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Chinese astronauts make rocket fuel and oxygen in space

(www.livescience.com)
298 points Teever | 1 comments | 24 Aug 25 17:54 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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kevinmershon ◴[26 Aug 25 22:09 UTC] No.45032976[source]▶
> This is a similar reaction to photosynthesis in plants, which produces glucose instead of rocket fuel.

This is silly, but also begs the sillier question why we aren't bioengineering plants to produce rocket fuel

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andrewflnr ◴[26 Aug 25 22:20 UTC] No.45033082[source]▶
Why aren't we engineering plants to produce automotive fuel? We ought to at least be able to do diesel.
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asdff ◴[26 Aug 25 22:28 UTC] No.45033143[source]▶
We do this for some plants. Hybrid palms are used for palm oil production due to the favorable yields and properties compared to parental species. One might ask why there are no cars powered off palm oil seeing as we can readily grow it across the world?
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1. sandworm101 ◴[26 Aug 25 22:34 UTC] No.45033186[source]▶
There are. Millions of them. Most any diesel can run just fine on veg oils, even used cooking oil. (Some very modern cars might need the electronic control systems tweaked.) There have been times/places where grocery stores put limits on oil once it became cheaper than diesel.

Mythbusters: https://youtu.be/QEX1YFXYTdI

TopGear: https://youtu.be/GOFbsaNeZps