Space · Item
Methane plant: inner system fuel
On Mars it makes methane and oxygen from the ground's dry ice and ice: fuel for the shuttle and the drive, without bringing it from the Earth.
In the game
How to get it
Craft it (bricks, a lens, copper sheets, a catalyst, steel plates, a circuit board), set it on Mars on a medium power cable; empty dewars, Mars ice and dry ice in.
What it is for
16 dry ice + 16 ice + 2 empty dewars give a dewar of liquid methane and one of liquid oxygen in 40 s: the rocket's fuel and the drive's. On Titan a bucket of the lakes gives a dewar of methane in 6 s.
Why it exists
Mars's methane makes the rest of the voyage cheap.
The same text the game shows in its progress tree and on the item's sheet (I).
Where
- Mars: dry ice (the CO2 frost) is found only there; any water ice works (Mars's polar caps, the Moon's, the Earth's).
- Titan: no oxygen, but its lakes are liquid methane: the filling station of the far reaches.
On the progress path
MR4MarsMain path
- BeforeMR3 · Aresite alloy: thorns · critical · deep drilling
- This stepMR4 · Methane plant: inner system fuel
- NextMR5 · Top of the giant volcano