Talk:Nitrous oxide fuel blend

Reads like an advertisement
This reads like an advertisement. Only one mixture from one company is discussed. The discussion under N2O is better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.249.47.174 (talk) 16:05, 20 April 2012 (UTC)


 * , way back in 2013 and 2014 N2e (talk) 16:45, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Needs work
I was trying to find citations for another article I was focusing rather intently on (Nitrous oxide) when I came across this one in the process. I didn't notice the excessive advocacy until I followed the references and noticed they all seemed to be either from the company in question, someone writing about the company, or just hastily-written token references. This article is half-way between a proper wiki article and an ad for Firestone NOXFB.

I was considering just tagging this for speedy deletion but decided against it. I think that if all the spam is removed, it should boil down to a stub, and we should be able to just tag it refimprove from there. But the redlink, the spam, and the list of why the product is so great needs to go.

I went a step beyond the previous poster and tagged the article as spam, COI & third-party. I plan to work on the article some, too.
 * —— meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 09:43, 29 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Agreed, article needs lots of work. However, nitrous-oxide fuel blends are a class of rocket propellants, as can be seen for example in this source I found in a Google search:
 * "Safety and Performance Advantages of Nitrous Oxide Fuel Blends (NOFBX) Propellants for Manned and Unmanned Spaceflight Applications, R Taylor - ESA Special Publication, 2012 - adsabs.harvard.edu. (partial abstract): '... This work focused on characterizing various Nitrous Oxide Fuel Blend (NOFB) monopropellants which exhibited many favorable attributes to include: (1) Mono-propulsion, (2) Isp > 320s, (3) Non-toxic constituents, (4) Non-toxic effluents, (5) Low Cost, (6) High Density Specific Impulse, (7) Non-cryogenic, (8) Wide Storable Temperature Range, (9) Deeply throttlable [between 5 - 100lbs], (10) Self Pressurizing, (11) Wide Range of materials compatibility, along with many, many other benefits. ...'"
 * It appears to me that there may be few articles on the class of nitrous oxide fuel blends, and rather a few more from the one particular company that is doing development on the trademarked "NOFBX".


 * I'll try to get back here and help improve the article a bit with you. N2e (talk) 13:40, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Okay. Enough for me to start working on it. meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 20:31, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Further reading is misleading; I want to remove these three [non]-links
I move to get rid of the following three altogether; I don't even know why they were put on the site of Firestar Technologies in the first place, other than to advance Mungas's profile (which seems to be the case). In short, they're all dead ends. The three in question:


 * Mungas, G.S. (May 2010). Regeneratively-Cooled, Vortex-Jacket, Fluids and Heat Transfer Model for Rocket Combustion Chambers. Joint Army, Navy, NASA, Air Force (JANNAF) Interagency Propulsion Conference, LPS-IIP-3, Colombia, MD: Chemical Propulsion Information Analysis Center/John Hopkins University.
 * Mungas, G.S.; Fisher, D.J.; Smith, J.A.; Doyle, K.W.; Peters, G.H.; London, A.P.; Droppers, L.; Fryer, J.; Coley, S.; Delange, T. (May 2010). NOFBX COLT Engine Development and Testing. Joint Army, Navy, NASA, Air Force (JANNAF) Interagency Propulsion Conference, SPS-IIE-3, Colombia, MD: Chemical Propulsion Information Analysis Center/John Hopkins University.
 * Mungas, G.S.; Fisher, D.J.; Mungas, C.B.; Carryer, B. (December 2008). NOFB Monopropellants – Background, Characterization, and Testing. Joint Army, Navy, NASA, Air Force Interagency Propulsion Conference (JANNAF), SPS-I-11, Colombia, MD: Chemical Propulsion Information Analysis Center/John Hopkins University.

Since they were not formatted with outgoing web links, I had to search for them. I started my search at http://www.jannaf.org, which led me to the acronyms subpage, http://www.jannaf.org/acro.html, whereupon I found: LPS is Liquid Propulsion Subcommittee and SPS is Spacecraft Propulsion Subcommittee.

The hyphenated acronyms "IIP-3", "IIE-3", and "I-11" don't match conferences or anniversaries, so I'm guessing they're really only useful as internal names (keep in mind some of this stuff is actually classified material – Jannaf.org has a login/password system)

The google search "G.S. Mungas, Regeneratively-Cooled, Vortex-Jacket, Fluids and Heat Transfer Model for Rocket Combustion Chambers, Joint Army, Navy, NASA, Air Force (JANNAF) Interagency Propulsion Conference, LPS-IIP-3, CPIA/JHU, Colombia, MD (May 2010)" (without quotes, mind you) returns exactly zero pages of interest; i.e., not counting the Firestar website itself, links to it, or cached versions of this Wiki. It doesn't appear to be on the web at all (and I doubt a few miscellaneous conferences made it into a book); I found a NASA summary of one presentation, but pretty much nothing else.

Jannaf does have reviews; including a review dated May 2010 and December 2008, but no mention of "Mungas", "nofxb", etc. It also has in its schedule a mention of Mungas several times, but nothing of interest.

In conclusion: can anyone else find a reason to keep these? To me, they're garbage. And I'm aware that many sites will re-use our content, dead-ends or not. meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 08:38, 31 December 2013 (UTC)


 * If they don't have a strong relation to article content, I would say you should be bold and remove them. If folks disagree, they can do the BRD process and discuss on the Talk page.  N2e (talk) 16:56, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

CO and CO2 are toxic
"its end products (N2, CO, H2O, H2 and CO2)[8] are all nontoxic and produce no accumulated deposits or contamination;[1] whereas hydrazine emits ammonia[8]"

CO is toxic as commonly known.

The toxicity of CO2 is not so well known: "Concentrations of 7% to 10% may cause suffocation, even in the presence of sufficient oxygen, manifesting as dizziness, headache, visual and hearing dysfunction, and unconsciousness within a few minutes to an hour." CO2

"Kohlenstoffdioxid-Konzentrationen von 8 % führen innerhalb von 30 bis 60 Minuten zum Tod."

Darsie42 (talk) 02:19, 3 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, as for CO, I suspect the existing claim is meaning that the post-propellant combustion very low concentrations of CO that would be in the atmosphere are quite non-toxic, and would be dealt with by various atmospheric chemical processes that are well known. Do you have a source for toxicity of minute amounts of CO in the atmosphere?
 * As for C02, I would imagine it is like every gas other than oxygen: if one gets too high a concentration of other gasses in the human lungs, bad things happen.  That's true of even non-reactive gases like Helium, or Argon, or Nitrogen.  Get the percentage too high, and breathing is in trouble.
 * But either way, if you have sources for "products of combustion" of NOFBX being a problem in the atmosphere, than please add appropriate statements to the article that can be sourced by those reliable sources. Cheers.  N2e (talk) 16:51, 3 January 2014 (UTC)


 * N2e is right. The common definition of "toxic" and the toxicological definition of "toxic" are at odds here. Carbon -monoxide and -dioxide both displace oxygen; as would any other gas in high enough concentrations, but that doesn't really qualify them as toxic in a certain sense. What Mungas means is that ammonia is an irritant, burning the skin, eyes, and the respiratory tract of a person. None of the others (N2, CO, H2O, H2 and CO2) would.


 * If there was, for example, a gas leak on board a rocketship, I'd be much more concerned about inhaling ammonia than I would nitrogen, carbon monoxide, water vapor, hydrogen gas, or carbon dioxide, because much less ammonia is needed to poison someone. I think that's what he's talking about.


 * Outside a rocketship, we live indoors in poorly ventilated environments, where small amounts of gases build up without notice until they reach toxic levels. To get to 10%, I'd imagine you'd need an open fire, perhaps a fireplace without a chimney or something. Regarding CO2, I think you misunderstood; the preceding text was:


 * ""CO2 is an asphyxiant gas and not classified as toxic or harmful in accordance with Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals standards of United Nations Economic Commission for Europe by using the OECD Guidelines for the Testing of Chemicals.""


 * Asphyxia is just jargon for choking, really.


 * I compared carbon dioxide, ammonia, and nitrogen's Immediately dangerous to life and health (IDLH) numbers at Haz-map, a tool from the National Institute of Health, and got these numbers:
 * IDLH for ammonia: 300ppm
 * IDLH for carbon monoxide: 1,200 ppm
 * IDLH for carbon dioxide: 40,000ppm
 * Meaning you need 100 times more carbon dioxide than you do ammonia to choke you.


 * Hopefully that was clear. meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 20:29, 3 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Of course toxicity depends on dose/concentration. At a distance that would protect from rocket explosions there would likely be no danger from CO/CO2. Yet, CO is undoubtedly toxic. CO2 is, of course, much less toxic (not enough to be labeled as "toxic"), but something like 10% CO2 and 90% O2 is deadly. It's not just displacing oxygen, it causes acidosis of the blood (and maybe more). The paragraph mentioning CO2 as asphyxiant gas is wrong, thanks for pointing that out. Darsie42 (talk) 12:41, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

proposing removal of entire NOFBX section
The references are exclusively two sites: The "firestar" folks who are pushing it, and "parabolic arc", an site which posts company press releases and advertisements for money. Looks like the entire section meets the "spam" critera. Tagging with ADMASQ for now.
 * Riventree (talk) 07:03, 23 June 2017 (UTC)


 * I just stumbled upon this article again today, a year and a half after this proposal. Looks like no consensus was ever reached to remove the NOFBX section contemporaneous with the proposal.


 * I have copyedited the article substantially today. I did not find that section was exclusively Firestar primary sources, and suspect one or two NASA or SpaceNews sources might have been ones I added several years ago; I'm not going to take the time to check on that.  But either way, I would say that the NOFBX work that happened in the 2000s, and that NASA planned to fly on the ISS, and which DARPA did apparently fly on a test aircraft, and the broad industry interest in safer monopropellants, are all good reasons to leave the obviously verifiable (meets WP:V) information of the progress made in that epoch.  Cheers.  N2e (talk) 16:45, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Article tag: contributor connection with the topic?
There is an article-level tag on the article, from December 2013, that says: "A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. Please discuss further on the talk page."

I don't see any discussion of the topic on the Talk page in the past five years? Does anyone know what specific editor this was alleged to be about? ... or which edits? If we don't have more data, then I'll probably just remove the tag after a while. Cheers. N2e (talk) 15:43, 27 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I have extensively copyedited the article, and if there ever was a connection with someone with a WP:COI, I don't find any WP:UNDUE emphasis in the article as it stands now. I think it simply describes the tech and history of this interesting monopropellant fuel blend, over the past seven decades, and that happens to include some years where some small private company called Firestar worked on it, and some principal there was, quite naturally, involved in publishing some papers on it.  I don't see anything unduly emphasized now.  Happy for opinions from other editors.  N2e (talk) 16:45, 27 December 2018 (UTC)


 * ✅ Based on no comment / issue for a mnonth, I have removed the tag. Cheers.   N2e (talk) 19:58, 27 January 2019 (UTC)