Yeah, that is a much better idea for everyday applications, safer too, I'd bet. It could be a good way to store the gas chromatography hydrogen supply for the rover, but alas, would be useless for the booster. It wouldn't surprise me if a really small Mars sample return mission could use it.
Actively cooling it would work much better (i.e. on Planck, they use H2 sorption cryocoolers, passively cooled to 60K.) Also, it wouldn't need a cryocooler. Hmm...imagine recharging your car by plugging it into your fridge
Statistics: Posted by aftercolumbia — Tue Oct 17, 2006 1:04 am
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One thing that you may have noticed is that pressurized hydrogen is very poor in some performance driven applications. In the case of a compressed hydrogen powered car, the tank is 98% dry tank and 2% hydrogen by mass at 10,000psi (www.dynetek.com), making it rather lame for that particular application.
If any of you are interested in liquifying hydrogen, I know how to start. I'm pretty sure there would be some government paperwork type stuff, and cryocoolers are thousands of dollars (a few are small enough to run on household power) and do-it-yourself maintenance for most problems.
It would not be for the faint of heart, as a pretty big investment. It is also characteristically dangerous (i.e.: you stand an excellent chance of blowing your house up if you are not careful.)
Statistics: Posted by aftercolumbia — Sun Oct 15, 2006 11:32 am
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