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From: chiaraviglio@husc2.UUCP (lucius)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: How about using liquid ozone as an oxidizer?
Message-ID: <1037@husc2.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 21-Nov-86 02:23:16 EST
Article-I.D.: husc2.1037
Posted: Fri Nov 21 02:23:16 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Nov-86 20:15:36 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Ctr., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 24
Keywords: ozone, O[3], energy of formation, stability in liquified form

_
	Has anyone ever thought about using liquified ozone (O[3]) as an
oxidizer for rockets?  It has a higher energy of formation (unfortunately I
don't remember how much higher) (thus it is less stable, and decays to normal
oxygen (O[2]) at temperatures found in Earth's atmosphere), and thus its
reaction with hydrogen (or anything else) would give more energy per weight of
reactants used.  It seems reasonable that its decay rate would be much lower
at the temperatures needed to liquify it than at temperatures naturally
occurring on Earth -- is this decay rate sufficiently lower to allow storage
of large amounts of it in liquid form?  The other problems I could see with
its use are that it might be too toxic, even allowing for the fact that it
would eventually decay (I don't know how long this would take) after escaping
from storage; also, I don't know how hard it is to produce ozone in large
quantities (doesn't have to be pure -- some O[2] mixed in with it shouldn't
hurt performance too much).  Does anyone have more complete information on the
chemistry involved?
-- 
	-- Lucius Chiaraviglio
	   chiaraviglio@husc4.harvard.edu
	   seismo!husc4!chiaraviglio

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