If you’re involved with any sort of online spaceflight discussion, you’ve almost certainly ran into the term methalox. Hell if you’re here you almost certainly know that kerolox refers to a rocket engine which uses kerosene, kero, as its fuel, and liquid oxygen, lox, as its oxidizer. Going forward I will call these propmanteaus1. These suck and I love them.
These are a fairly quick way to describe the most basic propellant combinations and they roll off the tongue a lot nicer compared to alternatives. When moving away from describing the more standard propellant combinations, what you’re referring can become near indecipherable and unclear. No one will bring understand what AniliFurfuralchoNitric is referring to. Ignoring all the other issues with this naming system, the issue is clear, there’s no standardization. Let’s fix that.
There are two main goals I wish to achieve with this, the first is a consistent set of rules and guidelines towards propmanteua affixes. The second goal is to establish a list of propellants and assign them suffixes/prefixes. This is both to give examples, and also because I think it sounds fun2.
First the rules. The fuel affixes must become before the oxidizer affixes, and in the case of multiple fuels or oxidizers the fuels or oxidizers will be ordered from most to least prevalent. Additionally, a fuel affix must start with a consonant and end with a vowel. This is to help the speakability of propmanteuas. Finally, each affix must have its start capitalized.
For the guidelines, it is recommended that each affix’s length is roughly proportional to it’s novelty that way they’re easier to guess. Additionally, an affix should try to include the “major beats” of a word. Propellant mixtures or variants of very common molecule groupings3 should not get their own unique affix. This is because the rules already accommodate multiple propellants and it reduces legibility.
With that out of the way, let’s get started. Here’s the relatively short list of oxidizers.
Okay remember how I said the oxidizer list was relatively short, here’s the list for fuels
- A portmanteau of propulsion and portmanteau referring to portmantueas of propulsion and propulsion forming propmanteau portmanteuas. ↩︎
- I make the rules here ↩︎
- For example, kerosene is not a single molecule, however listing 20 hydrocarbons to describe it would be too clunky. Additionally, having separate affixes for RP-1, Jet-A, and Kerosene is both likely unneeded extra info, and difficult to remember. This also goes for sugars, or propellant mixtures like aerozine 50. ↩︎
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