G
gunsandrockets
Guest
NASA's removal of the requirement for the CEV to use a methane propellent rocket engine generated much anguish in the pro-space exploration community, but maybe it wasn't such a bad decision after all.<br /><br />Aside from whatever merits methane rockets have for the purely lunar mission, they are valued for missions to Mars which employ ISRU to resupply the rocket on the Martian surface. But what if a different propellent could be made even more easily than methane?<br /><br />I found an interesting article about a process for methanol production on Mars. Supposedly, from the same amount of hydrogen feedstock, twice as much methanol/oxygen can be produced compared to methane/oxygen, and produced for half the electrical power. Here's the link...<br /><br />http://www.pioneerastro.com/Projects/index.html<br /><br />...and here's an excerpt...<br /><br />"The Methanol Mars In-Situ Propellant Production (MMISPP) is a method for producing both storable fuel and oxygen on the surface of Mars with 95% of the required raw material derived from the Martian atmosphere. In the MMISPP system, a reverse water gas shift reactor is run in series with a catalytic methanol reactor to combine a small quantity of imported hydrogen with Martian atmospheric CO2 to produce methanol and water, with the latter product subsequently being electrolyzed to produce oxygen and return hydrogen feedstock to the system. The methanol/oxygen bipropellant so produced can be used as either rocket propellant or to feed electrochemical fuel cells to drive rovers or other ground vehicles. The performance of methanol as a rocket fuel is attractive, and its density is high, making vehicle design easier. In the system employed, approximately 20 kg of methanol/oxygen bipropellant are produced for every kilogram of hydrogen imported to Mars, an attractively high leverage ratio. The primary advantage of the MMISPP system however, is its low