this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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Futurology
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Submission Statement
They are due to unveil the hydrogen propulsion system next week. I wonder who would be customers for this. Liquid hydrogen is much more expensive as a fuel than regular aviation fuel. Not needing runways will give it some use cases. Though how are they going to refuel with liquid hydrogen at places that don't have runways?
I imagine it would also be pretty inconvenient. Even space agencies don't like working with it, since it has to be way colder than even liquid nitrogen, and will boil off if you fuel up too early.
Hydrogen will probably get cheaper in the coming years as it becomes more popular as an alternative renewable fuel. You can make it from water, but you need a lot of electricity. You could perhaps generate it at scale using excess electricity from the grid during times of low demand.
However, most hydrogen these days is made from natural gas so unless there's a supply chain change this jet will probably be worse for the environment than a regular one (since vertical takeoff/landing usually uses a heap of fuel).
Don't forget blue hydrogen. That would be a good medium-term option.
The runway thing is kind of a good point. If you can move a literal ton of hydrogen somewhere you can afford a bit of paving. It's has to be the hardest ordinary material to move around; it's so low-density and diffuses through everything.
If you can buy this thing you can afford your own hydrogen fuel tanks.
Any spaceport that launches hydrogen-fueled rockets is equipped to store and handle liquid hydrogen, and not every spaceport has a runway. But overall, there are far fewer spaceports than there are runways, so I'm not sure how this is an advantage in general...