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A comment on Starship will attempt a launch this weekend. Parent comment

Re:Starship will attempt a launch this weekend by inglor_cz on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @07:34AM (#38262534)
Orbital refueling is a huge game changer. Interestingly, a formerly important politician (Senator Richard Shelby) allegedly hated the concept:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/rocket-scientist-say...

There is another thing sets apart Starship from other launch systems: relatively wide availability/manufacturability of its fuel outside of Earth. You won't find kerosene or hypergols on Mars or Ganymedes, but methane can be produced fairly straightforwardly there.

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Re:Starship will attempt a launch this weekend by bryanlarsen on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @09:21AM (#38263593)
Many other rockets work on hydrogen, which is far easier to synthesize than methane.
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Re:Starship will attempt a launch this weekend by inglor_cz on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @09:38AM (#38263784)
Not easier to handle, though. Keeping methane in a tank or moving it across some distance is fairly straightforward, as the problems regarding natural gas storage and transportation were solved a long time ago.

Hydrogen is notoriously tricky to even keep in one place, much less pipe across some distance.

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