Elon Musk Says SpaceX Is Going to Start Sucking CO2 Out of the Air and Turning It Into Rocket Fuel – Futurism

"Will also be important for Mars."Air Delivery

SpaceX is embarking on a bold new adventure: making rocket fuel out of thin air.

SpaceX is starting a program to take CO2 out of atmosphere & turn it into rocket fuel, CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Monday. Please join if interested.

Such a process using in-situ resources to generate fuel could have great implications during our transition to becoming interplanetary, according to Musk.

Will also be important for Mars, he added in a follow-up tweet.

Its particularly a pertinent topic for SpaceXs operations, given that its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket emits plenty of CO2when it launches.

And itsnotquite as far fetched as it sounds. Using a new technique called direct air capture (DAC), SpaceX could suck in thousands of tons of carbon dioxide to turn it into a source of fuel, Bloomberg reports.

Iceland recently started operations at the worlds largest DAC plant, sucking up to 4,400 tons of CO2 a year.

The news comes after Musk announced a $100 million prize to come up with carbon removal technologies earlier this year. The goal is to pull 1,000 tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere annually and eventually scaling up the operation dramatically.

I think this is one of those things that is going to take a while to figure out what the right solution is, Musk explained back in April. And especially to figure out what the best economics are for CO2 removal.

Right now weve only got one planet, Musk said at the time. Even a 0.1percent chance of disaster why run that risk? Thats crazy!

More on carbon capture: Scientists Fire Up Worlds Biggest Carbon Capture Machine

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Elon Musk Says SpaceX Is Going to Start Sucking CO2 Out of the Air and Turning It Into Rocket Fuel - Futurism