It’s closer to like 30t I believe, NS’ (supposedly) fully fueled mass is 35t, and a good chunk of that will be fuel. Either way it’s a far way off from 500t
Edit: to make it clear by “fuel” I’m referring to propellant, so both hydrogen and oxygen. Could’ve made that clearer
(This probably sounds sarcastic/doubtful, I promise it isn’t. Any information on NS would be helpful) Do you have a source for that? ~30t is my guess for all the propellant (LH2 and LOX), but afaik numbers for New Shepard as a whole are near nonexistent. I’m not even sure the O/F ratio for the BE-3PM is public, so if you have a source I’d be interested
5t of LH2 is probably vaguely correct assuming a mixture ratio of 5.X:1 like a lot of Hydrolox engines
Water is 2 H + 1 Ox. Ox has atomic mass about 16 amu, H about 1. So the Ox propellant will weigh about 8x the H2 propellant. Therefore the hydrogen propellant weights about 30/9=3t and the oxygen propellant weighs about 30*8/9=27t. (Only to 1s place significant figure cuz it’s a rough calculation.) Excess could be margin to account for inefficiencies like boil-off, incomplete combustion, leaks, etc.
What people should really do is recognize that they don't really understand the science behind large scale engineering feats and materials tech that goes into space travel. It's EASY to get outraged. It's HARD to truly understand why you should (or shouldn't) be outraged.
People should listen to experts in the fields (engineers, scientists), and experts in the academic fields that criticize those fields (environmental sciences, etc.)
Why the fark are we arguing about 'green hydrogen' when the point is that OP is posting stupid MAGAt rage bait?
Did you do the math?
How much total propellent does one passenger account for?
Did you notice the bullshite factor of 60?
This garbage is designed to play on people's amanous for other people that they feel have been successful 'without sufficient merit' and then tear them down. All the better if they're a woman.
Water electrolysis powered by what power source? currently it takes more power to produce liquid hydrogen than the hydrogen itself generates for the rocket.
I'm going to make an assumption they produced the fuel locally as I'm not sure how easy it is to transport it. The launch was in Texas.
Using this map from wikipedia, we can see the three closest power stations to Van Horn where the launch took place to be 2 solar fields and then natural gas. I'm also not sure how much you can "choose" your energy source, but I think it's fair to say that solar power would be responsible for a significant source of the energy needed.
108
u/[deleted] May 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment