In 2020, many rockets used liquid oxygen: Later, in the 1960s and 1970s, the ascent stages of the Apollo Saturn rockets, and the Space Shuttle main engines used liquid oxygen. In the 1950s, during the Cold War both the United States' Redstone and Atlas rockets, and the Soviet R-7 Semyorka used liquid oxygen. The World War II V-2 missile also used liquid oxygen under the name A-Stoff and Sauerstoff. Liquid oxygen was used in the first liquid fueled rocket. Liquid oxygen is the most common cryogenic liquid oxidizer propellant for spacecraft rocket applications, usually in combination with liquid hydrogen, kerosene or methane. See also: Liquid rocket propellant SpaceX's liquid oxygen ball at Cape Canaveral In 1985, the USAF started a program of building its own oxygen-generation facilities at all major consumption bases. Liquid oxygen is obtained from the oxygen found naturally in air by fractional distillation in a cryogenic air separation plant.Īir forces have long recognized the strategic importance of liquid oxygen, both as an oxidizer and as a supply of gaseous oxygen for breathing in hospitals and high-altitude aircraft flights. In commerce, liquid oxygen is classified as an industrial gas and is widely used for industrial and medical purposes. Air Force technician transfers liquid oxygen to a Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules aircraft at the Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. The surface tension of liquid oxygen at its normal pressure boiling point is 13.2 dyn/cm. Conversely, liquid nitrogen or liquid air can be oxygen-enriched by letting it stand in open air atmospheric oxygen dissolves in it, while nitrogen evaporates preferentially. Liquid nitrogen has a lower boiling point at −196 ☌ (77 K) than oxygen's −183 ☌ (90 K), and vessels containing liquid nitrogen can condense oxygen from air: when most of the nitrogen has evaporated from such a vessel, there is a risk that liquid oxygen remaining can react violently with organic material. Modern computer simulations indicate that, although there are no stable O 4 molecules in liquid oxygen, O 2 molecules do tend to associate in pairs with antiparallel spins, forming transient O 4 units. Lewis, who proposed it to explain why liquid oxygen defied Curie's law. The tetraoxygen molecule (O 4) was first predicted in 1924 by Gilbert N. Petrochemicals, including asphalt, often exhibit this behavior. Further, if soaked in liquid oxygen, some materials such as coal briquettes, carbon black, etc., can detonate unpredictably from sources of ignition such as flames, sparks or impact from light blows. Liquid oxygen is also a very powerful oxidizing agent: organic materials will burn rapidly and energetically in liquid oxygen. Liquid oxygen has an expansion ratio of 1:861 and because of this, it is used in some commercial and military aircraft as a transportable source of breathing oxygen.īecause of its cryogenic nature, liquid oxygen can cause the materials it touches to become extremely brittle. Liquid oxygen has a light or pale cyan color and is strongly paramagnetic: it can be suspended between the poles of a powerful horseshoe magnet. Goddard, an application which has continued to the present. It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. It is abbreviated as LOX or less frequently LOXygen in the aerospace, submarine and gas industries. Liquid oxygen is the liquid form of molecular oxygen. When liquid oxygen is poured from a beaker into a strong magnet, the oxygen is temporarily suspended between the magnet poles, owing to its paramagnetism. Liquid oxygen (pale cyan liquid) in a beaker. For other uses, see Lox (disambiguation).
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