No Man’s Sky guide: How to make starship launch fuel for your launch thrusters

No Man’s Sky starts with your character waking up on an alien planet with a busted ship. While the opening minutes of the game will walk you through the process of repairing your ship to get off the planet, you may run into a snag if you fly your ship too much at first.

One of the most critical resources you need to fly around the universe is starship launch fuel. You’ll need this specific type of fuel each time your starship takes off. In the beginning of the game, you may not know how to craft it and could find yourself stranded. Thankfully, making starship fuel is easy, but it is a multi-step process.

How to make starship launch fuel

Hello Games via Polygon

There are actually two ways to refuel your launch thrusters: with starship launch fuel and uranium. While uranium is easy enough to find in radioactive areas, it’s also dangerous (which is why we don’t recommend it).

Crafting starship launch fuel is easy, although it requires a few steps.

When you go to your menu to craft starship launch fuel, you’ll see that it needs 40 Di-Hydrogen and one Metal Plating to craft one unit of starship launch fuel.

Di-Hydrogen is easy to find: Use your scanner to find the bright blue hydrogen (H) icons on your map. You’ll know you’ve found a place to mine the resource when you come across big blue crystals embedded in a planet’s surface. Use your multi-tool to mine the Di-Hydrogen until you have enough for your fuel.

Crafting metal plating is pretty simple too: All you need is 50 Ferrite Dust which you can easily mine out of any rocks you see throughout each planet.

Once you have your 40 Di-Hydrogen and one unit of Metal Plating, go back into your crafting menu and craft a unit of starship launch fuel. Making plenty of this fuel is a process worth remembering since you’ll be blasting on and off planets plenty throughout your time with No Man’s Sky.