Rockets made of chocolate?

[Serendipity]

Mods - I'm not sure where this belongs - please move if appropriate.

This comes from my blog...

Sometimes when talking among friends you get some very crazy ideas... the one that keeps going round my tiny beetle blain at the moment is a rocket made of chocolate and fuelled by sugar. We are not talking about chocolate treats here, but rockets that fly into space.

Of course any sane-minded person would say this is ridiculous and will never work. It's obvious isn't it?

And then that little nagging voice of doubt creeps into my mind...

First off, sugar-fuelled rockets have taken off to reach extraordinary heights. Just do a quick google search if you don't believe me. Google for an article where a sugar-fuelled rocket reached over twelve (yes, 12) kilometres in height.

Now let's turn to the chocolate part of the design. We know a drone made of chocolate - if you don't believe me look it up on a you-tube video! This makes a good starting point! Yes I know the engines and batteries and wiring aren't made of chocolate, but the frame is!

However the problem for a real rocket would be atmospheric heating i.e. when the rocket travels so fast, it heats up the air surrounding it, which in turn makes it melt. Um... how about using chocolate as a layer of ablative - a substance designed to deliberately melt away when the frame gets hot!

The question then becomes of how much ablative would a rocket need and in consequence, how much extra fuel it would need to lift the extra weight. There is also the question of which type of chocolate to use and whether there would be any pre-cooling prior to launch e.g. put into the freezer and only taken out immediately before launch. A further relevant question would the ablative be structured to have air-cooling vanes or holes within it, which would reduce the overall weight of ablative chocolate needed? It would be worth looking at the engine cooling technology Reaction Engines Limited are producing for their Skylon space plane project for ideas as to how to do this.

Here's another issue. We will need electricity to control flight. So does chocolate conduct electricity? Milk chocolate being fatty does not. Dark chocolate? Well maybe enough to control the surfaces. So we can make cabling of dark chocolate surrounded by the insulating milk chocolate.

So what about the heat from burning the sugar fuel? Now this is going to get really weird... the fuel burning only happens inside the the hollow part of the solidified sugar fuel. Yes we can use the appropriate air-cooling techniques to reduce the heat transfer from the sugar to the chocolate.

Of course, there is a lot of engineering work to go into a chocolate rocket with its sugar fuel before we can say whether it's feasible or not. But as you can see, the more you think about it, the more feasible it becomes!

Someone ought to write a science fiction short story about this!

 

[chrispenycate]

Chocolate is a near perfect insulator of electricity. I've run some quick tests, and it's several megohms for a couple of mm. Probably spun-sugar optical fibres imbedded. And its Young's modulus is not well adapted for high accelerations.

As regards friction heating (which I suspect will be nowhere near as worrying as heat leaking from the combustion of the sugar, even if I install a meringue insulating layer) launch it from an altitude where the air is already less dense - hydrogen balloons have reached several kilometres in height, and could easily carry a quantity of confectionery well above mountain peaks, whence it could be launched above the stratosphere.

One question - why would anyone want to?

 

[Abernovo]

Re cooling before lift-off, you wouldn't want to cool it too much, as chocolate becomes brittle. Of course, you have the problem that, on a warm day, the chocolate would become soft and melt, even prior to launch.

Also, I suggest--purely from anecdotal evidence--that there may be a safety risk posed by engineers and other personnel getting tempted by chocolate goodness, and nibbling/picking at the ablative chocolate panelling.

I echo Chrispy's question. Isn't that all a waste of good chocolate?
Further question: is this the weirdest thing we've debated on Chrons? No, don't answer that.

 

[Vladd67]

Would it be the Swiss space programme? Or would any crew be Wonkanauts?
Mmmm a Swiss Space programme, clockwork chocolate rockets?

 

[Foxbat]

Someone ought to write a science fiction short story about this!

@Stephen Palmer wrote Hairy London a while back and mentioned chocolate trains in it so maybe if you ask him nicely, he'll take his transport and update it to include rockets. Perhaps he could call it Toblerone XL5

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I just don't want to meet the pilot.

http://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/kandyman-doctor-who.jpg

 

[Stephen Palmer]

@Stephen Palmer wrote Hairy London a while back and mentioned chocolate trains in it so maybe if you ask him nicely, he'll take his transport and update it to include rockets. Perhaps he could call it Toblerone XL5

"At two o’clock that afternoon Kornukope and Eastachia struggled across Westminster Bridge, then along York Road, which was choked to chest height with thick ginger hair. The station itself was hirsute on the outside but only lightly bearded inside. Messages and announcements written in chalk on blackboards directed them to platform nine, where the Reading Express awaited.

As with all modern trains it had been made by the Belgian Seashell Company using only the finest chocolate. The carriages themselves – third, second and first class – were made from a mixture of milk and white chocolate, blended so that pale swirls flowed like ink dropped in water through the brown substrate. Windows were made of sugar-glass. The locomotive itself was powered by cold steam and looked like a bison on wheels, its pistons and chambers bunched up as if muscled limbs. Reading the strawberry nameplate – The Pride Of The Carob – Kornukope discovered that it had been created by Master Chocolatiers from dark chocolate at a ratio of eighty percent cocoa solids. It was decorated with sea shells in the traditional style.

“Our tickets are first class,” Kornukope said. “Let us board and find an empty compartment.”

The first class compartments were little occupied, and Kornukope was able to settle with Eastachia so that they both had a window chair. The luxury of their marshmallow seats was impressive, as were the nougat tables and bioluminescent ceiling lamps."

- Hairy London, 2014.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I think, considering that they’re telling us we’re going to run out of chocolate in ten or twenty years, that might not be a good plan.

 

[BAYLOR]

I think, considering that they’re telling us we’re going to run out of chocolate in ten or twenty years, that might not be a good plan.

There is a very practical reason as to why rockets are not made out of chocolate. Because if they were launched , they'd melt .

 

[Foxbat]

I think, considering that they’re telling us we’re going to run out of chocolate in ten or twenty years, that might not be a good plan.

No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[chrispenycate]

Would it be the Swiss space programme? Or would any crew be Wonkanauts?
Mmmm a Swiss Space programme, clockwork chocolate rockets?

I worked on a documentary about Swiss astronaut Claude Nicollier a while back, and he claimed they went up in American shuttles because the holes in the Swiss cheese one let all the air out. He lied, though - it was fear of re-entry fondue.

 

[Abernovo]

I worked on a documentary about Swiss astronaut Claude Nicollier a while back, and he claimed they went up in American shuttles because the holes in the Swiss cheese one let all the air out. He lied, though - it was fear of re-entry fondue.

*groan* That's terrible.
I am not laughing...honest!

 

[Serendipity]

Chocolate is a near perfect insulator of electricity. I've run some quick tests, and it's several megohms for a couple of mm. Probably spun-sugar optical fibres imbedded. And its Young's modulus is not well adapted for high accelerations.

As regards friction heating (which I suspect will be nowhere near as worrying as heat leaking from the combustion of the sugar, even if I install a meringue insulating layer) launch it from an altitude where the air is already less dense - hydrogen balloons have reached several kilometres in height, and could easily carry a quantity of confectionery well above mountain peaks, whence it could be launched above the stratosphere.

One question - why would anyone want to?

Oh I does like the idea spun-sugar fibre-optics and totally agree with launch from altitude...

Agree with you about the heat leaking from sugar combustion... hadn't thought about a meringue insulation layer... oh this is certainly turning out to be a tasty little project....

Thank you for the tips....

I feel a diagram coming up in due course...

 

[Serendipity]

Re cooling before lift-off, you wouldn't want to cool it too much, as chocolate becomes brittle. Of course, you have the problem that, on a warm day, the chocolate would become soft and melt, even prior to launch.

Also, I suggest--purely from anecdotal evidence--that there may be a safety risk posed by engineers and other personnel getting tempted by chocolate goodness, and nibbling/picking at the ablative chocolate panelling.

I echo Chrispy's question. Isn't that all a waste of good chocolate?
Further question: is this the weirdest thing we've debated on Chrons? No, don't answer that.

A friend of mine worked in the Trebor sweet factory during one summer while at University. They allowed the workers to have as many sweets as they liked... they found that once the workers had their fill, they went off having any more! So the answer is to get in sufficient chocolate to satiate the workers on top of what is needed for the rocket!

Point taken about not letting the chocolate get too cold for launch.

As for being a waste of good chocolate, at least this rocket is more eco-friendly!