Quotes About Propellant

Rocket scientists agree that we have about reached the limit of our ability to travel in space using chemical rockets. To achieve anything near the speed of light we will need a new energy source and a new propellant. Nuclear fission is not an option.

This was the fundamental problem with rockets—and no one had ever discovered any alternative for deep-space propulsion. It was just as difficult to lose speed as to acquire it, and carrying the necessary propellant for deceleration did not merely double the difficulty of a mission; it squared it.

Rockets often spiral out of control if you put too much propellant in them.

I don't think a Drop Top can can reach an orbit this high, can it? Dinah asked. Sean's coming alone. It's some kind of special one-passenger model -- the extra mass is being used for propellant. And then what? He just goes to an airlock and knocks on the door? Basically, yes, Larz said. What will they do? Tell him to go away?

Rocket scientists agree that we have about reached the limit of our ability to travel in space using chemical rockets. To achieve anything near the speed of light we will need a new energy source and a new propellant. Nuclear fission is not an option.

Of course, in an ideal world we'd be using mercury as the propellant fluid, but even that has handling problems, not to mention cost and sourcing for the kind of volume we're looking at. So what we've wound up with is a very dense hydrocarbon, it's almost pure crude oil, but the chemists have tweaked the molecular structure so it remains liquid over a huge temperature range.