Why People Used To Drink Rocket Fuel
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- čas přidán 20. 06. 2024
- Ethanol has a long history of use in rocket fuels, and an even longer history of being consumed by humans for 'fun'. Why did so many early rockets use this when more energetic fuels were available, and, just how many bottles of Everclear does it take to fuel a V-2 rocket.
- Věda a technologie
My dad used to work in Plesetsk Cosmodrome during his military service in Soviet times. Not sure how much roket fuel he consumed, but he told me about their hobby of making icecream by freezing milk with sugar using decommissioned liquid oxigen.
Maxisokol S wow! Your dad is a legend!
I've eaten ice-cream made with liquid nitrogen and have to say that it was the smoothest ice-cream I had ever tasted. Props to your dad. Very good use of cryogenic materials.
cool AF! If they wanted to show off I suppose they could serve it flaming w/out adding any 151 proof rum
круто!
why would you decommission lox? it's not like it goes bad.
Reminds me, at university there was a joke that the definition of "evaporation allowance" on stored ethanol was "how much lab alcohol the technicians can consume in a year". LOL
That number being somewhere over 100% i assume?
LOL
Was a prpblem at the laser lab too. Used to use anhydrous EtOH to clean precision laser optics. Eventually they switched over to methanol because of it. 😅
In the same vein, the MiG-25 Foxbat Soviet interceptor originally used pure alcohol to de-ice it's wings. Crews nicknamed it "the flying liquor store"
Very Russian humor
Actually, it was a bit more subtle than 'flying liquor store' - the nickname was MASANDRA, after the well-known Massanda Winery, and the abbreviation decoded as: "Mikoyan Artyom, Syn Armyanskogo Naroda, Dal Radost Aviatoram" - Mikoyan Artyom (the M in MiG), Son of Armenian People (he was Armenian), Gave Joy to the Aviators.
Just about the same story with the Tu-22, being nick named the "flying booze carrier". Instead of de-ice it was the air conditioning though.
I'd like a cool, refreshing glass of hydrazine, please.
David Kusel no can do, ive got aerozine if that fits your fancy.
Me too, with a dash of (RFNA) Red-Fuming Nitric Acid.
And also two shots of dimethylmercury.
Dont forget the high test peroxide!
Oremo Oremo do you also have htpb? Im hungry
"They don't make it as they used to"
Damn good phrase
Not recording this video while being completely drunk was a missed opportunity!
I totally thought he was going to pull out a beer bottle at any moment
missed the opportunity... or he just holds his liquor really well! (which comes with the accent, right?)
He should of gotten drunk off of rocket fuel.
Truth is, I don't really change that much when I'm really drunk.
+Scott Manley It is the world around that changes I'm guessing? :)
the talk between the engineering and other departments for filling the rocked with Vodka for a load-test must have been great:
engineer: "Sir, we need 15 railcars of vodka"
projectleader: " are you drunk?"
engineer: "No, we need it to do a load-test of the rocket".
projectleader: "and what do we do with that after the test? We can't just throw it away"
Engineer: "We got some friends we can invite"
projectleader: " are you drunk?"
Engineer: "not yet, but after the loadtest i'll be, im quite sure of that. Dimitry said some lines have "leaks" in them and we cant waste such nice, fresh Vodka-esque liquid, right?"
Jokes aside, on some USSR planes coolant for electronics was alcohol solution almost like vodka in percentage (called Massandra in honor of famous winery). People in charge of those systems were very respected, of course...
A well lubricated space program you have there, comrad.
ABaumstumpf ha
projectleader: " are you drunk?"
engineer: "yes but that's irrelevant"
You should have mentioned the MiG-21's radar that was cooled by alcohol. There are stories that Soviet aircraft were often grounded because the alcohol had been consumed by the airfield personnel.
lmao that gave me a giggle
Hydraulic systems in tanks, too, I think I've read somewhere.
I thought Viktor Belenko told the opposite story -- they had plenty of coolant, but no fuel. What's a pilot to do?
That is when you pull a bate and switch and put methanol in
@@noname-wo9yy Then you end up with blind air crews. Or ones with distilleries. It's best to turn a, um, blind eye here.
My favorite fuel is the fuel in that orange tank, they said it wasn’t orange flavored but they lied
They said the tank itself didn't taste like an orange, not the fuel.
External Tang!
It actually tastes more like mango.
It makes the man-go really fast when you light it, too! Weeeeeeeeeee! :D
The Forbidden Tang
@@negirno That one made me laugh. Nice one mate.
Drink safe
"drink & fly safe" Lolololl
no
Speech: *inset number of likes on saas’ comment*
When I was younger, I drank a shot of the 95% stuff to win a bet. It immediately wanted to climb back out again, but eventually was persuaded to stay down. And after that, drinks was free that night. . . and that's pretty much all I remember of that night.
Good stuff.
I bought a bottle of ever clear for the fuck of it. Tried a few swigs; people say alcohol burns going down, but this was ridiculous. However, after the first swig, they became progressively easier. I don't remember much of that night; I just remember waking up the next morning, and my mom asking me why my clothes are all over the floor near the laundry room and the washer has peanuts in it... Fuck if I know. Lol
It was the summer of 2011. A couple of friends and I spent our vacation in Italy. Two of them made the 900km trip on 50cc "mopeds" and complained about engine difficulties after facing heavy rain in the Alpes. In an attempt to absorb possible water in the fuel tank, a bottle of 95% drinking alcohol was bought - but not filled into the tanks right away...
Fast forward to late in the evening, when we are sitting on the balcony. Chatting, drinking, smoking, all casual and relaxed, while some of the other guys, without anyone paying too much attention, start messing around with the stuff, you know. Using pieces of tinfoil to shape tiny cups, pouring a litte ethanol in there and lighting it on fire. And then, in the space of maybe 5 seconds, everything went to complete shit.
The tinfoil starts to melt, burning liquid slowly runs across the crooked plastic table. Without even thinking, our little pyro tries to blow the fire out, but actually sends the stuff flying off the table, where it hits another guy - and that guy was (of course) the one holding that very bottle of ethanol. Guy freaks out, drops the damn thing, glass bottle hits the tiled floor and in the blink of an eye, two pints worth of industrial grade ethanol goes up in flames.
Before I even knew what happened, everything in my field of view was a fucking inferno. Literally the entire balcony was on fire and there we were, some more than others, standing (bare foot) right in a pool of blazing fluid riddled with glass shards. Fun times!
US: Literally any kind of fuel you want
Russia: *_V O D K A_*
*germany
"We had some very happy sailors while that program was going on " :D
Ebumbaya ' John D. Clark is, as always, the best.
A biologist mate told me a story once about a guy that was supposed to store a whale fetus in a tank. He gained permission to obtain several thousand liters of high-grade alcohol to keep the fetus from decomposing. Years later, it was discovered that the liquid in the tank was in fact formaldehyde.
Sad fact: they discovered the switcheroo when a post-doc died from formaldehyde poisoning after a night of heavy partying that included a dare to chug whale-fetus-infused vodka.
@TheDerpy Kittybecause he sells propane and propane accessories
What's a good mixer for that? There must be some named recipes sitting around some bars.
@@julienguieu5636 "Nantucket Slay Ride"
@@Legitpenguins99 Say hwat?
Rocket engineer to bartender: "I've burned more alcohol in 30 seconds than you ever pushed across this lousy bar!" That's a steely-eyed missile man!
Now I know why sometimes powerful alcohol is called rocket fuel. Thanks Manley Scott's man
Correlation is not causation
Michael Farrell however, in this case it is! So don’t be so quick to correct, when you yourself are really just guessing as you most definitely didn’t know for certain. In any case, it isn’t the biggest leap of logic, for which a simple SearchEngine enquiry confirms the Pittsburgh origins of this expression!
Michael Farrell Regardless if it was or not I only left the comment to say Manly Scott's man
Umm.... no it's not... Rewatch the video and CAREFULLY read what has been said here, people from all over the world referring to alcohol as 'rocket fuel' has nothing to do with this video or the particular stories Scott is referring too.... Don;t be so quick to correct ;)
I'd also point out that UrbanDictionary.com is not a reliable source for factual information, not that the information you presented from there had anything to do with what I said... I'm somewhat confused as to your position though as if you believe the origins of the term are from Pittsburgh then you are AGREEING with me....
Finally my family will listen to me again when I start rambling about rockets!
A couple years ago I took a tour of a Balao class submarine by one of the few remaining museum docents who is an actual WW2 naval veteran. He told us a bit about the torpedoes, and how the American torpedoes at the start of the war had many problems. One of the problems was that they had engines that burned compressed oxygen, available on the submarines' compressed gasses vessels, and ethanol. Seems many of the submariners would drain some of the ethanol torpedo fuel to consume as hooch. That led to regular occurences of torpedoes not reaching their targets on long shots.
The Germans typically kept a case of Bier on board their subs, and the captains would give the OK to consume it when they were less than a day out from their return to port, to celebrate surviving a mission.
During the later years of the war the US Navy started to put formaldehyde in the torpedo fuel. But the sailors figured out how to filter that out eventually.
Thanks to Joe at the NJ Naval Museum!
Astronaut gets pulled over for swerving
Cop, you been drinking sir??
Astronaut, I had a beer or two but my rocket, my rocket is completely smashed
My experimental rocket motor ran on propane fuel and compressed air. I has propane for the heating torch and a sizable air tank and compressor. I injected the Air from the end of the combustion chamber and the propane from a central post. The test procedure was to start the propane and light it as it came out of the nozzle then add air until the unburned cone retreated into the motor. Then add more air until it roared most Impressively. The test ended when the Air ran out.
I was happy that it sort of worked but dissapointed it was an complex weed burner but not a rocket engine. This happened 60 years ago when I was 14. Other lesson never let a curious kid alone in a machine shop filled with tools he knows how to operate. Great fun.
I took a shot of straight Everclear once. Not my best decision. But I did end up somewhere around lunar orbit.
I chugged Absinthe and woke on a respirator....
Imagine being addicted to the stuff! Worst withdrawals ever
Everclear is evil.
straight Everclear makes you forget you have sore throat.
Kewl
So good to know, If one becomes stranded on another planet with just an oxygen liquifier and a bunch of copper pipe. Distill your own go juice from local plants.
This was a plot point in Heinlein’s “Space Cadet”. The heroes are stranded on Venus (it had a temperate climate then, © 1948) and plan on distilling alcohol as fuel for their getaway rocket. Until they manage to ask the Venusians, who provide the Alcohol and LOX for them.
Only if you have yeast starters with you...
I nearly spat out my own alcohol when you said "Passing it through a potato". Some Chris Morris worthy stuff right there.
So they added a "purgative" to the rocket fuel to prevent people drinking it?
I bet that resulted in some...........
*drum roll*
EXPLOSIVE INCIDENTS!
*brum-tish*
Take my wife.
I've worked in labs for a while and ethyl never lasted long we've since switched to isopropyl for some reason that seems to last a lot longer.
i've had a story of a teacher showing how to neutralise alkali metals. the neutralisation was a lot more spectacular than he expected.
Water?
yes they were diluting the alcohol with water
gavin kemp damn students hahaha. That would have sucked for them though getting busted by a alkali metal.
We use ethanol on cars here in brazil.
The air quotes around "gasoline" slayed me.
I'm especially glad they're using something that represents vodka and not wasting quality scotch for these rockets! :)
When I busted up my spine and could not go back to sea I got into distilling vodka (it's legal here in NZ). Strange hobby for a non drinker to get into. I was just fascinated with the process and trying to get a pure vodka with no discernible aftertastes. Family liked it and especially liked the one I would soak in cinnamon sticks. I did not feel right about supplying vodka to people so quit. Now I have gallons of fairly decent vodka sitting in my living room in five liter bottles. it's everclear strength because I do not dilute until I deiade what kind of spring water I want to try (and because i would also make lemone celllo). This video gives me ideas for new uses for my vodka still. Make a rocket! Move over Rocket Labs. There's a new player in town. I would have to be a bit more careful this time. last time I was about 8 years old and tried to make a rocket in my back garden using two stroke lawn mower fuel. Set myself on fire and jumped in the big concrete monstrosity pond mt step dad had made. .
"Dont just actually drink rocket fuel, They dont make it liked they used to" - Scott Manley 2018
I ahve been watching your vids for some time now.... and well. I found them Interesting Educational and Entertaining. Subbed :P
Lest we forget, I served on submarines out of San Diego and can offer some insights into the consumption of torpedo alcohol. Some torpedos used alcohol as a fuel and the alcohol was also consumed by the sailors who faithfully served. We called it torpedo-alcohol, or "Gilley." We survived, hahaha
I don't remember the source now, but I heard that the Soviets had issues with their R-1 (Basically a straight V2 clone, with changes so it could actually be manufactured by soviet industry at the time. Turbopumps are finicky.) rocket.
It apparently literally "fell short", but not by a consistent amount. The story was that once they figured out that the issue was the troops drinking some of the propellant, that was fixed in that the R-2 uses methanol.
Björn Augustsson really?
I did some searching. It's mentioned in several places ( www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/R/R_series.html , www.astronautix.com/v/v-2.html , nerdfighteria.info/v/YQfy5u3yOZQ/ )
And than soldeirs started going blind...
Scott, word was that torpedoes used in American submarines in WW2 used ethyl alcohol which was occasionally appropriated to fuel crew celebrations.
Now, I don't know whether there was any truth to such rumors, but it makes for some interesting sea stories!
Does this make bartenders rocket scientists?
Entirely
I'm thinking along the lines of rocket chemists to be exact
good thing we all use the internet to watch tv
as a bartender yes yes it dose
Perhaps it makes rocket scientists bartenders
Passing reference to biofuels reminded me of butanol as a petrol substitute. No engine modifications required (same octane rating more or less) and lower volatility/flammability/explosion risk.
Makes me wonder what other alcohols have been tried...
How to extract alcohol from propellant - russian rocket science :)
Actually it was German
The soviets copied the V-2 originally. Issues caused by human consumption caused them to change the fuel for their later V-2-derivatives.
funny a lot
the really nasty ones are the hypergolics - Hydrazine (and its derivatives) and Nitrogen Tetroxide - every time I see the old films of the hyperbolic engine fires, I cringe when I see the orange smoke - I think the Triton used fior Gemini was burning hyperbolic's..... ..... Alcohol is actually pretty tame in comparison. I still love to watch the firings of the Saturn F1 engine, which burned RP-1 - kerosene...lots and lots of kerosene and oxidized with Liquid Oxygen (lots and lots of it) - tons per second per engine. I love your videos - sanity in the youtube swamp - thank you
you know a heck of a lot for a girl
@@lolbots Have you considered deleting your account? I think you should give it a thought.
Well done and informative video as always. I love what you've been doing with your channel lately. All us KSP fans are finally learning a thing or two about real rocket science!
Love Bruce Schneier's Applied Cryptography in the background. Good book!
gregg4 Good call. Saw that too. :-)
Glad you mentioned the lower MW that water contributes in alcohol but off ratio,i.e. rich burning hydrocarbon fuels also lowers MW by having more free unburnt H2 in the exhaust plus lowering flame temp. And yes Germany had little to no crude oil of their own so potato fermented ethanol was the obvious choice. Ironically pure ammonia used in the X-15 performs as well as kerosene but is transported as a non-flammable gas because of its extremely narrow flammability range. As always I love your great videos Scott. Thank you, Ken
Huh! Alcohol is for the weak. I drink hydrazine!
Omer Magen hydrazine is for the weak I drink mercury
cyanide?
...i drink aluminum powder
Weaklings! I drink chlorine trifluoride.
And they say dead mean tell no tales.
Awesome video Keep up the good work. Loved the Clark quote about taking samples of methanol.
Great information. I recently added ethanol to a turbo S2000 I built. I had to install larger fuel injectors and a more powerful fuel pump but the car made around 50 more horsepower than 93 octane on the first dyno session. On such a light car, it made a very noticeable difference. The biggest difference is felt in the lower RPM range with the increase in torque. I have a short video uploaded to CZcams. I really enjoyed learning about the history of ethanol in this video and how it was used as rocket fuel. This is something I’ll certainly think about while driving around on ethanol fuel.
Scott uploads video. I run screaming about it down hallway. I put it on our smart tv and the whole family watches happily. The end.
Thats what has happened almost every time you upload a video in the last two years. Thanks scott!
Who on earth figured out how to filter out the dye via a potato?
A rocket scientist probably.
Well it is the kind of ingenuity that would get you into space
@@lewismassie Agree
Funfact: this video used have the title "Drinking Rocket Fuel Is A Bad Idea" when it was published :)
you are a little norbert :)
That was the funniest video to date. Thank you, Scott, I laughed the whole video. :) So crazy!
I love you so much, Maley! I could listen to you talk about anything for hours!
Please reread the blurry title.
My aunt told me story from my grandfather. He's usually was silent about WWII but sometimes told creepy stories. He was in soviet army. Once they passed beside some factory and there was cisterns with spirits inside. One soldier fill up some canister and moved with it somewhere this soldier was stopped by some soviet "officer" he checked what's inside and shoot out this soldier....
Actually I've never think about that from such perspective why there was so many alcohol in one place maybe it was simply to clear electronics connections but maybe for rockets who knows...
That would've made a great April 1st vid. Loved it.
that was an excellent video. thanks scott manley.
Don't drink hydrazine. I have no idea what it tastes like, and those who do are dead.
Very interesting and informative, Scott, thanks for explaining in terms i can understand! Greetings from Angola, Indiana!
This is the opener and closer on my history presentation on rockets.... Great stuff, I had this in my mind but finally found it
Awesome as usual. The "natural" laugh ate the end should be a trade mark from now on, please consider that! hahahahah, t´was really nice! Keep the good work!
You're doing good work man thank you for the cool info!
I remember stories from Soviet AF members talking about drinking the alcohol intended for aircraft de-icing and cooling.
And that smile at the end! Priceless.
very nice informational video. I really enjoyed it, thank you
Great, funny and informational video as usual!
5:45 The finger quotes on "recruited" made me lol.
Very interesting!! Thanks for the video!!
As one who drank ever clear straight, I imagine the rocket fuel went down quite smoothly in comparison.
I wouldn't suggest doing either.
The place I used to work got a variety of coffee in k-cups, including one called "Jet Fuel" featuring a stylized SR-71.
Running out of olives.....:"Houston, we have a problem..hic"
Interesting.... Thanks for showing us
AYE Scott your videos are great, I watch everyday; hilarious intellectual content is my forte'. But I need you to answer a question for me. Can you create a plasma by heating a solid fuel/liquid fuel under a lava rock. then melting it down with the combustible fluids intact. Allowing the form of the three bodies combined become the 4th, Plasma?
So the rocket of Yeager, master of high speed flight at the time, was basically powered by the key ingredient of … Jägermeister? 😜
"man, this vodka is so good, i almost feel like i'm in space!"
Hi Scott, great vid! Around 3:19 you mention that nitrogen boils away first, I think its the other way round. Keep up the great work! Cheers.
Liquid nitrogen has a lower boiling point at −196 °C than oxygen's −183 °C so the nitrogen boils away first.
Scott Manley , oh I was thinking wrong. Sorry!
I've had fun with liquefied air in the pas, and nitrogen definitely boils away first.
You can even check the boiling points :
N2 : −195.80 °C (77.36 K)
O2 : −182.96 °C (90.19 K)
haha, that cheeky grin at the end!
I could listen to Scott Manley read a freaking ingredient list. I love these vids.
"I'm Scott Manley...fly sake!"
Best episode 😂!
It took me quite a while to understand about which location you are talking about - Peenemünde is spelled quite differently;)
I like your moon impression at the end of each video :) (red dwarf reference)
I got to play with World War II torpedoes, while crewing on a restored PT Boat some years ago.
The Mark 12 and Mark 14 torpedoes were on destroyers,subs, and most warships in the U.S. Navy in WWII.
They were powered by an ethanol based liquid fueled steam turbine.
My dad was in the Navy in World War II and described how sailor' s would drink the "torpedo juice",as they called the alcohol they took from the torpedoes.
The Navy got fed up and put a foul tasting colored chemical in the fuel, to stop the practice, lol.
The sailors responded by taking a loaf of bread, cutting the ends off the loaf and poured the torpedo fuel through the bread
end wise top to bottom.
The bread filtered the chemical out of the alcohol and gave it a pink color.
Reportedly the cocktail called a "pink lady" came from this process.
Better living through chemistry.
That last sentence was a killer. I pissed my pants in laughter.
Yep. That's the kind of content we need.
Loved this video! Had no idea. 😆
Rocking that sweet Check Yo Stagin' shirt :D
Reminds me of the movie October Sky. Surprised I haven't heard you reference that movie on your channel.
It's not that people used to drink rocket fuel, is that rocket fuel used to be something that people drink.
Reminds me of something I heard of a N2O-ethanol mix being used for some small rockets, nicknamed "party fuel" as both are sometimes used as intoxicants.
gold
Saw one of the V2 engines a few weeks ago in Technikmuseum
(technology museum) Berlin
George Sutton talked about working on a red stone rocket engine and sticking his head up through the nozzle after a test firing to do a visual inspection and getting drunk very quickly from the fumes. After that the made sure to ventilate really well before he went back again.
The U.S. Navy banned alcohol consumption aboard its ships at the time I served, but the card of the magnetic compasses of which there were several aboard, were floated in pure alcohol. Some of those compasses were located in spaces the might have to be used should the bridge be knocked out in battle. They were the ones that needed more alcohol added when maintenance personnel got around to the job.
Youre so close to a million subscribers, do you have any plans for a celebration video?
The movie "October Sky" those kids use moonshine for their rocket. Love that movie. Anyway, love the channel Scott. I appreciate the videos and always look forward to your content. Keep um coming. Peace and love.
"Now that's what *I* call rocket fuel!"
Could you make a video on the Engine Extension on the delta IV shown on the launch video of SLC 6 i think
This is beautiful.
Those guys' farts must have been savage.
Too bad you didn't talk about the BPM5 made by Copenhagen Suborbitals, nice alcohol rocket engine!
We don't talk about Copenhagen Suborbitals...
This guy said it ^^
"We don't talk about Copenhagen Suborbitals..."
Why is that? What did I miss?
Because a few years back some of the members stole it from the founder and did nothing with it for several years. Only past year have they started back up but only doing smaller tests then before with no solid plans for manned flight.
You have no clue what you are talking about...search up their channel and theres a video currently 5 days ago about plans on the spica manned rocket. Peter madsen is who alendandre is talking about
I'm not stupid! But I'll cop to poor judgement.
In the US Navy submarine service “torpedo juice” was was the underway beverage during and after WW 2. Torpedoes ran on alcohol and was substituted for commercial beverages not allowed at sea.
I loved this.
Scott, LOVE THAT SHIRT, can you show the whole shirt in a future video. THANKS ever so much.
Cheers!
You're a very good reader.
Has anyone used alcohol in a large modern rocket engine? I mean one where the fuel and oxidizer is also used to drive the fuel pumps unlike the V2 and Redstone where the fuel pumps were driven by a separate system using hydrogen peroxide.
Why would anyone use alcohol in a modern rocket?
One uses what one has... I was mostly thinking of Brazil since they use ethanol as fuel to a large extent. Might be cheaper than the highly refined RP-1 too.
Well, for starters, you can distil alcohol from pretty much anything that grows. I've heard that in some distant rural areas of Russia they even manage to make it out of saw dust.
I'm not surprised if SpaceX has an ethanol-LOX engine in the pipeline as a future R&D project because ethanol is a perfect bio-fuel. The liquid methane they're using for the BFR is produced from petroleum where bio-ethanol is not.
Yes brazil is developing a small 75kn ethanol engine because it's so cheap
Before I started learning to fly the MiG-21bis in the flight sim 'DCS World', I never knew that it's radar used alcohol as a coolant for it's electronics. Some in the community mentioned Soviet airbases were often missing some of their 'radar coolant' supply.
Quite a lot of Russian military diesel (which by itself could run on pretty much anything that burns) vehicles could run on alcohol. Two reasons: very low freezing point and can be distilled out of anything that grows.