Encyclopedia > Hypergolic

  Article Content

Hypergolic

Hypergolic rocket fuels spontaneously ignite when they come into contact.

One important engineering advantage is that they prevent a rocket motor from igniting explosively, and exploding. This is called a "hard start[?]" and is one of the most destructive things that a rocket can do. However, hypergolic fuels are highly toxic and sometimes unstable, so a very high quality igniter, like a small rocket engine, is often used as an alternative.

Another important advantage is that the igniter cannot fail, so hypergolic fuels are the solution when the rocket must really start.

Some common hypergolic fuel combinations are:



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
U.S. presidential election, 1804

... King (14) Other elections: 1792, 1796, 1800, 1804, 1808, 1812, 1816 Source: U.S. Office of the Federal R ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 31.9 ms