Hydrazine, N2H4, is commonly used as a propellant on spacecraft.
The ingredients are there on Mars to create a propellant plant "with relative ease," Musk said, to fuel up the craft for the return trip to Earth.
(Both Autoliv and TRW now use a propellant based on guanidine nitrate, a compound that is less sensitive to moisture and temperature swings).
The reusability of ships back and forth between Mars, is another key cost reduction ingredient, and that requires building a propellant plant on Mars, Musk said.
It will also be important to pick the right propellant, be able to refill spaceships in orbit and build a propellant production plant on Mars. .
Mechanistic insights are presented to explain AP's unique ability to modify a propellant burning rate based on particle size alone.
Utilizing a propellant depot to aggregate propellant on orbit, smaller launch vehicles are capable of delivering all of the mass necessary for space exploration.
He said that there would be price improvements over time because of the reusability of the spacecraft, in-orbit refuelling and on-Mars propellant production that would reduce that cost by "orders of magnitude".
This paper introduces new concepts of on-orbit propellant depots for human space exploration based on contingency propellant.
Future spinoff applications include LH2 and liquid oxygen (LOX) tanks for launch vehicles, in-space propulsion systems, on-orbit propellant depots and long duration aircraft.
