On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Randall Clague wrote:
> You're daft man. Launch it as water ice, melt it, and split it with
> solar power wherever you need hydrogen.
Unfortunately, solar power in orbit is expensive, and you need an almighty
boatload of energy to split water. It's not something you do on demand
unless you've got a solar power satellite handy; you have to plan far
ahead to split sizable amounts of water with reasonable amounts of power.
NASA looked at this for SEI, and concluded that supplying one lunar
mission a year with LOX/LH2 required a 400kW electrolysis plant running
continuously in LEO.
The practical way to ship hydrogen at room temperature is probably as a
metal hydride or related compound. There are hydrides which have slightly
more hydrogen per kilogram than water does, *and*, more important, will
decompose on mild heating.
Henry Spencer
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