Chinese astronauts make rocket fuel and oxygen in space

https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/chinese-astronauts-make-rocket-fuel-and-oxygen-in-space-using-1st-of-its-kind-artificial-photosynthesis

by Teever • 11 months ago

298 136 11 months ago

livescience.com

monster_truck• 11 months ago

This is from January, have there been any updates in the past 7 months?

There is exceptionally little material info in this article and so very much speculation

nashashmi• 11 months ago

Apparently it has been in production since 2015. Why is this the first we are hearing about it?

grues-dinner3• 11 months ago

Chinese scientific progress relatively rarely gets reported on because nearly all science reporting is a push-based system of institutions throwing press releases at publications. The publications don't have the chops to analyse or verify that information, or to go and find interesting research happening on their own, so they mostly stick with uncritically repackaging output from the places they trust.

nosignono3• 11 months ago

Because English language news sources aren't particularly interested in developing the relationships necessary to report on Chinese scientific breakthroughs. It undermines the prevailing media narrative that China is behind and backwater.

Americans don't like the idea that maybe China is actually rocketing past them technologically and infrastructurally, so news doesn't really report on it much.

habibur• 11 months ago

This won't enable perpetual space travel in case anyone thought so.

Rockets need to eject particles to generate force. And to eject 1 kg of fuel, its photo synthesis system has to lose 1 km of mass in one way or another.

The solution is to find a way to generate thrust without rocket fuel ejection.

Buttons840• 11 months ago

Can we "swim" through space? Collect particles from space, add energy, expell them backwards to generate a net thrust.

aspbee555• 11 months ago

no particles needed, we already have ion drive, just need electricity

o11c• 11 months ago

There's a huge density difference if you aren't close to a planet or star.

Solar sails are probably more practical.

grues-dinner3• 11 months ago

That's called a Bussard ramjet: collect hydrogen and fuse it for power to energise the collection mechanism and thrust to overcome the drag. I think the current consensus is that the interstellar medium round these parts is too thin to make it work in deep space.

m4rtink• 11 months ago

Yep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet

Gather interstellar hydrogen, use it to run a fusion engine for propulsion and power. :)

swayvil2• 11 months ago

Maybe we could travel without bodies. Ala Lovecraftian astral travel or whatever. I mean you couldn't ship matter like that but for everything else it might work just fine.

Cthulhu_3• 11 months ago

Astral projection isn't Lovecraftian per se (fhtagn), but it's an interesting thing to ponder from a hypothetical / fictional perspective.

At best we'll be able to send out probes. Maybe, but this still feels science fiction too, we can harness quantum entanglement for long distance instant communication.

kevinmershon• 11 months ago

This is a similar reaction to photosynthesis in plants, which produces glucose instead of rocket fuel.

This is silly, but also begs the sillier question why we aren't bioengineering plants to produce rocket fuel

andrewflnr6• 11 months ago

Why aren't we engineering plants to produce automotive fuel? We ought to at least be able to do diesel.

asdff3• 11 months ago

We do this for some plants. Hybrid palms are used for palm oil production due to the favorable yields and properties compared to parental species. One might ask why there are no cars powered off palm oil seeing as we can readily grow it across the world?

philipkglass2• 11 months ago

Plants have very low sunlight conversion efficiency compared to solar farms. If you need chemical fuel instead of electricity, it would still be more efficient to use solar electricity to turn carbon dioxide and water into simple liquid fuels like methanol (usable in spark ignition engines) or dimethyl ether (usable in diesel engines).

staplung• 11 months ago

Biodiesal is already a thing. Also, we (the US) already blend a portion (about 10%) of corn-derived ethanol to our gasoline. There are problems with it though, one of which is that overall, it probably has a higher carbon footprint (fertilizer, harvesting, processing, etc.) than just not using it.

astrocat• 11 months ago

we already do have plants that produce (sort of) high-energy-density liquids for us. So if you want gas to be as expensive as maple syrup then... sure. :)

dr_dshiv2• 11 months ago

Over 1% of US land is devoted to biofuels. If we replaced those corn fields with solar, it would produce 4x the electricity currently consumed in the US.

QuadmasterXLII2• 11 months ago

We do and call it canola oil - which should give you an idea of whether eating canola oil is a good idea

bparsons• 11 months ago

We do. It is called biodiesel. You can make it from any organic matter.

PaulHoule3• 11 months ago

See https://www.aircela.com/ and many other e-fuel startups, that one makes a very pretty image of a "personal fuel synthesizer" which makes about a gallon of gas a day which is about what my wife and I use.

wombatpm• 11 months ago

Do you want plants you grind up into fuel or are you thinking Niven style Booster Trees?

conradev• 11 months ago

Something like 40% of the corn grown in the US is turned into biofuel:

https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=1057...

8bitsrule• 11 months ago

My guess: (in the US, at least) brains focussed on profits have taken less delight in exploration/invention. (Somewhat similar to what's been happening in science.)

xandrius• 11 months ago

We kind of are but we are also in the process of stopping burning stuff to create energy for ourselves, as usually burning creates CO2.

DanielHB2• 11 months ago

We literally make ethanol from corn and sugar cane. And biodielse from soy.

It doesn't make economic and enviromental sense in most parts of the world (especially corn). In some places they are net-positive on carbon emissions compared to oil-derived gasoline. Tilling the fields, growing, harvesting, processing and transporting often emits more CO2 than the equivalent gasoline produced. Especially the initial tilling of the land to convert it to farmland releases A LOT of CO2 into the atmosphere (this is a one-time thing though).

In the US all (ground vehicle) gasoline sold needs to have 10% ethanol (corn-based), in Brazil it is 20% (sugar cane based). In Brazil almost all cars support 100% ethanol fuel and it is quite common to fuel with ethanol only.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil

The whole bio-fuel industry is a very complex mix of economics (often requires subsidies to make sense), geopolitical (less imported oil), environmental concerns (mass scale farming soil degradation and CO2 emissions derived from it) and logistical (completely different transportation and refining process).

Fun fact ethanol freezes at a fairly high temperature and mixes with water which makes it not ideal for cold climates and boats. It is quite common for unaware boat owners to f-up their engines by buying car-grade fuel-station gasoline in Brazil.

mattashii• 11 months ago

Glucose can be used as a component in solid fuels, you just need to find an oxidizer to mix in.

Alternatively, you can break it down into ethanol, which has been used as liquid rocket fuel since at least the first half of the '40s.

PaulHoule3• 11 months ago

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket

This classic book tells the story of liquid rocket fuel development

https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...

You'd think that you could mix any of a wide range of fuels with a wide range of oxidizers and get a good rocket fuel but it does not really work that way, most combinations are pretty awful, including the ethanol + O2 used in the V2. There was a time when there was interest in "storable" liquid propellants but once solid propellants reached this level of maturity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman

those were obsolete.

It is hard to beat H2+oxygen or hydrocarbons+oxygen if you pick the right hydrocarbons (rocket kerosene isn't quite the kerosene you use in a lamp)

I'm not sure if ethylene is really that good of a rocket fuel. In the context of a space economy I see it as a "reactive carbon" substance which is easy to make other things out of, say,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene

in the sense that glucose is reactive carbon you can build structural carbohydrates and all sorts of biological molecules out of. There is talk about SpaceX establishing a methane economy on Mars, methane is definitely an easy to synthesize rocket fuel but it not very reactive and not on the path to making other things you might want.

LargoLasskhyfv4• 11 months ago

Reminds me of "UnkrautEx und Puderzucker".

Sort of early 'RoundUp' with high contents of Sodium chlorate combined with powdered sugar. Very dangerous! But fun :-)

Even more fun, but potentially fatal very fast would be Potassium chlorate.

But I've been cautious, and limited myself to selfmade blackpowder mostly, during the times one 'did that' as young boys with toys.

Still have all my fingers, no burn scars, full eyesight & hearing, though. Phew! :-)

awesome_dude2• 11 months ago

Lichens!

Cyanobacteria that can exist in the vacuum of space AND produce oxygen... just not fast enough to be useful, but one day, a big hairy space ship will rule the universe!

See: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1acqxml/lichen_survi...

14• 11 months ago

Because we are too busy making ethanol to add to gasoline so that motorcycle mechanics and small engine mechanics are guaranteed to have unlimited work every spring.

In a more serious response almost all questions like yours can boil down to economics. You can be certain if there is a way make something at a profit someone will jump in and make it happen. If there is no money in it you can expect that even if it is more environmentally friendly it may be part of research but not going to be implemented unless it becomes profitable.

sneak• 11 months ago

FYI “begs the question” does not mean “raises the question”.

elefanten• 11 months ago

Classically it doesn't, but colloquially it does. The dreaded "language changes and evolves" defense that frustrates pedants everywhere.

(I say this in the friendly spirit of a long-defeated fellow pedant who has hit people with your exact comment for decades)

Ekaros• 11 months ago

Depending on system rocket fuel is not that choosy. Oxidiser is harder part, otherwise depending type of engine pretty much anything goes. Ofc, some do have better mass ratios, but in space that is less of concern.

iancmceachern• 11 months ago

We are, there has been lots of work on algae biofuels, etc

adrian_b• 11 months ago

The difficult part done by plants is synthesizing complex organic molecules that can be used as food.

For now and the near future there are no ways of doing that part otherwise than by using living plants or fungi, possibly with genome modifications.

The part with capturing solar light and splitting water and reducing carbon dioxide to a very simple carbon compound can be done with artificial means much more efficiently than in plants, so there is little doubt that this will become commonly used in the near future.

Ethylene or methane are good for fuel or for making plastic, but when a slightly more complex organic substance were made, e.g. glycine or glycerol, that could be used to feed a culture of fungi, which could be used to make human food, especially if genetically-modified to make higher quality proteins.

fiftyacorn• 11 months ago

Sounds like Day of the Triffids

JumpCrisscross2• 11 months ago

why we aren't bioengineering plants to produce rocket fuel

Plants are self-assembling albeit inefficient photosynthesises.

On earth, where they can harvest their carbon in situ, that inefficiency outweighed by us not having to make them. Their main components by wet and dry mass, carbon and oxygen, are dissolved in atmosphere. In space, on the other hand, the major cost is lifting. (Even earth, farming quickly becomes uneconomical when just water costs balloon.)

In space you’re moving all the mass the plant is built out of at exorbitant cost. At that point, you might as well just assemble the machinery on the ground and get the efficiency boost.

I can only see an exception arising if lifting costs start scaling with volume more than mass, i.e. post chemical rocketry, at which point sending up compacted carbon and water and letting plants assemble themselves in space makes more sense than sending up panels and tiny labs. (That or you’re going somewhere with accessible carbon and/or oxygen.)

mapt2• 11 months ago

By far the most credible case for asteroid mining is water & carbon compounds. A little H, O, and C, and you have conventional hydrocarbon propellant + LOX.

I don't know what the actual claim that is being made here is; This seems to redirect ultimately to a lay press release from a state space agency rather than to a scientific paper. There do seem to be a number of competing articles on electrochemical synthesis of ethylene from CO2.

https://www.carboncapturejournal.com/news/artificial-photsyn...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-50522-7

https://lanzatech.com/lanzatech-produces-ethylene-from-co2-c...

https://techport.nasa.gov/projects/93860

https://news.umich.edu/in-step-toward-solar-fuels-durable-ar...

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/717409

Cthulhu_3• 11 months ago

To be a pedantic armchair non-expert internet commenter, let plants rot and they produce methane which can in my head be used as rocket fuel. Also corn and other plants to ethanol.

sharpshadow2• 11 months ago

In my opinion there is still a lot to discover around the manipulation of the environment of plants. Generally speaking its the milieu which has the primary effect on life. Genetic manipulation and environment settings should be applied together to find very specific appliances.

Very intriguing is the Primeval Code[0] in which plants and other life exposed to electrostatic fields changed significantly down to the genome.

Would be very interesting which other artificial settings and compositions affect life in which ways.

0. https://rexresearch.com/ebner2/BurginDerUrzeitCode.pdf

freeopinion• 11 months ago

Ah, all the great memories of making oxygen in the chem lab. Back when we used to rip the protons, neutrons, and electrons out of Flourine atoms and smash them into Nitrogen atoms until the N turned into O. Back when we made things the old-fashioned way.

animitronix• 11 months ago

Can America please start doing cool shit again like this instead of eating ourselves alive?

Chinese astronauts make rocket fuel and oxygen in space

Related Stories