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The German aerospace research establishment, the DLR, in Stuttgart, is conducting an extended program in advanced terrestrial energy1 environment subjects, including transportation. These technology development and demonstration activities generally pivot off in-hand aerospace accomplishments and know-how A major project presently being concluded, after nearly two decades of work by DLR staff and their research and industrial colleagues in Europe and the United States, has addressed the use of liquid hydrogen (a staple aerospace fuel) for automotive vehicle applications. This work recognizes that, in the strategic view, the non-fossil (fossil in the nearer term) production of hydrogen from water is mankind's leading prospect for achieving energy independence from the world's depleting fossil-energy resources. At the same time, hydrogen is conclusively the most environmentally benign chemical fuel possible. For example, its carbon dioxide effluent is zero.

The Earth-to-Orbit (ETO) Propulsion Program was initiated in 1988 as a major element of NASA's Civil Space Technology Initiative (CSTI), a set of some ten different program elements directed to the revitalization of the U.S.'s space technology resource upon which future spaceflight missions will be able to draw. Through the ETO Program the Nation is investing $ 20-30 million/year in the development and demonstration of needed design and analysis tools and computational means, advanced materials and processes, and very advanced systems-synthesis methodologies to enable advanced, highly reliable liquid hydrogen- and hydrocarbon-fueled, pump-fed rocket engines to be acquired and operated at significantly reduced technical risk and cost (e.g., vis-a-vis the SSME).