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Comment by M_bara | Hacker News Reader

If you think this is bad, then the chemicals used in rocketry - read the book ignition [1] - will have you whimpering in a corner. As with any system, risks can be identified and controlled and operationalised - Gasoline has its risks, so does Chlorine trifluoride [2]. Yet both are wildly different and are used in day to day operations.

1. https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_trifluoride

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Yes rocketry has made very dangerous chemical. And hydrazine is used in other fields too. But it’s used because there aren’t safer alternatives that are fit for purpose.

Ammonia is being pushed as a predatory delay strategy. The article hints at this when it talks about the engines being dual-fuel (ammonia and methane). Given the massive price difference between green ammonia and methane it doesn’t take a genius to know what their next message will be “our ships are ammonia ready, we will run them on methane until the ammonia supply chains are ready then we’ll transition to it”. Expect they have no intention of transitioning.

The ships are “ammonia ready” in the same way my driveway is Ferrari ready. All that’s missing is a lot of other people’s money.

I think that’s not a good comparison. I think we generally accept that leaving the planet is inherently riskier than traveling on it. You have to generate enough energy to exit the atmosphere, that’s a shitload of energy. Of course it’s dangerous. We’ve been sailing relatively safely for thousands of years, though.

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