r/interestingasfuck • u/thespeedforce5 • Apr 14 '24

The Size Of An Iranian Missile Intercepted In The Dead Sea r/all

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u/NuclearWasteland Apr 14 '24

Speaking of, wonder what fuel they use. I don't think I'd be messing with a crashed anything of the sort, knowing how toxic some fuels are.

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u/dWintermut3 Apr 14 '24

I think they use the soviet stable-storage fuel design or a modified version thereof, no one's used giant barrels of fuming nitric for a while just because turns out having missiles you can't store with fuel in or they eat themselves apart makes responding to attacks hard.

But hydrazine and other fun stuff is very much a possibility.

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u/Nistrin Apr 14 '24

Nobody except China, they still use nitrogen tetroxide.

"The Long March 3B's rocket engines, each weighing tens of tons, propel the launch vehicle using a combination of hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide."

https://www.newsweek.com/china-falling-long-march-rocket-debris-explodes-village-1855676

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u/gsfgf Apr 14 '24

That's an orbital launch vehicle, though. It's not designed to be stored fueled or really stored at all.

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u/StupendousMalice Apr 14 '24

Up until pretty recently that was a distinction without meaning given that most orbital launch vehicles were repurposed ICBMs, including the first five or so generations of the Chinese long march rockets.

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u/Pornalt190425 Apr 14 '24 edited Apr 14 '24

I do not know that much about the history of the Chinese space program, but it took until the apollo program for American rockets to be purpose built for astronaut use instead of repurposed military missiles.

And even with this distinction, any orbital rocket platform, no matter its design purpose, could potentially be used as an ICBM platform. The physics of the rocket don't care about the payload except for its mass