Cold Power rockets coming back?
 

Hello All,

A brief note before I get to the subject of this thread below: A few days ago Rick Piester at Hobbico (Estes) asked me to send him lists of my favorite old Centuri and Estes kits that I'd like to see Estes bring back, and I sent him a list of kits and motors. If anyone here would send me (either by YORF PM or at: blackshire@alaska.net ) lists of your favorite Centuri and Estes kits and motors that you'd like to see Estes bring back, I'll pass them along to Rick Piester.

Several YORF posters here have flown Vashon/Estes Cold Propellant model rockets (see: http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/ca...73/73est44.html ) and Cold Power Convertible model rockets (which can use either a Cold Propellant rocket engine or standard Estes 18 mm black powder motors, see: http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/ca...73/73est46.html ) using currently-available, legal aerosol propellants instead of the now-banned RP-100 (Freon-12) propellant that was originally used in these rockets. I have a question about this:

What propellant(s) do you use? If Estes still has the tooling for the Cold Propellant motors, they could re-issue these kits to use that/this propellant(s). (Even if they no longer have the Cold Propellant engine tooling, they could still re-issue the Cold Power Convertible kits as 18 mm black powder motor-powered kits.)

Many thanks in advance for anyone who can help.

I forgot to include the Cold Propellant Estes Land Rockets (see: http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/no...a/76est044.html ), which used the same small engines that powered their styrofoam Shrike and XS-1 Space Shuttle Cold Propellant planes.

Speaking of Land rockets, there was a segment on David Letterman the other night about summer toys. They set off a rocket-powered dragster in the studio. It actually looked cooler than I imagined. Does that mean Estes is making another push with Blurzz?


Bill

Unless I am corrected (and please, feel free), the orignal propellant was Freon 12 which does indeed eat through the ozone layer. I have seen the science, the data, the actual chemistry paper (the original in the MIT library under the big dome), and the NASA research to validate and prove the theory.

Freon 12 is not coming back.

Alternatives have been posted online for years and all are "greenhouse gasses". Expect the minions of Al Gore to charge you a huge tax (Carbon tax) for intentionally dumping pounds and pounds of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

And now we turn this thread over to our resident off-his-meds poster who will post either a long or a short manifesto (I can hardly wait).

Carbon dioxide gas extracted from the atmosphere should be a zero carbon footprint (you put back exactly what you take out). Discounting the energy cost of extraction and compression, of course.

Is there a reason we don't use CO2 for this? Does it have to be liquified to work?

old kits
 

would love to see them bring back the #1284 space shuttle kit

It has to be a liquid that is a liquid under pressure and turns to a gas at standard pressure. The rocket thrust is generated by the liquid turning to a gas and the gas is at increased pressure. As it changes state, it gets cold. It's a thermodynamics thing.

CO2 makes up such a miniscule amount of the atmosphere, there is debate as to whether it can really even be classed as a greenhouse gas. Lots of HYPE does not make it so.
Kinda like all those cows polluting the atmosphere with WAY too much methane.
The volcano eruption recently spewed more CO2 into the air in one day than the earth's population exhales in a year, for goodness sakes!
In the 70's we were all heading to a new Ice Age. Touted by the same morons who say we are all going to roast from rising temps and drown from the melted icecaps today.
Remeber the idiots who protested that the Concord flights would burn up the ozone?
Geez!
It just will not happen.
Warming is a solar event. Period.

Allen

I'd happily use airbrush propellant myself, which Leo Nutz apparently uses in his vintage Estes Cold Power rockets, including his home-brewed Cold Power Convertible Alpha (see: http://www.leo.nutz.de/Rockets.php?...on%20Industries ). If someone showed up at a NARAM to fly in the old motor documentation program with a Valkyrie 2 and a can of the original RP-100 propellant, the ensuing events might be very interesting...

Concorde flights WOULD HAVE destroyed the ozone layer over the populated portions of the Earth (based on real science and not hippie hype) in the presence of freon 12.
The reason is that the freon 12 breaks down in the UV light in the stratosphere and the reaction that breaks down the O3 (ozone) occurs very rapidly on the surface of ice crystals. The Concorde would fly at latitudes where people live and the resulting ice crystal contrails would have worked with all the freon 12 released in those days to rapidly reduce the ozone layer over the part of the Earth we inhabit the most. There were not many Concorde flights, as it was too expensive and the flights over land were mostly prohibited (at those altitudes and at supersonic speeds). Over Antarctica, there are ice crystal clouds and the ozone hole appeared there and NASA tests with the TR-1 (research U-2) proved that this was a scientific fact.