181–190 of 206 posts
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Someone can break out their chemistry references, but I think N₂O is probably not workable as a fuel (or at best, not very good). It forms naturally in internal combustion engines, from air, at the temperature and pressures found in engines, given O₂ and N₂. If something has the habit of forming in an engine, I don’t think you could use it as fuel, but my thermodynamics is a bit too rusty to do any kind of ELI5 and I…
You're probably thinking of NO2, which is indeed a pollutant that results from overly hot combustion in air. N2O is in fact used in engines, but it is not the fuel -- rather it is a supplementary oxidizer, which allows you to burn more fuel and therefore produce more power than you could if you only had the oxygen from air. At any rate, that means using N2O won't be a solution to the aircraft fuel problem -- you'd st…
But the reaction 2 N2O => 2 N2 + O2 is very exothermic, in fact it is explosive (but not in the burning sense, since its autodecomposition). However adding a small amount of ethanol makes N2O stable so that sudden shocks or compressions don't result in initiating autodecomposition or explosion.
To power an engine one doesn't necessarily need to burn, or a redox reaction to happen, the reaction just needs to be exothermic and N2O is very exothermic.
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If you're ever in DC, you should check out the ads in the metro stops near the Pentagon. Seeing those kinds of ads in real life is even more shocking.
I saw some photos of those ads on twitter a few years back about a certain manufacturer's engine being the correct choice for a specific in-development military plane. It's weird seeing physical advertising be so targeted. Like, multiple physical ads to target less than a dozen people total.
Like, the Dutch airplane manufacturer Fokker went bankrupt and stopped manufacturing planes in 1996, but the brand and company are still very much alive, manufacturing parts and providing maintenance services to all their planes still in operation worldwide.
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If you're ever in DC, you should check out the ads in the metro stops near the Pentagon. Seeing those kinds of ads in real life is even more shocking.
Walked into a weapons show a few decades ago that had a full scale Abrams tank + demo camera providing good 360 degree visibility. It was odd because I was like yea this is obviously a good idea, but also I’m not the person you need to convince here so WTF.