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Date Posted: 9:02:39 2/27/23 Mon
Author: Jasper
Subject: Shortly before liftoff, SpaceX cancels a crew launch due to igniter issues

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Shortly after the scrub, SpaceX tweeted a little bit more information about the cause: "Standing down from tonight's launch of Crew-6 due to a TEA-TEB ground system issue," the company said.

TEA-TEB is a combination of triethylaluminum (TEA) and triethylborane (TEB). Essentially, these are two different metal elements each linked to three hydrocarbon atoms. These molecules are held together by rather tenuous bonds that break easily. When it comes into contact with oxygen, therefore, TEA-TEB spontaneously combusts.

This is useful for igniting rocket engines, which turns out to be a rather tricky thing to do, at least when it comes to precisely starting engines at a certain time, in a carefully controlled manner. For the Merlin 1D engines inside the Falcon 9, oxygen is pumped into the engines' combustion chambers to meet up with TEA-TEB. After combustion begins, kerosene is injected into the chamber, and the flow of the TEA-TEB igniter fuel is turned off. Then, to increase thrust, the flow of oxygen and kerosene are increased.

Early in their development of the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets, SpaceX struggled mightily with safely handling TEA-TEB and getting the Merlin engines to ignite when desired. "The best thing about TEA-TEB is that it ignites on contact with air," SpaceX's original launch director, Tim Buzza, said. "The worst thing about TEA-TEB is that it ignites on contact with air."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/spacex-scrubs-crew-6-launch-due-to-an-issue-with-its-igniter-fluid/

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