3 ms·

You can’t burn oil without atmospheric oxygen.

• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• xrange 8y ago
  Feedstock for plastics and other industrial products. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=34&t=6 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=34&t=6 A similar process used in: https://availabletechnologies.pnnl.gov/technology.asp?id=395 https://availabletechnologies.pnnl.gov/technology.asp?id=395 ...could be used to reform lower value hydrocarbons into higher value ones.
• mattnewport 8y ago
  You can't burn oil without oxygen sure but don't Falcon rockets burn kerosene with liquid oxygen? I believe there are ways to obtain oxygen on Mars despite the shortage of atmosphere. There's also other industrial uses for oil such as plastics. I'm not an expert on any of this though so maybe oil isn't that useful if you don't have reasonably abundant atmospheric oxygen. SpaceX has talked about using methane from Mars to refuel though, it seems plausible to me that other sources of hydrocarbons like oil would be useful to us.