Talk:RP-1

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"Although considerably less powerful than liquid hydrogen, RP-1 can be stored at room temperature and is far more dense (a given volume of RP-1 is significantly more powerful than a similar volume of LH2)"

Here, the article states that RP-1 is both considerably less powerful than liquid hydrogen, and significantly more powerful! Could somebody please make this more comprehensible to the lay wiki-crawler who knows nothing about rocket science? Thank you! (^o^)V

PR-1 has a lower specific impulse (Isp) then hydrogen, this is basically a mark of efficiency of how much thrust can be made per mass of fuel. --BerserkerBen 00:59, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Now Imagine you were building a rocket engine, you need to mix fuel and oxidizer together and burn it to make thurst, The more fuel you mix at once the more thrust per mass of rocket engine, the higher the fuels Isp the more thrust per mass of fuel. So natural your going to want a rocket engine that can burn a huge amount of fuel at once thus producing huge a amount of thrust from a very light weight engine, as well has use a fuel that has a high Isp so you need less fuel and thus less mass. Hydrogen has the highest Isp so it got the fuel mass problem cover, but hydrogen very low density means that a large volume of fuel must be pump into the rocket engine, meaning a engine which produce less thrust per weight of the engine. RP-1 with is very high density means a small volume of must be pumped into the engine, thus smaller ligher engine. Thus RP-1 can produce greater thrust per volume then hydrogen, but Hydrogen produces greater thus per mass. --BerserkerBen 00:59, 20 December 2005 (UTC)