Science/Energy Question

[Typhoid]

Originally Posted by Angrist

Look at airplanes. They fly on kerosene, which is as you know very expensive and becomes scarcer every day. Those airplane engines are already as efficient as they can be. If they come up with a 1% improvement, it's pretty much world news.

But that's more to do with the height the planes fly and the temperature it gets in the storage compartments.

It's no good to have your fuel freeze in your airplane or spaceship mid-flight - so you need something with a low freezing point - which also helps make an efficient amount of energy. And since the Troposphere (which the planes fly in) is really temperate because of adiabatic lapse rate, you really don't want to go too cheap on the "What temperature will this fuel go solid at? Meh, let's wing it." And since it drops about 6 degreec celcius for every kilometer you go up, I'd say that's a good thing.