4 ms·
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
by 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 agoThey 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 agoWhatever 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.