Nebula - n-Prize competition entrant No. 1

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Far be it for me to lecture anyone on safety. All I'm going to do here is say what I intend to do to ensure that I, and everyone else in the world is safeguarded from my experiments.

I used to be included in the bunch of people that think that they're indestructible right up until the point they're killed. I was always cautious, but I never once thought that my action could have resulted in serious injury.

That was until my first Cato (Catostrophic failure). It was on one of my very first engine designs which was fed compressed (gaseous) Nitrous Oxide as the oxidiser. I was at (I thought) a safe distance when the engine started, but in order to throttle it up I had to be close to a control linkage.

After 5 seconds of idle, I throttled the engine to 100% and within 0.5 seconds the engine very loudly exploded. Because of its orientation most of the debris when skywards, but the compression wave was sent back along the oxidiser pipe to the cannister which ruptured under the pressure and blew one side away (see photo on right). It wasn't worth photographing the remains of the engine as there weren't any that I could find.

The ruptured piece flew the short distance to me and hit me on the left hand. Luckily, both my eardrums and hand didn't sustain permenent damage, but I don't need telling it could have been much worse.

From now on, all my static test experiments will be conducted at distance by remote control with a video link. The engine and all pressurised parts are now enclosed behind concrete bricks for additional safety and to deaden the sound from a cato should it occur.

N₂O cannister blowout