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Air Force & NASA Fire Off Green Rocket
coondoggie writes "NASA and the Air Force said today they had successfully launched a 9-ft. rocket 1,300 feet into the sky, powered by aluminum powder and water ice. This combination of fuel elements, referred to as ALICE, has the potential to replace some liquid or solid propellants. The technology is being developed at Purdue University and Pennsylvania State University. Aside from its environmental benefiits, ALICE has the advantage that it could be manufactured in far-away places, such as the moon or Mars, instead of being transported to distant horizons at great cost, researchers said."
right, because aluminium is in such short supply, and the survival of the human race on earth depends on it.
weinersmith
Who cares so much if it's "green"? How many of these do we launch a year - that might be what maybe 1/100 of a minute of smog eminating from California? Now... if we can easily manufacture these off earth, THAT should be the headline, IMHO.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
What if this happened in your lifetime...and you're not part of the crew?
All this talk about this and that going "green" is just puff; no real meaning beyond getting PR and more funding.
I don't see how any rocket can be considered "green" considering most all of the environmental impact is not from firing the rocket, but is from building it.
Ending all wars and stabilizing human population would go far further towards safeguarding the environment than all these feel-good "green" initiatives.
Ron
Snap! I accidentally my entire lunch laughing at that one.
The real goal is being able to build it easily on other planets. Although I don't know what they're thinking when they mention the moon. We're yet to find ice on the moon. Hydrogen is exceedingly rare on the lunar surface.
Dear Lord: I don't want to go back to college, so please help me be sexy. Amen.
All these gigantic federal government agencies commonly put on displays like this to look good in public and to make the next budget request go smoother. Truth is, any aerospace project run by the government costs so many resources that it's kind of irrelevent whether it's environmentally friendly or not. If you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on something, your actions cause the labor of thousands of people, all of whom will burn up all kinds of resources to get the job done. It doesn't really matter what the resulting rocket burns - the pollution from all the machinery and coal power plants and pickup trucks and countless other things is far greater.
The government needs to do what private industry can't : research a cost effective vehicle for accessing space. Whether that be an elevator, a bank of lasers, a gigantic railgun, or a factory in Russia mass producing simple rockets, we need something drastically better than the current crap. Until something is done about the stupendous costs of rockets, it's pointless to even discuss trips to far off planets and other big manned expeditions.
Well, the radium and phosphorus would certainly ensure that the rocket stays "green" (even in the dark)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Not really. The only proven effective method of stabilizing population is to give women the choice over whether to have children. Happily, this is also the Right Thing To Do. Sometimes the universe throws you a bone.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Ok, then let's be consistent:
Helum, Lithum, Beryllum, Sodum, Magnesum, Aluminum, Potassum, Calcum, Scandum, Titanum, Vanadum, Chromum, Gallum, Germanum, Selenum, Rubidum, Strontum, Yttrum, Zirconum, ah, who needs more than 40 protons.
My UID is prime. Hah!