No more hydrazine

NASA have apparently seen Europa Report so are taking alternatives to hydrazine seriously.

I admit, I am one of those Deplorable people whose nose wrinkles when he hears the word "green" bandied about. Usually it refers to carbon-dioxide. Which molecule helps keep plants green in the first place. So I wish they'd not use the word. Still: this is a health issue especially if a module fails to break atmo and ends up back down here. Or for lightweight payloads whose first-stages aren't Elon's - like China's whole fleet.

One avenue of approach is to send up a lot of water, or get it from Ceres I guess, and then use solar-panels to break up the water into the hydrogen and oxygen you can use to give thrust for your journey.

Then there's ASCENT. It's better than N₂H₄! ... because it burns hotter. There's your Tsiolkovsky: faster exhaust, more I_sp, as they hint when they talk about how awesome it is for small spacecraft. A bit hard on the ol' engine tho'. On the other hand... we're going to be graduating to NERVA eventually, nu? So we need that engine tech anyway.