Comparison of oxygen liquefaction methods for use on the Martian surface

Thermodynamic Modeling of In-Situ Rocket Propellant Fabrication on Mars

“…Liquefied oxygen (or LO x ) is commonly used as a cryogenic liquid oxidizer propellant for spacecraft applications; this is achieved via the Linde cycle, which delivers liquefied gases at higher temperatures and pressures via cascaded compression stages (Johnson et al, 2018), and a representative system is included in Figure 4.…”

“…Rockets usually make one-way trips to space and are largely limited by their weight, which is mostly liquid propellant (up to 80 wt%) (Ash et al, 1978). It is estimated that each kilogram of useful technology sent to Mars requires 7-11 kg of mass launched from Earth and translates to 5.6-8.8 kg of propellant needed per kilogram of material (Johnson et al, 2018). If transporting propellant from Earth to Mars to set up a local fuel depot, gear ratios become an important consideration during mission design (Leucht, 2018) and estimates show that Mars requires a gear ratio of 226:1 (Sanders et al, 2015).…”

Thermodynamic modeling of in-situ rocket propellant fabrication on Mars

“…Riding on the success of several Mars missions over the last few decades, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) are working collectively across multiple disciplines in a quest to colonize Mars by the 2030s ( Chen et al., 2020 ; Liu et al., 2021 ; Shishko et al., 2017 ). Sending humans to Mars would necessitate return missions, and current rocket technology is incapable of supporting this outcome ( Johnson et al., 2018 ). Rockets usually make one-way trips to space and are largely limited by their weight, which is mostly liquid propellant (up to 80 wt%) ( Ash et al., 1978 ).…”

“…Rockets usually make one-way trips to space and are largely limited by their weight, which is mostly liquid propellant (up to 80 wt%) ( Ash et al., 1978 ). It is estimated that each kilogram of useful technology sent to Mars requires 7–11 kg of mass launched from Earth and translates to 5.6–8.8 kg of propellant needed per kilogram of material ( Johnson et al., 2018 ). If transporting propellant from Earth to Mars to set up a local fuel depot, gear ratios become an important consideration during mission design ( Leucht, 2018 ) and estimates show that Mars requires a gear ratio of 226:1 ( Sanders et al., 2015 ).…”

“…Liquefied oxygen (or LO x ) is commonly used as a cryogenic liquid oxidizer propellant for spacecraft applications; this is achieved via the Linde cycle, which delivers liquefied gases at higher temperatures and pressures via cascaded compression stages ( Johnson et al., 2018 ), and a representative system is included in Figure 4 .

Figure 4 Schematic of the oxygen liquefaction subsystem

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