how anything could have been done wiht any
useful oxidizer, LOX, peroxide, N2O4 or whatever, untel Teflon came
along. But they did do lots of stuff. Even Teflon has a lot of
problems. (but is compatable.)


Henry H.
>
>--Bill Thompson
>
>
>

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

On Sun, 04 Feb 2007 03:40:31 GMT, "William R Thompson"
> wrote:

>Henry_H@Q_wrote:
>
>> I see that there was a lot of discussion I didn't read. I am glad to
>> see that the source was tracked down. But, I am I bit surprised to see
>> it was from Rocketdyne.
>
>It looks like someone issued specs that said, basically, "make it
>reliable and simple, and don't worry too much about the weight."

As I said, it doesn't look like it goes to far "up the stack". I
though about it being an "airplane" but I couldn't imagine which one.

But, it looks better, "all dressed up."
>
>> (For airplanes, RATO lost out to the army developed "JATO" solid
>> propellant "boosters.")
>
>I can see why. RATO could be throttled and restarted, but I think
>the only application anyone saw for that was in seaplane take-offs.
>JATO looks a lot less maintenance-intense than RATO (see attached
>picture).

Hey, looks simple to me! I have done my tour on both the liquid and
solid fronts. Both have advantages, both have problems. I will take
the liquid problems any day. But, I am in the minority it seems.

I think it turns out that rockets are much to expensive for general
use whether they are liguid or solid.

I meant to say that although Truax didn't have the right answer for
airplanes, that work lead drrectly on to the whole world of hypergols
in the US, many, many vehicles and engine/motors.

>
>> T-Stoff, was a mixture of 80% hydrogen peroxide plus
>> oxyquinoline or phosphate as a stabilizer. [most of the other 20
>> percent would have been water. _hh]
>>
>> And that
>>
>> C-Stoff was a mixture of 57% methanol + 30% hydrazine hydrate + 13%
>> water, with
>> traces of either cupro-potassium cyanide or copper oxide (probably as
>> a stabilizer).
>
>> I accept those as being correct. Methanol the kind of stuff you would
>> want as a fuel. The hydrazine hydrate would be added to provide
>> "smooth combustion" and the water may have resulted from using the
>> highest concentration of hydrazine hydrate that was available, or
>> possibly it was just added as coolant.
>
>> (Usually wiki is a really good place for this kind of stuff, but I
>> didn't find the exact numbers there)
>
>Those are the same figures in Sutton's "Rocket Propulsion Elements."
>I figure that Mano Zeigler gave different numbers in "Rocket Fighter"
>due to conditions in Axisland--with the Allies bombing their plants
>and supply lines, they may have had to settle for anything that could
>flow through the lines and burn.


If I remember the book, and I am pretty sure I do, it was sort of a
"quick and dirty" account based on very limited sources. I think I
first read it myself only a couple of years after the war, so it has
been around a while. A lot of documentation dhowed up later that the
author didn't have then.

>
>> It is hard to find people in the rocket biz that have had long term
>> exposure to hydrazine that have not also be exposed to N2O4 so when
>> there are stories about long term effects, you don't know which to
>> blame. But I will take the alternative to "in a couple of more days,
>> they die." Better chronic than prompt.
>
>As I recall, Vance Brand passed out from exposure to dumped fuels
>during the Apollo-18/ASTP descent, and the crew was taken to the
>hospital afterward. They didn't seem to suffer any long-term effects.


I remember somethign about tat, but I don't even know as much as you
said.
>
>> (In ordnance circles, I got into this thing of distinguishing between
>> "high order" explosions or "detonations" and "low order" explosions or
>> deflagrations. Then there are "no yield" ones, like tank ruptures. I
>> use to rankle when people talked about auto gas tanks exploding, or
>> example. Then I read some dictionaries. The "sufficient" definition of
>> an "explosion" seems to be some event in which a noise was heard.)
>
>I know people who think that a proper footnote is anything with
>an asterisk. (Sorry, but citing a newspaper gossip column isn't
>quite the same as citing, say, a trial transcript.)
>
>> One thing that was more hazardous on the Me163 than the exotic (for
>> then) propellants was the operational scenario. Take off, climb to
>> combat altitude, run out of propellant, glide to a landing spot, and
>> be stuck on the ground on the landing skids.
>
>> The allied pilots quickly figured that out, and that there was little
>> to be done about powered flight, so they just waited and followed them
>> down and nailed them on the ground. It is a wonder that anyone had any
>> stories about explosions, they should have all been killed.
>
>> My conclusion from trying to find out what happened was that the
>> Luffwaffe was totally negligent in keeping any useful accident reports
>> in the WW II era, at least that I found.
>
>That was a typical condition in the Reich. And, given how hard it was
>to find self-confessed Nazis after the war, the condition persisted.
>Albert Speer's "Inside the Third Reich" is a classic example.


You have to be careful about testimony of participants. You have to be
ten times more careful when they are under duress. And, being a POW
after having lost a war is a LOT of duress.

But there are all to many examples of people thinking up stories and
then feeding them to people just like that to get them to play them
back.

The worst one I think of off hand was some guy who was on the
interrogation team of the Japanese Navy participants in PH. His own
personal theory was that the Japanese should have left the ships alone
and gone for the oil tanks. So he asked that question over and over
again until all the Japanese got the answer right.

There was a similar deal about the pre war demands, whch are totally
unclear as to whether they mean "China" or IndoChina" or both. Some
different guy (I guess he was different) got all sorts of people to
say it would have been entirely different, "If they had only known"
what we said.

The Japanese were unusually eager to cooperate, be everyone is eager
in those circumstances.
>
>> Designers are often told that "You have to listen to what the user
>> says, they were the ones that know what is going on.
>>
>> I agree that you should listen. But you should evaluate what you hear.
>> Anyone's "eye witness account" is likely to be highly biased and
>> frequently just imaginary.
>
>That's what I was taught when getting my degrees in hysteria, er, history.
>My favorite example has to do with the "Nuts!" event at Bastogne.
>There are several accounts of exactly what was said; the accounts
>come from people who were there--and they don't match up.


I have read many of those accounts. And there are very different
versions of what General McAuliffe initally said. Some say it was
profane, othere say that people heard what they wanted to hear, and
that McAuliffe never used profanity and that is exactly what he would
have said.

"It is very true, and if it is not, it should be."

Some stories are so well known and are so much a paart of what
happened they are as important as "facts."


But, there is another aspect of the "Nuts" story. In about 1950 the
National Archives put togetner an exibition on a train and it toured
the country. It had really "heavy weight" stuff on it. Including the
Constitution and the Declaration of Independnce, the originals (I
think!). Hard to imagine doing that now.


I toured the train. I was there. I SAW the piece of paper that
McAuliffe wrote it on.

Just like the Germans to file that away.

SO, although there can be debate about what he SAID, I KNOW what he
wrote, because I saw it.

However, I can't find any discussionof anyone else knowing that.

>
>(Although the military historian SLA Marshall claims that the
>Germans did, indeed, get the "Nuts!" message. Marshall interrogated
>Manteuffel and his staff after the war. At one session Manteuffel
>kept blaming his mistakes on his staff. At last one of his subordinates
>leaned forward, waggled a finger in Manteuffel's face and shouted
>"Nuts! Nuts!")


Another sub plot to that story that I have seen in one account was
that there was some junior officere there who was an English language
expert. He thought up the idea of the surrender demand. And wrote it
and got permission to deliver it. But, when he got the answer, he
didn't know what it meant.

The officer who escorted him back to the German lines explained it in
terms the German understood. He may have used any of the expressins
that have been suggested.

It was also said that when they parted, the German made a last plea
"you must accept or many people will die." the escort was said to have
said "this is war and that is what it is all about. Many will die and
they won't all be on our side."

Now, that is a REAL fairy tale.


>> And, what were the seals and all the other bits made of. I was once
>> reading a report on the X-1 which was very like an American Lox Me163
>> and at about the same time. There was something about an explosion and
>> a fire. The report said they weren't sure what happened, but they
>> though it might have involved a seal. (I think maybe it was in a check
>> valve and lit off when the valve closure slammed on it.) They then
>> started to discuss what sort of special, proprietary LEATHER (!) the
>> seal was made of. I quit reading.
>
>The Ulmer leather gaskets, which if memory serves were treated with
>tricresyl phosphate. The accounts I've read said that the treated gaskets
>didn't react with the liquid oxygen--but in the presence of lox, the gaskets
>became *very* sensitive to mechanical shock, making them "slightly"
>explosive. I think the losses of the X-1A, X-1D and second X-2 were
>blamed on that.


I have though about that a lot. The correct process for making leather
LOX compatable doesn't leave ANY leather in the leather. Or as I told
a guy once "Send me that (polyethelyne bottle) to be LOX cleaned and
I will send you back an empty bag with a tag on it."

In those days, I gather, they hadn't come up with impact testing. And
such events were how they got the idea.

In one sense, most things are "compatible" with LOX, as there is no
"attack' in the absece of impact.

RP won't react with LOX until you hit or subect it to an ignition
source. That is what makes it so dangerous, you can get an
accumulationt that will blow the back end of the vehicle into the next
county. "Static" compatibility is meaningless for LOX.

"Low order" reactions to impact are also pretty meaningless since even
a small pop can do a lot of damage, including possibly stuff like
igniting some surrounding stuff, like aluminum valve housings, say.

It is somewhat hard to see how anything could have been done wiht any
useful oxidizer, LOX, peroxide, N2O4 or whatever, untel Teflon came
along. But they did do lots of stuff. Even Teflon has a lot of
problems. (but is compatable.)


Henry H.
>
>--Bill Thompson
>
>
>

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

On Sun, 04 Feb 2007 03:40:31 GMT, "William R Thompson"
> wrote:

[snip]

>That's what I was taught when getting my degrees in hysteria, er, history.
>My favorite example has to do with the "Nuts!" event at Bastogne.
>There are several accounts of exactly what was said; the accounts
>come from people who were there--and they don't match up.

After my first reply to this message I did some Googleing. I still
can't find any mention of the "Nuts" document.

However, I did find this on wiki:



*****************

The 1947-1949 Freedom Train was proposed by Attorney General Tom C.
Clark as a way to reawaken Americans to their taken-for-granted
principles of liberty in the post-war years. The idea soon got the
approval of President Harry S. Truman and everything else fell into
place. Top Marines were selected to attend to the train and its famous
documents. The Marine contingent was led by Col. Robert F. Scott.

The train carried the original versions of the United States
Constitution, Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights on
its tour of more than 300 cities in all 48 states. As Alaska and
Hawaii didn't gain statehood until 1959, this train toured all of the
US States that existed at the time.


*****************

I saw it when it stopped in Atlanta, Ga. on Jan. 2, 1948/

I am very sceptical of authority in reference sources, I certainly
don't think the EB is very authorative. "Trust everyone, but cut the
cards, anyway."

But, as a friend use to say "Even a blind pig finds some nuts."

There are a LOT of nuts on wiki.

Various kinds.

No matter what you know, you don't know that you know everything until
you check wiki.


Henry H.
>

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

On Sun, 04 Feb 2007 03:40:31 GMT, "William R Thompson"
> wrote:

[snip]

>That's what I was taught when getting my degrees in hysteria, er, history.
>My favorite example has to do with the "Nuts!" event at Bastogne.
>There are several accounts of exactly what was said; the accounts
>come from people who were there--and they don't match up.

After my first reply to this message I did some Googleing. I still
can't find any mention of the "Nuts" document.

However, I did find this on wiki:



*****************

The 1947-1949 Freedom Train was proposed by Attorney General Tom C.
Clark as a way to reawaken Americans to their taken-for-granted
principles of liberty in the post-war years. The idea soon got the
approval of President Harry S. Truman and everything else fell into
place. Top Marines were selected to attend to the train and its famous
documents. The Marine contingent was led by Col. Robert F. Scott.

The train carried the original versions of the United States
Constitution, Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights on
its tour of more than 300 cities in all 48 states. As Alaska and
Hawaii didn't gain statehood until 1959, this train toured all of the
US States that existed at the time.


*****************

I saw it when it stopped in Atlanta, Ga. on Jan. 2, 1948/

I am very sceptical of authority in reference sources, I certainly
don't think the EB is very authorative. "Trust everyone, but cut the
cards, anyway."

But, as a friend use to say "Even a blind pig finds some nuts."

There are a LOT of nuts on wiki.

Various kinds.

No matter what you know, you don't know that you know everything until
you check wiki.


Henry H.
>

[William R Thompson]

Henry_H@Q wrote:

> "William R Thompson" wrote:

> [snip]

>>That's what I was taught when getting my degrees in hysteria, er, history.
>>My favorite example has to do with the "Nuts!" event at Bastogne.
>>There are several accounts of exactly what was said; the accounts
>>come from people who were there--and they don't match up.

> After my first reply to this message I did some Googleing. I still
> can't find any mention of the "Nuts" document.

> However, I did find this on wiki:

> The 1947-1949 Freedom Train was proposed by Attorney General Tom C.
> Clark as a way to reawaken Americans to their taken-for-granted
> principles of liberty in the post-war years. The idea soon got the
> approval of President Harry S. Truman and everything else fell into
> place. Top Marines were selected to attend to the train and its famous
> documents. The Marine contingent was led by Col. Robert F. Scott.

Well-armed and alert, I trust. The Liberty Bell had been sent on an
earlier tour (in the Twenties, I think--details escape me) during which
tour bits and pieces were hacked off the rim as souvenirs.

> I am very sceptical of authority in reference sources, I certainly
> don't think the EB is very authorative. "Trust everyone, but cut the
> cards, anyway."

The history department's attitude was "multiple references, please,
and even then we may laugh."

> But, as a friend use to say "Even a blind pig finds some nuts."

> There are a LOT of nuts on wiki.

Both metric and SAE.

--Bill Thompson

[William R Thompson]

Henry_H@Q wrote:

> "William R Thompson" wrote:

> [snip]

>>That's what I was taught when getting my degrees in hysteria, er, history.
>>My favorite example has to do with the "Nuts!" event at Bastogne.
>>There are several accounts of exactly what was said; the accounts
>>come from people who were there--and they don't match up.

> After my first reply to this message I did some Googleing. I still
> can't find any mention of the "Nuts" document.

> However, I did find this on wiki:

> The 1947-1949 Freedom Train was proposed by Attorney General Tom C.
> Clark as a way to reawaken Americans to their taken-for-granted
> principles of liberty in the post-war years. The idea soon got the
> approval of President Harry S. Truman and everything else fell into
> place. Top Marines were selected to attend to the train and its famous
> documents. The Marine contingent was led by Col. Robert F. Scott.

Well-armed and alert, I trust. The Liberty Bell had been sent on an
earlier tour (in the Twenties, I think--details escape me) during which
tour bits and pieces were hacked off the rim as souvenirs.

> I am very sceptical of authority in reference sources, I certainly
> don't think the EB is very authorative. "Trust everyone, but cut the
> cards, anyway."

The history department's attitude was "multiple references, please,
and even then we may laugh."

> But, as a friend use to say "Even a blind pig finds some nuts."

> There are a LOT of nuts on wiki.

Both metric and SAE.

--Bill Thompson

[William R Thompson]

Henry_H@Q_ wrote:

> I meant to say that although Truax didn't have the right answer for
> airplanes, that work lead directly on to the whole world of hypergols
> in the US, many, many vehicles and engine/motors.

Got it. He did come up with some brilliant design work, which
he must have know were inappropriate for aircraft. Most rocketeers
of the time had their eye on spaceflight and had to search hard to
justify their projects. There was considerable opposition to wasting
resources on "that Buck Rogers stuff."

>>Those are the same figures in Sutton's "Rocket Propulsion Elements."
>>I figure that Mano Zeigler gave different numbers in "Rocket Fighter"
>>due to conditions in Axisland--with the Allies bombing their plants
>>and supply lines, they may have had to settle for anything that could
>>flow through the lines and burn.

> If I remember the book, and I am pretty sure I do, it was sort of a
> "quick and dirty" account based on very limited sources. I think I
> first read it myself only a couple of years after the war, so it has
> been around a while. A lot of documentation showed up later that the
> author didn't have then.

I checked the copyright dates in my book, and the oldest date for
"Rocket Fighter" is 1961. I vaguely recall seeing another book about
the Komet somewhere, but I never had a chance to read it.

>>That was a typical condition in the Reich. And, given how hard it was
>>to find self-confessed Nazis after the war, the condition persisted.
>>Albert Speer's "Inside the Third Reich" is a classic example.

> You have to be careful about testimony of participants. You have to be
> ten times more careful when they are under duress. And, being a POW
> after having lost a war is a LOT of duress.

Speer wrote his book in Spandau, and he managed to keep
it secret from the jailers. He was clearly writing with an eye
on redeeming his reputation, such as it was. How it fooled
anyone is beyond me.

>>(Although the military historian SLA Marshall claims that the
>>Germans did, indeed, get the "Nuts!" message. Marshall interrogated
>>Manteuffel and his staff after the war. At one session Manteuffel
>>kept blaming his mistakes on his staff. At last one of his subordinates
>>leaned forward, waggled a finger in Manteuffel's face and shouted
>>"Nuts! Nuts!")

> Another sub plot to that story that I have seen in one account was
> that there was some junior officere there who was an English language
> expert. He thought up the idea of the surrender demand. And wrote it
> and got permission to deliver it. But, when he got the answer, he
> didn't know what it meant.

That's the version which played on the British series "World At War."
An American officer said, more or less, "'I told him 'The general said
"nuts!"' The German said 'I do not understand that word in this context.'
I said 'Do you understand "Go to hell"?' The German said 'Yes, I
understand that.'")

--Bill Thompson

[William R Thompson]

Henry_H@Q_ wrote:

> I meant to say that although Truax didn't have the right answer for
> airplanes, that work lead directly on to the whole world of hypergols
> in the US, many, many vehicles and engine/motors.

Got it. He did come up with some brilliant design work, which
he must have know were inappropriate for aircraft. Most rocketeers
of the time had their eye on spaceflight and had to search hard to
justify their projects. There was considerable opposition to wasting
resources on "that Buck Rogers stuff."

>>Those are the same figures in Sutton's "Rocket Propulsion Elements."
>>I figure that Mano Zeigler gave different numbers in "Rocket Fighter"
>>due to conditions in Axisland--with the Allies bombing their plants
>>and supply lines, they may have had to settle for anything that could
>>flow through the lines and burn.

> If I remember the book, and I am pretty sure I do, it was sort of a
> "quick and dirty" account based on very limited sources. I think I
> first read it myself only a couple of years after the war, so it has
> been around a while. A lot of documentation showed up later that the
> author didn't have then.

I checked the copyright dates in my book, and the oldest date for
"Rocket Fighter" is 1961. I vaguely recall seeing another book about
the Komet somewhere, but I never had a chance to read it.

>>That was a typical condition in the Reich. And, given how hard it was
>>to find self-confessed Nazis after the war, the condition persisted.
>>Albert Speer's "Inside the Third Reich" is a classic example.

> You have to be careful about testimony of participants. You have to be
> ten times more careful when they are under duress. And, being a POW
> after having lost a war is a LOT of duress.

Speer wrote his book in Spandau, and he managed to keep
it secret from the jailers. He was clearly writing with an eye
on redeeming his reputation, such as it was. How it fooled
anyone is beyond me.

>>(Although the military historian SLA Marshall claims that the
>>Germans did, indeed, get the "Nuts!" message. Marshall interrogated
>>Manteuffel and his staff after the war. At one session Manteuffel
>>kept blaming his mistakes on his staff. At last one of his subordinates
>>leaned forward, waggled a finger in Manteuffel's face and shouted
>>"Nuts! Nuts!")

> Another sub plot to that story that I have seen in one account was
> that there was some junior officere there who was an English language
> expert. He thought up the idea of the surrender demand. And wrote it
> and got permission to deliver it. But, when he got the answer, he
> didn't know what it meant.

That's the version which played on the British series "World At War."
An American officer said, more or less, "'I told him 'The general said
"nuts!"' The German said 'I do not understand that word in this context.'
I said 'Do you understand "Go to hell"?' The German said 'Yes, I
understand that.'")

--Bill Thompson

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

On Mon, 05 Feb 2007 03:56:02 GMT, "William R Thompson"
> wrote:

>Henry_H@Q wrote:
>
>> "William R Thompson" wrote:
>
>> [snip]
>
>>>That's what I was taught when getting my degrees in hysteria, er, history.
>>>My favorite example has to do with the "Nuts!" event at Bastogne.
>>>There are several accounts of exactly what was said; the accounts
>>>come from people who were there--and they don't match up.

Some one once told me that there was a lot of interesting discussion
here on UseNet but that no one had ever resolved ANYTHING here.

Well, You are not going to believe this, I hardly believe it myself,
but I have resolved this one, to my satisfaction at least. See below….

And you figured out what the rocket motor was. WOW!
>
>> After my first reply to this message I did some Googleing. I still
>> can't find any mention of the "Nuts" document.
>
>> However, I did find this on wiki:
>
>> The 1947-1949 Freedom Train was proposed by Attorney General Tom C.
>> Clark as a way to reawaken Americans to their taken-for-granted
>> principles of liberty in the post-war years. The idea soon got the
>> approval of President Harry S. Truman and everything else fell into
>> place. Top Marines were selected to attend to the train and its famous
>> documents. The Marine contingent was led by Col. Robert F. Scott.
>
>Well-armed and alert, I trust. The Liberty Bell had been sent on an
>earlier tour (in the Twenties, I think--details escape me) during which
>tour bits and pieces were hacked off the rim as souvenirs.


Just a few days back, I wrote a message on "military" that was exactly
appropriate to that question.


The first was while I was in the Basic course [Of the Ordnance School,
APG, Maryland]. I noticed this Captain
who seemed to be around a lot. He was a scrawny little guy, but with a
VERY military "bearing."

One day, he stood up at the lectern and said "Gentlemen, I am Captain
Blank and I am your artillery instructor. By way of introduction, I
would like to tall you that I have had three notable experiences in my
army career.

1) I was the fire control officer for the first [and only, as it
turns out] 280 mm gun to fire an atomic projectile at the Nevada Test
Range.

2) I was the fire control officer for the first [and only, as it turns
out] 280 mm gun to fire an projectile into downtown Lawton
Oklahoma.

3) I am the only officer of that battery who is still in the U. S.
Army"

I IMMEDIATELY too that guy off my list of people that could be fooled
around with. (certainly ones that I was going to fool around with!)

************************************************


In 1948 the Marines, and the other services were full of guys in that
same category. "Bad Asses" that were very casual about killing people
and many of whom were just waiting out their time to get out, Some
were not to patient and some had bad attitudes. Some both.

There was one story at just that time about one Marine that was
assigned to gate guard duty at the Brooklyn Navy Yard while he was
waiting out his time. "Don't let anyone through this gate unless he
shows a badge" I guess they told him.

Some civilian, not paying attention drove through and didn't stop. The
Marine shot him neatly through the back of the head. There was no
recurrence of that!

There was no one on that train that I, a ten year old at the time, was
going to mess with.



>[i]
>> I am very skeptical of authority in reference sources, I certainly
>> don't think the EB is very authoritative. "Trust everyone, but cut the
>> cards, anyway."
>
>The history department's attitude was "multiple references, please,
>and even then we may laugh."

I have often thought that when I find something that I think is really
important, I don't want another thousand sources that tell me the same
thing. They may well be copying each other. Or they may all be copying
the same source. So they are not truly independent.

First thing I want to see is someone who disagrees. Then you have to
pick between the arguments and see which one you believe.

"How many non black non crow things do you have to find to prove that
'all crows are black'?"

Quite a few. But you only have to find one white crow to prove it
false.

>
>> But, as a friend use to say "Even a blind pig finds some nuts."
>
>> There are a LOT of nuts on wiki.
>
>Both metric and SAE.

You betc'um Red Ryder!

There are also some premium grade Macadamias and Blue Diamond Smoked
Almonds there too.

I went back and had the following exchange there.


************************************************** *************

OK, I have seen all this discussion about what was said, many times.
What I want to know is what was written down and the evidence for it.
In 1947 and 1948 there was the "Freedom Train" tour. My recollection
is that among other things, the train contained the document. But, I
can find no mention of that, or the document. Everything else is in
wiki, why not this?

Henry H.

Henry H. 17:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC) 11/13/05

Reply to Henry H.:

The document that was in the Freedon Train was a copy of General
McAuliffe's message to the troops on Christmas 1944. It included the
text of both the German surrender demand and the succinct reply of
General Mcauliffe. It was composed by Lt. Col. Kinnard on Christmas
Eve while General McAuliffe was attending a Catholic Mass being held
in Savy, where one on his artillery units was based. When he returned
to the HQ, General McAuliffe agreed with what Col. Kinnard had written
and it was run off and distributed to the troops. It is mentioned in
the series "Band of Brothers", episode 6. A copy of that message is
occasionally sold on eBay. I think a Google search on 'McAuliffe
"Christmas message"'will find copies of it on the Internet.


[I did look and I did find it, just like that!]

Ken McAuliffe

General McAuliffe's nephew --Bastogne 15:39, 5 February 2007 (UTC)



I think that is as good an answer on that as one is ever going to get.
When you don't like what EB you don't get that kind of help, at least
I never have.

What I was looking at was not "the original" (I always wondered how
the heck they managed to get it back from the Germans!)

It was a replica, but it was a "contemporaneous replica" made by the
same guy that made the original.

I am going to have to go back and thank Ken McAuliffe for the
wonderful reply. I almost feel the same as if General McAuliffe had
contacted me directly. And, he was as close to a military hero as I
have in my pantheon.

I stand in awe.

One of the many stories I read about the BOB was that a bunch of
American troops were milling around. Waiting for the German advance. A
single paratrooper showed up and started making preperations. He
pointed at the road. "You people got on THAT side of the road. I am
the 82 (not 101 in this case) and I am stopping them, RIGHT HERE."

That was exactly the attitude that the 101st. and McAuliffe had.

(There was no reserve in the ETO except for the 82 and 101 who where
recuperating from Market Garden. At first the idea was to send the 82
to Bastogne but once they got that straight, there was no real
direction to getting the 101 there. They just went. Stole trucks or
whatever, and went. They had no idea where it was they were going to,
just that they were going. At one time I figured that was a uniquely
American thing. But I later read descriptions of the German response
to Anzio that were very similar. )

Henry H.

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

On Mon, 05 Feb 2007 03:56:02 GMT, "William R Thompson"
> wrote:

>Henry_H@Q wrote:
>
>> "William R Thompson" wrote:
>
>> [snip]
>
>>>That's what I was taught when getting my degrees in hysteria, er, history.
>>>My favorite example has to do with the "Nuts!" event at Bastogne.
>>>There are several accounts of exactly what was said; the accounts
>>>come from people who were there--and they don't match up.

Some one once told me that there was a lot of interesting discussion
here on UseNet but that no one had ever resolved ANYTHING here.

Well, You are not going to believe this, I hardly believe it myself,
but I have resolved this one, to my satisfaction at least. See below….

And you figured out what the rocket motor was. WOW!
>
>> After my first reply to this message I did some Googleing. I still
>> can't find any mention of the "Nuts" document.
>
>> However, I did find this on wiki:
>
>> The 1947-1949 Freedom Train was proposed by Attorney General Tom C.
>> Clark as a way to reawaken Americans to their taken-for-granted
>> principles of liberty in the post-war years. The idea soon got the
>> approval of President Harry S. Truman and everything else fell into
>> place. Top Marines were selected to attend to the train and its famous
>> documents. The Marine contingent was led by Col. Robert F. Scott.
>
>Well-armed and alert, I trust. The Liberty Bell had been sent on an
>earlier tour (in the Twenties, I think--details escape me) during which
>tour bits and pieces were hacked off the rim as souvenirs.


Just a few days back, I wrote a message on "military" that was exactly
appropriate to that question.


The first was while I was in the Basic course [Of the Ordnance School,
APG, Maryland]. I noticed this Captain
who seemed to be around a lot. He was a scrawny little guy, but with a
VERY military "bearing."

One day, he stood up at the lectern and said "Gentlemen, I am Captain
Blank and I am your artillery instructor. By way of introduction, I
would like to tall you that I have had three notable experiences in my
army career.

1) I was the fire control officer for the first [and only, as it
turns out] 280 mm gun to fire an atomic projectile at the Nevada Test
Range.

2) I was the fire control officer for the first [and only, as it turns
out] 280 mm gun to fire an projectile into downtown Lawton
Oklahoma.

3) I am the only officer of that battery who is still in the U. S.
Army"

I IMMEDIATELY too that guy off my list of people that could be fooled
around with. (certainly ones that I was going to fool around with!)

************************************************


In 1948 the Marines, and the other services were full of guys in that
same category. "Bad Asses" that were very casual about killing people
and many of whom were just waiting out their time to get out, Some
were not to patient and some had bad attitudes. Some both.

There was one story at just that time about one Marine that was
assigned to gate guard duty at the Brooklyn Navy Yard while he was
waiting out his time. "Don't let anyone through this gate unless he
shows a badge" I guess they told him.

Some civilian, not paying attention drove through and didn't stop. The
Marine shot him neatly through the back of the head. There was no
recurrence of that!

There was no one on that train that I, a ten year old at the time, was
going to mess with.



>[i]
>> I am very skeptical of authority in reference sources, I certainly
>> don't think the EB is very authoritative. "Trust everyone, but cut the
>> cards, anyway."
>
>The history department's attitude was "multiple references, please,
>and even then we may laugh."

I have often thought that when I find something that I think is really
important, I don't want another thousand sources that tell me the same
thing. They may well be copying each other. Or they may all be copying
the same source. So they are not truly independent.

First thing I want to see is someone who disagrees. Then you have to
pick between the arguments and see which one you believe.

"How many non black non crow things do you have to find to prove that
'all crows are black'?"

Quite a few. But you only have to find one white crow to prove it
false.

>
>> But, as a friend use to say "Even a blind pig finds some nuts."
>
>> There are a LOT of nuts on wiki.
>
>Both metric and SAE.

You betc'um Red Ryder!

There are also some premium grade Macadamias and Blue Diamond Smoked
Almonds there too.

I went back and had the following exchange there.


************************************************** *************

OK, I have seen all this discussion about what was said, many times.
What I want to know is what was written down and the evidence for it.
In 1947 and 1948 there was the "Freedom Train" tour. My recollection
is that among other things, the train contained the document. But, I
can find no mention of that, or the document. Everything else is in
wiki, why not this?

Henry H.

Henry H. 17:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC) 11/13/05

Reply to Henry H.:

The document that was in the Freedon Train was a copy of General
McAuliffe's message to the troops on Christmas 1944. It included the
text of both the German surrender demand and the succinct reply of
General Mcauliffe. It was composed by Lt. Col. Kinnard on Christmas
Eve while General McAuliffe was attending a Catholic Mass being held
in Savy, where one on his artillery units was based. When he returned
to the HQ, General McAuliffe agreed with what Col. Kinnard had written
and it was run off and distributed to the troops. It is mentioned in
the series "Band of Brothers", episode 6. A copy of that message is
occasionally sold on eBay. I think a Google search on 'McAuliffe
"Christmas message"'will find copies of it on the Internet.


[I did look and I did find it, just like that!]

Ken McAuliffe

General McAuliffe's nephew --Bastogne 15:39, 5 February 2007 (UTC)



I think that is as good an answer on that as one is ever going to get.
When you don't like what EB you don't get that kind of help, at least
I never have.

What I was looking at was not "the original" (I always wondered how
the heck they managed to get it back from the Germans!)

It was a replica, but it was a "contemporaneous replica" made by the
same guy that made the original.

I am going to have to go back and thank Ken McAuliffe for the
wonderful reply. I almost feel the same as if General McAuliffe had
contacted me directly. And, he was as close to a military hero as I
have in my pantheon.

I stand in awe.

One of the many stories I read about the BOB was that a bunch of
American troops were milling around. Waiting for the German advance. A
single paratrooper showed up and started making preperations. He
pointed at the road. "You people got on THAT side of the road. I am
the 82 (not 101 in this case) and I am stopping them, RIGHT HERE."

That was exactly the attitude that the 101st. and McAuliffe had.

(There was no reserve in the ETO except for the 82 and 101 who where
recuperating from Market Garden. At first the idea was to send the 82
to Bastogne but once they got that straight, there was no real
direction to getting the 101 there. They just went. Stole trucks or
whatever, and went. They had no idea where it was they were going to,
just that they were going. At one time I figured that was a uniquely
American thing. But I later read descriptions of the German response
to Anzio that were very similar. )

Henry H.

[William R Thompson]

Henry_H@Q wrote:

> And you figured out what the rocket motor was. WOW!

Dave Kearton gets credit for that one.

> I have often thought that when I find something that I think is really
> important, I don't want another thousand sources that tell me the same
> thing. They may well be copying each other. Or they may all be copying
> the same source. So they are not truly independent.

True. Do a Google search for "medical Middle Ages" and you'll find
dozens of sites which refer to Dr. Hammond's comment on medicine
during the American Civil War.

> First thing I want to see is someone who disagrees. Then you have to
> pick between the arguments and see which one you believe.

That's a big part of historical studies. You can improve the odds on
making the right choice if you already know the topic. The bozoes
have a habit of leaving out any facts they don't like.

> The document that was in the Freedon Train was a copy of General
> McAuliffe's message to the troops on Christmas 1944. It included the
> text of both the German surrender demand and the succinct reply of
> General Mcauliffe. It was composed by Lt. Col. Kinnard on Christmas
> Eve while General McAuliffe was attending a Catholic Mass being held
> in Savy, where one on his artillery units was based. When he returned
> to the HQ, General McAuliffe agreed with what Col. Kinnard had written
> and it was run off and distributed to the troops. It is mentioned in
> the series "Band of Brothers", episode 6. A copy of that message is
> occasionally sold on eBay. I think a Google search on 'McAuliffe
> "Christmas message"'will find copies of it on the Internet.

> [I did look and I did find it, just like that!]

Pre-internet, looking for a transcript of the message would have
involved a visit to a good research library, checking the card catalog
for references to McAuliffe and the Ardennes Offensive . . . find the
books, check their indexes and lists of illustrations . . . strike out
there, so go to the periodicals index and hope to find something in
a journal or mass-circulation magazine . . . find out that another library
had what you needed . . . order it on an inter-library loan . . .

Google takes all the fun out of it.

> I think that is as good an answer on that as one is ever going to get.
> When you don't like what EB you don't get that kind of help, at least
> I never have.

All sources have that limitation. I grew up in Orange County, California;
I went to a parochial high school in Anaheim--and until a few years I
had no idea that the area had been a hotbed of KKK activity in the
mid-Twenties. Given that some prominent members of Orange County
society had belonged to the Klan, it's easy to imagine why nobody
said much about Klanaheim.

> What I was looking at was not "the original" (I always wondered how
> the heck they managed to get it back from the Germans!)

Well, the Germans did make the mistake of losing that war . . .

--Bill Thompson

[William R Thompson]

Henry_H@Q wrote:

> And you figured out what the rocket motor was. WOW!

Dave Kearton gets credit for that one.

> I have often thought that when I find something that I think is really
> important, I don't want another thousand sources that tell me the same
> thing. They may well be copying each other. Or they may all be copying
> the same source. So they are not truly independent.

True. Do a Google search for "medical Middle Ages" and you'll find
dozens of sites which refer to Dr. Hammond's comment on medicine
during the American Civil War.

> First thing I want to see is someone who disagrees. Then you have to
> pick between the arguments and see which one you believe.

That's a big part of historical studies. You can improve the odds on
making the right choice if you already know the topic. The bozoes
have a habit of leaving out any facts they don't like.

> The document that was in the Freedon Train was a copy of General
> McAuliffe's message to the troops on Christmas 1944. It included the
> text of both the German surrender demand and the succinct reply of
> General Mcauliffe. It was composed by Lt. Col. Kinnard on Christmas
> Eve while General McAuliffe was attending a Catholic Mass being held
> in Savy, where one on his artillery units was based. When he returned
> to the HQ, General McAuliffe agreed with what Col. Kinnard had written
> and it was run off and distributed to the troops. It is mentioned in
> the series "Band of Brothers", episode 6. A copy of that message is
> occasionally sold on eBay. I think a Google search on 'McAuliffe
> "Christmas message"'will find copies of it on the Internet.

> [I did look and I did find it, just like that!]

Pre-internet, looking for a transcript of the message would have
involved a visit to a good research library, checking the card catalog
for references to McAuliffe and the Ardennes Offensive . . . find the
books, check their indexes and lists of illustrations . . . strike out
there, so go to the periodicals index and hope to find something in
a journal or mass-circulation magazine . . . find out that another library
had what you needed . . . order it on an inter-library loan . . .

Google takes all the fun out of it.

> I think that is as good an answer on that as one is ever going to get.
> When you don't like what EB you don't get that kind of help, at least
> I never have.

All sources have that limitation. I grew up in Orange County, California;
I went to a parochial high school in Anaheim--and until a few years I
had no idea that the area had been a hotbed of KKK activity in the
mid-Twenties. Given that some prominent members of Orange County
society had belonged to the Klan, it's easy to imagine why nobody
said much about Klanaheim.

> What I was looking at was not "the original" (I always wondered how
> the heck they managed to get it back from the Germans!)

Well, the Germans did make the mistake of losing that war . . .

--Bill Thompson

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

On Mon, 05 Feb 2007 04:33:21 GMT, "William R Thompson"
> wrote:

I tried emailing you, and got the following:

550 >... User unknown

I don't know what the protocol for this is, anymore.

If you email me, I would be very surprised it it goes anywhere,
especially to me.

Lets see, I could go and sit on this park bench and leave you my email
address in a 7-up can.

Henry H.

[Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]]

On Mon, 05 Feb 2007 04:33:21 GMT, "William R Thompson"
> wrote:

I tried emailing you, and got the following:

550 >... User unknown

I don't know what the protocol for this is, anymore.

If you email me, I would be very surprised it it goes anywhere,
especially to me.

Lets see, I could go and sit on this park bench and leave you my email
address in a 7-up can.

Henry H.

[William R Thompson]

Henry_H@Q wrote:

> I tried emailing you, and got the following:

> 550 >... User unknown

> I don't know what the protocol for this is, anymore.

550 is a new one on me, and I'm quite experienced at
getting error messages. Ask any computer I've touched.

I just tried to e-mail you and I got a "501" error message.

--Bill Thompson

[William R Thompson]

Henry_H@Q wrote:

> I tried emailing you, and got the following:

> 550 >... User unknown

> I don't know what the protocol for this is, anymore.

550 is a new one on me, and I'm quite experienced at
getting error messages. Ask any computer I've touched.

I just tried to e-mail you and I got a "501" error message.

--Bill Thompson

[Bob Harrington]

"Dave Kearton" > wrote in
:

> William R Thompson wrote:
>> "Dave Kearton" wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks Bill & Henry,
>>
>>> It's sounding more interesting all the time.
>>
>> One obvious question--can you find out if those
>> nuts are metric or SAE?
>>
>> --Bill Thompson
>
>
>
> I'll ask the question and see what happens, if it's a confused
> mixture of metric and imperial, does that mean it's a NASA rocket ?.
>
>
> ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)


Depends... was the motor found in a fresh crater on Mars? =}

[Bob Harrington]

"Dave Kearton" > wrote in
:

> William R Thompson wrote:
>> "Dave Kearton" wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks Bill & Henry,
>>
>>> It's sounding more interesting all the time.
>>
>> One obvious question--can you find out if those
>> nuts are metric or SAE?
>>
>> --Bill Thompson
>
>
>
> I'll ask the question and see what happens, if it's a confused
> mixture of metric and imperial, does that mean it's a NASA rocket ?.
>
>
> ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)


Depends... was the motor found in a fresh crater on Mars? =}