> 3) Just because the main component of a fuel will boil off eventually doesn't mean chemicals added to the propellant or produced in side reactions will
What do you have in mind that exists in quantities large enough to make things "extremely toxic"?
> 4) Hypergolic just means chemicals spontaneously combust on contact with one another; it has nothing to do with environmental risk.
Nothing except if you look at the actual list of rocket fuels that get used.
> What do you have in mind that exists in quantities large enough to make things "extremely toxic"?
I don't know where you are quoting "extremely toxic" from but even small quantities of toxic chemicals can be cause for concern.
> Nothing except if you look at the actual list of rocket fuels that get used.
Just because a square's a rectangle doesn't make a rectangle a square. Hypergolics are toxic does not equal non-hypergolics are non-toxic. For example, hydrazine monopropellant.
> I don't know where you are quoting "extremely toxic" from but even small quantities of toxic chemicals can be cause for concern.
Look up a couple comments in the thread. "I was under the impression that regular use of rocket fuel made a lot of land extremely toxic."
And we can't just assume there are harmful additives in meaningful quantities.
> Just because a square's a rectangle doesn't make a rectangle a square. Hypergolics are toxic does not equal non-hypergolics are non-toxic. For example, hydrazine monopropellant.
Okay, technically it spontaneously decomposes upon contact with a catalyst. That's so close to the definition of hypergolic.
Also it was pretty clear what they were saying. You can nitpick the wording, but their underlying point is still valid. SpaceX isn't using toxic fuels.
> And we can't just assume there are harmful additives in meaningful quantities.
No one's assuming there are, but the onus is to prove that there aren't.
> Okay, technically it spontaneously decomposes upon contact with a catalyst. That's so close to the definition of hypergolic.
But that's not WHY it is toxic. A substance can be not only non-hypergolic, it could be completely non-flammable and still be toxic, like say Carbon Tetrachloride, which is why the parent comment that I was replying to saying "since it's not hypergolic, it's therefore not toxic" is wrong, which was the thing I was trying to correct. SpaceX isn't using toxic fuels, but not because they are not using hypergolic fuels.
> No one's assuming there are, but the onus is to prove that there aren't.
For an environmental assessment, yes. For someone casually arguing against the area becoming "extremely toxic" then we should need a reason to suspect large amounts of very bad additives.
> But that's not WHY it is toxic.
Yeah but nobody said that.
The post was giving reasons the area isn't being made toxic, and one of those reasons is because out of the list of normal rocket fuels only the hypergolic ones are terrible, and they're not using those fuels.
It's fine to point out that it's not directly because of hypergolic or not (though there are strong correlations based on how reactive things are), but it doesn't affect the actual point they were making. You made it sound like a rebuttal when it's not a rebuttal. At worst they worded it badly.
What do you have in mind that exists in quantities large enough to make things "extremely toxic"?
> 4) Hypergolic just means chemicals spontaneously combust on contact with one another; it has nothing to do with environmental risk.
Nothing except if you look at the actual list of rocket fuels that get used.