Mining the Moons of Mars

On 05/01/2009, ANTIcarrot wrote:
> Oh for pity's sake...
>
> Oh, yes, so sorry. You're right. TECHNICALLY it's possible IN THEORY to put
> a large enough tank on an aircraft to power it across the pacific , but gosh
> darn it, any time someone has suggested actually doing this in the REAL
> world, the answer has always been, "Don't be so ****ing stupid!" Given ready
> alternatives like biofuels or LNG or simply continued use of jet fuel,
> hydrogen is not in anyway desirable to the airline, regulators, or
> manufactures.

Probably wrong:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/22/reaction-engines-a2-supersonic-jet-could-easily-humble-the-conc/

Um... 4.5 hours to do an antipodal flight is not desirable????

> See Challenger and Hindenburg. Which you would know if you had
> done your research properly; or cared.

Hindenberg was a completely different system, it had a highly
flammable envelope and did not have adequate static discharge
handling. An aircraft carrying liquid hydrogen would probably use a
metallic tank that is not susceptible to these kinds of problems.

Challenger would have blown up whatever fuel had been in that tank.
When you have a solid fuelled rocket engine leaking hot exhaust gases
all over an aluminum tank, that tank is going to fail, it's going to
be a bad day. It was not in any way a failure due to the use of
hydrogen.

Note that liquid hydrogen is not much more dangerous than gasoline
when used with suitable precautions, it's been known how to do this
since the research done in the 50s.

> John

--
-Ian Woollard

We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly
imperfect world would be much better.