Innovations in Space Launch Systems 95
WolfWithoutAClause writes "Its long been a dream of people to just fly into space in an airbreathing aeroplane, however this has sadly remained as science fiction. The main problems have been a) collecting air at mach 23 requires that most expensive material: 'unobtainium' ; and b) having to carry extra airbreathing equipment into orbit. New Scientist has an article on a new study that NASA is funding to investigate whether an airbreathing launch vehicle might in fact be possible."
Retro is the way of the future (Score:3)
All you need to get to another planet, never mind just into orbit, is a toilet roll tube, a sparkler and a funnel or perhaps a bit of rolled card to make the nosecone of your intergalactic spacecraft.
Of course they used old-fashioned sparklers back then, modern ones would be too feeble compared to the old ones that would take your arm off if you weren't careful lighting them...
Re:using water to handle greater forces (Score:2)
The bottom line is this...it takes a certain (and very large) amount of energy per pound of stuff to get said stuff into orbit. Right now, chemical rockets are the most cost effective way to do it. I think that until skyhooks and/or space elevators come into the picture, space travel is going to have a hard time breaking the $100/lb barrier. (Right now, the cost to launch stuff in the Shuttle is in the neighborhood of $10,000/lb, and the next generation SSTO craft are around $1000/lb IFF they meet their performance goals, which they almost certainly won't.)
Alchemist? Anti-Matter.... (Score:1)
Re:Unobtanium=Unobtanum in USofA (Score:1)
Ryan
Air breathing rocketry is HARD. (Score:1)
There is a certain amount of LOX that you have to have to combine with your H2 to sling a pound of stuff into orbit. If you harvest that LOX from the atmosphere (schlepping your LOX generation along with you as dead weight) or tank up on the pad (and leave said dead weight on Earth) you still have to have the same volume of stuff to get into orbit. OK, you do get a nominal advantage in that you don't have to lift your LOX from 0 to, say, 60,000 feet, but considering you're needing to go up about 10x that far, this is not a big advantage. (I have the same objection to piggyback rockets like Pegasus and Burt Rutan's X-Prize entry...the air breathing craft does not give your spacecraft a substantially better energy budget than just launching from the surface. I guesstimate that you might get 10% more useful payload by using an air breathing first stage)
Scramjets (supersonic compression stage ramjets) are nice, because they have very few moving parts. (like, about zero.) They are not nice because you have to have a very large frontal area to collect enough air to combust the fuel, AND you still have to carry a conventional rocket engine to boost you into orbit (where there ain't no air to breathe). The key problem is that you cannot use the area rule to decrease your supersonic wave drag...the frontal area of your craft must be large relative to its weight. (Area ruling occurs when you keep the cross sectional area of an airplane close to constant along its length. I don't know why it works, but in the 60's the Convair Delta Dagger was converted into a supersonic interceptor simply by giving the fuselage a little bit of a coke-bottle shape)
Anyhow. Conventional rocketry is messy and expensive, but it's currently the best thing going. I hope that this will change in the future...I've got high hopes for electric and light powered spacecraft. But I don't think we're going to get away from chemical propellants and oxidizers in the near future.
Re:Not the best solution (Score:1)
Comment removed (Score:3)
It wouldn't work. You'd still get a concussion. (Score:2)
This sets a hard maximum limit on the level of acceleration that a human can survive.
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Re:Not the best solution (Score:2)
Gathering while on the back of the 747 seems like it's going to cost you most of the advantages of collecting the oxygen in the air. About the only reason I can see that this might actually work is that you can replace the weight of the 747's fuel with the oxygen while you're doing the gathering. On the other hand, I'd expect that more energy goes into the speed than the 5 mile altitude, so you're still going to need a lot of fuel to make it the rest of the way into orbit.
An effective 50-75% reduction in effective fuel volume could make for a big gain with realtime oxygen harvesting. (I don't have the math, but I'm sure that someone else could do it).
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Where is the other end? (Score:1)
If filled with vacuum, then you have a real problem when the spacecraft hits the heavy metal plug sealing the end of the tunnel.
If it's sealed with an amazing plug that disappears just at the right time, then you have a problem finding all the pieces when the craft explodes having hit the equivalent of an air brick wall at mach 25.
If the tunnel is constructed vertically so the other end is in an area of very low air pressure, then it needs to be much more than two miles long, and it would be very, very difficult to build. Where 'difficult' tends asymptotically towards 'impossible' for current values of 'today' tending towards 'tomorrow'. This is the hazard of reading these sorts articles in discarded copies of "modern biker". :)
Zero sum gain, because:- (Score:1)
If at 'regular airliner' speeds, then all you've done is buy yourself 8000m and (say) 600 kts, which is pretty insignificant. For traditional vertical launchers, this is not a huge part of where their delta-v goes.
If the two craft stay attached and generating oxygen until they reach orbital speeds before the orbiter 'zips into orbit', then how does the launch craft prevent itself burning up? If it has thermal tiles and all that stuff, and it's right there at orbital speed (or close to it), then why not just have a single craft.
There is no valid argument that the cost saving comes in the self-production of fuel oxidizer, as LOX is incredibly cheap.
The only saving seems to come by having smaller landing gear on the orbital vehicle than would be required if it carried the oxygen generator itself - a saving that is probably outweighed by the additional complexity of the whole arrangement. If they separate at airliner speeds, then the orbital vehicle needs to carry a huge amount of oxidizer anyway.
Air Breathing Rockets (Score:2)
Some information: It takes $10,000 per pound to put something in orbit. NASA's intent is to reduce it to below $1000/pound in 25 years. They way to do this is to get rid of the ~1,000,000 pounds of liquid oxidizer that wouldn't be needed for air-breathing rockets (which will use air instead, duh).
An air breathing rocket is very similar to a jet engine, except that a jet engine overheats at about Mach 3-4.
MOST IMPORTANTLY, Air-breathing rockets DO NOT have the thrust to achieve lift off. The intent in the future is to use conventional rockets up to Mach 3-4. Then switch to air-breathing until Mach 10, then return to conventional rockets for the spaceward journey.
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Re:There is a cost effective solution. (Score:2)
Further out, NASA is developing a plan to launch the air-breathing rocket vehicle by using magnetic levitation (maglev) tracks. Using maglev tracks, the vehicle will accelerate to speeds of up to 600 mph before lifting into the air.
Following liftoff and after the vehicle reaches twice the speed of sound, the air-augmented rockets would shut off. Propulsion would then be provided by the air-breathing rocket vehicle, which will inhale oxygen for about half of the flight to burn fuel. The advantage of this is it won't have to store as much oxygen on board the spacecraft as past spacecraft have, thus reducing launch costs. Once the vehicle reaches 10 times the speed of sound, it will switch back to a conventional rocket-powered system for a final push into orbit.
Because it will cut the weight of the oxidizer, the vehicle will be easier to maneuver than current spacecraft. This means that traveling on an air-breathing rocket-powered vehicle will be safer. Eventually, the public could be travelling on these vehicles into space as space tourists.
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Re:There is a cost effective solution. (Score:2)
Re:There is a cost effective solution. (Score:1)
Its the expensive initial investments that stop all too many good ideas from getting past bugeteers in congress.
The trouble with LOX... (Score:1)
Re:FOX TV special (Score:3)
The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
Cheapen the shuttle in the short term (Score:3)
The current launching market is too small to support large R&D efforts. The rate of commercial launches is dropping steadilly with the dissolution of market drivers like Iridium. To make it worth the while of companies like Lockmart to spend big bucks on space you need to make space appealing to the industries that would purchase cheap access to space.
The first step is not to spend $10 billion for a Venturestar (which will never get congressional approval). The real step is to make the Space Shuttle as cheap as possible in the short term so that business in space can get started. Here's how:
1. Remove government restrictions on using the shuttle fleet for commercial operations. This reactionary restriction that came in the wake of the Challenger incident hurts our future in space and forces companies to use expensive ELVs.
2. Give NASA the chance to profit. Any commercial money NASA ever makes is funneled straight back into a general slush fund. If they had a direct incentive to operate more like a business, they would start innovating.
3. Switch from toxic hydrazine to high energy cryogenics for the OMS. Hydrazine safing is part of the huge delay and costs in maintaining the shuttle. Insulative technology has progressed in the 30 years since Hydrazine was chosen to a point where LOX and Hydrogen (or higher temperature fuels) can be stored on orbit for the duration of a shuttle flight.
4. Remove the expensive to maintain and toxic fueled APUs that (among other things) run the hydraulics that power the control surfaces during gliding flight. Use electric pumps powered off of fuel cells instead. After this, Hydrazine would be limited to the RCS and much easier to safe.
5. Convert the Enterprise into an unmanned cargo launcher. Removing the life support, crew cabin insides and so on and automating it would drop the between flight costs and increase payload significantly. Use this to deliver things that don't need human interaction to orbit.
6. Re-activate the Centaur upper stage project and install the plumbing in at least two of the OV fleet. Cryogenic upper stages increase your payload to geosynchronous orbit and let you build things like transfer vehicles to the moon. The shuttle uses IUS solid upper stages that have a fraction of the performance.
7. Last and more importantly, commission the development and construction of LFBB (Liquid FlyBack Boosters) to replace the dangerous and low performance SRBs. Liquid fueled boosters would increase the payload to orbit, offer abort modes during the first 2.5 minutes that the SRBs don't (see the Challenger disaster for an example of where this would have helped) and could be a lot cheaper then dragging the solid steel SRBs out of the ocean and rebuilding them. Boeing wants to make LFBBs. They would land themselves on a runway and be ready for launch shortly afterwards. LFBBs could lower costs for other boosters like the Titan V, the EELV, Ariane 5 and more.
Once companies can afford to get stuff to orbit, the market will exist to develop the new space craft that will drop costs to where we want. Until then, it will be entirely dependent on how much pork a congressman will get.
Re:Hard to See (Score:2)
3) launch often
Economies of scale nearly always reduce cost; there's no known reason why that won't extend to space also.
The question is, is there anything about this idea that can reduce the standing army normally needed with rocketry? Clearly there is because this technology seems fully reusable, unlike the space shuttle; secondly this launch platform may well be further away from the bleeding edge of performance because it has two liquid fueled engines. That will help to keep costs down.
Incidentally, energy isn't the problem in rocketry; the real question here is takeoff mass- is it reduced or increased with all this mucking about? I expect that that's really what the study will be looking.
Re:There is a cost effective solution. (Score:1)
but this would seriously be a great technique once we get to the moon in a profitable way
P.S. I'd like to apologise on behalf of my fellow horny
P.P.S. is that nick a Culture refrence?
Sorry! Wrong! (Score:1)
Re:Hard to See (Score:3)
Apollo 11 Space Pen Story [thewritersedge.com]
I've heard (although this is unverified) that the problem with the pencils was graphite dust getting into the machinery--or at least the potential for it.
what's proposed are not air-breathing ramjets (Score:1)
Re:Hard to See (Score:1)
Oh, for crying out loud. Here we go ago. See my above referenced article. NASA paid not a dime to get an ink pen to write in space--it was an independently developed invention that was then purchased for the astronauts (who also used pencils at the time) and later by cosmonauts (who no longer use pencils).
It's from rocky and bullwinkel (Score:1)
Re:Air breathing rocketry is HARD. (Score:2)
Not true:
a) you're higher up (this is hardly any help- 93% of attaining orbit involves going sidewise very fast, the other 7% is going up 70 km or so.)
b) the atmosphere is thinner so there are less aerodynamic losses
c) rocket nozzles generally like less backpressure which you get at higher altitude
Other points:
1) energy budget is irrelevant for rockets- rockets don't conserve energy in the sense that most of the energy ends up in the exhaust.
2) takeoff weight is crucial for the aircraft part- once in the air the weight of fuel is often supported by aerodynamics, on the ground it has to be supported by metal that you have to carry with you later
3) range control is going to be a lot easier, the rocketry can happen over ocean and it won't land on someones head
4) this proposal is fully reusable, normally rockets are not very reusable
Scramjets? That's where unobtainium comes in doesn't it?
Re:FOX TV special (Score:1)
We thought we deleted every reference. Therefore we must find you and delete this reference again.
You will be delt with shortly
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Re:Hard to See (Score:1)
Re:what's proposed are not air-breathing ramjets (Score:2)
THeir idea is not going to work even in concept (Score:1)
Energetically speaking, there is negligible "weight" saved by collecting Oxygen from the atmostpher flying at "jet liner" speed.
The actual calculations are left to the student. But I bet a lot of pop (I don't drink) on it.
.
!= doesn't equal not equal? WTF? (Score:1)
= == 1 keystroke.
thus, != == 3 keystrokes. I got that far.
But what is this 4 keystroke (not equal) that you're talking about? Is it like Alt-1-7-1 produces a ½? If so, what's the keycode?
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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Black Horse invented yet again, and poorly (Score:2)
Yup, that's the idea behind Mitchell Burnside Clapp's Black Horse [mit.edu] rocket plane. It was published in the 1995 Analog. I guess it made too much sense for NASA to even give it a try.
Rather than use LOX, his original plan called for burning JP-5 and highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide. That was the densest combination of propellants he could find, so would take the smallest amount of tankage. And, because it didn't involve any cryogens, it could use lighter non-insulated tanks. Lighter spacecraft == a chance at single stage to orbit. Here's an excerpt from the Analog article:
Because off-the-shelf rocket engines that use H2O2 are few and far between, he later changed his plans to use LOX. This would mean more changes in the tanker, but would avoid using unproven engines.
Clapp eventually founded a company to develop the concept, Pioneer Rocketplane [rocketplane.com], but I haven't heard much from it lately. That's too bad. It was (is) a great concept.
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Re:To get into space cheaply, we need only 1 thing (Score:1)
Goodwin's Law: you lose!
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C'mon, flame me!
would it be useful to protect from radiation too? (Score:1)
Re:Hard to See (Score:1)
Re:Hard to See (Score:1)
You forgot the real reason for SDI - the pork barrel. Here the US taxpayers can be repaid to those entities responsible for electing the officials.
Unobtanium (Score:2)
The "Avatar" script has been floating around the net for a while. Anyone care to post a link?
what in the world? (Score:1)
FOX TV special (Score:2)
According to FOX we didn't even go to the moon, so what makes you think airplanes can fly above the atmosphere?
"TV said that?!" -- Homer Simpson
Not the best solution (Score:2)
The ideal "breather" vehicle would be making liquid oxygen in "real time", i.e. as it's flying toward the orbit. That way, it would never have to carry any extra LO around, making things cheap for real.
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Some more Info (Score:5)
Including, but not limited too:
1)This Article in Scientific American [sciam.com]
2)This Reasearch Paper [fiu.edu]
3)This NASA report [nasa.gov]
Just FYI
Re:Water vapor based propulsion systems (Score:1)
But wouldn't it suck to be sittin' there and suddenly find the seat a bit too warm?
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Unfortunately... (Score:2)
What is this with Science imitating Comic Books, these days; I kept looking for the "It's Funny, Laugh!" section on this one!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
Hard to See (Score:4)
The problem with Horizontal Takeoff, Horizontal Launch designs is resident time in air. Most boosters launch on a pretty vertical trajectory to get above the energy-robbing atmosphere. They do pitch over in the air, but only to use gravity to do most of the work for them. Boosters even launch up, reach a local maximum altitude, then decend under power in order to obtain the very large velocity required for orbit. Getting this velocity in air gives a lot up to drag.
This idea gets around the mass penalty for heavy landing gear by gaining weight in the air. Aircraft landing gear accounts for about 3% of the maximum total takeoff mass. This is for sufficient strength in a takeoff abort situation.
Pretty clever, but I think complicated machinery that requires extensive maintainance won't get us into space cheaply. The price of space travel is largely the cost of people on the ground. It takes about 10,000 people to service the Space Shuttle, hence its cost. LOX is cheap, and so is LH2.
It will be interesting technology, but I disbelieve that it will lower the cost. To get into space cheaply, I think we need to do two things:
1.) build it big.
2.) build it simple.
After all, NASA spent thousands to get an ink pen to write in space. The Russians used a pencil...
SatelliteBoy
Re:Hard to See (Score:1)
Besides, graphite is better for preserving writing since it contains no acids that eventually destroy the paper.
Re:Hard to See (Score:1)
I was shooting for an informative rating as well, looks like it worked
Do we really need new technology for CATS? (Score:1)
The problem is that if you want to develop a new launcher, and you're neither NASA nor Boeing or Lockheed, you aren't really credible. What NASA wants is to fly the Space Shuttle and keep a monopoly on human spaceflight (at least in the US), and develop new space technology as long as it can't compete with the former before a decade or two. What the big aerospace corporations want is to sell their existing expendable lauchers and maybe develop bigger ones at taxpayer expense. It looks like none of these players want CATS.
Look at their projects aimed at reducing launch costs. The DoD/McDonnell-Douglas Delta Clipper demonstrated a reusable rocket-based vehicle capable of quick turnaround by 1994; NASA sat on the funding before taking over the project, modifying the vehicle until it crashed. A competition was held for a follow-on, the X-33, whose stated goal was building a prototype of cheaply reusable, quick-turnaround suborbital vehicle using off-the-shelf technology; of the three competitors, the winner (Lockheed Martin's) was the one who most depended on new technologies; the vehicle is now two years behind schedule, over budget, underpowered and obsolete, and quite a number of people wonder whether Lockheed didn't fail on purpose ("see, it can't be done, buy our Titans!")
Finally, while a number of small companies are trying to get business done on inexpensive lauchers, they can't find investors as they are competing with NASA, especially with the recent Space Launch Initiative (SLI), aimed at subsidizing new launchers' development - favoring, as everybody expects, those which can meet NASA's requirements (one-size-fits-all, man-rated, heavy payloads) over commercial businesses' (cheap launchers aimed at a single market).
Where does all this leave us? Space is expensive, thus the market remains small, controlled by few players who ensure new ideas won't fly before twenty years and not cost less than what we have now, much less what IMHO we could do now. Sad, isn't it?
To get into space cheaply, we need only 1 thing: (Score:2)
NASA has been screwing up space flight for decades.
Private companies have long been willing and able to develop cheap commercial space flight, if only NASA wasn't involved. They wrap fifty tons of red tape around any project. Similarly troublesome agencies exist in practically every country with a space program. Since NASA went to the moon, every government thinks they must be doing things right, so they model their agencies after them.
But just look at the space shuttle: the ultimate hangar queen, and so damned complicated that one little easily-overlooked mistake causes the whole thing to blow up. Just look at that monstrosity: underpowered main engine, so solid rockets are needed to launch, extremely heavy frame drastically cutting down payload, etc. . Now, it's pretty good for their first try at a reuseable vehicle, but instead of learning from their mistakes and building something better they decided to build several copies of this disaster. Hell, even the Russians beat them at it: building one that could fly without humans onboard (sure they had the advantage of seeing the American one, but so did the Americans, after building the first one!).
Don't get me wrong, there are lots of smart people at NASA, but they are all stepping on each others' toes on a handful of projects. Every damned NASA toy is designed by committee, guaranteeing inefficiency and lots of failures.
Space flight isn't that hard! The V2 rockets were space-capable, and the Nazis were pumping them out by the thousands during war-time shortages, 60 years ago. All these years later, we ought to be able to produce orbit-capable rockets for the same price or cheaper. We would be able to, if a small team of good rocket scientists were given sufficient freedom and money to build a factory for these things (the price of one shuttle-launch would suffice).
Except for government intervention, any number of companies would have already done so. Wilder plans, such as beam propulsion and space catapults would follow quickly. We'd have people living on the moon and mining asteroids within the decade.
The question is, is it unintentional incompetence, or do governments prevent space travel because of their love of "stability"? It's all well and good to have one tangled bureaucracy sending out the occasional Mars probe, but having a million people living free up there who could drop big rocks on the old countries is enough to give anyone concerned with defense the screaming heebie-jeebies.
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I don't know (Score:1)
Seems a bit too complicated... (Score:1)
Water/Gelatin (Score:2)
Re:There is a cost effective solution. (Score:1)
But you shouldn't apologize much for the other responses to NLA; she (if it is in fact a she) is one of the worst trolls I've seen around here for months. Gives other Banks' fans a bad name.
Re:There is a cost effective solution. (Score:2)
Also, the strain on the capsule and it's contents would be IMMENSE. This method would pretty much be suitable only for delivering durable, non-mission critical, components to orbit.
That said, this would still be of immense use for delivering structural components to orbit, like strusses for the ISS. But think of the logistics of this. The "barrel," the initial propulsion corridor, would have to be parallel to the equator, to avoid complications with the rotation of the earth perturbing the trajectory of the projectile. To avoid complications arising because of the curvature of the earth, you would want to construct it as close to the equator as possible. This means south america, or africa. Areas that have neither the infrastructure nor the political stability to bear a two to five mile long shaft, propelling by some means, a capsule.
Add that to the fact that the area immediately under the barrel's mouth, and the area under the capsule's flight path until it reached high atmosphere, would be regularly devastated by the sonic boom, and the fact that the elictricity neccesary to power such a maglev tunnel would be prohibitively expensive, and you'll find that this plan, while it sounds nice at first, is not going to fly. It's been being batted around since Jules Verne used a cannon to shoot a man to the moon in one of his stories, but the sad truth is that the future of orbital transport does not lie with the cannon.
Re:Hard to See (Score:1)
It has been said that the Space Shuttle is the most complex machine ever built. It does not need to be.
Re:Do we really need new technology for CATS? (Score:1)
Re:Cheapen the shuttle in the short term (Score:1)
2. Just giving NASA the money is not the answer. They need to think commercially as well.
3. I agree, but isn't the other problem the oxidizer, Nitrogen Tetroxide. The thing is that Hydrazine and Nitogen Tetroxide are Hypergolic (sp?) or otherwise known as self-igniting. Good ignition systems for high performance rockets are not simple.
4. In a word, efficiency.
5. I agree, but it would be kind of interesting landing the thing.
6. Again, it is the matter of reliable ignition and also fuel handling.
7. See 5.
Re:Seems a bit too complicated... (Score:1)
That does seem like a much easier way to make this thing work, though. That second plane could be a modified (but already existing) tanker. Cheap.
Space Pen: Mostly UL (Score:2)
[Spider Robinson story about space pen replacing switch snipped; read it at the Official Space Pen website [thewritersedge.com]. For the record, there's no mention of this incident in the exemplary resource Apollo Lunar Surface Journal [nasa.gov].]
In the rest of his article, Spider uses the space pen, and other by-products of space-race research, to justify the support of basic research by government in the face of opposition from pork-barrelling politicians like Senator Socksdryer.
But the Space Pen was developed entirely by private enterprise. Fisher does claim that they spent $2 million (in 1960s dollars? doesn't say) to develop the pen, but we can assume those development costs have been repaid many times over.
Also, many Russian cosmonauts now use the Space Pen; and American astronauts have used a variety of writing implements, generally chosen by the astronauts themselves. The ALSJ does relate one mention of the Space Pen: Aldrin says he had a felt-tip pen that put out more ink than the Fisher pen.
The space pen is neither an example of government procurement gone mad, nor an example of return on investment, except for the Fisher company.
The original Spider Robinson article [google.com]. Despite the attribution to Aldrin, I believe we have to take this one with a grain of salt. The Apollo 11 mission has been very closely studied for a generation.
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Re:Unobtanium=Unobtanum in USofA (Score:1)
Re:would it be useful to protect from radiation to (Score:1)
Re:Kieth Henson's idea. (Score:1)
Why not split the functions? (Score:1)
Pluses:
Minuses:
A magcannon doesn't need to do the whole job! (Score:1)
Perhaps I should mention that it doesn't actually have to fly, as such, just fall past the planet faster than it falls onto it. (-:
That said, the use in a magcannon would not be firing things at orbital velocities; the cannon would be firing things at only a few thousand miles per hour. The business end would be at the top of a mountain, a couple of miles above sea level, having run up a nice straight Western ridge, and would be hurling capsules into reasonably thin air; you would either use a tunnel at or near vacuum, or suffer the drag of full pressure at lower speeds/altitudes working up to high speeds and altitudes. The idea is to do the hardest part (getting started and getting above most of the atmosphere) on the ground, as it were, so making the actual flying bits much lighter and smaller.
The big problems would be dissipating the heat from the power source and maglev track if you launch stuff often enough to be profitable. Perhaps run a power station from the waste heat? Once you had run it for a few years and built yourself a powersat, the first big problem would be over 80% smaller.
BUT what's actually being discussed by the original poster is not a magcannon, but a laser ablation launcher. Part of the purpose of rocket fuel is to provide energy, the other part is to provide reaction mass. By providing the energy from a ground-based laser instead of lofted fuel, the reaction can be made denser (means smaller so lighter and cheaper vehicle) and cheaper (water or even rock(!)).
Laser ablation is usually teamed with a magcannon to fling the payload into the air in the path of the laser, but there is no particular reason not to use an airborne launching platform like a modified 747, other than most pilots being nervous about flying through the field of fire of a really big laser...
Re:Cheapen the shuttle in the short term (Score:2)
The problem with these technologies is the amount of money it takes to develop them to working examples. The solution? Make it _worth_ investing the large sums of money.
You can't "make" it worth it. It either is, or it isn't. At this point, it isn't. It almost was, but it really wasn't. So it isn't again.
The current launching market is too small to support large R&D efforts. The rate of commercial launches is dropping steadilly with the dissolution of market drivers like Iridium. To make it worth the while of companies like Lockmart to spend big bucks on space you need to make space appealing to the industries that would purchase cheap access to space.
I'm baffled by what you could mean here. Either industries have investments in space they want to make, or they don't. We can't change that. What we can change is the expense.
The first step is not to spend $10 billion for a Venturestar (which will never get congressional approval). The real step is to make the Space Shuttle as cheap as possible in the short term so that business in space can get started. Here's how:
I'm with you in principle. VentureStar is LockMart's bid for a gravy-train-to-the-future. They have a vested interest in promoting big, bloated government space programs.
1. Remove government restrictions on using the shuttle fleet for commercial operations. This reactionary restriction that came in the wake of the Challenger incident hurts our future in space and forces companies to use expensive ELVs.
Expensive? Expensive?! Most ELVs are a mere fraction of the cost of a shuttle flight, by a factor of at least three and probably closer to five-to-twenty, depending on how costs are amortized. The ban on commercial launches was not reactionary. What was reactionary was the original policy to concentrate all US launch capability in Shuttle, simply in order to protect the Shuttle program's political viability. As Challenger demonstrated, that had enormous risks, both for the commercial and military applications.
The ban on commercial launches aboard Shuttle allowed the revival of a true private launch business, with Delta, Pegasus, and Titan all available now. Pegasus costs as little as $15M, compared with the out-of-the-gate Shuttle costs of $300M. How would Shuttle compete for that business?
2. Give NASA the chance to profit. Any commercial money NASA ever makes is funneled straight back into a general slush fund. If they had a direct incentive to operate more like a business, they would start innovating.
First of all, NASA is a government agency. It is not a quasi-private business like Amtrak or the Post Office. The lesson of Challenger was that human spaceflight is still too risky to be subject to a business-style imperative on schedule.
Second, Shuttle operations are being privatized in the form of the United Space Alliance. USA at this point is only acting as a contractor for NASA launch requirements, though they do occasionally entertain the fantasy of bringing Shuttle costs low enough to be competitive, as you've suggested. USA would like to be a profitable entity.
Third, government agencies do not need the profit motive to incentivize them. They have all the motivation they need. Ask anybody at NASA, off-campus, whether they want to go to Mars, and they'll say Hell yeah.
Fourth, a profit-based incentive can skew and damage the overall purpose of what should be a pure R&D oriented program. Goodbye planetary missions! No ROI, you see. I don't want to see NASA playing the carnival hawker and dropping important activities that just can't produce income.
3. Switch from toxic hydrazine to high energy cryogenics for the OMS. Hydrazine safing is part of the huge delay and costs in maintaining the shuttle. Insulative technology has progressed in the 30 years since Hydrazine was chosen to a point where LOX and Hydrogen (or higher temperature fuels) can be stored on orbit for the duration of a shuttle flight.
4. Remove the expensive to maintain and toxic fueled APUs that (among other things) run the hydraulics that power the control surfaces during gliding flight. Use electric pumps powered off of fuel cells instead. After this, Hydrazine would be limited to the RCS and much easier to safe.
Hydrazine replacement is being considered for Phase III of the ongoing Shuttle Upgrades program. It should be noted that the decision tree NASA uses for Shuttle upgrades places safety first, supportability second, reliability and maintainability third, and cost-reduction last.
5. Convert the Enterprise into an unmanned cargo launcher. Removing the life support, crew cabin insides and so on and automating it would drop the between flight costs and increase payload significantly. Use this to deliver things that don't need human interaction to orbit.
Anything the Enterprise (equipped with Buran-like automated systems) can do, the Titan can do just as well. There are few applications for large payloads in LEO outside of Station. The orbiter cannot deliver beyond LEO without modifications.
6. Re-activate the Centaur upper stage project and install the plumbing in at least two of the OV fleet. Cryogenic upper stages increase your payload to geosynchronous orbit and let you build things like transfer vehicles to the moon. The shuttle uses IUS solid upper stages that have a fraction of the performance.
Centaur, of course, was cancelled for crew safety reasons.
7. Last and more importantly, commission the development and construction of LFBB (Liquid FlyBack Boosters) to replace the dangerous and low performance SRBs. Liquid fueled boosters would increase the payload to orbit, offer abort modes during the first 2.5 minutes that the SRBs don't (see the Challenger disaster for an example of where this would have helped) and could be a lot cheaper then dragging the solid steel SRBs out of the ocean and rebuilding them. Boeing wants to make LFBBs. They would land themselves on a runway and be ready for launch shortly afterwards. LFBBs could lower costs for other boosters like the Titan V, the EELV, Ariane 5 and more.
Being floated as a possibility for Phase III or beyond. NASA, of course, would have preferred flyback boosters 30 years ago, but 1970s budgets forced them to the SRBs.
Once companies can afford to get stuff to orbit,
They already can.
the market will exist to develop the new space craft that will drop costs to where we want.
That's a very disingenuous statement. Not only is it a completely unwarranted assumption, it ignores the likelihood that having Shuttle in place as the default launch capability will eliminate any market incentive for cheaper, nimbler vehicles to be developed. That is a Bad Thing.
Until then, it will be entirely dependent on how much pork a congressman will get.
No, it really hasn't depended on that for some time. The rise and fall of the commercial launch business the last ten years was entirely due to factors outside government funding, as you noted earlier. Without Iridium, Globalstar, etc. requiring 60-odd satellites launched every five years, there is no need for cheaper launch vehicles. The existing commercial satellite business is stable and relatively healthy.
You sound like you get it -- you want a sustainable business model for space. But you can't create business where there isn't demand. This is exactly the lesson that the dot-com venture capitalists had to learn. We're watching lots of companies who've spent a lot of money giving away services the last couple of years. Sure, as long as it's free, they get customers. The moment they have to make it pay, though -- see Yahoo auctions, who implemented a modest fee, pennies really, and saw their business drop 90% in January -- everything collapses.
You want NASA to be in the business of creating these markets. It really can't, and when it's in anything like that position, its priorities get screwed up. NASA is better off NOT being in this loop at all. They are putting money into pure R&D for things like X-33 and hypersonic transport and scramjets. But only in the most arcane laboratory conditions, with payoff expectations measured in decades.
What I wanted to see happen was one of the startups -- Rotary being my favorite -- succeed in getting just enough funding to reach the next step, a second prototype, a third prototype, a test launch. Whoever was there first was destined to be in the best position to win this market. But the market fizzled away, and there's nobody to pay for that. That still could happen, e.g. the new Kelly-Boeing alliance, but on a much more extended timeline.
The last thing we want is to go back to the 80s when Shuttle's very existence meant that our launch needs were theoretically covered. Getting NASA out of that market was the smartest thing Congress has ever done with Shuttle.
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Shuttle Upgrade program (approved; details) (Score:2)
3. Switch from toxic hydrazine to high energy cryogenics for the OMS. Hydrazine safing is part of the huge delay and costs in maintaining the shuttle. Insulative technology has progressed in the 30 years since Hydrazine was chosen to a point where LOX and Hydrogen (or higher temperature fuels) can be stored on orbit for the duration of a shuttle flight.
4. Remove the expensive to maintain and toxic fueled APUs that (among other things) run the hydraulics that power the control surfaces during gliding flight. Use electric pumps powered off of fuel cells instead. After this, Hydrazine would be limited to the RCS and much easier to safe.
I wrote:
Hydrazine replacement is being considered for Phase III of the ongoing Shuttle Upgrades program. It should be noted that the decision tree NASA uses for Shuttle upgrades places safety first, supportability second, reliability and maintainability third, and cost-reduction last.
That last remains true, but I was wrong about the upgrade status. The $1.6 billion upgrades program [space.com] that Congress approved last fall [space.com] includes $224M to eliminate hyrdrazine in the Shuttle APU and $208M for the SRB, though the OMS will apparently continue to use it.
Look for these upgrades to be incorporated into flying orbiters late in the coming decade.
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Re:There's a *lot* of $$$ LOX involved, fly a kite (Score:2)
I have not much experience with kites except for my own childhood experiments, but it seems to be difficult to get a kite to fly really high. The problem is that the wire will be dragged by the wind, so when you release more wire it will not necessarily make the kite fly much higher (most of the movement will be horizontal).
Now, using a really big kite, you will of course be able to get higher, as you don't need to double the surface area of the wire to double it's strength. I wouldn't know, anyone who knows enough physics to do some calculations? How about atmospheric conditions, etc...
Still, I can't start to imagine the size and forces involved in this, we are talking about using a kite as a launching platform, right? You are going to launch rockets from this thing. In a jet-stream... Or were you just thinking about putting wings and a big wire on a rocket, and drop them when you were high enough?
Re:FOX TV special (Score:1)
Yawn. Take a look at the "Black Horse" (Score:4)
Seriously, a former USAF captain proposed a hybrid air-breathing vehicle [mit.edu] which would be fueled with LOX once in the air by a modified KC-135 at least 7 years ago.
The guy who came up with the idea has since left the USAF and founded a company [rocketplane.com] solely for the purpose of commercializing the concept.
The primary difference between the Black Horse concept and the one proposed in this article is that it wouldn't take three hours for a Black Horse-type aircraft to collect the LOX necessary to fire its rocket motor(s). They'd take on the LOX from the KC-135 while airborne in presumably less than three hours.
There is a cost effective solution. (Score:2)
Put simply, you build a long (2 miles?) maglev shaft and then fire a capsule atlong it. It should reach escape velocity and at the propitious moment be flung of the end of the tube at a speed allowing it to reach geostationary orbit.
NASA have done research showing that although building the long shaft would be expensive initially, thereafter, per flight, costs would be very low.
I think that it is really the concept to replace the space shuttle, as it would give us a cheap way of getting into space for an expensive initial investment.
Water vapor based propulsion systems (Score:1)
Nasa has done some research on these systems, but I haven't heard anything recently. Have any of you?
--Kara
... (Score:1)
...and suffered from respiratory ailments as a result of inhaling fine graphite dust.
Unobtanium is an older joke than that. (Score:2)
Anyway, upsidasium is a far superior material for building spacecraft.
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Re:Hard to See (Score:2)
Re:FOX TV special (Score:1)
Unobtanium=Unobtanum in USofA (Score:1)
Hope this help you better understand this rather complex matter.
Re:Yawn. Take a look at the "Black Horse" (Score:1)
Currently, they fit rockets using hydrogen and oxygen, and only carry enough LOX to get up to the tanker, plus a reserve for powering back to a landing. Originally, they planned to fit two air-breathing engines, plus the rockets. The air breathers would use kerosene fuel, which could also be used (with LOX taken on at altitude) with the rockets. This means that they could land more safely during an abort, because no LOX would be on board. The extra dead weight of the engines once the vehicle started running on rockets would be an issue, as would the lower energy density of the fuel. However, the extra safety and simplicity would be worth it in my opinion.
Once this kind of system gets going, it will be possible to build larger rockets which could actually get orbital (rather than using an expendable upper stage - the heat protection has to be there regardless since the vehicle leaves the atmosphere). Original versions would be great "4 hour delivery anywhere in the world" vehicles, as well as LEO launchers. Later versions would be a dirt cheap way to get payloads to orbit.
-jeff
Re:Cheapen the shuttle in the short term (Score:1)
even at cheaper cost, you'd get few takers (Score:3)
Some applications don't care about this, and I expect you're correct in thinking that if the actual launch cost went down, that might lower the barrier to some companies, and of course there are some things where you actually need the Shuttle, but there will still be many, many applications for which the Shuttle is not a cost-effective launch vehicle. It's a two-edged sword: the Shuttle is great because it's a manned vehicle, but it's also terrible for the same reason, and there's no good way around that.
Just my 2 cents. :-)
Re:Hard to See (Score:1)
Re:Hard to See (Score:1)
Hmm..That's odd. Any notes that I have from college written 9+ years ago w/ a mechanical pencil are kinda faded. Some of the stuff that's gotten wet has no visible traces of graphite on it. I can still read my ink written notes, even if they got wet (provided that it didn't run too much). I easily erase the mech pencil writing too.
Re:Black Horse invented yet again, and poorly (Score:1)
-jeff
Conservative and dated solutions? (Score:1)
With all the current debate in the soundness of our current physics model, I can't understand the continued funding, implementation, and developement of such antiquated devices as are currently used in the spacefaring arena.
To put this in perspective, our current model of physics insists that anti-gravity is an "impossibility" due to the accepted fact that the electric and gravity forces are unable to interact. Yet a recent article on MSNBC indicates that researchers are now discovering that certain particles (muons) do not react as is predicted by current physics. The article even goes so far as to say that these new discoveries could lead to the obsolesence of the current physics model. Imagine that. What happened to the Newtonian model may happen to the Einsteinian model!
One profound point made within the article is that only three of the four known forces are considered within todays accepted physics model. Currently, gravity is not covered within dynamic force interaction principals.
Further, an article publishing a documented case of an anti-gravity device came to my attention a few months ago. In the article was proof that anti-gravity is a reality though the device in question created a field of negligible power( measured at somewhere around 0.09% decrease), the field measured to be uniform directly above the device through the several upper floors of the building.
In all fairness, I must say that none of the recent discoveries are "here and now", nor directly affect current spacefaring as the original story topic may, but the spaceprogram we have is certainly doing fine with what it has already, so I say lets look to what comes next in technology rather than refine the technologies currently in use.
In conclusion, all of these new developments lead to many thoughts of what the future has in store for us. Whether science fiction or science fact, if we don't take the chance and try as the true space pioneers did, we may never know. I say, lets take the chance of embraceing our future and the new discoveries inherent therein.
[Sorry I don't know the links to the documents in question, but the one on MSNBC shouldn't be that hard to find. The one about the anti-gravity device may prove to be a little more difficult to find. I believe I got the link in the Langa List, but could be mistaken. It may even be one of the links on this page ;)http://www.amasci.com/freenrg/antigrav.html ]
unobtainium!!! (Score:1)
Space Pen on Snopes Urban Legend site (Score:2)
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Re:Air breathing rocketry is HARD. (Score:1)
a) agreed. The sideways fast part (kinetic energy state) is a lot harder to achieve than altitude (potential energy state)
b) Atmosphere is thinner, but you're beating the everloving crap out of the atmosphere you DO encounter. Slugging a big object through the atmosphere for a long time at a high velocity is a great way to waste a lot of fuel.
c) In the back of my head, I was thinking about an aerospike engine like on the Venture Star prototype. This engine design uses variable air pressure to vary its bell geometry as it ascends. Side note...surely you're not proposing to have this thing cruise around the upper atmosphere using its ROCKET? That's another terrifically good way to waste fuel. Rockets are good at applying a big acceleration to something in a small period of time. Sustained operation is a bitch.
1) Well, you still have to make a certain amount of stuff accelerate to a high velocity so you can accelerate the other way...
2) True, but with vertical launch rockets, you can build the thing like a column. No weird stress vectors running around. For a conventionally launched aircraft, you're right. This is a major disadvantage, which could be largely ameliorated by cool carbon fiber construction technology. (Carbon fiber exhibits many properties of the aforementioned unobtainium. It is, however, even more expensive.)
3) Yeah, but it's real easy to shoot from a coast and have your entire range over an ocean. I don't see this as a critical advantage.
4) I'm really really dubious about the viability of reusable "spaceplane" technologies. The X-30 scramjet design was just stupid from the get-go (way too many unused engines in each of its FOUR SEPARATE flight regimes). The X-33 Venture Star looks promising, but I bet that, like the Shuttle, servicing that thing is going to be a bitch. Titan rockets are cheap. Energiya boosters are cheap. (well, when they don't blow up...)
Anyhow, your points are well taken, but I don't think we're anywhere near over the hump on reusable spacecraft yet. But what do I know...I'm still an undergrad (on the 10 year degree plan!)
Re:would it be useful to protect from radiation to (Score:1)
The big problem is differential heating. And for that, a giant radiator on the outside of the hab module might be just the thing. The problem is, water is WAY useful for drinking and washing...I don't know if it would be "worth its weight" as an insulator/heat distribution apparatus...but it's a very interesting idea.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Black Horse invented yet again, and poorly (Score:2)
Really? That's great! Although I would recommend that Mr. Clapp try to update the web page a bit more, even if it just means adding a note or two and bumping the revision date occasionally, to let everyone know that Pioneer is still making progress. He can think of it as part of the PR budget. 8^)
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Re:Unobtanium (Score:1)
An interesting idea... (Score:2)
Okay, so we have to worry about how much fuel is used up trying to fuel up the orbiter. We also have to worry about the launch vehicle's aerodynamic qualities both with and without the orbiter attached. Sure, the project is getting funded decently, but would that money be better spent trying to get a launch vehicle that can also enter orbit (like the space plane that we have already spent quite a lot of money on)?
Perhaps an aerospace engineer can explain to me whether this would be workable or not.
Re:Unobtanium (Score:1)
I've seen the term "unobtanium" floating around for years, generally just referring to some material (imaginary or otherwise) that was incredibly rare/expensive/or just plain unobtainable. I don't think Jim Cameron invented it.
Aerospace engineers used to use it in reference to titanium, before it became more readily available from the former U.S.S.R.
If you go fast enough................ (Score:1)
I'm not sitting around for this. (Score:1)
Re:Hard to See (Score:5)
Spider Robinson writes a column, Past Imperfect, Future Tense, for the Toronto Globe and Mail. Some time ago, his column was titled "Senator Socksdryer and the Two Million Dollar Boondoggle". In it, Spider relates a conversation he had with Buzz Aldrin at a science fiction convention where they were co-Guests Of Honour. Buzz Aldrin related a fairly hushed up incident in the Apollo 11 mission.
The lunar landing module was very tight for space. The story is that, at the end of the exploration phase of the mission, as our heroes get ready to return to Earth, they need to remove their backpacks (dead weight) and switch back to the LEM air supply. In removing his backpack in the tight constraints of the LEM, Neil Armstrong breaks the ignition switch for the ascent engine. They are stranded on the moon with no tools to fix the problem and a finite reserve of air.
As Spider puts it:
``It dawns on Armstrong and Aldrin that they are now dead men walking, a long way from home.
``And then, God be thanked, Armstrong remembers what Senator Jocksfire called the Two Million Dollar Boondoggle. That egregious taxpayer-ripoff frippery: his zero-gravity pen. He retrieves it, roots around in the ruins of the switch...and becomes the first man ever to hot-wire a vehicle on another planet."
In the rest of his article, Spider uses the space pen, and other by-products of space-race research, to justify the support of basic research by government in the face of opposition from pork-barrelling politicians like Senator Socksdryer.
The space pen had a bigger side effect than having any notes written by American astronauts more easily preserved for posterity. The failure of Apollo 11 could have crippled the American space program and provided the Russians with breathing room for their moon landing efforts. Kennedy's goal, after all, was ``to land a man on the moon and return him safely"
Jerry Pournelle argues the point that the fall of the Soviet Union is in large part due to the fact that the Russians bankrupted themselves trying to match the American SDI ("Star Wars") effort. Their belief that the Americans might succeed at Star Wars was, Pournelle believes, founded in the USA's success on seemingly impossible projects like Apollo. Would we still be living with the Cold War had we not had the space pen?
using water to handle greater forces (Score:1)