this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
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Space travel is exceptional in that you need an incredible amount of cooperation to get a project into space. The supply chains are insane, the component parts highly specialized and hugely expensive, and the range of expertise and knowledge required is simultaneously focused and intense and broad and varied. If human society ever does manage to transition to a genuine people power, space flight will be, to my knowledge, the very last thing we achieve, because it takes so many people working together to get it done. The scope of these projects makes you realise how easy it must have been to build the pyramids. Two brothers can build a plane that just about works, but to get a vehicle to orbit needs a city of people working together.
Yes we should, and I hope we will. I would love to be able to imagine some kind of smooth, consensual, non violent transition to a society where we keep doing the same stuff but are fairly treated, but I have difficulty with that. And I think space would be the hardest industry to revolutionise because of the above. Not saying it's impossible and I'm definitely not saying it's not preferable!
Almost like Jim Bridenstone was a bad pick….
Regarding rocket propellant
Methane is more dense than hydrogen
Methane makes more thrust than hydrogen
Hydrogen rockets need to have huge fuel tanks, hydrogen rockets have low thrust - the space shuttle needed boosters to lift off
Everything in space is a trade off, kerosene is better in all those ways than methane, but you can make methane on Mars. The global warming potential isn't much as there are so few rocket launches, and hydrogen fuelled rockets use fossil hydrogen (made from fossil methane (aka natural gas)) because it is cheaper than alternatives
Saturn V stage 1 ran on kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen
Stages 2 and 3 were hydrogen.
The rocket you want, to use space hydrogen, is the bussard ramjet, which unfortunately isn't expected to work