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It would be cool if they built a full-scale prototype of their proposed methane/oxygen propellant plant near the launch site. It would be harder to pull CO2 out

It would be cool if they built a full-scale prototype of their proposed methane/oxygen propellant plant near the launch site. It would be harder to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere on Earth than on Mars, but on the other hand solar power is much more abundant here.

Mauricebranagh 6y ago
Do you really want a fuel plant next to a launch site?
- zlynx 6y ago
  Why not? The fuel is next to the launch site, before they put it into the rocket. It can be protected from exploding rockets by berms, concrete, etc. It isn't as if an exploding rocket is a shaped charge; the force of an explosion would go up and out and be easily deflected.
  - Mauricebranagh 6y ago
    Assuming nothing landed on top of tanks
bryanlarsen 6y ago
If they do that, it'll probably be a couple of miles away at the old natural gas well site they own. That's where they're putting an oxygen purification stack.
baking 6y ago
I think that plant is just for oxygen and nitrogen (plus the bonus argon for the welders.) Somebody did a calculation that showed that the number of truckloads of methane needed to power the plant was substantially less then the number of truckloads of oxygen that would otherwise be needed.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  They might also pull out some krypton for Starlink and Xenon for ion thrusters on other satellites. AFAICT, thescriptkiddie is talking about an electrolysis plant to create hydrogen, and then a Sabatier plant to create methane from that hydrogen and atmospheric CO2 from the air liquidation stack. This would not make sense economically, but they have two good reasons for doing this. 1: using a carbon-neutral fuel would be on-message for Elon Musk and would mitigate a major criticism of frequent spaceflight. 2: They're going to have to do something similar on Mars to create fuel for the return flight home. So doing it at scale on Earth first may help them debug the process before trying to do it on Mars.
  - baking 6y ago
    Whatever they use on Mars will need to be lightweight and designed for the application. I can see them building some prototypes, but putting them in the middle of an active launch site seems overly risky. The current distillation plant under construction is second hand and much too large and heavy for being sent to Mars.

Mauricebranagh 6y ago

Do you really want a fuel plant next to a launch site?

zlynx 6y ago
Why not? The fuel is next to the launch site, before they put it into the rocket. It can be protected from exploding rockets by berms, concrete, etc. It isn't as if an exploding rocket is a shaped charge; the force of an explosion would go up and out and be easily deflected.
- Mauricebranagh 6y ago
  Assuming nothing landed on top of tanks

bryanlarsen 6y ago

If they do that, it'll probably be a couple of miles away at the old natural gas well site they own. That's where they're putting an oxygen purification stack.

baking 6y ago

I think that plant is just for oxygen and nitrogen (plus the bonus argon for the welders.) Somebody did a calculation that showed that the number of truckloads of methane needed to power the plant was substantially less then the number of truckloads of oxygen that would otherwise be needed.

bryanlarsen 6y ago
They might also pull out some krypton for Starlink and Xenon for ion thrusters on other satellites. AFAICT, thescriptkiddie is talking about an electrolysis plant to create hydrogen, and then a Sabatier plant to create methane from that hydrogen and atmospheric CO2 from the air liquidation stack. This would not make sense economically, but they have two good reasons for doing this. 1: using a carbon-neutral fuel would be on-message for Elon Musk and would mitigate a major criticism of frequent spaceflight. 2: They're going to have to do something similar on Mars to create fuel for the return flight home. So doing it at scale on Earth first may help them debug the process before trying to do it on Mars.
- baking 6y ago
  Whatever they use on Mars will need to be lightweight and designed for the application. I can see them building some prototypes, but putting them in the middle of an active launch site seems overly risky. The current distillation plant under construction is second hand and much too large and heavy for being sent to Mars.