America has more new spaceships on the way

Re:America has more new spaceships on the way by twic on Monday June 01, 2020 @02:38PM (#23382048)

Collect a water-ice asteroid or cometary nucleus or some such, park it in orbit, and electrolyse it.

I'm not aware of a less outlandish plan!

Now, if you want oxidiser, you could skim air off the top of the earth's atmosphere. I have no idea if that has been considered outside of science fiction [1], though.

[1] okay, here they're skimming nitrogen, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_Angels_(science_fiction...

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Re:America has more new spaceships on the way by Turing_Machine on Monday June 01, 2020 @02:49PM (#23382199)

If you were electrolyzing water ice, wouldn't you get both hydrogen (fuel) and oxygen (oxidizer), by definition?

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Re:America has more new spaceships on the way by twic on Monday June 01, 2020 @03:11PM (#23382438)

Yes. But if you only wanted oxidiser, you could skip the awkward "capture a cometary nucleus" step by scooping air. Since oxygen is much heavier than hydrogen, this could save you a lot in mass launched from the Earth.

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Re:America has more new spaceships on the way by m4rtink on Monday June 01, 2020 @08:02PM (#23385584)

Also if you had enough power (solar or possibly nuclear) you could use the captured gases directly for slightly inefficient propulsion by heating them NERVA style or accelerating them by a modifiedion engine.

I remember some concepts for very low altitude satellites that compensate for drag by running a solar powered ion ramjet. :)

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