Watch: Add butane to a bottle of Coke, get a totally unsafe high-powered bottle rocket

#21

Apparently yes. I looked on some of the old “soda bottle and bike pump” rocket sites, and they suggest adding salt or even dish soap:

You can also experiment with making the water a more efficient working mass for
accelerating your rocket. In terms of volume, this is a case of “less
is more;” although having too little water means a disappointing thrust,
too much water makes the rocket too heavy to overcome the weight of its
own fuel. Denser propellant, on the other hand, will give you greater
thrust (because it will transfer more momentum) without increasing the
“burn time” (the amount of time it takes to vacate the heavy fuel, which
is weighing down your rocket). You can make the water denser by adding
dish soap or salt.

I also think he needs to have a lot less soda in the bottle, should pour off more than half before gassing up.

#22

You won’t get past the first word with McAfee and then you’ll have to slowly explain to him that you don’t have any coke.

#23

I bet there’s an interesting story about how they discovered this.

#24

How far is that as the rocket flies?

#25

What I want to know is, what is that KICK ASS SONG at the end of the video? It’s so funky cool I gotta have it but Shazam can’t identify it. Any ideas?

#26

Maybe hydrogen peroxide butane and an ignition source.
Or would that require a sturdy metal combustion chamber?

#27

I’m not sure hydrogen peroxide would do enough oxidizing to burn Coke. Could be wrong.

#28

That would require quite a sturdy chamber to get the thrust we expect from rocket engines. And a pair of quite good turbopumps to push against the pressure to get the fuel into the chamber, or at least pressurized tanks.

And a decent ignition system, to avoid pooling the propellant mix in the chamber which tends to lead to so called hard starts, also known outside of the rocketeer circles as explosions. If you can’t get one working, try hypergolic mixes.

But with hydrogen peroxide, if you can do with lower thrust, you can use it as a monopropellant. That also avoids the ignition issues.

Then there are the issues with combustion oscillations. Those can cut the chamber like an ultrasonic saw. It’s a bitch to debug. Maybe not as much today, with simulation software, if you can write it.

Not much when it comes to travel time. Enough for low probability of impact, because without a guidance system you need a barrage of rockets to have a reasonable chance to hit, and negligible damage if the flight vehicle is not heavy and does not have a significant warhead. Worth the fun, I’d say.

#29

Hard start. Reminds me of these guys:

theShop.jpg1024×683 128 KB

I can’t find it right now, but they published a picture of a perfectly banana-peeled chamber from one of their experiments. It was interesting to read about…

#30

omg
ALL I KNOW IS THIS DEMONSTRATION OF RUSSIAN FORCE WILL NOT STAND!!

CONGRESS MUST APPROPRIATE THE NECESSARY FUNDS TO DEVELOP AND STOCKPILE FOUR LITER BOTTLES OF COKE AND BUTANE. THEY WARNED US ABOUT THE COLA WARS DECADES AGO, BUT DID ANYONE LISTEN??

#31

I wouldn’t mind them as my neighbors. Not too close but within a minute or two of walking distance.

Q: What do you call the houses between you and your crazy neighbors?

A: The DMZ.

#32

A: Collateral damage.
A: Practice targets.
A: Parking lot.
A: Glass parking lot.

#33

In this video of theirs (one of the microwave magnetron episodes) the air raid siren goes off and they finish the video underground as bombs fall nearby shaking dirt from the ceiling:

#34

Armadillo was wonderful to watch. I really wish they hadn’t ended up needing to fold.

Myself, I’d prefer that to at least be running distance. Or more…

#35

[points to the cheery stains on his labcoat]
These colors don’t run!

#36

Your explanation is correct, there have been toy projectiles that worked by forcing air under pressure into a bottle of water. When the pressure is high enough to release a clamp, the compressed air in the top of the bottle forces the water out. The water is the reactant. If as suggested above it was the carbon dioxide in the bottle, the tiny amount involved would do very little. The butane on the other hand is going to result in several litres of gas and a peak pressure of perhaps 10 bar.

#37

Given the amount of kids toys on the floor around here it takes me a minute to walk to the kitchen.

#38

It’s admirable how little regard for their own safety these guys have. The videos with the magnetron had me in stitches.

#39

They request financial support for their projects and I’m tempted to give them some; but I would feel terrible if they ended up maimed, dead or reanimated as unstoppable killing machines as a result of me giving them some cash.

#40

With or without your or my financial support, those guys, or guys very much like those guys, will be setting up a moon colony for us puny earthlings. If such a colony is ever established. They are the makers.

Porky’s genocide program will fail, it’s already pretty frayed around the edges. Lugansk and Donetsk may well emerge as shining cultural and intellectual centers for the 21st century.