Science fiction movies and books that have anything to do with space travel make it look so easy. In Star Wars practically anyone can blast off into space in an old clunker. Star Trek, while it has a Star Fleet, it also has ships of every shape and size right down to private citizens with shuttle craft. Battlestar Galatica led a rag tag fleet amongst enemy robots, even they have cheap space transportation. Asimov has the Foundation series where people not only flew in space, but have acorn sized fusion reactors hanging from their necks on necklaces.
Do you think it is possible that we will ever be able to create space elevators, or teleportation, or spacecraft capable of taking a trip like we now do in a car, bus, train, or plane. In other words will we ever be able to say, “I’ve got to take off for orbit, but I’ll be back in time for dinner”. Or taking a trip to the moon like in 2001 a Space Odyssey that seemed so boring that the guy falls asleep?
I am of course using these fictional examples because there are as yet no real examples. Spending twenty million as a space tourist to the space station does not count. Nor do I include rocketing up to 70 miles high for a 10 minute joy ride. I’m talking about the possibility of the average person being able to go to space without anyone thinking it is unusual at all for business or pleasure.
Carl Sagan thought there was a time limit for humans to reach for space, and if we did not push forward, then we might forever lose the opportunity because we will have squandered our natural resources before we could make the effort again.
If you do think it is possible, when do you think it will happen? If you do not think it is possible, why not? Are there any technological obstacles from attaining this goal?
No, I do not think this will become true at least not with what we know today. You can make space travel cheap, yes. But who wants to sit in a rocket with a success rate of 85%? Failure in manned space flight means most of the time death. That is what makes space travel expensive. This and the amount of impulse involved you require to lift off earth surface.
Launching to space will only become cheap if there is a demand for it and even then it is like any other business save that it will stay more expensive. Today one kg of cargo to an earth orbit is in the range of 10000$. You require around 50kg to 100kg cryogenic fuel to get this 1 kg into orbit... My guess is that with conventional and with practicable systems you could perhaps reach a price of 2000$/kg...
Launching to space will only become cheap if there is a demand for it and even then it is like any other business save that it will stay more expensive. Today one kg of cargo to an earth orbit is in the range of 10000$. You require around 50kg to 100kg cryogenic fuel to get this 1 kg into orbit... My guess is that with conventional and with practicable systems you could perhaps reach a price of 2000$/kg...
Guest,
What about this newer idea of creating a space elevator using carbon nanotubes? The idea about teleportation where they have recently teleported beams of light using quantum mechanics? How about the possibility of a new form of cheap energy like zero point energy, cold fusion (I shudder to mention these but you never know), or a breakthrough in fusion power?
I wonder if you are not answering from a contemporary viewpoint. Think where we have come in the last 100 years in transportation. My great-grandparents took a covered wagon on the Oregon Trail around 1900; now we regularly send rockets to space with crews of several people. As far as the 85% success rate; the Oregon Trail pioneers had a 94% success rate, not that great either. SpaceShipOne was a commercial venture that successfully made it to space, and the next prize is to have a commercial spacecraft orbit Earth.
I do not look at the situation as hopeless or that we will never be able to go to orbit cheaply, I just wonder how long it will take to eventually do so. To me the question is will we have major breakthroughs allowing us to do so in 10 years, or 100 years, or 1000 years? Look at the personal computer 10 years ago, look at warfare technology 100 years ago, or look at what the whole world technology situation was 1000 years ago. If we could bring someone from the year 1005 to the present, even a scholar, would they not view much of our technology as magic? What will the world look like 10, 100, or 1000 years from now?
I am hoping that the future will look more like the movie Blade Runner (minus berserk replicants, constant rain, and a forgotten Earth), where there is a great exodus off of Earth where the natural resources of our solar system are harvested. I would like to think at some future date that my ancestors will be able to get in their covered wagon (space transportation) and head out to create a new life for themselves, or to at least be able to take a vacation to see their grandkids off Earth.
What about this newer idea of creating a space elevator using carbon nanotubes? The idea about teleportation where they have recently teleported beams of light using quantum mechanics? How about the possibility of a new form of cheap energy like zero point energy, cold fusion (I shudder to mention these but you never know), or a breakthrough in fusion power?
I wonder if you are not answering from a contemporary viewpoint. Think where we have come in the last 100 years in transportation. My great-grandparents took a covered wagon on the Oregon Trail around 1900; now we regularly send rockets to space with crews of several people. As far as the 85% success rate; the Oregon Trail pioneers had a 94% success rate, not that great either. SpaceShipOne was a commercial venture that successfully made it to space, and the next prize is to have a commercial spacecraft orbit Earth.
I do not look at the situation as hopeless or that we will never be able to go to orbit cheaply, I just wonder how long it will take to eventually do so. To me the question is will we have major breakthroughs allowing us to do so in 10 years, or 100 years, or 1000 years? Look at the personal computer 10 years ago, look at warfare technology 100 years ago, or look at what the whole world technology situation was 1000 years ago. If we could bring someone from the year 1005 to the present, even a scholar, would they not view much of our technology as magic? What will the world look like 10, 100, or 1000 years from now?
I am hoping that the future will look more like the movie Blade Runner (minus berserk replicants, constant rain, and a forgotten Earth), where there is a great exodus off of Earth where the natural resources of our solar system are harvested. I would like to think at some future date that my ancestors will be able to get in their covered wagon (space transportation) and head out to create a new life for themselves, or to at least be able to take a vacation to see their grandkids off Earth.
If you want to get an idea of the timeline for advances in space-flight, I think the second poster, the Guest, had the right idea.
Compare the conditions of the birth of space flight to the birth of regular flight. Compare the first manned space flight to the Wright brothers' flight at Kittyhawk. The flight at Kittyhawk was achieved by a couple of brothers who worked with readily-available materials, almost as a hobby. The first manned space-flight, on the other hand, was achieved by a Soviet governmental agency, and was most likely only accomplished because of the fierce competition between the USSR and the USA.
We can take it to another level and rather compare the flight of SpaceShipOne to Kittyhawk, but the fact remains that SpaceShipOne required the investment and backing of a rich and famous engineer, plus a $10 million incentive prize. This is still a far cry from the hard work of two regular, but smart, guys chasing a dream.
Let's take a look from another viewpoint. 50 years after Kittyhawk, how common were planes, and how difficult was it to get a plane in the air? Right now, nearly 50 years after the first manned space-flight, how common are spacecraft? And how difficult does it remain to get a spacecraft in the air?
Nanotubes are still in their infancy. It's hard to say what use they will be 15, 30, or 50 years from now.
Space flight is ridiculously more complicated and dangerous than atmospheric flight. And even with the astounding advances in technology since Kittyhawk, space-flight progress has been much, much slower. I would think that as we strive to reach more complicated goals, things will only slow down further and get more expensive. It will take amazing leaps in materials and energy technology before spaceflight becomes any easier/cheaper/safer.
Compare the conditions of the birth of space flight to the birth of regular flight. Compare the first manned space flight to the Wright brothers' flight at Kittyhawk. The flight at Kittyhawk was achieved by a couple of brothers who worked with readily-available materials, almost as a hobby. The first manned space-flight, on the other hand, was achieved by a Soviet governmental agency, and was most likely only accomplished because of the fierce competition between the USSR and the USA.
We can take it to another level and rather compare the flight of SpaceShipOne to Kittyhawk, but the fact remains that SpaceShipOne required the investment and backing of a rich and famous engineer, plus a $10 million incentive prize. This is still a far cry from the hard work of two regular, but smart, guys chasing a dream.
Let's take a look from another viewpoint. 50 years after Kittyhawk, how common were planes, and how difficult was it to get a plane in the air? Right now, nearly 50 years after the first manned space-flight, how common are spacecraft? And how difficult does it remain to get a spacecraft in the air?
Nanotubes are still in their infancy. It's hard to say what use they will be 15, 30, or 50 years from now.
Space flight is ridiculously more complicated and dangerous than atmospheric flight. And even with the astounding advances in technology since Kittyhawk, space-flight progress has been much, much slower. I would think that as we strive to reach more complicated goals, things will only slow down further and get more expensive. It will take amazing leaps in materials and energy technology before spaceflight becomes any easier/cheaper/safer.
As I remember in Blade Runner Earth was not exactly a great world to live in. (The movies is still excellent, though.)
I think we will know in the next decade a lot of the course man will chart in the universe. There are several major events going on that will redefine the resolve we have to get off world.
1. The commercial industry's initiative (Space Ship One, America’s Space Prize, etc.)
2. NASA's directive to reach the moon/mars.
3. What to do with the Hubble Space Telescope.
4. The growing international space programs.
While none of these will totally define the future, they do give strong indications of how much people are willing to expend on space travel. In the Apollo era there was a high resolve because it was such a lofty dream and because the U.S. needed to look good in the cold war, but that died with the Shuttle program and the Cold War.
I think if there is anything that will hold us back, it will not be the technology or even the money, but the resolve of the populace to make it happen. Right now most people are satisfied with the minimum amount of space travel to put their communications satellites in orbit, and not much beyond it.
I think we will know in the next decade a lot of the course man will chart in the universe. There are several major events going on that will redefine the resolve we have to get off world.
1. The commercial industry's initiative (Space Ship One, America’s Space Prize, etc.)
2. NASA's directive to reach the moon/mars.
3. What to do with the Hubble Space Telescope.
4. The growing international space programs.
While none of these will totally define the future, they do give strong indications of how much people are willing to expend on space travel. In the Apollo era there was a high resolve because it was such a lofty dream and because the U.S. needed to look good in the cold war, but that died with the Shuttle program and the Cold War.
I think if there is anything that will hold us back, it will not be the technology or even the money, but the resolve of the populace to make it happen. Right now most people are satisfied with the minimum amount of space travel to put their communications satellites in orbit, and not much beyond it.
I personally think private enterprise is going to take the ball and run with it.
Ithink the space elevator is about 10 to 20 years out. but before that I beleive that space tourism is going to be affordable for the merely affluent, and no longer just the filthy rich, (though still out of my price range) once we get the kinks worked out of a single stage to orbit transport things are going to snowball and we'll see some giant leaps in progress.
a lunar colony will not be too far beyond that and from there asteroid mining.
though I have nothing to base these opinions on other than optimism. but as long as there's money to be made, someone will be there to make the money.
I think the main reason it hasn't taken off so far is because government has been so strongly involved.
Ithink the space elevator is about 10 to 20 years out. but before that I beleive that space tourism is going to be affordable for the merely affluent, and no longer just the filthy rich, (though still out of my price range) once we get the kinks worked out of a single stage to orbit transport things are going to snowball and we'll see some giant leaps in progress.
a lunar colony will not be too far beyond that and from there asteroid mining.
though I have nothing to base these opinions on other than optimism. but as long as there's money to be made, someone will be there to make the money.
I think the main reason it hasn't taken off so far is because government has been so strongly involved.
Skipping alot that would help explain my point of view for the sake of time...
Bush has fail to put a high priority on research and development, and that is hurting us. As seen recently, we are loosing our lead in the technology race. This isn't due to lack of scientists, it is due to lack of funding for them. Sadly, people who believe using stem cells from zygots to study and experiment with cures for cancer and neuralogical problems, are too short sighted to be president...and likely got in that position because their father had a big influence. While I have respect for the president, as long as people like him are focusing on the things he focuses on, we won't have enough funding to achieve anything drastic in the near future. Granted, we have the potential to do all sorts of things that would make even our skeptical minds scramble for an explanation. But none of this will be accomplished without a leader who can rally a country toward a "space race" that isn't really part of the cold war.
On a lighter note...things like teleportation would be possible on small scales I believe, but we would still need a MUCH vaster amount of compter power. As far as a space elavater goes, it would be a nice, but isn't feasable within 10 years. The best we could hope for in the best of circumstances would be 15 years. However, with the right minds and the right funding I believe a space elavater could be achieved in our day. Especially if it was a platform in space that orbited a large tube or pipe down to the middle atmosphere. It would be here that it would be easy for a plane to fly to this altitude and dock with it....empty passengers and cargo, and fall free from the "dock". As for being attached to the ground, no way and never. Not only would that be much more expensive, but then the elavator would loose its potential for mobility. Lastly, by using and orbit to counter the force of gravity, one could use less fuel to keep the platform in orbit for much cheaper. Not to mention if the platform is mobile, there could be a schedule for landing, around all areas of the world which would ultimately lower the price it would cost to make something of such a scale.
Bush has fail to put a high priority on research and development, and that is hurting us. As seen recently, we are loosing our lead in the technology race. This isn't due to lack of scientists, it is due to lack of funding for them. Sadly, people who believe using stem cells from zygots to study and experiment with cures for cancer and neuralogical problems, are too short sighted to be president...and likely got in that position because their father had a big influence. While I have respect for the president, as long as people like him are focusing on the things he focuses on, we won't have enough funding to achieve anything drastic in the near future. Granted, we have the potential to do all sorts of things that would make even our skeptical minds scramble for an explanation. But none of this will be accomplished without a leader who can rally a country toward a "space race" that isn't really part of the cold war.
On a lighter note...things like teleportation would be possible on small scales I believe, but we would still need a MUCH vaster amount of compter power. As far as a space elavater goes, it would be a nice, but isn't feasable within 10 years. The best we could hope for in the best of circumstances would be 15 years. However, with the right minds and the right funding I believe a space elavater could be achieved in our day. Especially if it was a platform in space that orbited a large tube or pipe down to the middle atmosphere. It would be here that it would be easy for a plane to fly to this altitude and dock with it....empty passengers and cargo, and fall free from the "dock". As for being attached to the ground, no way and never. Not only would that be much more expensive, but then the elavator would loose its potential for mobility. Lastly, by using and orbit to counter the force of gravity, one could use less fuel to keep the platform in orbit for much cheaper. Not to mention if the platform is mobile, there could be a schedule for landing, around all areas of the world which would ultimately lower the price it would cost to make something of such a scale.
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I think the main reason it hasn't taken off so far is because government has been so strongly involved.
I agree. I also wonder if it isn't government who has been hyping up how expensive it is to get to space. I understand that in comparison to aircraft, rockets are expensive, but it doesn’t seem like NASA has ever tried to significantly reduce costs. The Space Shuttle is outright exorbitant per flight hour.
Zorlont3-
I like the idea of a mobile elevator. It definitely has advantages. Docking of course would be the difficult trick, but that has already been done with systems like air-to-air refueling, and aircraft launched for dirigibles.
Hi,
There's an article in the March issue of Popular Science about Las Vegas entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, who has plans to put a hotel in orbit. He already is working on the modules that would constitute such a structure.
z
There's an article in the March issue of Popular Science about Las Vegas entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, who has plans to put a hotel in orbit. He already is working on the modules that would constitute such a structure.
z
Lack of funding??? That is not really the reason...
The US have by any means the highest financial funding of the world... I think if you take all other countries together... The problem is that they want to do all at once and that they have constantly to consider that they get their money from government and that they have to compete with such entities as the military budget... so projects that have more publicity are sometimes favoured and basic research and launch systems which are cost intensive and long term to develop are not very popular.
Did you know that the space shuttle was once planned to have a payload price of 200$/kg? This happens if an organization tries desparately to get the funds for such a project. In fact NASA is almost an example for commercial spaceflight even today as they have to please their customer (government) and the results of that became apparent in the problems during the faster, better, cheaper period... I guess we all hope this gets better.
Yes Matt it was no sign of not wanting to reduce cost, it was the result to reduce cost... at all costs.
The space shuttle has become the most expensive means to bring something to space... but to save the honor of NASA: It is also the mightiest one in service and it is one that supports manned spaceflight. That is a great archievement one will easily forget if talking about cost.
Anyway I consider such things as the space elevator science fiction. It has more problems than solutions and it is doubtful whether the little benefit would justify the enourmous risk and investment. The next generation spacecrafts will perhaps be a two stage to orbit hybrid system. One stage airbreathing and the second liquid stage... technology has advanced far enough for this to be feasible. This would be the first new principle applied since 30 years...
And yes, I guess a hotel is feasible... and someone will try to do it. But I guess the costs will be 'astronomical' and I fear for the visitors if some (more or less) weird engineer does such all alone...
The US have by any means the highest financial funding of the world... I think if you take all other countries together... The problem is that they want to do all at once and that they have constantly to consider that they get their money from government and that they have to compete with such entities as the military budget... so projects that have more publicity are sometimes favoured and basic research and launch systems which are cost intensive and long term to develop are not very popular.
Did you know that the space shuttle was once planned to have a payload price of 200$/kg? This happens if an organization tries desparately to get the funds for such a project. In fact NASA is almost an example for commercial spaceflight even today as they have to please their customer (government) and the results of that became apparent in the problems during the faster, better, cheaper period... I guess we all hope this gets better.
Yes Matt it was no sign of not wanting to reduce cost, it was the result to reduce cost... at all costs.
The space shuttle has become the most expensive means to bring something to space... but to save the honor of NASA: It is also the mightiest one in service and it is one that supports manned spaceflight. That is a great archievement one will easily forget if talking about cost.Anyway I consider such things as the space elevator science fiction. It has more problems than solutions and it is doubtful whether the little benefit would justify the enourmous risk and investment. The next generation spacecrafts will perhaps be a two stage to orbit hybrid system. One stage airbreathing and the second liquid stage... technology has advanced far enough for this to be feasible. This would be the first new principle applied since 30 years...
And yes, I guess a hotel is feasible... and someone will try to do it. But I guess the costs will be 'astronomical' and I fear for the visitors if some (more or less) weird engineer does such all alone...
Seems to me the only real problem developing commercial (non-govt) space flight is that governments don't persecute anybody hard enough anymore. A big weakness of our society. Govt's, instead of developing space systems themselves, should get off their duff's and start making life really miserable for some sub-groups, who would then develop space flight just to excape the persecution (worked to get the US started, obstacles and hardships of protestant travellers at least comparable).
Lets see now, who should we pick? How about scientists?
Lets see now, who should we pick? How about scientists?
I agree, docking would be a difficult task. However, If you were to make a plane that could support its own weight by the area at which it docked, it would be very easy. But wouldn't you say that having a wire hang all the way down to the surface of the earth would cause more problems than just docking a plane? Also, a mobile concept would be much cheaper, considering the vasy amount of money you could save by not having to produce all the extra "nano wire". If of course that was what you had pictured in your hear. I sure did for a while till I gave it a few minutes of thought.
Here is my reasoning, while in orbit, a space elevator would be able to travel fast, but not obsurdly fast, well just say like 700 mph for docking purposes. I envisions passenger jets going at least that fast 15 years from now....at least. Now, If the center of the plane is able to support its own weight under the pressure of 700 mph of high altitude flight, it should be easy for a "wire" to br dropped from the docking station and hooked to a latch on the planes surface. From here, the plane could be pulled up nice and snug up to the large tube. The people could exit, as well as any cargo, and the plane could be "released" much like how a fighter jet drops a bomb from its bay.
Here is my reasoning, while in orbit, a space elevator would be able to travel fast, but not obsurdly fast, well just say like 700 mph for docking purposes. I envisions passenger jets going at least that fast 15 years from now....at least. Now, If the center of the plane is able to support its own weight under the pressure of 700 mph of high altitude flight, it should be easy for a "wire" to br dropped from the docking station and hooked to a latch on the planes surface. From here, the plane could be pulled up nice and snug up to the large tube. The people could exit, as well as any cargo, and the plane could be "released" much like how a fighter jet drops a bomb from its bay.
A space elevator isn't something that will happen in the next couple years, but it has potential. And while one may say that planes and such are much more economical, it is my belief that a plane that can reach outerspace and still return, will always lack behind in cargo capacity to that of a plane that has as much oxygen to gulp up and glide on as a high altiture bomber. While you can get to space fast with various scram jet engines, slow and steady wins the race. Trying to put a bag of potatos on a cheeta and sending it quickly to Europe, as compared to a mule is just.....interesting. I believe that using a large plane with a massive wingspan that flies slow and "docks" would be better suited for lifting truley massive things into space. Look at the Airbus that is coming into service, itll be flying in a year I believe, at least test flights. It is only a matter of time before our jaws hit the floor, and now that science has stopped thinking that anything is possible, we tend to not be as creative....saying that something is impossible. Which ultimately makes our advances become smaller and smaller.
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Yes Matt it was no sign of not wanting to reduce cost, it was the result to reduce cost... at all costs. wink.gif The space shuttle has become the most expensive means to bring something to space... but to save the honor of NASA: It is also the mightiest one in service and it is one that supports manned spaceflight. That is a great achievement one will easily forget if talking about cost.
[FYI- Matt and I are not the same person]
Don't get me wrong, I used to be a huge Space Shuttle fan. The machine itself is really amazing, however, over time I have begun to see it's flaws (more than just falling foam and leading edge RCC.)
Personally I think the biggest problem is NASA's lack of adherence to the KISS principle. By comparison, Space Ship One is by far the most simple vehicle ever launched into space, and probably the safest because of it.
Sure launching huge amounts of cargo will take a lot of energy and thereby increase the risk (just by shear volume of fuel), so why not take people off the cargo ship and put them in one designed for safety?
Just a thought on the space elevator-
If we could build a space elevator, could we build a huge space winch? Then you could eliminate the whole problem of docking and unloading. Just dock, and the platform will pull you right up.
Zorlont3--
I really don't see why we needed to include a tirade against president bush in this thread but you've convinced me, I won't vote for him in the next election. though I am getting tired of people finding any and every reason to bash him, even in a totally unrelated and non political thread.
as for the space elevator, I'm not sure you fully understand the concept nor orbital mechanics.
The space shuttle when it is in low earth orbit is going about mach 17. it circles the earth every 90 minutes. if it went any slower, it would fall out of orbit. so if you put some kind of platform into low earth orbit and dropped a rope from it, the platform would still circle the earth in 90 minutes, and the rope would be moving thru the atmosphere at the same speed, which will make it really hot, and we wouldn't have any planes that move fast enough to catch up to the dock.
if we move the platform hire, the the rope will slow down, but it will also pull the platform down into orbit. so unless the rope is tied to the earth, there is nothing to keep the platform in space.
once the platform is tied to the ground, then it's centrifigufal force keeps it in it's proper orbit, much like the bucket on a string pulls on your when you spin around while holding it.
I really don't see why we needed to include a tirade against president bush in this thread but you've convinced me, I won't vote for him in the next election. though I am getting tired of people finding any and every reason to bash him, even in a totally unrelated and non political thread.
as for the space elevator, I'm not sure you fully understand the concept nor orbital mechanics.
The space shuttle when it is in low earth orbit is going about mach 17. it circles the earth every 90 minutes. if it went any slower, it would fall out of orbit. so if you put some kind of platform into low earth orbit and dropped a rope from it, the platform would still circle the earth in 90 minutes, and the rope would be moving thru the atmosphere at the same speed, which will make it really hot, and we wouldn't have any planes that move fast enough to catch up to the dock.
if we move the platform hire, the the rope will slow down, but it will also pull the platform down into orbit. so unless the rope is tied to the earth, there is nothing to keep the platform in space.
once the platform is tied to the ground, then it's centrifigufal force keeps it in it's proper orbit, much like the bucket on a string pulls on your when you spin around while holding it.
You are correct Matt. Now I feel like an idiot for not remembering that fact. 
Well Matt is correct provided he adds "CG at geosynchronous orbit" for a surface tied rope. If the CG is any lower than geosynchronous orbit, the whole thing falls down, partly onto the surface and partly into lower faster orbits.
Interesting comments from everyone, I knew I was on a slippery slope when I mentioned Blade Runner, which is why I mentioned a disclaimer after it – lol
One thing this discussion has brought to mind is that maybe we do not have a good enough reason yet to go into space. Efforts are underway to map the Moon and Mars for mineral deposits and we are headed out soon to two of the largest asteroids, but I wonder if mining for ore will really be the value of space.
I am thinking about the California gold rush; once people came there they found value besides gold. Maybe it will take a eureka moment for space to really open up, something beyond value will be found like uranium, diamonds, or something more exotic that we are not yet aware of. For example, what might we be able to do with pure liquid or solid methane on Titan? Saturn’s rings are looking more and more like they are made of ice and other material that is segmented out into individual rings. There might be endless rings of some rich material. These probably are not too good of examples, but the point is that maybe space will present to us some wonder that we cannot do without. It might even be in the nature of space itself, or a location of space, but I think the gold fever needs to set in or it is going to take a very long time.
I cringe every time I hear someone say something like, “We need to take care of things on Earth first instead of blasting off into space.” I can understand their point of view though, because not enough is being said to the general public about what space can do for us, nor do many care. If there is money in it for them though, people will listen. I think the general public sees the billions going into space, but they can’t put their fingers on the rewards.
One thing this discussion has brought to mind is that maybe we do not have a good enough reason yet to go into space. Efforts are underway to map the Moon and Mars for mineral deposits and we are headed out soon to two of the largest asteroids, but I wonder if mining for ore will really be the value of space.
I am thinking about the California gold rush; once people came there they found value besides gold. Maybe it will take a eureka moment for space to really open up, something beyond value will be found like uranium, diamonds, or something more exotic that we are not yet aware of. For example, what might we be able to do with pure liquid or solid methane on Titan? Saturn’s rings are looking more and more like they are made of ice and other material that is segmented out into individual rings. There might be endless rings of some rich material. These probably are not too good of examples, but the point is that maybe space will present to us some wonder that we cannot do without. It might even be in the nature of space itself, or a location of space, but I think the gold fever needs to set in or it is going to take a very long time.
I cringe every time I hear someone say something like, “We need to take care of things on Earth first instead of blasting off into space.” I can understand their point of view though, because not enough is being said to the general public about what space can do for us, nor do many care. If there is money in it for them though, people will listen. I think the general public sees the billions going into space, but they can’t put their fingers on the rewards.
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I think the general public sees the billions going into space, but they can’t put their fingers on the rewards.
Fortunately there are men like Bigelow, Rutan, Allen, and Branson trying to change that. Heck, if it was in my price range I'd be on a ship to space. There's just something about the view.
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Fortunately there are men like Bigelow, Rutan, Allen, and Branson trying to change that. Heck, if it was in my price range I'd be on a ship to space. There's just something about the view.
The difference is that these men have done it not for billions, but millions. And while that's still steep, it's cheap by comparison to the government's efforts, even 50 years ago. And that is very admirable. It deserves applause. *Waterbreath claps wildly*
However, as I noted before, it's still very expensive. Much moreso than the first atmoshperic flight efforts were. I didn't mean earlier to imply that this was a permanent barrier. I just meant that it explains why progress has been, and will likely continue to be, slower. I still question how quickly and cost-effectively the flights can be expanded to safely carry multiple people, plus cargo, farther out into space.
I am for the tug, to orbit, concept.
This is simple in its prodigy.
There are only two components needed.
One, if a retrofitted 747, or some other used large commercial aircraft.
The second, is a single shuttlecraft.
The general idea, is for the shuttle to rest on a platform, on the top portion of the carrying aircraft.
This form of shuttle would not have to be necessarily smaller. Although this type of shuttle, would have to carry two saddlebags of liquid fulle to be burnt, in order to have orbited the shuttle.
The carrying aircraft lumbers off, with a fully fueled shuttle being carried on its back.When the carrying aircraft reached an altitude of thirty five thousand feet, the carrying aircraft noses forwards, the docking clamps for the shuttle are released and the shuttle pops of the back of the carrying aircraft, to hang aerodynamically, for a second or so.
Rocket engines are then ignited and from a flight level of thirty five to forty thousand feet, as launch levels, the shuttle can then be safely inserted to obit.
The idea is low cost, as you carrying modified aircraft, acts as your boost to orbit principle, so replacing a noisy ground level, high impact lift off.
The orbiter simple flies to its rendezvous point, after its carry-on saddle fuel bags have been expended and the shuttle can safely deliver its cargo.
This idea, is lower cost than a ground launch.
Many aerospace engineers are already looking at this possibility.
The only trauma to the shuttle, since to ferry to insertion to orbit profile is aerodynamically made gradually, is the slipstream of the air, over the shuttle shape, with is almost negluble.
I'm surprised that more private entrepreneurs have not taken this idea and already have their own versions of satellite and or space stations deposited round the globe, rather than depend on NASA for everything.
This is simple in its prodigy.
There are only two components needed.
One, if a retrofitted 747, or some other used large commercial aircraft.
The second, is a single shuttlecraft.
The general idea, is for the shuttle to rest on a platform, on the top portion of the carrying aircraft.
This form of shuttle would not have to be necessarily smaller. Although this type of shuttle, would have to carry two saddlebags of liquid fulle to be burnt, in order to have orbited the shuttle.
The carrying aircraft lumbers off, with a fully fueled shuttle being carried on its back.When the carrying aircraft reached an altitude of thirty five thousand feet, the carrying aircraft noses forwards, the docking clamps for the shuttle are released and the shuttle pops of the back of the carrying aircraft, to hang aerodynamically, for a second or so.
Rocket engines are then ignited and from a flight level of thirty five to forty thousand feet, as launch levels, the shuttle can then be safely inserted to obit.
The idea is low cost, as you carrying modified aircraft, acts as your boost to orbit principle, so replacing a noisy ground level, high impact lift off.
The orbiter simple flies to its rendezvous point, after its carry-on saddle fuel bags have been expended and the shuttle can safely deliver its cargo.
This idea, is lower cost than a ground launch.
Many aerospace engineers are already looking at this possibility.
The only trauma to the shuttle, since to ferry to insertion to orbit profile is aerodynamically made gradually, is the slipstream of the air, over the shuttle shape, with is almost negluble.
I'm surprised that more private entrepreneurs have not taken this idea and already have their own versions of satellite and or space stations deposited round the globe, rather than depend on NASA for everything.
I hope I do get a chance to go up to space someday; I would even take the 85% odds.
I still marvel at the Saturn V rocket; Werner von Braun, what a guy. I wonder about NASA now though, at least as far as a manned program, I just don’t think they have the guts anymore. The robotic probes like Voyager, Cassini, and the Mars Rovers they seem to be able to handle with the help of places like JPL.
As far as SpaceShipOne and others spending millions rather than billions, they have been using the off the shelf technology and free information that has cost billions to produce. Much of this technology is from the military contracting work out to companies to come up with products like the F117A Stealth Fighter, the B2 Bomber, and other projects that I am sure remain secret. For example, for years the military was using laser light to produce artificial stars to look down to Earth through the haze with spy satellites to compensate for the distortion of the atmosphere; now this same technology is used to look up through the haze with ground based telescopes.
I still marvel at the Saturn V rocket; Werner von Braun, what a guy. I wonder about NASA now though, at least as far as a manned program, I just don’t think they have the guts anymore. The robotic probes like Voyager, Cassini, and the Mars Rovers they seem to be able to handle with the help of places like JPL.
As far as SpaceShipOne and others spending millions rather than billions, they have been using the off the shelf technology and free information that has cost billions to produce. Much of this technology is from the military contracting work out to companies to come up with products like the F117A Stealth Fighter, the B2 Bomber, and other projects that I am sure remain secret. For example, for years the military was using laser light to produce artificial stars to look down to Earth through the haze with spy satellites to compensate for the distortion of the atmosphere; now this same technology is used to look up through the haze with ground based telescopes.
I was just commenting on Werner von Braun to a friend yesterday. Rutan seems to be the only guy since to have the same such vision at a practical level. von Braun used NASA (and even the Nazis) to help further the dream of space travel, and since the vision was so new and cool, government bought in and was a useful tool. Today, it is not. Instead, Rutan (and others) are using private industry to fund their work in a very similar way. Both took current technology, applied it, then furthered it. I only hope Rutan's end accomplishments will be as cool as the Apollo V.
It is a little disheartening that after SpaceShipOne took the X-Prize I have not heard of any of the other competitors launching their vehicles. At first they were all going to continue the ventures even though the X-Prize was won, but I have not heard a word about them since then.
I never thought of Rutan being like Braun, but I suppose he is. I have an original book sitting around here somewhere from the 1950’s that has the art drawings by Chesley Bonestell of Werner von Braun’s concepts for spaceships, space stations, and other concepts for spacesuits and things like that. An older friend just gave it to me one day when he found out I liked Brawn.
I really do not know what is going on with technology these days. We do need people like Brawn and Rutan to get things moving. I sat in a meeting at a large aerospace company about ten years ago with engineers that had left the company and gone on to work with others to come up with a working flying car. If you search the net you will see that it is the one with 8 tiny jet engines, 2 at each corner of the car. They were pitching this car to the aerospace manager and engineers trying to get them to produce it. I thought at the time, wow this is so cool! They already had developed for it collision avoidance systems so that the cars would not come into contact with each other, just a lot of really neat technology.
Did the aerospace company get involved? No. They are afraid of change, afraid of government red tape, afraid that it will dip into their own business, and probably mostly afraid of failure. I have no doubt that we could be flying around in flying cars right now if they would have had someone with the vision and the money to back them up. I really am starting to wonder if the world is being held back from technological innovation by the vary ones who created it in the first place because they now have the market and don’t want to rock the boat. Another company, Lockheed, was working on the single stage to orbit vehicle for years and they said they canceled it because the material for the liquid oxygen tank was delaminating! There is something very fishy about that. What happened to the can do spirit?
I never thought of Rutan being like Braun, but I suppose he is. I have an original book sitting around here somewhere from the 1950’s that has the art drawings by Chesley Bonestell of Werner von Braun’s concepts for spaceships, space stations, and other concepts for spacesuits and things like that. An older friend just gave it to me one day when he found out I liked Brawn.
I really do not know what is going on with technology these days. We do need people like Brawn and Rutan to get things moving. I sat in a meeting at a large aerospace company about ten years ago with engineers that had left the company and gone on to work with others to come up with a working flying car. If you search the net you will see that it is the one with 8 tiny jet engines, 2 at each corner of the car. They were pitching this car to the aerospace manager and engineers trying to get them to produce it. I thought at the time, wow this is so cool! They already had developed for it collision avoidance systems so that the cars would not come into contact with each other, just a lot of really neat technology.
Did the aerospace company get involved? No. They are afraid of change, afraid of government red tape, afraid that it will dip into their own business, and probably mostly afraid of failure. I have no doubt that we could be flying around in flying cars right now if they would have had someone with the vision and the money to back them up. I really am starting to wonder if the world is being held back from technological innovation by the vary ones who created it in the first place because they now have the market and don’t want to rock the boat. Another company, Lockheed, was working on the single stage to orbit vehicle for years and they said they canceled it because the material for the liquid oxygen tank was delaminating! There is something very fishy about that. What happened to the can do spirit?
QUOTE
Did the aerospace company get involved? No. They are afraid of change, afraid of government red tape, afraid that it will dip into their own business, and probably mostly afraid of failure. I have no doubt that we could be flying around in flying cars right now if they would have had someone with the vision and the money to back them up.
My guess is that another very big and important consideration for those companies is demand. Is there demand for flying cars? One of the qualifications for producing a "niche" product for commercial sale despite lack of demand is that usually it has to be fairly easy to adapt in-place systems to produce it. Flying cars are so radically different than current automotive or aerospace products that this is not likely the case.
There are two things that could allow flying cars to come to market, I think. 1) A government contract. 2) Someone who is risky enough not to care whether there is demand before investing millions/billions producing a series of them for attempted sale to the filthy-rich. That guy from Virgin seems like a good prospect for this, if you ask me.
On the line of flying cars, Segway went into production without a real market, and it has had a mixed reaction at best. Sure they're cool toys, but not very practical for most people. Same problem with space travel or flying cars.
I know of at least one peson who wants a flying car, and I'm sure there are plenty of others, look at the lear jet market. and the rich boys looking for the coolest toys.
Is anyone else having flash backs of a flying DeLorian?
"You mean it actually flew?"
"Ya doc. We had a hover conversion done in the early 21st century."
"You mean it actually flew?"
"Ya doc. We had a hover conversion done in the early 21st century."
...how about the flying cars in the last Star Wars movie...all they need is a good stereo system to make them better - lol
QUOTE (Matt+Mar 17 2005, 03:50 PM)
I know of at least one peson who wants a flying car, and I'm sure there are plenty of others, look at the lear jet market. and the rich boys looking for the coolest toys.
Yes, but a learjet is still a jet. It's still pretty much just old technology made smaller. A flying car requires new technology that hasn't been mass-produced before, plus complex, specialized computer systems. And rigorous safety testing for both of those. That makes for very high unit cost.
Demand consists of, among other things, consumer unit cost and need (this consists of a number of both "hard" and psychological factors). Right now, I think consumer unit cost is too high, and need is too low.
I think MattWeston's example of the Segway is a perfect analogy. Dean Kamen is the kind of crazy guy who might be willing to bring this kind of thing to market without taking that into consideration. But his will alone wasn't enough in that case to make the public pay for it.
I'm not saying no one should try. I'm just saying I wouldn't want to be that guy.
Yes, but a learjet is still a jet. It's still pretty much just old technology made smaller. A flying car requires new technology that hasn't been mass-produced before, plus complex, specialized computer systems. And rigorous safety testing for both of those. That makes for very high unit cost.
Demand consists of, among other things, consumer unit cost and need (this consists of a number of both "hard" and psychological factors). Right now, I think consumer unit cost is too high, and need is too low.
I think MattWeston's example of the Segway is a perfect analogy. Dean Kamen is the kind of crazy guy who might be willing to bring this kind of thing to market without taking that into consideration. But his will alone wasn't enough in that case to make the public pay for it.
I'm not saying no one should try. I'm just saying I wouldn't want to be that guy.
I am just a little sorry for bringing up flying cars, but it is space related sort of. Check out this site, there have been flying cars:
http://www.roadabletimes.com/alphalisting.html
http://www.roadabletimes.com/alphalisting.html
That was actually a pretty cool link, though it has nothing to do with space travel.
Yes, that was a little off the subject as a flying car can’t get much higher than around 4 kilometers. I guess someone decided space starts at 100 kilometers up for some reason that I have never heard a good explanation for. Getting up, and staying up requires a little more power to get into orbit. I wonder if there would be some way to provide the fuel from above Earth orbit so that a spaceship would only have to carry the engines, rather than the fuel also. Maybe there is a way to harness the suns energy and then beam it down to a ship in the form of a high energy laser or something like that. Then the engines would convert the energy from space into thrust. Well, I am sure someone must have thought about that. I suppose the energy needed from the sun would require a huge collector of some kind.
What would happen if you could cut a tunnel through the atmosphere to the surface that was a complete vacuum? In other words say you would use a force field that would expand out from a line to the surface into a circular shape and be left with a vacuum all the way to space? Actually, perhaps nothing would happen, although is not that the result of thunder, the collapsing of a void in the atmosphere created by lightening? Would there be any advantage in getting into space with a vacuum from the surface up? Gravity would still be there, that is the real force at work. Maybe suddenly collapsing a straw shaped void from the surface upward would create some kind of force propelling an object upward. Well I have said enough to allow others show me the errors of my way – lol.
What would happen if you could cut a tunnel through the atmosphere to the surface that was a complete vacuum? In other words say you would use a force field that would expand out from a line to the surface into a circular shape and be left with a vacuum all the way to space? Actually, perhaps nothing would happen, although is not that the result of thunder, the collapsing of a void in the atmosphere created by lightening? Would there be any advantage in getting into space with a vacuum from the surface up? Gravity would still be there, that is the real force at work. Maybe suddenly collapsing a straw shaped void from the surface upward would create some kind of force propelling an object upward. Well I have said enough to allow others show me the errors of my way – lol.
There are a lot of potential ways to get places once you're free of Earth's gravity. Ion thrusters, for example. Only thing is they take a long time to accelerate (and hence decelerate) unless you pump ridiculous amounts of energy into them.
What would happen if the space elevator were created at the true north and/or south pole?
it wouldn't work.
it has to be at the equator.
the idea is that there is something in geo stationary orbit with a rope coming down to the earth. centrifugal force keeps the rope tight. it's the spinning around the earth that makes it work. that's why the rope has to have such strong tensil strength.
nothing can be in geostationary orbit over the poles.
it has to be at the equator.
the idea is that there is something in geo stationary orbit with a rope coming down to the earth. centrifugal force keeps the rope tight. it's the spinning around the earth that makes it work. that's why the rope has to have such strong tensil strength.
nothing can be in geostationary orbit over the poles.
The strange thing is that you would not have the added speed of the Earth rotation if you went straight up from the poles. If you went up a space elevator at the equator then you would automatically maintain the same speed as the rotation of the Earth, but if you were to go up at the poles would you even remain by the Earth? In other words since the Earth is moving through space around the sun and you went straight up from the north pole to say 300 miles up and held that altitude would the Earth continue below your feet or would it move on around the Sun while you floated in space where the north pole was?
Or would the proximity of the Earth still take you along with it? At the equator when they want to leave orbit they crank the speed up to over 18,000 miles per hour, but what would it take to leave Earth from the poles?
Or would the proximity of the Earth still take you along with it? At the equator when they want to leave orbit they crank the speed up to over 18,000 miles per hour, but what would it take to leave Earth from the poles?
Launching to the east adds as much as a thousand mph to a rocket, that's why there is such an interest in a sealaunch near the equator. When leaving orbit the speed is slowed. A space elevator would have to go from the equator to geosychronous orbit, it would not work from the poles. ICBMs travel over the north pole and the earth's rotation has to be taken into account. But back to the original subject.
Aside from the ease that very unaerodynamic spacecraft could get into orbit and the sharp turns, Starwars had another very unscientific aspect, the spacedocks were open to space yet the air stayed in.
Given the cost and safety issues of human space flight, and the tremendous expense of the construction of space hotels, it dosn't look like the average wealthy tourist is going to have space as a place to visit. Past frontiers like the west had the means to make a living, first gold then winter wheat. Something like solar power satellites have potential but it might cost a trillion dollars to build mass accelerators on the moon to harvest the materials and space refineries and factories to make the hardware.
It might be possible to build a big, cheap, inefficient booster that could put a payload in orbit for only a few hundred dollars a pound, but where is the market? It is sort of a catch 22, launch costs won't come down untill there is a big market, but there can't be a market untill launch costs come down.
James Cameron, the movie director, suggests that NASA put a little more effort into selling itself. A future rover like Spirit or Opportunity could carry a camera that it could set down to take pictures of itself. If there is one thing Starwars did demonstrate, it is that little robots can be the stars of the show.
Maybe small scale projects are all that we can hope for in the near term. Recovering gold foil and small debre from the as yet unseen crash site of the Apollo 17 upper lander stage. Sales to collectors might support the enterprise if watching the process were to become a popular show. The same goes for collecting small rocks from the surface of an asteroid. Millions of years of micrometeorite impacts would give these pebbles a surface that can not be duplicated terrestrially.
Some of the most impressive photography by the astronauts has been taken at an angle to the earth rather than looking straight down. A six inch telescope could take pictures down to the resolution of a car. Seeing a cloud on your computer screen, then going outside and seeing it from below, might have some appeal. Certainly seeing one's local surroundings in real time should have some appeal that people would pay for or accept advertising on. The biggest benefit of the hype to sell samples and views from off the earth would be an increased intrest in space and its possibilities.
Aside from the ease that very unaerodynamic spacecraft could get into orbit and the sharp turns, Starwars had another very unscientific aspect, the spacedocks were open to space yet the air stayed in.
Given the cost and safety issues of human space flight, and the tremendous expense of the construction of space hotels, it dosn't look like the average wealthy tourist is going to have space as a place to visit. Past frontiers like the west had the means to make a living, first gold then winter wheat. Something like solar power satellites have potential but it might cost a trillion dollars to build mass accelerators on the moon to harvest the materials and space refineries and factories to make the hardware.
It might be possible to build a big, cheap, inefficient booster that could put a payload in orbit for only a few hundred dollars a pound, but where is the market? It is sort of a catch 22, launch costs won't come down untill there is a big market, but there can't be a market untill launch costs come down.
James Cameron, the movie director, suggests that NASA put a little more effort into selling itself. A future rover like Spirit or Opportunity could carry a camera that it could set down to take pictures of itself. If there is one thing Starwars did demonstrate, it is that little robots can be the stars of the show.
Maybe small scale projects are all that we can hope for in the near term. Recovering gold foil and small debre from the as yet unseen crash site of the Apollo 17 upper lander stage. Sales to collectors might support the enterprise if watching the process were to become a popular show. The same goes for collecting small rocks from the surface of an asteroid. Millions of years of micrometeorite impacts would give these pebbles a surface that can not be duplicated terrestrially.
Some of the most impressive photography by the astronauts has been taken at an angle to the earth rather than looking straight down. A six inch telescope could take pictures down to the resolution of a car. Seeing a cloud on your computer screen, then going outside and seeing it from below, might have some appeal. Certainly seeing one's local surroundings in real time should have some appeal that people would pay for or accept advertising on. The biggest benefit of the hype to sell samples and views from off the earth would be an increased intrest in space and its possibilities.
Yeah, well.
I was talking to a rocket scientist once.
Back in 2000, if I remember right.
His idea, which I have seen since on the internet was that a device could be built that would swing down into near earth orbit and pick up and release spacecraft.
It would not have worked.
Orbital mechanics are just a little more complicated when you deal with things that hang down in a gravity field.
To know this, you have to look at what happens with tides.
(not the soap)
Not to diss Clarke. Really, the man is smarter than I, but this whole 'space elevator' thing is not going to work.
That point on the ground really *wants to be in high orbit, the point up there *wants to be on the ground.
*Re the 'pathetic fallacy'
Sometimes people involve in IT talk this way when we are discribing information exchange.
I was talking to a rocket scientist once.
Back in 2000, if I remember right.
His idea, which I have seen since on the internet was that a device could be built that would swing down into near earth orbit and pick up and release spacecraft.
It would not have worked.
Orbital mechanics are just a little more complicated when you deal with things that hang down in a gravity field.
To know this, you have to look at what happens with tides.
(not the soap)
Not to diss Clarke. Really, the man is smarter than I, but this whole 'space elevator' thing is not going to work.
That point on the ground really *wants to be in high orbit, the point up there *wants to be on the ground.
*Re the 'pathetic fallacy'
Sometimes people involve in IT talk this way when we are discribing information exchange.
The space docks in Star Wars, and newer movies of Star Trek, had invisible force fields that kept the atmosphere in and the vacuum of space out. Don’t they have containment fields now when working with things like antimatter and particle accelerators?
Forgetting about the space elevator for a moment, what is the escape velocity from the true North or South Pole? Would it be an easier way to escape Earth’s vicinity my launching a rocket straight up from the North Pole? Just curious really, especially since when you see the sun and other stars rotate, the exit point for most of the material that escapes to space is at the poles.
As far as that goes why do we go out to other planets in a circuitous spiral orbit along the plane of the solar system? Why not launch from the North Pole and take advantage of the tilt of the Earth’s axis to go towards the inner planets or up and over the sun in an arch to reach a planet on the other side of the solar system? Wouldn’t this be shorter than spiraling out or inward until we match the planet we seek? Would not the sun and the planet we were going to provide sufficient gravity to insert a spacecraft into orbit? Also the spacecraft would then be in a polar orbit, even with Uranus, which is the better orbit anyway for viewing a planet.
Another possibility for a reason to go into space would be if they found any kind of life at all, surely that would spark the imagination of the world. No doubt if we ever decipher a signal from the SETI projects the world’s nations would come together, along with the military, in a sort of panic when they realize the universe might be teeming with intelligent life capable of all of our foibles. Conversely not finding a speck of life out there might also alert the world of our uniqueness and that we need to start setting up colonies in an attempt to prevent extinction of the human race by a global disaster.
I have seen the concept of the rotating windmill type of device that rides above the atmosphere in orbit and rotates its arms down into the atmosphere for transporting things off of Earth. Yes, that seems really farfetched to me, the drag of the atmosphere… An idea that I do like is shooting stuff up with a huge rail gun, also seems farfetched, but they say it can be done as long as there is no human cargo because we could not take the G forces. Something like that on a small body like the Moon would probably work to get a large amount of material off of its surface. Of course on the Moon it would basically be a giant slingshot with no detonation involved.
Forgetting about the space elevator for a moment, what is the escape velocity from the true North or South Pole? Would it be an easier way to escape Earth’s vicinity my launching a rocket straight up from the North Pole? Just curious really, especially since when you see the sun and other stars rotate, the exit point for most of the material that escapes to space is at the poles.
As far as that goes why do we go out to other planets in a circuitous spiral orbit along the plane of the solar system? Why not launch from the North Pole and take advantage of the tilt of the Earth’s axis to go towards the inner planets or up and over the sun in an arch to reach a planet on the other side of the solar system? Wouldn’t this be shorter than spiraling out or inward until we match the planet we seek? Would not the sun and the planet we were going to provide sufficient gravity to insert a spacecraft into orbit? Also the spacecraft would then be in a polar orbit, even with Uranus, which is the better orbit anyway for viewing a planet.
Another possibility for a reason to go into space would be if they found any kind of life at all, surely that would spark the imagination of the world. No doubt if we ever decipher a signal from the SETI projects the world’s nations would come together, along with the military, in a sort of panic when they realize the universe might be teeming with intelligent life capable of all of our foibles. Conversely not finding a speck of life out there might also alert the world of our uniqueness and that we need to start setting up colonies in an attempt to prevent extinction of the human race by a global disaster.
I have seen the concept of the rotating windmill type of device that rides above the atmosphere in orbit and rotates its arms down into the atmosphere for transporting things off of Earth. Yes, that seems really farfetched to me, the drag of the atmosphere… An idea that I do like is shooting stuff up with a huge rail gun, also seems farfetched, but they say it can be done as long as there is no human cargo because we could not take the G forces. Something like that on a small body like the Moon would probably work to get a large amount of material off of its surface. Of course on the Moon it would basically be a giant slingshot with no detonation involved.
.001-
More than 90% of the fuel a rocket burns is in the first 100 miles (vertically) leaving Earth's gravity well. Launching from the equator helps with that. Once out of the gravity well, going anywhere else in space takes a much smaller effort by comparison. It is mostly just an efficiency thing to launch from the equator, then alter your orbit to go where desired.
On this line though, NASA did open up a launch site in Alaska a few years back to aid in launching satellites into a polar orbit. It is more expensive fuel wise, and I think the site only supports launching smaller rockets.
More than 90% of the fuel a rocket burns is in the first 100 miles (vertically) leaving Earth's gravity well. Launching from the equator helps with that. Once out of the gravity well, going anywhere else in space takes a much smaller effort by comparison. It is mostly just an efficiency thing to launch from the equator, then alter your orbit to go where desired.
On this line though, NASA did open up a launch site in Alaska a few years back to aid in launching satellites into a polar orbit. It is more expensive fuel wise, and I think the site only supports launching smaller rockets.
escape velocity is based on gravity, how much acclereation to you need to get off the ground. the escape velocity is the same everywhere on earth, so you need to accekerate faster than 9.8 m/s2 until you are up high enough to fall back to the earth and miss. launching from the equator with the rotation of the earth gives us a speed boost and makes it so we don't need as much fuel. if we were to launch from the pole, we would need more fuel to get up to speed and hold that acceleration for a longer period of time.
we spiral out and in from the earth because its easier, and because we're already going that way. the earth moves around the sun, so does the rocket. so if you were to launch the rocket straight at the sun, you would have to overcome your lateral motion that you got from the earth. so it's more efficient to orbit the sun in an ever expanding orbit. all we have to do is just add a little bit more speed than we already have.
we spiral out and in from the earth because its easier, and because we're already going that way. the earth moves around the sun, so does the rocket. so if you were to launch the rocket straight at the sun, you would have to overcome your lateral motion that you got from the earth. so it's more efficient to orbit the sun in an ever expanding orbit. all we have to do is just add a little bit more speed than we already have.
It always comes back to gravity. I wonder if they will ever come up with an antigravity device, sounds farfetched though. I remember a comic strip I saw years ago in Omni magazine – the boss of a research institute was wondering where so n so was, complaining that he was always taking off to go surfing, and then they show the guy in his laboratory riding a gravity wave on his surf board.
If we cannot fight gravity then why not use incredible amounts of power to overcome gravity. Is there a way to harness the suns power from orbit and then beam the energy down to a ship? It might be as a temporary space ladder made from laser light. The beam would continually hit the center of the ship where it would be converted into thrust. I know they have thought about propelling solar cells with laser light directed at them from orbit or from the moon. I suppose the collectors needed to get that much energy from the sun would be miles and miles across. Maybe a laser could also be on the ground projecting up for power while the beam from orbit was also supplying power. You would then have two sources of power all the way up. The power requirements would be incredible. I wonder how much 6 million pounds of thrust converts into kilowatt-hours of electricity. It must be huge. Actually, I just looked it up and it looks like roughly 5,650,000 kilowatts. I assume that would be a constant power requirement. So much for my electric bill.
The G word...
If we cannot fight gravity then why not use incredible amounts of power to overcome gravity. Is there a way to harness the suns power from orbit and then beam the energy down to a ship? It might be as a temporary space ladder made from laser light. The beam would continually hit the center of the ship where it would be converted into thrust. I know they have thought about propelling solar cells with laser light directed at them from orbit or from the moon. I suppose the collectors needed to get that much energy from the sun would be miles and miles across. Maybe a laser could also be on the ground projecting up for power while the beam from orbit was also supplying power. You would then have two sources of power all the way up. The power requirements would be incredible. I wonder how much 6 million pounds of thrust converts into kilowatt-hours of electricity. It must be huge. Actually, I just looked it up and it looks like roughly 5,650,000 kilowatts. I assume that would be a constant power requirement. So much for my electric bill.
The G word...
Even with a launch weight fifty times the payload delivered to low orbit, the cost of lox and kerosene would be well under fifty dollars per pound to LEO. Perhaps bringing the cost of a launch closer to the cost of propellant holds far more promise of making space accessable than any of the more exotic proposals.
So that would be about $10,000 per passenger if they didn’t take anything with them. That is still a lot of money. Isn’t that what Lockheed tried to do with the single stage to orbit vehicle they were working on?
X-33 that eventually was suppose to become the Venture Star was going to cost only $1000.00 to low Earth orbit see the link below:
http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/rlvs/x33_sum.shtml
I actually believe they made at least a couple of the the full scale Venture Stars as the top secret Aurora program. I believe this because I was actually given a top secret clearance to work on it back towards the end of the 80's. I knew one person who did work on it for over a year and all he would say, even though we were both on another secret program, was that it was like something out of Star Trek. I suppose we shall find out anytime now what it actually is, as they usually keep things like that secret for only around 10 or 15 years.
X-33 that eventually was suppose to become the Venture Star was going to cost only $1000.00 to low Earth orbit see the link below:
http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/rlvs/x33_sum.shtml
I actually believe they made at least a couple of the the full scale Venture Stars as the top secret Aurora program. I believe this because I was actually given a top secret clearance to work on it back towards the end of the 80's. I knew one person who did work on it for over a year and all he would say, even though we were both on another secret program, was that it was like something out of Star Trek. I suppose we shall find out anytime now what it actually is, as they usually keep things like that secret for only around 10 or 15 years.
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[FYI- Matt and I are not the same person]
Yes, sorry I realized
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| QUOTE |
| [FYI- Matt and I are not the same person] |
Yes, sorry I realized
Personally I think the biggest problem is NASA's lack of adherence to the KISS principle. By comparison, Space Ship One is by far the most simple vehicle ever launched into space, and probably the safest because of it.
No, the simplest vehicle is a normal ballistic missile. And Spaceship one barely reaches the performance of those. The safest? If the control system fails (what if did on the flight) you call it 'safe'? Yes you can say it is more safe than a system of equal performance and size but you cannot compare to anything even like a commercial rocket. You have to realize why rockets got as complicated as they are: For the same reason as cars. Because you want to drive them to the limit of high tech and every tenth percent of payload is pure money. I think SpaceShip One cost 20 million$... One Pegasus rocket (quite expensive but almost the same principle as SpaceshipOne) costs around 10 million dollar and puts 450kg to ORBIT... an Ariane 5 will take 18 tons to orbit for ~150million$ See the difference?
Not that I want to discredit anything regarding these ambitious flights, but they are MILES away from being better or cheaper than todays rockets and they are MILES away from the reliability of todays large launch systems.
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Sure launching huge amounts of cargo will take a lot of energy and thereby increase the risk (just by shear volume of fuel), so why not take people off the cargo ship and put them in one designed for safety?
I do not think I understand what you say here... I guess you mean having one cargo and a different passenger ship?
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| QUOTE |
| Sure launching huge amounts of cargo will take a lot of energy and thereby increase the risk (just by shear volume of fuel), so why not take people off the cargo ship and put them in one designed for safety? |
I do not think I understand what you say here... I guess you mean having one cargo and a different passenger ship?
Just a thought on the space elevator-
If we could build a space elevator, could we build a huge space winch? Then you could eliminate the whole problem of docking and unloading. Just dock, and the platform will pull you right up.
If someone explains to me how you will sustain anything like an almost still standing cable through the low earth orbit where pieces of metal fly with 35000 km/s and how you will prevent this cable from ripping apart (strength is not all you need) as oscillations in the 36000km long cable (nothing of that kind even could be maintained on earth today) impose multiples of the nominal load. Someone then would need to explain to me how you will prevent degeneration due to the proton/electron bombardement in two Van Allen belts crossing the cable... how discharge of millions of volts will affect a carbon nanotube construction that relies on its uniform structure to reach its strength. If someone shows me how much you actually gain by it comparing it to a conventional system... then I perhaps would start considering the idea and compare it to conventional existing systems: If such an elevator reaches the gigantic age of 20 years then the benefit would have to be better (including investment, maintenance and control) than standard launch systems... I very very much doubt that and I think that it will result in a ten times higher price... just my current opinion.
QUOTE ("MattWeston"+)
More than 90% of the fuel a rocket burns is in the first 100 miles (vertically) leaving Earth's gravity well.
That is incorrect. It is true that most of the fuel is burned in the first 100 miles but it is not due to the gravity well as you call it. 90% of the fuel are required to bring the payload and supporting structure to a sufficient speed to STAY in orbit. Only 10% you require to reach the altitude of around 300km. Meaning that you only need 10% of a normal rockets fuel to make a 300km jump like SpaceShipOne. It also shows why having a normal plane as first stage cannot save much energy as the saving in fuel only affects the first 10% and does not contribute to the (90%) speed factor.
Yes, I agree, but there are exceptions. There are e.g. earth observation satellites or spy satellites which require a highly polar orbit. For them it is much better to launch from the pole caps (as they do). Altering a speed vector of 8km/s requires much more energy than earth rotation can give you. Because of that the rocket will turn to its direction as soon as possible after launch (though taking the part of the equatorial speed with it).
That is incorrect. It is true that most of the fuel is burned in the first 100 miles but it is not due to the gravity well as you call it. 90% of the fuel are required to bring the payload and supporting structure to a sufficient speed to STAY in orbit. Only 10% you require to reach the altitude of around 300km. Meaning that you only need 10% of a normal rockets fuel to make a 300km jump like SpaceShipOne. It also shows why having a normal plane as first stage cannot save much energy as the saving in fuel only affects the first 10% and does not contribute to the (90%) speed factor.
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Launching from the equator helps with that. Once out of the gravity well, going anywhere else in space takes a much smaller effort by comparison. It is mostly just an efficiency thing to launch from the equator, then alter your orbit to go where desired.
Yes, I agree, but there are exceptions. There are e.g. earth observation satellites or spy satellites which require a highly polar orbit. For them it is much better to launch from the pole caps (as they do). Altering a speed vector of 8km/s requires much more energy than earth rotation can give you. Because of that the rocket will turn to its direction as soon as possible after launch (though taking the part of the equatorial speed with it).
QUOTE (ArianeV+Mar 19 2005, 03:46 PM)
That is incorrect. It is true that most of the fuel is burned in the first 100 miles but it is not due to the gravity well as you call it. 90% of the fuel are required to bring the payload and supporting structure to a sufficient speed to STAY in orbit. Only 10% you require to reach the altitude of around 300km. Meaning that you only need 10% of a normal rockets fuel to make a 300km jump like SpaceShipOne. It also shows why having a normal plane as first stage cannot save much energy as the saving in fuel only affects the first 10% and does not contribute to the (90%) speed factor.
If this is true then maybe there is a way to carry the 10% of the current fuel and be snagged by a passing ship already in orbit. On the surface that sounds ridiculous because the passing ship is in orbit at approximately 17,500 mph but maybe there would be a way to snag a ship using a flexible capture system that would extend out the back of the passing ship for miles and gradually absorb the shock of the momentum shift of the craft being captured. They could synchronize it so that a docking end cap would be near the craft going up into space and it would dock with this and minutes later the pull would begin from the orbiting craft until eventually the flexible line was played out and then when it began to snap back they would release from the docking cap. I have no idea what this would mean to the orbiting ship though, surely it would be at least dragged down to a lower orbit and would probably have to use its own power to compensate.
QUOTE
If this is true then maybe there is a way to carry the 10% of the current fuel and be snagged by a passing ship already in orbit.
Please think about the system... where would the energy to accelerate the 'snagged' ship come then from? It will come from the snagging ship that means you require fuel UP there with the snagging ship. That would be even MORE inefficient as the fuel had to be brought up there and used already up much more energy than potential fuel carried with the starting ship (which is in lower and has not yet put that much into accelerating the mass). In general you require the energy this is not bypassed by thinking of more and more complicated ways of getting there it is only more hidden then from view if you are not deeper in it.
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| QUOTE |
| If this is true then maybe there is a way to carry the 10% of the current fuel and be snagged by a passing ship already in orbit. |
Please think about the system... where would the energy to accelerate the 'snagged' ship come then from? It will come from the snagging ship that means you require fuel UP there with the snagging ship. That would be even MORE inefficient as the fuel had to be brought up there and used already up much more energy than potential fuel carried with the starting ship (which is in lower and has not yet put that much into accelerating the mass). In general you require the energy this is not bypassed by thinking of more and more complicated ways of getting there it is only more hidden then from view if you are not deeper in it.
On the surface that sounds ridiculous because the passing ship is in orbit at approximately 17,500 mph but maybe there would be a way to snag a ship using a flexible capture system that would extend out the back of the passing ship for miles and gradually absorb the shock of the momentum shift of the craft being captured.
As I said it is not about anyting like that, the problem with it is far more fundamental. If you snag the lower slower ship then your higher ship will be decelerated while the other one is accelerated. Energy is transferred fro mthe higher to the lower but you gain exactly nothing in fact you LOOSE energy in the stable orbiting and in the end you have two ships not being able to sustain orbit and going down. The lower ship will drag your other ship down, not the other way round.
A good innovative solution to this problem would be to transfer the energy to a starting ship from the earth. However this also has major problems, but perhaps you might be inspired by that idea.
Actually, I was thinking that the fuel for the ship in orbit could be supplied by a low gravity environment like the Moon or an asteroid, or even by power generated from the sun. They are even considering creating the extra fuel for a Mars return from Mars.
The regular way of doing business obviously is not working, so new methods should be considered. When companies continue to use the old tried and true technology you end up having a ford ranger pickup that is not that much different from a Model T Ford, or building a behemoth airliner like Airbus that looks like all the other airliners made in the past 40 years. People get stuck in a rut thinking that we should stick with conventional rockets based on the V1 from 60+ years ago.
The regular way of doing business obviously is not working, so new methods should be considered. When companies continue to use the old tried and true technology you end up having a ford ranger pickup that is not that much different from a Model T Ford, or building a behemoth airliner like Airbus that looks like all the other airliners made in the past 40 years. People get stuck in a rut thinking that we should stick with conventional rockets based on the V1 from 60+ years ago.
Well there are concepts that promise an improvement. But to everything we know up today we will not have an 'easy' way to get up there. Having a facility to produce fuel on another planet is not very efficient as you again have to get it to earth then.
A promising concept would be air breathing technology reaching hypersonic speeds as this would contribute then significantly to the speed then and this could in my opinion be as revolutionary step. Also what you mention of having facilities on other planets will be a very important step, but it is a very difficult topic as no nation alone could provide enough resources to do this and still keep pace with the others on other technical areas... To archieve a breakthrough in spaceflight you will require a new kind of propulsion concept and that is quite tricky...
A promising concept would be air breathing technology reaching hypersonic speeds as this would contribute then significantly to the speed then and this could in my opinion be as revolutionary step. Also what you mention of having facilities on other planets will be a very important step, but it is a very difficult topic as no nation alone could provide enough resources to do this and still keep pace with the others on other technical areas... To archieve a breakthrough in spaceflight you will require a new kind of propulsion concept and that is quite tricky...
Maybe it is meant to be, that to finally get off this planet with cheap transportation we will need to use the world’s resources working together. Within the USA alone so much information is kept confidential within the commercial sector in the fear of someone getting the upper hand in technology that has been created in research and development. The military is really secretive and it probably only needs to classify 10% of what they do. When something no longer needs to be declassified it probably seldom gets done, because they don’t have people sitting around saying, oh gee this doesn’t need to be classified anymore. I can only imagine what countries and corporations all over the world must have hidden away as far as information regarding materials, processes, procedures, specifications, and methods of creating technology for spaceflight. I have worked at companies that are doing R&D that is duplicated at another company doing very similar things, really it is a pathetic waste of time and resources, and those resources are mostly people reinventing the wheel all over the world.
If these companies and countries could get together and let down their security requirements on information for spaceflight it would be a tremendous thing. There are many other industries that probably have something to add to spaceflight also, but no one has sat down to look at the whole picture. Europe, Russia, Japan, China, USA, and many other countries working together probably have already everything they need to put the puzzle of cheap spaceflight together. At least they would be in a lot better position to build on what the world knows. I worked at companies that are so departmentalized that I did not know what program was going on in the next building, nor would I have access to any of the information on the program no matter how it might pertain to the program that I was working on.
There could be a whole industry setup just to examine the information from around the world that pertains to such things as spaceflight if that information was freely made available. It appears outwardly that so much information is now available on the Internet, but not really, most large companies have the Intranet and little of their information ever leaves those companies.
In a world of open information a company could design and build a spacecraft based on the information of say a million different companies from all over the world. All the information would be tracked as to where it came from and depending on the quality and quantity of the information a percentage of the profits from the spacecraft would be sent to each information source, sort of like a dividend check. Well that is my rant on the lack of sharing of information in the information age and a pipe dream to go along with it.
If these companies and countries could get together and let down their security requirements on information for spaceflight it would be a tremendous thing. There are many other industries that probably have something to add to spaceflight also, but no one has sat down to look at the whole picture. Europe, Russia, Japan, China, USA, and many other countries working together probably have already everything they need to put the puzzle of cheap spaceflight together. At least they would be in a lot better position to build on what the world knows. I worked at companies that are so departmentalized that I did not know what program was going on in the next building, nor would I have access to any of the information on the program no matter how it might pertain to the program that I was working on.
There could be a whole industry setup just to examine the information from around the world that pertains to such things as spaceflight if that information was freely made available. It appears outwardly that so much information is now available on the Internet, but not really, most large companies have the Intranet and little of their information ever leaves those companies.
In a world of open information a company could design and build a spacecraft based on the information of say a million different companies from all over the world. All the information would be tracked as to where it came from and depending on the quality and quantity of the information a percentage of the profits from the spacecraft would be sent to each information source, sort of like a dividend check. Well that is my rant on the lack of sharing of information in the information age and a pipe dream to go along with it.
April 14, 2024
I remember a thread I had created at a message board back in 2005 (do you remember those message boards?), that asked the question of when there would be affordable, safe, and boring space travel. Most comments were rather negative for this to ever occur, if I recall correctly, within the foreseeable future. I could bring up the old message on Solarnet, but I'm still a little lazy.
The sights we have seen on our space liner out to Saturn are breathtaking, as I communicate this message I wonder at the startling snowball effect of information throughout the solar system. To think in under twenty years we have created a world society where millions are ferried off to all locations of the solar system, some temporally and some permanently to begin in harvesting endless riches, along with that a greater knowledge of the universe. Who would have thought back in 2005 that we would now have ships and settlements beyond the Ort Cloud and even now the multitude of ships jumping from one planetoid to another in the endless voyage to the next stars?
I saw two lovers against the far window here in the lounge just an hour or so ago and wrote a poem in handwriting on a bar napkin (I know - lol, handwriting on bar napkins seems ancient now). I will transmit the poem via image recognition along with this communications. Hope this letter finds you all in good spirits and health on your journey to Epsilon Eridani.
Travel Saturn, Inc.
O watery glittering Rings of Saturn
Forever icy and ethereal shine
Cavorting within changing swirling patterns
Sheppard moons cast their shadows deep within your twine
How hearts soar amongst Saturn’s endless rolling seas
Space-faring ships behold flowing rivers as forever
Some like ghosts of fogs delight fading in twilight
Wispy as old memories evaporating beyond faintest dreams
Rings too of raging furrowed mountains on end
Menacing charcoal depths and white pleated heights
Off to port no blackness is spied, Saturn only fills the sky
Two lovers silhouetted against swirling colored depths of blue
O the strength of humankind to behold a sight like this anew
To sail away where dreams are woven in the mists
Our star is but a lonely point of light of no importance
In blackness that holds nothingness so well
Yet Saturn trumpets with satisfaction at our space liners farewell
Happy Saturn is to see lover’s hearts soar amongst the stars
The grandeur of a majestic ribbon world behind
Saturn longs for lover’s hearts return again
I remember a thread I had created at a message board back in 2005 (do you remember those message boards?), that asked the question of when there would be affordable, safe, and boring space travel. Most comments were rather negative for this to ever occur, if I recall correctly, within the foreseeable future. I could bring up the old message on Solarnet, but I'm still a little lazy.
The sights we have seen on our space liner out to Saturn are breathtaking, as I communicate this message I wonder at the startling snowball effect of information throughout the solar system. To think in under twenty years we have created a world society where millions are ferried off to all locations of the solar system, some temporally and some permanently to begin in harvesting endless riches, along with that a greater knowledge of the universe. Who would have thought back in 2005 that we would now have ships and settlements beyond the Ort Cloud and even now the multitude of ships jumping from one planetoid to another in the endless voyage to the next stars?
I saw two lovers against the far window here in the lounge just an hour or so ago and wrote a poem in handwriting on a bar napkin (I know - lol, handwriting on bar napkins seems ancient now). I will transmit the poem via image recognition along with this communications. Hope this letter finds you all in good spirits and health on your journey to Epsilon Eridani.
Travel Saturn, Inc.
O watery glittering Rings of Saturn
Forever icy and ethereal shine
Cavorting within changing swirling patterns
Sheppard moons cast their shadows deep within your twine
How hearts soar amongst Saturn’s endless rolling seas
Space-faring ships behold flowing rivers as forever
Some like ghosts of fogs delight fading in twilight
Wispy as old memories evaporating beyond faintest dreams
Rings too of raging furrowed mountains on end
Menacing charcoal depths and white pleated heights
Off to port no blackness is spied, Saturn only fills the sky
Two lovers silhouetted against swirling colored depths of blue
O the strength of humankind to behold a sight like this anew
To sail away where dreams are woven in the mists
Our star is but a lonely point of light of no importance
In blackness that holds nothingness so well
Yet Saturn trumpets with satisfaction at our space liners farewell
Happy Saturn is to see lover’s hearts soar amongst the stars
The grandeur of a majestic ribbon world behind
Saturn longs for lover’s hearts return again
QUOTE (WaterBreath+Mar 16 2005, 03:55 PM)
We can take it to another level and rather compare the flight of SpaceShipOne to Kittyhawk, but the fact remains that SpaceShipOne required the investment and backing of a rich and famous engineer, plus a $10 million incentive prize. This is still a far cry from the hard work of two regular, but smart, guys chasing a dream..
it cost 20 million for the project anyway, the real incentive was the fact that it was a historical event, and the rich guy gets his name on something cool
to get to space we dont necesarily have to use rockets, france has been launching thier satellites using electromagnets (a big rail gun)
while doing something like this for a shuttle is currently out of the question, as generating enough power is difficult, i think instead we could launch pods, and have the pods be caught in space, making going up much cheaper, comming back down would be difficult however
and no matter what method you use to get into space, be it teleporting or whatever, work is STILL DONE, your moving some displacement (basic physics) and the power must come from somewhere, rockets, lifters, however, there is no cheap source of energy readily available for commercial airflight (and thats dissapointing)
also rentry is still not as safe as it could be, id like to see more efforts placed into a more controled rentry, rather than our ballistics
it cost 20 million for the project anyway, the real incentive was the fact that it was a historical event, and the rich guy gets his name on something cool
to get to space we dont necesarily have to use rockets, france has been launching thier satellites using electromagnets (a big rail gun)
while doing something like this for a shuttle is currently out of the question, as generating enough power is difficult, i think instead we could launch pods, and have the pods be caught in space, making going up much cheaper, comming back down would be difficult however
and no matter what method you use to get into space, be it teleporting or whatever, work is STILL DONE, your moving some displacement (basic physics) and the power must come from somewhere, rockets, lifters, however, there is no cheap source of energy readily available for commercial airflight (and thats dissapointing)
also rentry is still not as safe as it could be, id like to see more efforts placed into a more controled rentry, rather than our ballistics
do you have anything on this rail gun the french are using?
this is the first I've heard of one being in use.
this is the first I've heard of one being in use.
i lost the link, but they built it on a mountain in africa (saved on the infastructure)
hmmmm last I heard, the rail gun to orbit was still a practical impossiblity. mostly because we don't have transistors that can switch on fast enough with enough juice to push the payload the last few feet.
ahhh here it is.
Granted this is a blog by someone who writes mostly about different scripting methods. However he makes a lot of sense.
http://blogs.msdn.com/ericlippert/archive/.../21/358512.aspx
I'd be interested in confirming if these problems have been overcome.
ahhh here it is.
Granted this is a blog by someone who writes mostly about different scripting methods. However he makes a lot of sense.
http://blogs.msdn.com/ericlippert/archive/.../21/358512.aspx
I'd be interested in confirming if these problems have been overcome.
Hehe, yes... I guess with all the 'now we ignore this and that' in it you might say what is left over makes a lot of sense...
If you imagine what it feels like to shoot with 11km/s through the lower atmosphere I would suggest you try and drive your car against a concrete bridge... a rail gun is never useful to archieve anything alone. Note that Jules Verne already had the idea to use a cannon... still I would not suggest that for health reasons...
The calculation is funny but quite useless as it neglects all effects that create the real problems of those principles because those are not to be calculated with simple math equations. At least I have to say that he mentions most of the complex problems. But that does not make the principle better.
If you imagine what it feels like to shoot with 11km/s through the lower atmosphere I would suggest you try and drive your car against a concrete bridge... a rail gun is never useful to archieve anything alone. Note that Jules Verne already had the idea to use a cannon... still I would not suggest that for health reasons...
The calculation is funny but quite useless as it neglects all effects that create the real problems of those principles because those are not to be calculated with simple math equations. At least I have to say that he mentions most of the complex problems. But that does not make the principle better.
bah, health concerns, thought you were physists, not humanitarians!! im joking, but i do think that it would be feasable to load our astronaughts into pods, shoot them up, and catch them in orbit,
There is a cheap way to go to space already available, but I suppose that it is something that nobody at NASA nor other companies want to mention due its "bad press".
I am talking about standard nuclear fision reactors, like those used in today nuclear submarines. When used near its critical mass point, a nuclear reactor can provide huge amounts of energy, more than enough to send shuttle-like spaceships into orbit. And it would only require a very small uranium amount, just to sustain enough trust during the few minutes required to accelerate into orbit.
In fact, NASA is planning to use similar technology for next decade missions, but they plan to ignite the reactors far away from earth in order to avoid radioactivity contamination risks in case of a catastrophic failure.
But a fision reactor could be also used for the earth to orbit travel, if complemented with a powerfull ion engine or other alternative engines (for example, some NASA engineers have suggested that metal particles could be thrown directly from the reactor, thanks to extremely high pressures, and it can be combined with powerfull magnetic fields and an ion engine for more trust..). In any case, the main problem (energy) can be completly solved be using a fision reactor.
But what about contaminaton risks in case of an accident? I think that a good reactor enclosure can provide an acceptable security degree. If common asteroid nucleus (mainly iron) can hit the earth at incredible speeds and still survive, why not a well designed reactor enclosure flying at Match 17 only?.
I think that the space companies and the involved goverments do not want to do it in order to avoid conflicts with Greenpeace or due to the risk of losing green votes (or green space tourists), and not because of real safety reasons nor technical reasons.
I am talking about standard nuclear fision reactors, like those used in today nuclear submarines. When used near its critical mass point, a nuclear reactor can provide huge amounts of energy, more than enough to send shuttle-like spaceships into orbit. And it would only require a very small uranium amount, just to sustain enough trust during the few minutes required to accelerate into orbit.
In fact, NASA is planning to use similar technology for next decade missions, but they plan to ignite the reactors far away from earth in order to avoid radioactivity contamination risks in case of a catastrophic failure.
But a fision reactor could be also used for the earth to orbit travel, if complemented with a powerfull ion engine or other alternative engines (for example, some NASA engineers have suggested that metal particles could be thrown directly from the reactor, thanks to extremely high pressures, and it can be combined with powerfull magnetic fields and an ion engine for more trust..). In any case, the main problem (energy) can be completly solved be using a fision reactor.
But what about contaminaton risks in case of an accident? I think that a good reactor enclosure can provide an acceptable security degree. If common asteroid nucleus (mainly iron) can hit the earth at incredible speeds and still survive, why not a well designed reactor enclosure flying at Match 17 only?.
I think that the space companies and the involved goverments do not want to do it in order to avoid conflicts with Greenpeace or due to the risk of losing green votes (or green space tourists), and not because of real safety reasons nor technical reasons.
QUOTE (Javier+Mar 25 2005, 12:20 AM)
There is a cheap way to go to space already available, but I suppose that it is something that nobody at NASA nor other companies want to mention due its "bad press".
I am talking about standard nuclear fision reactors, like those used in today nuclear submarines. When used near its critical mass point, a nuclear reactor can provide huge amounts of energy, more than enough to send shuttle-like spaceships into orbit. And it would only require a very small uranium amount, just to sustain enough trust during the few minutes required to accelerate into orbit.
In fact, NASA is planning to use similar technology for next decade missions, but they plan to ignite the reactors far away from earth in order to avoid radioactivity contamination risks in case of a catastrophic failure.
Yes, the Prometheus project to Jupiter is so cool!
http://prometheus.jpl.nasa.gov/
Nulcear fission is safe enough for subs and aircraft carriers but not blasting off into space...I believe they can do it safely also.
I am talking about standard nuclear fision reactors, like those used in today nuclear submarines. When used near its critical mass point, a nuclear reactor can provide huge amounts of energy, more than enough to send shuttle-like spaceships into orbit. And it would only require a very small uranium amount, just to sustain enough trust during the few minutes required to accelerate into orbit.
In fact, NASA is planning to use similar technology for next decade missions, but they plan to ignite the reactors far away from earth in order to avoid radioactivity contamination risks in case of a catastrophic failure.
Yes, the Prometheus project to Jupiter is so cool!
http://prometheus.jpl.nasa.gov/
Nulcear fission is safe enough for subs and aircraft carriers but not blasting off into space...I believe they can do it safely also.
QUOTE (Matt+Mar 16 2005, 05:22 PM)
I think the main reason it hasn't taken off so far is because government has been so strongly involved.
The US government spent an outrages amount of money to develop a pen that could write in zero gravity.
Do you know what the Soviets did? They used a pencil.
The US government spent an outrages amount of money to develop a pen that could write in zero gravity.
Do you know what the Soviets did? They used a pencil.
Yeah, they used a pencil but then their empire collaspsed and the 12 men who walked on the moon are still all from USA.
I once designed a $2000 extraction tool the size of a screwdriver. A person off the street might think that it was a waste of money - a $2000 screwdriver - but I saved the program hundreds of thousands in redesign by designing a small tool at high cost.
We are on the verge of cheap spaceflight, but remember back to the Space Ship One adventure. There were something like 20 other competitors, almost all of them said they would continue to compete after they won the X-Prise. I don't think I ever heard another thing about any of them, it takes guts and hard work and making a moon pen to get the job done, very few are willing to make the effort.
I once designed a $2000 extraction tool the size of a screwdriver. A person off the street might think that it was a waste of money - a $2000 screwdriver - but I saved the program hundreds of thousands in redesign by designing a small tool at high cost.
We are on the verge of cheap spaceflight, but remember back to the Space Ship One adventure. There were something like 20 other competitors, almost all of them said they would continue to compete after they won the X-Prise. I don't think I ever heard another thing about any of them, it takes guts and hard work and making a moon pen to get the job done, very few are willing to make the effort.
QUOTE (.001+Sep 27 2005, 04:50 AM)
Yeah, they used a pencil but then their empire collaspsed and the 12 men who walked on the moon are still all from USA.
I am not trying to compare the soviet space program to the US space program. After all the soviets were the first to put an astronaut into space and the first to land a spaceship intact on another planet, the first to build a space station, the first to put a women into space, the first to launch a satellite, the first to collapse ....
Don't worry, USA had allot of firsts to.
Just the USA has a chronic problem of cost overruns. IE the space pen.
BTW $2000.00 pretty cheap for a screwdriver. Providing there is not an identical one at Wallmart.
,p
I am not trying to compare the soviet space program to the US space program. After all the soviets were the first to put an astronaut into space and the first to land a spaceship intact on another planet, the first to build a space station, the first to put a women into space, the first to launch a satellite, the first to collapse ....
Don't worry, USA had allot of firsts to.
Just the USA has a chronic problem of cost overruns. IE the space pen.
BTW $2000.00 pretty cheap for a screwdriver. Providing there is not an identical one at Wallmart.
,p
Space elevator? Nah, too complex. All we have to do is work on a way to magnify the Poonler effect(which spontaneously launches small objects like peebles into space), and control it of course, else it'd shoot us all into the big void.
Hey Jumon, what is this Poonler effect??? Is there a web link or something with info on it, it looks interesting. I tried to search for it with the way you had spelt it but it came up with no matches????
QUOTE (icecycle+Mar 18 2005, 01:01 AM)
His idea, which I have seen since on the internet was that a device could be built that would swing down into near earth orbit and pick up and release spacecraft.
This is, I believe.. the 'Space Tether' technique. I too, question the physics behind it.
As far as the Space Elevator, LiftPort group has FAA waivers to test climbers over the one mile altitude. They already made a 1,000 feet and they are coming along with carbon nanotube production, but there are many issues to resolve: space Junk, terrorism, breakdown by oxygen, Van Allen Belts, possible generation of static/voltage, etc.
There is MUCH to do in space after we get there.. there are things to be manufactured in Zero Gee and Hard Vacuum that just cannot be done down here.
One such thing is Bubble Aluminum: like soap bubbles, but made from an aluminum foam. Another is purified metals, given that what is called a hard vacuum down here still contains 3.3x10^11 molecules of air instead of 3 per cc in free space. Normal air presssure contains some 2.5x10^19 molecules <a Reference
This is, I believe.. the 'Space Tether' technique. I too, question the physics behind it.
As far as the Space Elevator, LiftPort group has FAA waivers to test climbers over the one mile altitude. They already made a 1,000 feet and they are coming along with carbon nanotube production, but there are many issues to resolve: space Junk, terrorism, breakdown by oxygen, Van Allen Belts, possible generation of static/voltage, etc.
There is MUCH to do in space after we get there.. there are things to be manufactured in Zero Gee and Hard Vacuum that just cannot be done down here.
One such thing is Bubble Aluminum: like soap bubbles, but made from an aluminum foam. Another is purified metals, given that what is called a hard vacuum down here still contains 3.3x10^11 molecules of air instead of 3 per cc in free space. Normal air presssure contains some 2.5x10^19 molecules <a Reference
For those who are interested there is a very good book called "the fountains of paradise" by renowned scifi writer Arthur C Clarke which gives a step by step account of the construction of a tethered space elevator, the physics behind it and the technological hurdles that the chief engineer faced. Its pretty old so you might not be able to find it in print anymore but well worth the read.
He describes a construction technique where by they started with a station in geostationary orbit. From this point they extended a filament in both directions, the first was tethered to the ground and the other went outwards with a mass attached to it in order to keep the filament under tension due to the mass's centripetal acceleration (since the mass is beyond geostationary orbit yet still moving at the same rotational speed as the midpoint station, it be going at a linear speed significantly faster than that required to keep it in orbit. -the mass would have needed a thruster of some sort to increase its linear speed the further it got from the mid point of course to keep the filament acting straight out from the earth).
He then moved on to describe the gradual reinforcement and thickening of both filaments so that they could support the movement of payloads along their length.
The great advantage of this solution is that payloads cost only the amount of energy required to lift them directly (without the inefficiency of flight and impulse, - just strap an electric motor to the load and go), the midpoint station can be used as a zero g manufacturing/docking facility and the outer most end of the filament can be used as a launching station for payloads that need to escape earths gravitational pull (since it is already moving at a sufficient speed for this (depending on its actual length.)
Additionally you do not need to worry about conservation of momentum (the other worry with a "floating" tether. -So long as you do not exceed the applied tension force at any point along the filament.
Lastly the other advantage is that you can lift and release satellites at any point along the filament depending on the level of orbit required. (Of course those released for near earth orbits would also require rockets or other means to get them to the higher necessary speed).
Just another engineer
He describes a construction technique where by they started with a station in geostationary orbit. From this point they extended a filament in both directions, the first was tethered to the ground and the other went outwards with a mass attached to it in order to keep the filament under tension due to the mass's centripetal acceleration (since the mass is beyond geostationary orbit yet still moving at the same rotational speed as the midpoint station, it be going at a linear speed significantly faster than that required to keep it in orbit. -the mass would have needed a thruster of some sort to increase its linear speed the further it got from the mid point of course to keep the filament acting straight out from the earth).
He then moved on to describe the gradual reinforcement and thickening of both filaments so that they could support the movement of payloads along their length.
The great advantage of this solution is that payloads cost only the amount of energy required to lift them directly (without the inefficiency of flight and impulse, - just strap an electric motor to the load and go), the midpoint station can be used as a zero g manufacturing/docking facility and the outer most end of the filament can be used as a launching station for payloads that need to escape earths gravitational pull (since it is already moving at a sufficient speed for this (depending on its actual length.)
Additionally you do not need to worry about conservation of momentum (the other worry with a "floating" tether. -So long as you do not exceed the applied tension force at any point along the filament.
Lastly the other advantage is that you can lift and release satellites at any point along the filament depending on the level of orbit required. (Of course those released for near earth orbits would also require rockets or other means to get them to the higher necessary speed).
Just another engineer
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