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by mLuby 1516 days ago
Love how much expertise there is here; thanks for adding yours!

When you say "metal bladder/diaphragm" is that a sliding wall with propellant on one side and pressurant on the other? (I can't imagine how the seals in that would work.) Or do you mean the metal actually deforms in place?

1 comments

Yeah, the metal deforms. They are single use devices. Imagine a spherical metal tank, with a thin metal hemisphere welded inside. The hemisphere would invert as the propellant is expelled. Hard engineering and manufacturing problems here. I think there have been piston tanks (which would be reusable with sliding elastomer seals. Not many elastomers play well with hypergolics), but they would be very weight inefficient.