| This from the race of clever monkeys extracting liquid sunshine at 5 million times the rate of formation. The Saturn V stage 1 engine produced 166 GW of power, roughly the electrical generating capacity of France at the time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(power) The total net metabolic rate of 7 billion humans is about 700 GW. 18.1 TW -- only 100x the first stage power, is the total average human power consumption as of 2013. The 770,000 litres of RP-1 (kerosene) represent some 18.3 million tonnes of primaeval plant matter converted over tens to hundreds of millions of years into petroleum. Per unit volume, it's very nearly the highest energy-density fuel available from chemical reactions (hydrogen does better on a unit-weight basis, but even that buys you only a factor of three. Oh, and that's what the Saturn V used in its upper stages (where the volume requirements for LH2 were viable). What you're wishing for is what you've already got. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-IC https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1026391317686 |