For Buran it was possible to keep the LOX liquid for the a month long
flight duration, at least in the program goals - obviously not
confirmed with practice.
Alex
On 4/20/23, Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 19 Apr 2023, roxanna Mason wrote:
[Doug] Propane is storable at modest pressure at room temperature, it
was to be the fuel for both main and RCS.
But if propane is stored at LOx temp it's density matches that of
kerosene and with higher performance.
Yeah, but you don't want to have to keep your whole spacecraft at cryo
temperatures -- it's difficult in the inner solar system and virtually
impossible in LEO, and too much hardware isn't built or tested to work
that cold -- and keeping the tanks much colder than the rest of the
spacecraft for many months is tricky. In practice you want fuels that
store at typical satellite-interior temperatures, roughly room
temperature.
Henry