Pathetic beyond belief...”green”
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Saw/heard a ‘good one’ yesterday (maybe here on FR) that if newspapers and the Lib magazines REALLY wanted to go green they would just not print an issue or two, so as to save ink, paper and fuel for the delivery trucks.
You must be reading our newspaper (San Jose Mercury News). They’ve cut the amount of ink in the Sunday comics in half — everything is dull, washed out, flat and listless. Never thought it might be a green-wash job.
NASA and the rest of government have been given "green" marching orders. NASA's PR departments, staffed by liberal weenies who have never been inside a lab, much less a launch facility, have to follow their script, even if they don't understand anything about what's really the purpose. Herds of junior Joe Bidens.
Leaving out "green", this is actually a very serious and important effort to do away with the poisonous and hard-to-handle assortment of propellants used in thrusters, APUs, and actuators with something much safer to use, store, and empty.
The holy grail is to make methane work, and then develop the institutional knowledge to make everything that uses it 99.99999% reliable. No hazardous leaks inside the cabin, and with a common fuel, designs could either run off a single common tank, or build in redundancy by being able to switch tanks among devices if a problem arises.
The cherry on top would be to produce this fuel out there, without having to pay the weight penalty of bringing it from earth. Just top off your methane when you're at a convenience store that produces its own propane and methane.
The big boosters will always run on some nastier chemicals to squeeze every bit of energy possible out of it. One you drop the booster, you'd like a worry-free cruise with all your fuel coming from something a lot human-friendlier, and more available.