You said:-
bluh
PULL ... PULL ... PULL ... PULL ...
Tue Jun 26 09:12:46 2001

> WE HAVE MOMENTUM CAPTAIN !!! I'M NOT SURE WE CAN TURN
> FAST ENOUGH !!! PULL ! PULL !

> http://www.spacedaily.com/news/future-01g.html

I don't know who is more stupid? The army for publishing this or you for relaying it.

How fast do you think a mechanised battallion will go if it has to carry a biofuel composter the size of a small town and its own refining and processing plant?

Do you think they might be JUST a little bit vulnerable to a counterattack? Even a big dumb bomb can hit a thousand-acre plant.

And what about the 3-week delay as it composts? Will the enemy lay out their deck chairs and read the comics while they wait for you to fuel up?

For many reasons like this, liquid hydrocarbons are the fuel of the future, as with the present.

> http://www.spacedaily.com/news/fuel-01b.html

yes hydrazine is nasty stuff. That's one of the resons it makes a good propellamt - it's chemically energetic.

LOx/LH2 is the ideal green fuel. Product is pure H2O. A bit hard to handle. You need more than rubber gloves!

Alternative chemical mono- and bi- propellents exist aplenty. Most have less bang than hydrazine/ADMH, or other handling or stability problems. If you're paying a lot of money to send something far away, you need high energy density and reliability, and can put up with problems on the ground. It ends up cheaper.

Probably the Shuttle shouldn't have hydrazine, but unmanned boosters don't care a s#!t.

Idealistic environmentalists are dumb, and dangerous.