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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Thomas J. Asaki
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 35 | Number 2 | March 1999 | Pages 126-130
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST99-A11963915
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experiments have been conducted in which the D2 fill pressure has been determined for several closed millimeter-size aluminum and beryllium shells. The vibrational resonance frequency spectrum of the shells was used to calculate the sound velocity of the interior gas. This velocity, along with the equation-of-state, determined the gas pressure and density. The accuracy in determining the fill conditions is within 0.5% in both pressure and density for near critical density (ρ ≳ 9 mol/L) gas over a wide range of temperatures (190 K to 300K). Reduced accuracy was apparent at low density. An attempt was made to determine the fill density of one shell by acoustic observation of the dew point temperature. While this temperature was recorded very accurately, the uncertainty in the saturated vapor density curve near the critical point yielded inaccurate results. These methods were shown to be unaffected by small deviations in the sphericity of the gas-filled cavity.