> Hydrogen is also dangerous, and there does appear to be a double standard here.
I don't have beef with hydrogen, but I suspect it's a lot easier to secure fuel in a liquid state versus a gaseous state. Putting a lot of hydrogen in a relatively small steel container for use in an engine seems quite a lot safer than putting it in a big bubble and then dangling people from it. But I am not an aerospace engineer, could be wrong, etc.
I don't know the statistics, but a damaged and leaking LPG cylinder seems more dangerous than leaking kerosene or gasoline, because the gas boils off and leaks itself.
I understand that it's just reckless driving. And had this been a gasoline tank, it may have burned as well, but at least no cylinders would have flown around.
Though, its still seems safer than pressurized methane. 300 bar make cylinders explode, probably from material fatigue. It doesn't burn, because decompression makes it super cold, but still, the car is ripped apart.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%D0%B2%D0%B7%D1%80%D1%8B%D0%...
It's probably helpful to ignore Hollywood here. We see exploding cars all the time, but in real life cars don't explode.
They can burn of course, and a fireball is a fireball, but an explosion creates shock waves, and all kinds of ancillary damage. Recall the Beirut explosion recently - the fire was relatively contained, but the damage from the explosion is vast.
So yeah, talking about gasoline here - the liquid doesn't explode, it burns. However the gas (as in gas, not liquid) can explode, rupturing the tank and spraying burning liquid everywhere. The worst case is a tank mostly empty - the fumes explode, spraying the rest of the liquid. The best case is a full tank. Liquids can absorb a lot of heat, without expanding or creating pressure. Once they boil though (which requires that the liquid doesn't already "fill the tank", pressure builds leading ultimately to the rapid disassembly of the container.
Incidentally this is why throwing an _empty_ aerasol can on a fire is very dangerous, possibly more dangerous than a completely full one (depending on the contents).
But to your point, and explosion and a fire are very different animals, with very different outcomes.
I don't have beef with hydrogen, but I suspect it's a lot easier to secure fuel in a liquid state versus a gaseous state. Putting a lot of hydrogen in a relatively small steel container for use in an engine seems quite a lot safer than putting it in a big bubble and then dangling people from it. But I am not an aerospace engineer, could be wrong, etc.