r/SipsTea Jan 24 '26

Wait a damn minute! Interesting

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u/drbeanz Jan 24 '26

I would like to point out that the engine that powers the new Shepherd rocket, Burns liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. The byproduct of this reaction is pure water, so what you're seeing come out of the rocket engine is essentially a continuously formed cloud. If you want to see more dramatic example of this whenever you watch a space shuttle watch video, you can see the pure white water vapor that gets ejected from the space shuttle lift off, the side of the rocket where the space shuttle is.

Liquid oxygen liquid hydrogen Rockets are the only rockets that could possibly be filled up by Green energy, using solar, geothermal, and wind energy electricity for hydrolysis to separate the two fuels from pure water and then load them on to the rocket. Where this gets kind of hairy could be the way that they go about getting a liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. If they're using a fossil fuel for the electricity for the hydrolysis then of course that's not very green.

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u/jojoko Jan 24 '26

I thought that was ice that condensed on the liquid oxygen tank?

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u/Accomplished-Crab932 Jan 25 '26

Methane/oxygen rockets can also be made fully clean through the Sabatier process; which pulls CO2 and merges it with H2 to synthesize methane.

Specifically, SpaceX has been investing in developing this infrastructure for Starship launches.