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posted by janrinok on Thursday September 29 2016, @07:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the worth-a-try dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Researchers led by NASA's former chief technologist are hoping to launch a satellite carrying water as the source of its fuel. The team from Cornell University, guided by Mason Peck, want their device to become the first shoebox-sized "CubeSat" to orbit the moon, while demonstrating the potential of water as a source of spacecraft fuel. It's a safe, stable substance that's relatively common even in space, but could also find greater use here on Earth as we search for alternatives to fossil fuels.

Water is a way around this issue because it is essentially an energy carrier rather than a fuel. The Cornell team isn't planning to use water itself as a propellant but to rather use electricity from solar panels to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen and use them as the fuel. The two gasses, when recombined and ignited will burn or explode, giving out the energy that they took in during the splitting process. This combustion of gasses can be used to drive the satellite forward, gaining speed or altering its position in orbit of whichever desired planet or moon is the target.

Solar panels, with high reliability and no moving parts, are ideally suited to operate in zero gravity and in the extreme environments of space, producing current from sunlight and allowing the satellite to actively engage on its mission. Traditionally this energy is stored in batteries. But the Cornell scientists want to use it to create their fuel source by splitting the on-board water.

Source: http://phys.org/news/2016-09-space-rocket-fuel-power-revolution.html


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @02:11PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @02:11PM (#408381)

    Careful there -- tanks have considerable mass themselve. One water tank and two tiny propellant tanks, vs. two big cryo tanks, that's quite possibly a mass savings, if the tiny tanks are small enough. Electrolysis equipment adds mass, so at least initially it's almost certainly a net loss, but it's conceivable that we could refine the electrolysis gear such that it's a win for some missions.

    I expect this to make the most sense on long missions with multiple Oberth maneuvers*, such as a Voyager sequel (but with extra fuel and time replacing the favorable alignment of planets). You use boosters with separate propellants to get to Earth escape; then the spacecraft proper can use sunlight to slowly convert water to propellant while coasting to the next flyby. Burn it all, repeat. Because you need a relatively small portion of the propellant at any one time, your separated propellant tanks are small; because you have months or years to fill them each time, you don't need a huge solar array. (In fact, given a PV array sized for peak power demands when active, you may already have enough spare capacity built in to produce adequate propellant while the vehicle is mostly dormant.)

    *or other occasional burns, but if at least some of them aren't exploiting the Oberth effect, you're probably better off using an ion propulsion setup than a chemical rocket with any sort of fuel supply. Especially for the two most obvious such missions, exploring the asteroid belt, or a gas giant's satellites.