gas on valentine's day

I decided the best way to  celebrate valentine's day was to watch my favorite astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about the worst solar storms in the universe (did you know the spots on planets like Jupiter are storms?).

While I was watching the show they talked about how Titan has oceans like earth but instead of water it's methane. So I got an idea and sent this email to my brothers (I admit I obsess about how to get a space ship to a black hole because I want to know what's in those things):

I'm watching a show about planetary storms and started thinking that maybe you could refuel a space ship with shit from planets. Like methane.

Then you could get a ship to a black hole.

Steve responded:

You will enjoy this book: http://www.amazon.com/How-Hippies-Saved-Physics-Counterculture/dp/0393076369/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329270400&sr=8-1http://www.amazon.com/How-Hippies-Saved-Physics-Counterculture/dp/0393076369/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329270400&sr=8-1

I have the audio book if you want it.  You would enjoy this book it's about the ridiculous things that physicist did to create jobs in the 70s. 

Methane is theoretically abundant because it's a stable combination of two compounds abundant in this solar system (hydrogen and carbon).  However, it has a fairly low energy on chemical combustion.  When we do use it we compress it, I doubt in space it will have very effective propulsion.  But maybe used for energy to fuel some other method.  But if you are doing that, why not just make a nuclear power source?

Also, don't forget that no matter what your mass is, as you accelerate you require exponentially more energy.  A photon has no mass, which is why it's capable of going the speed of light.  For all items with mass you would require infinite energy to achieve light speed.  If you look in your physics text books you will see all relativity problems say something like "item traveling near the speed of light (0.98 C)" in all the problems.

Another idea shot down.