I wonder about it performance on Mars, but that gives an idea.
Also, I wonder what its gas diffusion rates are for air @ SL and for CO2 at 6
millibars...
George William Herbert
Sent from my iPhone
On Dec 24, 2015, at 11:44 AM, Jonathan Goff <jongoff@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Henry,
One other point (emphasis added to your original quote):
On Thu, Dec 24, 2015 at 12:34 PM, Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
The one big win is if you eventually want to refuel somewhere off Earth, in
which case it's a lot easier to make methane than anything resembling
kerosene. (Making hydrogen is easier yet -- indeed, making methane may
involve that as an intermediate step -- but it's much harder to store, which
is important since fuel-making is likely to be slow and you'll have to
accumulate fuel for a while. It's especially hard to store if you're in an
environment, like say the surface of Mars, where there's enough atmosphere
to ruin the effectiveness of MLI.)
Quest Thermal has demonstrated an MLI type insulation with a lightweight
polyimide vacuum shell around it, so it can function just fine in an
atmosphere. I think it's only a little bit heavier per unit surface area than
SOFI foam insulation, but much better, and once you're in vacuum the MLI
spacers expand to separate the layers better, giving you really good MLI
insulation capabilities.
http://www.questthermal.com/products/load-responsive-mli
~Jon