Reaching to the sky to find fuel for rockets

SAN ANTONIO — Elon Musk needs methane to launch his Starship into orbit from South Texas in early 2022. He’s looking to the atmosphere to get it.

To get through an orbital test phase beginning soon and then on to the moon and Mars in coming years, Musk has been searching for supplies of the hydrocarbon, which is found in natural gas. It’s why he said earlier this year that he wants to drill for gas near his SpaceX launch site at Boca Chica.

And it’s at least partly why he now wants to create a program to remove carbon dioxide from the Earth’s atmosphere.

“SpaceX is starting a program to take CO2 out of atmosphere & turn it into rocket fuel,” Musk, the company’s founder and CEO, tweeted recently. “Please join if interested.”

He added: The process “will also be important for Mars.”

Thousands of tons of methane are needed for each Starship launch, and SpaceX is planning dozens for 2022.

Its Super Heavy rocket’s 32 massive Raptor engines run on methalox, a fuel cocktail of super-cooled liquid methane and oxygen. At launch, the rocket will be filled with about 6.8 million pounds of the mixture.

A supply of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would provide SpaceX with a raw material for methane.

In San Antonio, Eloy Flores, a research scientist in the chemical engineering department at Southwest Research Institute, said Musk apparently switched from kerosene to methane as the Starship’s fuel “because of its simplicity and efficiency” for reusable engine operations — a key to SpaceX’s plans.

Earlier this year, Musk announced a $100 million Carbon Removal XPrize challenge to generate ideas from inventors to develop ways to capture and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or oceans.

“Ultimately, the goal here is to take the CO2 out of the atmosphere to reduce climate change and if we can turn the CO2 into fuel, it can be burned and we recycle that CO2,” Flores said. “Not all of it, but enough of it so the net emission is lower than it would’ve been.”

Musk’s idea to convert carbon dioxide into fuel isn’t new.

Flores manages labs here using carbon capture technology “not for methane but for jet fuels and gasolines,” he said. “There are processes that have been proven to convert CO2 to methane.”

There’s a possible problem: “If you end up emitting more CO2 when you produce the fuel, then you’re still a net CO2 producer.” A possible solution: “Using renewable energies like solar and wind to convert CO2 into another form like methane, then it’s possible you could have a net reduction in emissions.”

Flores said using methane as fuel is “ideal” for Musk’s plans for Mars. He described how the SpaceX CEO wants to use the Sabatier reaction — a chemical process — to synthesize methane from the red planet’s atmospheric carbon dioxide and subsurface water. The process would help meet the Starship’s refueling needs to get back to Earth. eric.killelea@express-news.net