Hydrogen Fuel Quotes

In other words, a star is a nuclear furnace, burning hydrogen fuel and creating nuclear "ash" in the form of waste helium. A star is also a delicate balancing act between the force of gravity, which tends to crush the star into oblivion, and the nuclear force, which tends to blow the star apart with the force of trillions of hydrogen bombs. A star then matures and ages as it exhausts its nuclear fuel.

I thought I was far enough from the explosion but no, not even close. Chunks of twisted metal bashed my boulder while smaller bits of wreckage rained from above. “Oh, right,” I said. I’d forgotten to account for the other explosive in there: the hydrogen fuel-cell battery. All that hydrogen had met the oxygen at high temperature and they’d had a brief chat.

Not because of the perfect landing, but because he left so much fuel behind. Hundreds of liters of unused hydrazine. Each molecule of hydrazine has four hydrogen atoms in it.

for every kilogram of hydrogen you bring to Mars, you can make thirteen kilograms of fuel. It’s a slow process, though. It takes twenty-four months to fill the tank.

Eventually, however, the star will run out of its hydrogen and other nuclear fuels. Paradoxically, the more fuel a star starts off with, the sooner it runs out. This is because the more massive the star is, the hotter it needs to be to balance its gravitational attraction.

Ethanol is a volatile, flammable, colourless liquid with a slight chemical odour. It is used as an antiseptic, a solvent, in medical wipes and antibacterial formulas because it kills organisms by denaturing their proteins. Ethanol is an important industrial ingredient. Ethanol is a good general purpose solvent and is found in paints, tinctures, markers and personal care products such as perfumes and deodorants. The largest single use of ethanol is as an engine fuel and fuel additive. In other words, we drink, for fun, the same thing we use to make rocket fuel, house paint, anti-septics, solvents, perfumes, and deodorants and to denature, i.e. to take away the natural properties of, or kill, living organisms. Which might make sense on some level if we weren’t a generation of green minded, organic, health-conscious, truth seeking individuals. But we are. We read labels, we shun gluten, dairy, processed foods, and refined sugars. We buy organic, we use natural sunscreen and beauty products. We worry about fluoride in our water, smog in our air, hydrogenated oils in our food, and we debate whether plastic bottles are safe to drink from. We replace toxic cleaning products with Mrs. Myers and homemade vinegar concoctions. We do yoga, we run, we SoulCycle and Fitbit, we go paleo and keto, we juice, we cleanse. We do coffee enemas and steam our yonis, and drink clay and charcoal, and shoot up vitamins, and sit in infrared foil boxes, and hire naturopaths, and shamans, and functional doctors, and we take nootropics and we stress about our telomeres. These are all real words. We are hyper-vigilant about everything we put into our body, everything we do to our body, and we are proud of this. We Instagram how proud we are of this, and we follow Goop and Well+Good, and we drop 40 bucks on an exercise class because there are healing crystals in the floor. The global wellness economy is estimated to be worth $4 trillion. $4 TRILLION DOLLARS. We are on an endless and expensive quest for wellness and vitality and youth. And we drink fucking rocket fuel.

[08:41] MAV: You fucking kidding me? [09:55] HOUSTON: Admittedly, they are very invasive modifications, but they have to be done. The procedure doc we sent has instructions for carrying out each of these steps with tools you have on hand. Also, you’ll need to start electrolyzing water to get the hydrogen for the fuel plant. We’ll send you procedures for that shortly. [09:09] MAV: You’re sending me into space in a convertible. [09:24] HOUSTON: There will be Hab canvas covering the holes. It will provide enough aerodynamics in Mars’s atmosphere. [09:38] MAV: So it’s a ragtop. Much better.

Professor J. B. S. Haldane was one of the most celebrated scientists in Britain. A pioneering and broad-ranging thinker, he developed a mathematical theory of population genetics, predicted that hydrogen-producing windmills would replace fossil fuel, explained nuclear fission, and suffered a perforated eardrum while testing a homemade decompression chamber: “Although one is somewhat deaf,” he wrote, “one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment.

For the Earth, the future lies in fire. In five or so billion years we will have the last nice day on our home planet, then the sun will exhaust its hydrogen fuel and expand into a red giant star. Eventually the sun will set the sky on fire. The oceans will boil and the mountains will melt. The Earth will be engulfed by the sun, and will orbit like a burnt-out cinder within its fiery atmosphere. There is a biblical reference that says, from ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Physicists say, from stardust we came, to stardust we will return.

[08:41] MAV: You fucking kidding me? [09:55] HOUSTON: Admittedly, they are very invasive modifications, but hey have to be done. The procedure doc we sent has instructions for carrying out each of these steps with tools you have on hand. Also, you'll need to start electrolyzing water to get the hydrogen for the fuel plant. We'll send you procedures for that shortly. [09:09] MAV: You're sending me into space in a convertible. [09:24] HOUSTON: There will be Hab canvas covering the holes. It will provide enough aerodynamics in Mars's atmosphere. [09:38] MAV: So it's a ragtop. Much better.

Nearly, my friend.” “And what will they burn instead of coal?” “Water,” replied Harding. “Water!” cried Pencroft, “water as fuel for steamers and engines! water to heat water!” “Yes, but water decomposed into its primitive elements,” replied Cyrus Harding, “and decomposed doubtless, by electricity, which will then have become a powerful and manageable force, for all great discoveries, by some inexplicable laws, appear to agree and become complete at the same time. Yes, my friends, I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable. Some day the coalrooms of steamers and the tenders of locomotives will, instead of coal, be stored with these two condensed gases, which will burn in the furnaces with enormous calorific power.

Stars are bright, hot, rotating masses of gas which emit large quantities of light and heat as a result of nuclear reactions. Most newly-forming large stars begin to collapse under the weight of their own gravitational pull. That means that their centres are hotter and denser. When the matter in the centre of the star is sufficiently heated-when it reaches at least 10 million degrees Celsius (18 million degrees Fahrenheit)-nuclear reactions begin.56 What happens inside a star is that with enormous energy (fusion), hydrogen turns into helium. Nuclear fusion takes the particles that make up hydrogen and sticks them together to make helium (1 helium atom is made from 4 hydrogen atoms). In order to make the protons and neutrons in the helium stick together, the atom gives off tremendous energy. The energy released in the process is radiated from the surface of the star as light and heat. When the hydrogen is consumed, the star then begins to burn with helium, in exactly the same way, and heavier elements are formed. These reactions continue until the mass of the star has been consumed. However, since oxygen is not used in these reactions inside stars, the result is not ordinary combustion, such as that takes place when burning a piece of wood. The combustion seen as giant flames in stars does not actually derive from fire. Indeed, burning of just this kind is described in the verse. If one also thinks that the verse refers to a star, its fuel and combustion without fire, then one can also think that it is referring to the emission of light and mode of combustion in stars. (Allah knows best.)

At that moment, remarkably, there was a man in the expansive reactor hall of Unit 4 who witnessed all this.121 Night Shift Chief of the Reactor Shop Valeriy Perevozchenko saw the top of the reactor - a 15-meter-wide disk comprised of 2000 individual metal covers which cap safety valves - begin to jump up and down. He ran. The reactor’s uranium fuel was increasing power exponentially, reaching some 3,000°C, while pressure rose at a rate of 15 atmospheres per second. At precisely 01:23:58, a mere 18 seconds after Akimov pressed the SCRAM button, steam pressure overwhelmed Chernobyl’s incapacitated fourth reactor. A steam explosion blew the 450-ton, 3-meter-thick upper biological shield clear off the reactor before it crashed back down, coming to rest at a steep angle in the raging maw it left behind. The core was exposed.122 A split second later, steam and inrushing air reacted with the fuel’s ruined zirconium cladding to create a volatile mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, which triggered a second, far more powerful explosion.123 Fifty tons of vaporised nuclear fuel were thrown into the atmosphere, destined to be carried away in a poisonous cloud that would spread across most of Europe. The mighty explosion ejected a further 700 tons of radioactive material - mostly graphite - from the periphery of the core, scattering it across an area of a few square kilometers. This included the roofs of the turbine hall, Unit 3, and the ventilation stack it shared with Unit 4, all of which erupted into flames. The reactor fuel’s extreme temperature, combined with air rushing into the gaping hole, ignited the core’s remaining graphite and generated an inferno that burned for weeks. Most lights, windows and electrical systems throughout the severely damaged Unit 4 were blown out, leaving only a smattering of emergency lighting to provide illumination.124

For unknown ages after the explosive outpouring of matter and energy of the Big Bang, the Cosmos was without form. There were no galaxies, no planets, no life. Deep, impenetrable darkness was everywhere, hydrogen atoms in the void. Here and there, denser accumulations of gas were imperceptibly growing, globes of matter were condensing-hydrogen raindrops more massive than suns. Within these globes of gas was kindled the nuclear fire latent in matter. A first generation of stars was born, flooding the Cosmos with light. There were in those times, not yet any planets to receive the light, no living creatures to admire the radiance of the heavens. Deep in the stellar furnaces, the alchemy of nuclear fusion created heavy elements from the ashes of hydrogen burning, the atomic building blocks of future planets and lifeforms. Massive stars soon exhausted their stores of nuclear fuel. Rocked by colossal explosions, they returned most of their substance back into the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the stars, new raindrops made of many elements were forming, later generation of stars being born. Nearby, smaller raindrops grew, bodies far too little to ignite the nuclear fire, droplets in the interstellar mist on their way to form planets. Among them was a small world of stone and iron, the early Earth. Congealing and warming, the Earth released methane, ammonia, water and hydrogen gases that had been trapped within, forming the primitive atmosphere and the first oceans. Starlight from the Sun bathed and warmed the primeval Earth, drove storms, generated lightning and thunder. Volcanoes overflowed with lava. These processes disrupted molecules of the primitive atmosphere; the fragments fell back together into more and more complex forms, which dissolved into the early oceans. After a while the seas achieved the consistency of a warm, dilute soup. Molecules were organized, and complex chemical reactions driven, on the surface of clay. And one day a molecule arose that quite by accident was able to make crude copies of itself out of the other molecules in the broth. As time passed, more elaborate and more accurate self replicating molecules arose. Those combinations best suited to further replication were favored by the sieve of natural selection. Those that copied better produced more copies. And the primitive oceanic broth gradually grew thin as it was consumed by and transformed into complex condensations of self replicating organic molecules. Gradually, imperceptibly, life had begun. Single-celled plants evolved, and life began generating its own food. Photosynthesis transformed the atmosphere. Sex was invented. Once free living forms bonded together to make a complex cell with specialized functions. Chemical receptors evolved, and the Cosmos could taste and smell. One celled organisms evolved into multicellular colonies, elaborating their various parts into specialized organ systems. Eyes and ears evolved, and now the Cosmos could see and hear. Plants and animals discovered that land could support life. Organisms buzzed, crawled, scuttled, lumbered, glided, flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through steaming jungles. Small creatures emerged, born live instead of in hard-shelled containers, with a fluid like the early ocean coursing through their veins. They survived by swiftness and cunning. And then, only a moment ago, some small arboreal animals scampered down from the trees. They became upright and taught themselves the use of tools, domesticated other animals, plants and fire, and devised language. The ash of stellar alchemy was now emerging into consciousness. At an ever-accelerating pace, it invented writing, cities, art and science, and sent spaceships to the planets and the stars. These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution.

Blue Dwarf Stars: these evolve from red dwarf stars after most of their hydrogen fuel is consumed.

Power generation through renewable energy has to be increased from 5 per cent to 28 per cent. Dependence on fossil fuels as primary energy source needs to be brought under 50 per cent from the present 75 per cent. Mandating the use of ethanol from 10 per cent to 20 per cent and the associated public policy for ethanol development by the sugarcane industry is also required. There is also a need for a sustainable biofuel policy for generating 60 million tonnes of biofuel, along with the use of alternate sources such as emulsification, bio-algae and hydrogen fuel.

hold. That’s because each pillar can only function in relationship to the others. The five pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution are (1) shifting to renewable energy; (2) transforming the building stock of every continent into micro–power plants to collect renewable energies on site; (3) deploying hydrogen and other storage technologies in every building and throughout the infrastructure to store intermittent energies; (4) using Internet technology to transform the power grid of every continent into an energy-sharing intergrid that acts just like the Internet (when millions of buildings are generating a small amount of energy locally, on site, they can sell surplus back to the grid and share electricity with their continental neighbors); and (5) transitioning the transport fleet to electric plug-in and fuel cell vehicles that can buy and sell electricity on a smart, continental, interactive power grid.

Hydrogen plays a significant role in hydroprocessing technology, which can be obtained from different sources such as fossil fuels, biomass, and waste.

Water in space would be hugely valuable, far more so the gold, given the cost of hauling water up from Earth. On b moon, water would support life, and using electrolysis (pass ing an electric current through it) water can be broken dow into hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel. The moon could become a filling station outside Earth's deep gravity field that could be used to support a general expansion ins the solar system, just as was dreamed of before Apollo.

The explosion At first the crew thought a meteoroid had hit them. As well as the noise of an explosion, the electrics were going haywire and the attitude control thrusters had fired. In fact, a short circuit had ignited some insulation in the Number 2 oxygen tank of the Service Module. The Service Module provided life support, power and other systems to the Command Module, which held the astronauts as they travelled to and from lunar orbit. The Lunar Module was a separate, though connected, craft that would be used to ferry the men to the lunar surface and back. The fire caused a surge in pressure that ruptured the tank, flooding the fuel cell bay with gaseous oxygen. This surge blew the bolts holding on the outer panel, which tore off free and spun into space, damaging a communications antenna. Contact with Earth was lost for 1.8 seconds, until the system automatically switched to another antenna. The shock also ruptured a line from the Number 1 oxygen tank. Two hours later all of the Service Module’s oxygen supply had leaked into the void. As the Command Module’s fuel cells used oxygen with hydrogen to generate electricity, it could now only run on battery power. The crew had no option but to shut down the Command Module completely and move into the Lunar Module. They would then use this as a ‘lifeboat’ for the journey back to Earth before rejoining the Command Module for re-entry. As for the mission, the Service Module was so badly damaged that a safe return from a lunar landing was impossible. These men would not be landing on the Moon. 320,000 km from home The Flight Director immediately aborted the mission. Now he just had to get the men home. The quickest way would be a Direct Abort trajectory, using the Service Module engine to essentially reverse the craft. But it was too late:

Well,” Harry said, “look at it this way: Suppose you were an intelligent bacterium floating in space, and you came upon one of our communication satellites, in orbit around the Earth. You would think, What a strange, alien object this is, let’s explore it. Suppose you opened it up and crawled inside. You would find it very interesting in there, with lots of huge things to puzzle over. But eventually you might climb into one of the fuel cells, and the hydrogen would kill you. And your last thought would be: This alien device was obviously made to test bacterial intelligence and to kill us if we make a false step. “Now, that would be correct from the standpoint of the dying bacterium. But that wouldn’t be correct at all from the standpoint of the beings who made the satellite. From our point of view, the communications satellite has nothing to do with intelligent bacteria. We don’t even know that there are intelligent bacteria out there. We’re just trying to communicate, and we’ve made what we consider a quite ordinary device to do it.

Before engineers and scientists had acquired experience with large quantities of liquid hydrogen, they were fearful of its explosive properties. Now, though, after several decades of working with it in laboratories and in rocketry, they've concluded that it's less dangerous than gasoline or jet fuel. In the crash of a hydrogen-fueled aircraft, the hydrogen would tend to rise very quickly because of its light weight. Though it would certainly burn, the flames and heat would be high in the air. Ordinary jet fuel stays on the ground as a liquid, soaks the clothing of crash victims, and burns them at ground level.

I found certain persuasive factors. A sedentary job, because his musculature was slack, his posture poor, flabby buttocks. Slightly rough hands, a fair bit of old diesel fuel ingrained in the skin. Also traces of old diesel fuel on the soles of his shoes. Internally, a poor diet, high in fat, plus a bit too much hydrogen sulfide in the blood gases and the tissues. This guy spent his life on the road, sniffing other people’s catalytic converters. I make him a truck driver, because of the diesel fuel.

Stone went through two more corrections, and five sharp braking maneuvers. Then, maybe half a mile from the booster, he took the Apollo on a short, angular inspection sweep. The reaction control systems bit sharply, rattling York against her restraint. York watched the cluster roll with silent grace past her window. The booster cluster was squat, pregnant with fuel. Its heart was a fat MS-II booster, a Saturn second stage, modified to serve as an orbital injector. Fixed to the front of the MS-II was an MS-IVB, a modified Saturn third stage, a narrower cylinder. To either side of the MS-II were fixed the two External Tanks, fat, silvery cylinders as long and as wide as the MS-II stage itself. The supplementary tanks carried more than two million pounds of liquid oxygen and hydrogen, propellant Ares would need to break clear of Earth orbit. The MS-II and its tanks looked like three fat sausages, side by side, with the slimmer pencil shape of the MS-IVB protruding from the center. The rest of the Ares stack—the Mission Module, MEM, and Apollo—would be docked onto the front of the MS-IVB to complete the assembly of the first Mars ship, a needle well over three hundred feet long.

A metallic hydrogen rocket!” she explained. “We reached 995,000 kilometers per hour after escaping Earth’s gravity and still had enough fuel to decelerate before reaching the new Port of Entry. You were right about the G-forces, by the way

Actions Summary The following list of new institutions, policies and actions is my best effort at envisaging what is required for Australia to survive the climate emergency. • A National Target and Plan for 95% or more of electricity to be supplied by renewables by 2030. • State plans to electrify all transport, beginning with the swift retirement of non-electric buses and including a plan for 50% of all new car sales to be EVs by 2030. • Implement planned changes to how we work and live so as to minimise unnecessary travel. • A plan for clean hydrogen to replace bunker fuel in shipping. • A plan for the adoption of e-fuels for aviation, with an aim to have all domestic flights running on e-fuel by 2030. • A National Commission for Climate Adaptation, with a Coastal Defence Fund and a Commission for Primary Production operating under its umbrella. • A National Initiative on Drawdown Innovation to provide leadership in early stage research and fund some on-ground projects. • The Federal Government to help convene a Global Working Group on Geoengineering.

There was too much to gamble on in space. Fuel, for one thing. Men had experimented with fuel for ten years now and still the only thing they had was a combination of liquid oxygen and gasoline. They had tried liquid hydrogen but that had proved too cold, too difficult to confine, treacherous to handle, too bulky because of its low density. Liquid oxygen could be put under pressure, condensed into little space. It was safe to handle, safe until it combined with gasoline and then it was sheer death to anything that got within its reach. Of course, there had been some improvements. Better handling of the fuel, for instance. Combustion chambers stood up better now because they were designed better. Feed lines didn't freeze so readily now as when the first coffins took to space. Rocket motors were more efficient, but still cranky.

While a star is on the main sequence, it makes only helium. A star leaves the main sequence when it exhausts the supply of available hydrogen in its core. The post-main sequence fate of the star, and the range of elements produced, depends on the mass of the star. The lowest mass M stars, roughly below .2 Solar masses, are well mixed and can always bring hydrogen from outer layers to the core to sustain fusion. Such stars become gradually more luminous over trillions of years as they convert their hydrogen into helium, until they exhaust their fuel and fade away as white dwarf stars. White dwarf stars are no longer producing energy by fusion. Because of contraction, their surface temperatures are high (hence their bluish-white colour), but they have low luminosity because they are very small. White dwarfs are a common form of stellar remnant. All white dwarfs eventually cool down and go dark, but this process takes many times the current age of the Universe.

We read labels. We shun gluten, dairy, processed foods, and refined sugars. We buy organic. We use natural sunscreens and beauty products. We worry about fluoride in our water, smog in our air, hydrogenated oils in our food, and we debate whether plastic bottles are safe to drink from. We replace toxic cleaning products with Mrs. Meyer’s and homemade vinegar concoctions. We do yoga, we run, we SoulCycle and Fitbit, we go paleo and keto, we juice, we cleanse. We do coffee enemas and steam our yonis and drink clay and charcoal and shoot up vitamins and sit in infrared foil boxes and hire naturopaths and shamans and functional doctors and we take nootropics, and we stress about our telomeres (these are all real words). We are hypervigilant about everything we put into our body, everything we do to our body. And we are proud of this. We Instagram how proud we are of this and follow Goop and Well + Good and drop forty bucks on an exercise class because there are healing crystals in the floor. The global wellness economy is estimated to be worth four trillion dollars. Four trillion dollars. We are on an endless and expensive quest for wellness and vitality and youth. And we drink fucking rocket fuel.

2011, I led the Department of Energy’s Quadrennial Technology Review to develop strategies for government support of emerging clean energy technologies. In one town hall meeting, I faced advocates for four different vehicle technologies—internal combustion engines powered by biofuels, compressed natural gas, hydrogen-powered fuel cells, and battery-powered plug-ins. Each of them believed that their technology was the optimal vision for the future, and that all the government had to do was support the development of the appropriate fueling infrastructure. When I reminded them that the country could probably deploy no more than two new fueling technologies at scale, a squabble ensued. There are several reasons I believe that electricity will fuel the passenger vehicles of the future, but one of them is that the existing electrical grid is a good start on the fueling infrastructure. If a widespread transition to plug-in electric cars does come about, systems thinking will be even more important as the electrical and transportation systems would have to work together to accommodate charging millions of vehicles.

It is well within the capabilities of current technology to create a stratospheric haze via any of a number of methods, including additives to jet fuel or artillery shells that disperse the gas hydrogen sulfide (H2S, which smells like rotten eggs) at high altitude. This would not be a onetime exercise: the haze would have to be refreshed constantly, as the particles settle out over a year or two. The amount of sulfur that would have to be added to the stratosphere each year would be only about one-tenth of that humans currently emit at much lower altitudes, so direct health impacts would be minimal. And projected costs are low enough that a small nation or even a single wealthy individual could carry out the entire project themselves.

In today’s market, consumers often buy the largest car they might need for a family vacation and use it for all purposes, regardless of whether a smaller car might be advantageous for shorter trips or where parking is limited. In a digital shared-ride system, more fuel-efficient vehicles, including electric and hydrogen vehicles, might become the preferred-choice winners for short trips. In this case, a transition to alternative fuels could be accomplished with the construction of fewer fueling stations.

In a final energy comeuppance, I came to regret leaving fusion out of my nuclear chapter. Like most, I figured it was too good to be possible—zero mining (the fuel is hydrogen), zero greenhouse gases, zero waste stream, zero meltdown capability, zero weaponization.

Now, what is jet fuel? That depends. A turbojet has a remarkably undiscriminating appetite, and will run, or can be made to run, on just about anything that will burn and can be made to flow, from coal dust to hydrogen.

Stars burn as long as they have available hydrogen—their fuel—then die out. The remaining material is no longer supported by the pressure of the heat and collapses under its own weight. When this happens to a large enough star, the weight is so strong that matter is squashed down to an enormous degree, and space curves so intensely as to plunge down into an actual hole. A black hole.

Just as oil refineries convert crude oil into products like gasoline, jet fuel, and asphalt, so do solar refineries convert hydrogen into liquid fuels for vehicles, ships, and aircraft and into a whole range of other products, from fertilizer to plastics.

Someone’s gotta do it. No one’s gonna do it. So I’ll do it. Your honor, I rise in defense of drunken astronauts. You’ve all heard the reports, delivered in scandalized tones on the evening news or as guaranteed punch lines for the late-night comics, that at least two astronauts had alcohol in their systems before flights. A stern and sober NASA has assured an anxious nation that this matter, uncovered by a NASA-commissioned study, will be thoroughly looked into and appropriately dealt with. To which I say: Come off it. I know NASA has to get grim and do the responsible thing, but as counsel for the defense—the only counsel for the defense, as far as I can tell—I place before the jury the following considerations: Have you ever been to the shuttle launchpad? Have you ever seen that beautiful and preposterous thing the astronauts ride? Imagine it’s you sitting on top of a 12-story winged tube bolted to a gigantic canister filled with 2 million liters of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Then picture your own buddies—the “closeout crew”—who met you at the pad, fastened your emergency chute, strapped you into your launch seat, sealed the hatch and waved smiling to you through the window. Having left you lashed to what is the largest bomb on planet Earth, they then proceed 200 feet down the elevator and drive not one, not two, but three miles away to watch as the button is pressed that lights the candle that ignites the fuel that blows you into space. Three miles! That’s how far they calculate they must go to be beyond the radius of incineration should anything go awry on the launchpad on which, I remind you, these insanely brave people are sitting. Would you not want to be a bit soused? Would you be all aflutter if you discovered that a couple of astronauts—out of dozens—were mildly so? I dare say that if the standards of today’s fussy flight surgeons had been applied to pilots showing up for morning duty in the Battle of Britain, the signs in Piccadilly would today be in German. Cut these cowboys some slack. These are not wobbly Northwest Airlines pilots trying to get off the runway and steer through clouds and densely occupied airspace. An ascending space shuttle, I assure you, encounters very little traffic. And for much of liftoff, the astronaut is little more than spam in a can—not pilot but guinea pig. With opposable thumbs, to be sure, yet with only one specific task: to come out alive. And by the time the astronauts get to the part of the journey that requires delicate and skillful maneuvering—docking with the international space station, outdoor plumbing repairs in zero-G—they will long ago have peed the demon rum into their recycling units.

Using the Gibbs free energy stored in ATP, plants unburn carbon dioxide. In a series of choreographed chemical reactions, the free energy in each ATP molecule is released and used to split the carbon and oxygen in atmospheric carbon dioxide and repackage them into molecules known as carbohydrates. This is known as “fixing” carbon and it has two main purposes. First, carbohydrates provide building block materials such as cellulose, which give the plant structure. Second, making carbohydrates doesn’t use up all the energy stored in the ATP. The unused energy is, in effect, transferred into the carbohydrate molecules. They are also chemical springs. This means that carbohydrates themselves become temporary stores of free energy, which can then be used to fuel plant growth and all the other chemical reactions a plant needs to live. This second step in photosynthesis, when the free energy in isolated hydrogen is used to fix carbon, is called the dark reaction.

Hydro treating is a process whereby hydrogen is used to remove impurities. It can remove up to 90% of contaminants such as nitrogen, sulphur, oxygen and metals from liquid petroleum. Without this process, catalytic converters (the emission control devices fitted to all modern Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles) would not work. So, in order to produce the polluting fuels

that we currently use in ICEs, we have to use hydrogen. I find this very disappointing as hydrogen can actually be used to fuel ICEs directly (and only emits water and trace amounts of nitrogen oxide from the exhaust), and as a fuel in fuel cells to generate electricity that powers the vehicle.