I feel like we are far from the end of the in space propellant wars.
Chemical is not my specialty but as far as I can see:
- No-one wants to deal with hydrazine anymore, and people are afraid it
will get banned in the EU
- N2O just works, compared to more exotic stuff that is difficult to source
and get reliable.
- The performances are good enough for LEO commercial applications where
the market is
As for EP propellant the main issue of metallic propellant is that it has
only really been demonstrated on specific thruster technologies that are
not very good at providing the high thrust to power ratio people want for
commercial applications (too high Isp). For high profile and high cost
science or GEO missions xenon is still going to stay king for a while. What
is nonsense is to say that your thruster is "propellant agnostic" like some
companies are trying to market.
On Tue, Apr 4, 2023 at 1:50 PM Ben Brockert <wikkit@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Curious if anyone has interesting thoughts on
https://payloadspace.com/transitioning-space-propulsion-to-a-nitrous-based-industry-standard/
For me it plays loose with the truth a bit too much in order to strengthen
its arguments. For example:
“Propellant storage: N2O is a pure chemical compound. It does not demix,
decompose, come out of solution, or crystalize. It does not degrade in any
manner and is, therefore, theoretically infinitely storable.“
Nitrous can be a pure chemical, but industrial nitrous that it talks about
elsewhere in the article isn’t. Nitrous obviously decomposes, it’s a
monopropellant, and exposure to ionizing radiation in space would give a
constant irreversible decomposition rate. It crystallizes if you freeze it
like any chemical will.
In general if nitrous is the best possible storable oxidizer then it
should capture the space storable oxidizer market without needing position
papers.
So far LOX for short duration storable and the angrier nitrogen/oxygen
compounds for longer durations seem unthreatened, but I’ll be glad to see
more attempts at nitrous and peroxide and other oxidizers fly. Metal-based
solar electric seems poised to take a lot of dv from things that would have
been storables in the past.