The extension of human space exploration from a low earth orbit to a high earth orbit, then to Moon, Mars, and possibly asteroids is NASA’s biggest challenge for the new millennium. Integral to this mission is the effective, sufficient, and reliable supply of cryogenic propellant fluids. Therefore, highly energy-efficient thermal-fluid management breakthrough concepts to conserve and minimize the cryogen consumption have become the focus of research and development, especially for the deep space mission to mars. Here we introduce such a concept and demonstrate its feasibility in parabolic flights under a simulated space microgravity condition. We show that by coating the inner surface of a cryogenic propellant transfer pipe with low-thermal conductivity microfilms, the quenching efficiency can be increased up to 176% over that of the traditional bare-surface pipe for the thermal management process of chilling down the transfer pipe. To put this into proper perspective, the much higher efficiency translates into a 65% savings in propellant consumption.

将载人太空探索从低地球轨道扩展到高地球轨道，然后扩展到月球、火星，可能还有小行星是 NASA 新千年面临的最大挑战。这项任务不可或缺的是有效、充足和可靠的低温推进剂流体供应。因此，以节约和最小化制冷剂消耗的高能效热流体管理突破性概念已成为研究和开发的重点，特别是对于深空火星任务。在这里，我们介绍了这样一个概念，并证明了它在模拟空间微重力条件下抛物线飞行的可行性。我们表明，通过在低温推进剂传输管的内表面涂上低热导率微膜，对于冷却传输管的热管理过程，淬火效率比传统的裸表面管提高176%。从正确的角度来看，更高的效率转化为推进剂消耗量节省 65%。