A (usually liquid) rocket propellant that can be used by itself, without the need for a second component. Monopropellants can either be a single chemical that can be made to decompose exothermically, or a mixture of chemicals (generally a fuel and an oxidizer) that can be made to react with one another and release energy. The most common monopropellants currently used are hydrogen peroxide and hydrazine, both of which are generally decomposed with a catalyst bed or thermal bed in a rocket engine to produce thrust. A Redstone rocket, part of the Mercury program A rocket is a vehicle, missile or aircraft which obtains thrust by the reaction to the ejection of fast moving exhaust gas from within a rocket engine. ... A propellant is a material that is used to move an object by applying a motive force. ... For the workstation, see SGI Fuel. ... The most fundamental reactions in chemistry are the redox processes. ... The chemical compound hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is a viscous liquid that has strong oxidizing properties and is therefore a powerful bleaching agent that has found use as a disinfectant and (in high concentrations as high test peroxide) as an oxidizer or monopropellant in rockets. ... Hydrazine is a chemical compound with formula N2H4 used as a rocket fuel. ... A catalyst (Greek: καταλύτης, catalytis) is a substance that accelerates the rate of a chemical reaction, at some temperature, but without itself being transformed or consumed by the reaction (see also catalysis). ... A remote camera captures a close-up view of a Space Shuttle Main Engine during a test firing at the John C. Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi Spacecraft propulsion is used to change the velocity of spacecraft and artificial satellites, or in short, to provide delta-v. ... For the land-speed record breaking car, see ThrustSSC and Thrust2 For the computer game, see Thrust (computer game) Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newtons Second Law when a system expels or accelerates mass in one direction to propel a vehicle in the opposite direction. ...

Much work was done in the US in the 1950s and 1960s to attempt to find better and higher-energy monopropellants. For the most part, the people working on monopropellants came to the conclusion that any single substance that contained enough energy to compete with bipropellants would be too unstable to handle safely under practical conditions.

There is an entire chapter on the history of monopropellant development in the book "Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants" by John D. Clark, first published in 1972, ISBN 0-8135-0725-1. It is unfortunately currently out of print, but can be ordered from UMI Books on Demand (http://wwwlib.umi.com/bod/fullcite?id=148917).

Also see: Monopropellant_rocket A monopropellant rocket (or monoprop rocket) is a rocket that uses a single chemical as its power source and propellant. ...