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Old 09-19-2020, 05:25 AM   #21
Agemegos
 
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Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
Default Re: [Spaceships] Martian “Gas” Station

Checking Wikipedia I see that the atmospheric pressure on Mars is about 0.00628 bar, which means that you would need an envelope 147 times as capacious to contain each ton of hydrogen gas there as you would on Earth near sea level. Envelope area and presumably mass go with the 2/3 power of volume, so about 27.8 times the weight of envelope eating into your load. I don't think airships are plausibly practical where there isn't much air.


There's a point about using hydrogen as a lifting gas that probably belongs in the previous thread. But I don't want to necromantise that, so here. There is a problem with storing and transporting hydrogen gas that, having a very small molecular mass it diffuses rather rapidly. Diffusion going inversely with the square root of molecular mass, losses of hydrogen are 40% more rapid than losses of helium. I don't know how important that would be.
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Last edited by Agemegos; 09-19-2020 at 05:39 AM.
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