"Now it is clear that anyone working with rocket fuels is outstandingly mad. I don’t mean garden-variety crazy or a merely raving lunatic. I mean a record-shattering exponent of far-out insanity.
There are, after all, some chemicals that explode shatteringly, some that flame ravenously, some that corrode hellishly, some that poison sneakily, and some that stink stenchily. As far as I know, though, only liquid rocket fuels have all these delightful properties combined into one delectable whole."
Isaac Asimov, from the leading words to John D. Clark's "Ignition!"
While technically true, in rocketry - where the term was born - "hypergolic" mostly mean "of hydrazine family", which are (almost all extremely) toxic.
So it's a moot point to talk about the fine print. What was meant is that SpaceX doesn't pollute the land with poisonous fuel of the Starship, and the one argument is that the fuel isn't poisonous to begin with.
(And I'd really like to know what kind of additive would be in liquid methane - medium cryogenic - which Musk hopes to keep adding on Mars and which is toxic.)
There are, after all, some chemicals that explode shatteringly, some that flame ravenously, some that corrode hellishly, some that poison sneakily, and some that stink stenchily. As far as I know, though, only liquid rocket fuels have all these delightful properties combined into one delectable whole."
Isaac Asimov, from the leading words to John D. Clark's "Ignition!"
While technically true, in rocketry - where the term was born - "hypergolic" mostly mean "of hydrazine family", which are (almost all extremely) toxic.
So it's a moot point to talk about the fine print. What was meant is that SpaceX doesn't pollute the land with poisonous fuel of the Starship, and the one argument is that the fuel isn't poisonous to begin with.
(And I'd really like to know what kind of additive would be in liquid methane - medium cryogenic - which Musk hopes to keep adding on Mars and which is toxic.)