[Land-speed] Fw: Ford's Hydrogen 999 racer shooting for fuel cell land speed record > Hybrid News

[Ed Weldon]

Mayf--  Ahhhh.........I told you I'd defer to folks who knew more about it
than me.  I remain skeptical though on both sides.  To me we'd best err on
the side of caution.  That 2%-98% range is scary.  But still that needs to
be measured against the rapid difusion rate of the tiny hydrogen molecules.
What do we know about the postmortem analysis of that Santa Susana event?
Interesting subject.  You got any good Google search words to try?
Ed

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "drmayf" <drmayf at mayfco.com>
To: "Ed Weldon" <23.weldon at comcast.net>
Cc: <land-speed at autox.team.net>
Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2007 10:34 PM
Subject: Re: [Land-speed] Fw: Ford's Hydrogen 999 racer shooting for fuel
cell land speed record > Hybrid News


> well, Ed, you would be wrong about the really big bang part. Back in
> Apollo days there was a free hydrogen explosion at the Rocketdyne
> facility in Santa Susana. They detanked stage 2 from the Saturn rocket
> system which used Hydrogen as the fuel. The hydrogen was allowed to boil
> off into the atmosphere.  Something set it off. For just about a mile
> around the complex, every window was blown inward trailer complex was
> crushed, cars were mashed and windows blown in, eardrums were ruptured.
> And as I recall, the upper and lower explosive limits for h2 are 2% and
> 98% in air. So inside a closed race car it can get concentrated enough
> to explode, not burn. Explode.
>
> mayf