Usually when an alchemist shows up promising to turn rocks into gold, you should run the other way. Sure, rocket fuel isn’t gold, but on the moon it’s worth more than its weight in the yellow stuff. So there would be reason to be skeptical if this “Blue Alchemist” was actually an alchemist, and not a chemical reactor under development by the Blue Origin corporation.
The chemistry in question is quite simple, really: take moon dust, which is rich in aluminum silicate minerals, and melt the stuff. Then it’s just a matter of electrolysis to split the elements, collecting the gaseous oxygen for use in your rockets. So: moon dust to air and metals, just add power. Lots and lots of power.
Melting rock takes a lot of temperature, and the molten rock doesn’t electrolyse quite as easily as the water we’re more familiar with splitting. Still, it’s very doable; this is how aluminum is produced on Earth, though notably not from the sorts of minerals you find in moon dust. Given the image accompanying the press release, perhaps on the moon the old expression will be modified to “make oxygen while the sun shines”.
Hackaday wasn’t around to write about it, but forward-looking researchers at NASA, expecting just such a chemical reactor to be developed someday, proposed an Aluminum/Liquid Oxygen slurry monopropellant rocket back in the 1990s.
That’s not likely to be flying any time soon, but of course even with the Methalox rockets in vogue these days, there are appreciable cost savings to leaving your oxygen and home. And we’re not biologists, but maybe Astronauts would like to breathe some of this oxygen stuff? We’ve heard it’s good for your health.
There was a very good treatment of making fuel from natural resources on Mars, as documented in the very fine book “The Case For Mars” by Robert Zubrin.
https://tinyurl.com/2eu6wu3e
Aluminum-liquid oxygen slurry sounds like it should belong on the list of “Things I won’t work with”
It’s thermite without the middle man and they’re passing the savings on to you!
or
Filling for the world’s most exciting Etch-A-Sketch
You’d think so, but I guess the aluminum powder passivizes the same way the walls of the aluminum tanks do. It’s apparently stable.
I’m certainly not going to stand next to the test stand, though.
A hybrid motor that pours liquid oxygen through an aluminum honeycomb was also proposed, but that’s much less exciting.
The oxide layer on the Al particles is quite good at passivating the surface. The shuttle’s boosters contained 16% aluminum and 12% PBAN, which is acidic enough to be a problem for other metals.
Personal experience: I’ve made solid propellant with PBAN as the binder, and aluminum was never a problem. For magnesium and zinc, however, the oxide layer isn’t sufficient to prevent a rapid reaction with PBAN.
Point being that the oxide layer on aluminum may be sufficient to prevent a runaway reaction. Nonetheless I will not be anywhere near the “uh-oh” radius if something goes south. Unlike PBAN and aluminum, Al-LOX has not been tested enough under adverse conditions to satisfy me. If I had to be somewhat close to the motor during preparation and launch, I’d be wearing Depends. The extra-absorbent kind.
How to make LOX at home with just a tank of liquid Nitrogen, an old school glass thermos, a deep freeze, a 1 foot length of 1 inch ID copper tubing (substitute Napoleonic unit parts if needed) and a N2 tank fitting:
Prechill thermos in freezer.
Attach the copper tube to the tank fitting so the tube is angled downward at about a 45 degree angle, no regulator or any of that safety BS.
Secure the nitrogen tank to wall, there will be thrust.
Put the thermos under the lowest point of the tube but not directly front of the opening.
Ventilate room well.
Open the valve on the tank so it’s blasting but tank not yet flying through brick walls.
Observe liquid air condensing on outside of tube, running down and dripping into thermos.
Wait for thermos to chill then fill, until you have about 20x the amount of LOX you need.
Close tank valve.
Remove tube fitting, save for next use.
Put thermos full of liquid air in deep freeze.
Wait about 2 weeks.
The remaining liquid in the thermos is LOX.
Add ground aluminum at your discretion.
Don’t forget to deny everything.
LOX is a controlled substance in the USA.
Don’t do any of the things described in this post.
Oxygen is good for your health? Your obviously not up with the latest healthcare advice. Everyone knows oxygen now comes under the catagory of “sciencey stuff” which clearly causes cancerous pre-natal autism in brain deficient humans.
I do wish the “Bobby BrainWorm Band with opening act The Quack Doctors” had stayed touring on the Indie circuit.
My father published on obtaining oxygen from lunar rock in the 60s and 70s. I saw some of his experimental rig as a child. He used an elliptic mirror to focus the energy from some kind of hot light source onto a piece of basalt. Here’s a link to the abstract of one of his later papers on extracting oxygen from lunar rock: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780120373116500107?via%3Dihub
Here’s a link to an earlier paper (pdf file): https://rruff.geo.arizona.edu/doclib/MinMag/Volume_37/37-289-568.pdf
Thanks for the info. I knew there was a great deal of previous work backing up Blue Origin’s effort, but didn’t have references to hand.
I wonder how many kW worth of solar panels can the current rockets get to Mars.
I mean that would be the first step to colonising (or at least building stuff on) another planet/moon right? A local power source that can power all your building equipment and stuff
Then again I don’t suppose using them will be as simple as putting them on the ground and connecting them in series
Personally, I’d keep them in orbit and just transmit power to the surface in the form of microwaves. Slightly less dust accumulation that way, and if you’ve got fast hands it’s an easy way to warm up your astronaut burritos quickly.
They have squirrels padalling small bycicles with tiny dynamos, ripping electron after electron to charge a supercapacitor that will power the furnance.
You ask what they’ll with all the helium 3 thats on the moon? Tell ya the secret: it will be pumped in the squirrels room, the squirrels will go squeecking ultrasound and laughing they’ll triple the power production.
There is only one small problem. How do you feed the squirrels?
With all the nuts in Mars Bars.
I need one of those bikes for my squirrels soon to be wintering under my roof eave.
First step, send a bunch of small nuclear power plants to the moon/mars for round the clock steady state power. Do your build out from there.
Turn the mass of the moon into energy…what could go wrong?