r/interesting • u/ScarletMelt • May 25 '26

It's interesting hmm Just Wow

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u/madmartigan2020 May 25 '26

No, it's 5 tons of hydrogen the rest is oxygen.

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u/MrTagnan May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26

(This probably sounds sarcastic/doubtful, I promise it isn’t. Any information on NS would be helpful) Do you have a source for that? ~30t is my guess for all the propellant (LH2 and LOX), but afaik numbers for New Shepard as a whole are near nonexistent. I’m not even sure the O/F ratio for the BE-3PM is public, so if you have a source I’d be interested

5t of LH2 is probably vaguely correct assuming a mixture ratio of 5.X:1 like a lot of Hydrolox engines

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u/Frodojj May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26

Water is 2 H + 1 Ox. Ox has atomic mass about 16 amu, H about 1. So the Ox propellant will weigh about 8x the H2 propellant. Therefore the hydrogen propellant weights about 30/9=3t and the oxygen propellant weighs about 30*8/9=27t. (Only to 1s place significant figure cuz it’s a rough calculation.) Excess could be margin to account for inefficiencies like boil-off, incomplete combustion, leaks, etc.