Comments on: NASA Sets Its Sights On $45 Million Green Fuel Mission

By: gopher652003

gopher652003 — Tue, 05 Aug 2014 17:07:00 +0000

They are somewhat concerned with the carbon footprint of the fuels, but they’re more concerned with the fact that current fuels are extremely toxic. These new fuels are “green” in that you won’t immediately die upon breathing in a seemingly insignificant amount of fumes.

By: Wayne Williamson

Wayne Williamson — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 23:06:00 +0000

yes, I meant acceleration. I am however confused by the symbol and the 2.

By: arne-nl

arne-nl — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 18:18:00 +0000

Newton is a unit of force, not energy.

The amount of energy needed to move 1 kg in 1 second over 1 m is not 1 joule. If the kg is floating around free in space at a speed of 1 m/s, that energy is 0. Since the days of Newton we know that motion at constant speed costs no energy, acceleration and deceleration does (as does moving an object through a gas or liquid).

Perhaps you are confused with the energy required to accelerate a mass of 1 kg to a speed of 1 m/s. 1 Joule equals the energy needed to accelerate a mass of 1 kg to a speed of √ 2 m/s.

By: TechnicaG

TechnicaG — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 02:22:00 +0000

Good point– I would guess that green production methods would be part of the NASA goals, but I was criticizing the mindset of spending a lot of energy in development effort to save only a little. In order to navigate our transition to renewable energy, we must make sure that the enthusiasm for a given technological solution doesn’t blind us to the energy costs of creating or using the solution. Yaaay for NASA, however!

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Sun, 28 Jul 2013 16:21:00 +0000

Would you show us the basis for your claim?

“Hydroxyl Ammonium Nitrate (HAN) fuel/oxidizer blend” and “a mixture of liquid oxygen and methane” can be produced with electricity, can they not?

Electricity can have an very low carbon footprint if we use renewables.

By: TechnicaG

TechnicaG — Sun, 28 Jul 2013 16:02:00 +0000

Unfortunately, the “carbon footprint” of the Green Fuel development effort will completely dwarf any possible environmental advantages of such a fuel. Space program propellants use such an unmeasurably small amount of energy that we really should be spending human effort (synonymous with energy consumption / carbon emission) on developing more efficient technologies (or Green Fuels) for the transportation and energy sectors.

By: Wayne Williamson

Wayne Williamson — Sat, 20 Jul 2013 14:30:00 +0000

very good point;-)

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 20 Jul 2013 13:30:00 +0000

Rockets are just a payload on top of a controlled explosion. So yes all the fuels are explosive

By: Wayne Williamson

Wayne Williamson — Fri, 19 Jul 2013 21:17:00 +0000

very interesting…I hope they can make this work..just a side note, the ingredients are normally used in explosives(except for the Hydroxyl)…
Also, for those metric illiterate(meaning most of the USA)…a newton equals one joule or 1 watt second or the amount of energy to move one kilogram one meter in 1 second.