wild and crazy idea
Does anyone know how brittle water ice gets when it is really cold? I just thought up the idea that in the event that External tanks are ever taken to orbit, the slosh baffles in the Oxygen tank could be replaced by Ice, thus delivering that amount of water to orbit at no penalty. Obviously an infrastructure issue as to when they would be installed and whether the tank could be kept cold indefinitely at the pad. etc. Wouldn't work if they were so brittle as to break up during launch, clogging the feed to the engines, thus my question.