{"id":162606,"date":"2025-09-23T04:32:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T04:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/162606\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T04:32:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T04:32:06","slug":"blue-alchemist-promises-rocket-fuel-from-moon-dust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/162606\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Alchemist Promises Rocket Fuel From Moon Dust"},"content":{"rendered":"

Usually when an alchemist shows up promising to turn rocks into gold, you should run the other way. Sure, rocket fuel isn\u2019t gold, but on the moon it\u2019s worth more than its weight in the yellow stuff. So there would be reason to be skeptical if this \u201cBlue Alchemist\u201d was actually an alchemist, and not a chemical reactor under development by the Blue Origin corporation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The chemistry in question is quite simple, really: take moon dust, which is rich in aluminum silicate minerals, and melt the stuff. Then it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Melting rock takes a lot of temperature, and the molten rock doesn\u2019t electrolyse quite as easily as the water we\u2019re more familiar with<\/a> splitting. Still, it\u2019s very doable; this is how aluminum is produced on Earth,<\/a> 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 \u201cmake oxygen while the sun shines\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hackaday wasn\u2019t 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.<\/a><\/p>\n

That\u2019s not likely to be flying any time soon, but of course even with the Methalox rockets in vogue these days,<\/a> there are appreciable cost savings to leaving your oxygen and home. And we\u2019re not biologists, but maybe Astronauts would like to breathe some of this oxygen stuff? We\u2019ve heard it\u2019s good for your health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Usually when an alchemist shows up promising to turn rocks into gold, you should run the other way.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":{"0":"post-162606","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}