Yes, I remember it that way too, but just stated it in the post as a finished BP product.
I need to invent a cheap and easy way to extract carbon from CO and CO2 en masse. They say charcoal from certain trees and plants is better. I wonder if pure carbon would be even better. The enviro wackos would go bat crap crazy if they lost their sky-is-falling flagship!

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I love sanding.

That's one of the Holy Grails of the industry my day job is in - refinery R&D.
Doing anything useful with methane other than burning it is another.

It CAN be done - it's the cheap and easy part that's hard.

So far, the cheapest/easiest way is to plant a forest.
The next might be to seed the ocean with iron.
A less biological way is to turn it into carbonate - you end up with something like cement. Someone has made a commercial process for that. It ties up the carbon - but not in an especially useful way.

In my other job, you see vodka guys arguing about which source of activated carbon is better: coconut hulls, etc. The source wood seems to matter. I was just wondering how much like activated carbon gunpowder charcoal is.

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Charles McGonegal
Ciderwright
AEppelTreow Winery & Distillery
Ad Astra Tabernamque!

And Jack Daniels uses sugar maple to make theirs.

As for uses of methane, lets hope that methane for efficient rocket fuel takes off, pun intended. I'm still waiting on Blue Origin to catch up with SpaceX on any of their projects, including their big fart motors.

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I love sanding.

Now if you could extract carbon *directly* from the wackos in question... (Spock eyebrow)

...Sorry. Got lost in thought for a minute there.

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Jay Goemmer
"Centuri Guy"/"Tau Zero"
YORF Member 28
Semroc SAM #0029
NAR 86131


"I think about organizing things all the time. Never seems to happen. I find something that piques my interest and I'm off on a quest. Or a Centuri. "

--Bill Eichelberger, 02/22/2022


“Centuri fret buzz in an updated form.”
Bill “Wallyum” Eichelberger re: Estes Flutter-By
03 Sept 2014

What program made these plots?

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A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets. But high above the quiet streets on the 12th floor of the Acme Building, one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions. Guy Noir, Private Eye.

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If you'd like to see the variation from a test stand instead of an altimeter, all you have to do is look at page 2 of the NAR motor test for the C5. Unfortunately the C6 and other older tests aren't laid out in this format.

https://www.nar.org/SandT/pdf/Estes/ES_C5_2019.pdf

Burn times from 1.96s to 2.05s
Delay times from 3.04s to 3.46s
Max thrust from 19.79 to 21.32N

This is all from one batch, so I'm sure the variations would be greater if multiple batches were tested. One could easily see that there could be even greater variation over a 40 or 50 year span.

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I love sanding.

JMP from SAS Institute.

www.jmp.com

Much easier to use than minitab.

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Charles McGonegal
Ciderwright
AEppelTreow Winery & Distillery
Ad Astra Tabernamque!

It would be interesting to see a comparison of Black Powder impulse levels due to various charcoal wood sources.
That could give definitive proof, but doubt it could be actually done.

Where does one specify "I would like my black powder to be from Coconut hull charcoal, etc" ?

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When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !
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ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, CHAOS, and HAVOC !

The main effect of less effective charcoal, is that a given volume of BP has less n-sec. But that volume can be changed, or rather, increased, to make up for it. The result would tend to be a motor with a longer BP grain, that burns a littler bit longer, with a little bit less thrust, but could be dialed-in for the same N-sec.

BUT, that runs into a problem with the C6-7. IIRC there is not enough casing length to hold both a longer grain, and a true 7 second delay. So either the BP grain has to be a bit shorter, with less n-sec, or the delay grain has to be a bit shorter, meaning less than 7 seconds. What I am unsure of is whether it would be practical to make a "faster burning delay", so that a 7 second delay grain can fit into full power C6. But when I heard of this problem before, it was stated as though a "given" that the delay train's burn rate was not tweakable to burn faster (or most likely it could be, but for whatever reasons they don't want to do so).

In any case, this is also a strike against seeing the old A3-6T's again. Same problem of the casing not being able to hold both a longer propellant grain, and a full 6 second delay grain. Still no reason not to have A3-2T's for gliders again.

But other than those issues above in physically cramming a given N-sec and time delay into a casing for C6-7, and A3-6T (ignore bigger than 18mm for now), the other motors could make up for it with longer propellant grains. The one thing that could not achieve the same efficiency would be the fact that say a current B6-4 motor initial mass would be greater than a 50 year old B6-4. But if you test flew them..... and they both had the same N-sec, the modern longer-burning lower thrust B6-4 would probably fly higher for aerodynamic drag reasons, despite being a teeny bit heavier. This ignores issues with possible effects of moisture from storage over decades, and other real-word issues.

Also, BTW, my understanding of the Estes machines is that they are quite consistent once dialed-in. Run a few motors, test fire, find out what needs tweaking, tweak, test fire, and once within normal specs for a freshly made motor, let it crank out many thousands which will be very close to each other in performance (also, they test fire one out of every 100 made, IIRC, even once dialed in, to be sure they are still dialed in). And the motors that were out of spec are destroyed, never packaged to be sold.

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George,

Yes, that all squares with my understanding. I still have some older motors....I can see if the weights vary as you suggest.

And yes, that’s what Estes’ processes are supposed to be....which is why I’m really frustrated with A10-0Ts with date code H180219. They are either really week or they CATO, or so has been my experience so far. If the process was as you described (and as Ellis explained to us during the NARAM-60 Estes tour) then I certainly shouldn’t be having that experience.

Yes, I have been in touch with them over it. They don’t have any from any other batches in stock, or so I was told a few weeks ago.

BTW, the wide variation in results from the most recent B6-4s in my little test surprised me for the same reasons.....

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Bernard Cawley
NAR 89040 L1 - Life Member
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