It’s well known that I am a massive fan of the Titan missile, and its derived space boosters – the Titan II GLV, the Titan-III and Titan-IV booster families. These launch systems, based upon the Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, used a very special type of fuel and oxidizer type that was storeable at room temperature for extended periods without any particularly special treatment. These fuels ignited on contact with each other, without requiring any special equipment, such as a spark generator, to achieve combustion. This allowed the Titan II ICBM to be stored, ready to launch, for months or years at a time with (arguably) minimal maintenance, compared to more traditionally fueled missiles, like the Atlas, which used RP-1, a type of Kerosene, and extremely cooled (known as cryogenic) liquid oxygen as the oxidizer – this material could not be stored in the missile for extended periods, as it needed to be kept cold, a very resource intensive task.
These fuels were, and still are, incredibly useful on actual spacecraft themselves, since they can be stored easily, and ignite with minimal issues, and high reliability. They have been used on virtually every manned spacecraft, in some form, even including the Space Shuttle and the future Orion and Dragon V2 spacecraft. These fuels, however, by their nature, are very dangerous to humans – their toxicity is high, and an accidental mixture of the fue and oxidizer can lead to quite a dangerous situation (see the Nedelin Catastrophe), up to and including the complete destruction of the fueled booster on the pad.
In 1966, during the height of the Titan II launched Gemini program, NASA published this safety film discussing in amazing details the properties of the most common hypergolic fuel – oxidizer combinations, Nitrogen Tetroxide and Hydrazine compounds. This film, while a little boring at times, is quite fascinating in how it so directly shows the actions of these compounds in amazing detail. Of course, it also includes a close up of a Titan II GLV launch, which is always a treat to me.
As always, enjoy the film!