this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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I mean, we’re talking about hydrogen for rockets here which is an absolutely tiny portion of global fuel consumption, wether or not we should be using it for anything else and the costs and scale of doing so is neither here nor there. ( Personally I think hydrogen powered cars are dumb)
In the context of rocket science hydrogen is just a better fuel in absolute terms. It is ~25% more efficient than methane. It’s less dense and thus needs larger tanks, but due to the square cube law that matters less and less the larger the rocket is, so on particularly large rockets like those going to the moon, hydrogen is just flat out better and leads to smaller less costly rockets if done properly.
The problem is that Boeing has been holding nasa hostage and extracting ransom, I don’t think nasa should be reliant on private companies for it’s rockets, they should have a internal department that develops and builds boosters in a similar way to how JPL works with probes and rovers. It would be costly upfront for sure, but would save money in the long run since it would prevent private companies from exploiting public interests in the future.