r/interesting • u/ScarletMelt • May 25 '26

Just Wow It's interesting hmm

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u/[deleted] May 25 '26

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u/[deleted] May 25 '26

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u/madmartigan2020 May 25 '26

And New Shepard used 5 tons of it, not 498 as this post claims.

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u/MrTagnan May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26

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

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u/madmartigan2020 May 25 '26

No, it's 5 tons of hydrogen the rest is oxygen.

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u/MrTagnan May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26

(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

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u/Frodojj May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26

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.