液态氢以低碳排放将杰夫·贝佐斯的“新谢泼德”送入太空

继理查德布兰森最近的太空任务之后，世界首富杰夫·贝索斯于 7 月 20 日成功完成了“新谢泼德”的首次载人飞行，使用液态氢和液态氧将其送入太空。

通过利用液态氢，这艘太空船独特地产生了接近于零的碳排放，而在其尾流中只留下了水蒸气的踪迹。

这可以被认为是氢创新太空飞行的下一步，低排放火箭技术可能是开创性的，显然该行业正在寻求氢来提供火箭推进的下一步。

氢还被用于海王星一号太空气球，以将航天器轻轻地提升到恒星，计划于 2024 年进行的第一次商业飞行已经售罄。

尽管焦点可能是杰夫·贝佐斯(Jeff Bezos)从他对太空旅行的投资中获得了回报，但氢也帮助成立于 2000 年的蓝色起源公司实现了一些里程碑式的目标。

这包括 82 岁的沃利·芬克(Wally Funk)成为最年长的太空飞行者，而 18 岁的奥利弗·戴门(Oliver Daemen)成为有史以来第一位购买机票并从私人发射场乘坐私人资助和许可的航天器飞往太空的商业宇航员，同时也成为最年轻的太空飞行者。

“新谢泼德”号还成为第一辆获得亚轨道可重复使用运载火箭执照的商用飞行器，可以将付费客户(包括有效载荷和宇航员)往返太空，而杰夫和马克·贝佐斯则成为有史以来第一批一起在太空中飞行的兄弟姐妹。

这一切都是通过利用液态氢来实现的，而且随着航天器的低碳排放使航天器更加环保，并且随着发射的成功，氢能在未来的低排放太空旅行中再次发挥关键作用。

蓝色起源预计今年将再进行两次载人飞行，并计划在 2022 年进行更多载人飞行。

蓝色起源首席执行官 Bob Smith 说：“今天对于 蓝色起源 和载人航天来说是具有纪念意义的一天。

“我为 Blue 团队、他们的专业精神和执行今天的飞行的专业知识感到无比自豪。这对我们来说是向前迈出的一大步，而这仅仅是个开始。”

原文阅读：

Hot on the heels of Richard Branson’s recent space mission, Jeff Bezos successfully completed “New Shepard’s” first human flight on July 20 using liquid hydrogen and oxygen to blast into space.

By utilising liquid hydrogen, the space vessel uniquely produced close to zero carbon emissions instead leaving only a trail of water vapour in its wake.

This could be considered the next step for hydrogen innovating space flight, low emission rocketry could be groundbreaking and clearly the industry is looking to hydrogen to provide the next step in rocket propulsion.

Hydrogen is also being utilised in the Neptune One spaceballoon to gently lift the spacecraft to the stars with the first commercial flights slated for 2024 already sold out.

Although the focal point may have been on Jeff Bezos reaping the rewards of his investment into space travel, there were also several landmarks that hydrogen helped Blue Origin, founded in 2000, to achieve.

This includes Wally Funk, 82, becoming the oldest person to fly in space and Oliver Daemen, 18, becoming the first ever commercial astronaut to purchase a ticket and fly to space on a privately funded and licensed space vehicle from a private launch site whilst also becoming the youngest person to fly in space.

The New Shepard also became the first commercial vehicle under a suborbital reusable launch vehicle license to fly paying customers, both payloads and astronauts, to space and back whilst Jeff and Mark Bezos became the first siblings to ever fly in space together.

All this has been achieved through the utilisation of liquid hydrogen and, with low carbon emissions making the spacecraft environmentally friendly and with the successful launch, it could see hydrogen yet again playing a pivotal role in low emission space travel in the future.

Blue Origin expects to fly two more crewed flights this year, with many more crewed flights planned for 2022.

Bob Smith, CEO of Blue Origin, said, “Today was a monumental day for Blue Origin and human spaceflight.

“I am so incredibly proud of Team Blue, their professionalism, and expertise in executing today’s flight. This was a big step forward for us and is only the beginning.”