Talk:Dust/@comment-99.151.12.10-20151227181902/@comment-80.192.6.40-20151227211631

But since they understand that Dust fails to function once you attempt to get into space, I would assume they'd be working on an alternative. The benefits of a satellite network would be impetus enough. Even if Dust is clean burning, if petroleum were only used for satellite research, that's not a big environmental problem. And given how common oil is - as evidenced by the plethora of plastics and asphalt - it would make sense they'd realise its potential for fuel. Granted it'd take time if they were really, really slow off the bat (at worst perhaps not even starting petroleum research until just prior to the establishment of the CCTS or earlier) but given Remnant's general technological sophistication, I'd expect them to have at least managed to get something Sputnik-esque up into orbit even with such a large delay, so the fact they haven't is very surprising. The Soviets managed that in the 50's, and we’ve been able to refine oil since the 19th century, so for Remnant it should be a cakewalk. Now obviously you have to design your rockets around such a process, which may be very unfamiliar if you’re used to working with Dust but it shouldn’t take that long. The V2 made it into outer space and that was a pretty crude machine, so with Remnant’s technological understanding making something like that should be pretty easy. Unless they've literally only just begun to research it but then that begs the question of what took so long when the impetus was there? Extremely bad policy is the only real delay I could think of that doesn't stretch plausibility too much.