Carbon Negative SpaceX Starship Possible
Elon Musk suggested that SpaceX can make methane fuel for Starship from water and air. Water supplies hydrogen, and air supplies carbon; carbon and hydrogen make methane, fuel for Starship. That carbon from the air comes from CO2, carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas.
Starship tankers, carrying methane, will refuel other Starships in orbit that carry cargo and people into the solar system. That fuel, made from airborne CO2, will never again cause climate change.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.You don't need air, just water and solar energy to perform electrolysis on the water (water which is abundant on the moon and elsewhere).
Trying to pull CO2 out of the air and then convert it to methane is doing a lot of work for little benefit. Unless one is trying to cleanse the CO2 out of the atmosphere. That would be a worthy goal. Maybe a catalytic nano-aerosol that converts CO2 to pure carbon (and O2) ?
racocn8
Level 9
Oct 11, 2019
1
Hydrogen is a great rocket fuel, but it leaks through steel and other materials. It also needs a huge tank compared to methane. So the decision to use one or the other is not easy. On very long trips, leakage could be a killer.
@EdEarl Hydrogen is certainly a problematic substance: tiny and very chemically reactive. Slush hydrogen and hydrogen reversably stuck onto a porous absorbent have been advanced as solutions. There might be linings that could reduce leakage, or engineer to tolerate and sequester the leakage.
Anything is possible...but planet travel is not on my agenda and not one single person that I have crossed paths with! I don’t think there is going to be a great demand for ‘otter world experiences’...(some people are stuck in ‘other world experiences,’ here)! Maybe ‘one’ must be born into this mindset? Lol
Freedompath
Level 9
Oct 11, 2019
1
There are already volunteers.
@EdEarl How many out of about 350 million people in this Country?
@Freedompath IDK from US. A scam, Mars One Inv. Advertised for Mars colonists and received 200,000 inquires.
@EdEarl ? ...I have a ‘wait and see attitude!’
@Freedompath A few daring souls will do anything for fame and name in history.
@EdEarl ...I guess you be right on that subject! I wonder if they realize that dead means for eternity?
@Freedompath Unavoidable, and some aren't happy alive.
@EdEarl there are days that most people have that thought cross their mind...but, that is misdirected anger at ‘self’...because in the next hour, next day/month, things look different! Un-examined thoughts, could be catastrophic! ‘Haste makes waste’...as they say!
@Freedompath It has not crossed my mind. However, a bipolar friend committed suicide. It's a waste.
@EdEarl ...yes, ‘a waste!’
This sounds like a rehash of the strategy for NASA's Mars Reference Mission released in the early 90s. The problem addressed was in generating fuel for the return trip from Mars. The solution was in splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen would be processed with the CO2-rich Martian atmosphere in order to make methane, which burns well with the oxygen. I'm not sure Earth's atmosphere is rich enough in CO2 to make it practical here.
bingst
Level 8
Oct 11, 2019
1
That's it, easiest fuel to make elsewhere.
Won’t whatever methane is burned while in the atmosphere go right back to CO2? While some methane might be carried off into space, it would be a minuscule amount compared to human and natural input.
WilliamFleming
Level 8
Oct 11, 2019
2
You are correct. Any going out is better than nothing.
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