And if you remember, the Discovery channel used to be a big thing. My opinion on why their ratings dropped for a while is that the general populace was temporarily enamored with all the new technology. (Computers and the Internet) Now that they've become comfortable with such things, they are looking for more interesting things again. That's why CNN, Fox News, CBS, C-SPAN, NBC, ABC, etc. all picked up the story of Rutan's flight. The populace is again ready to be fascinated by the unknown.
Honestly, people do like the Discovery Channel and hearing about "Mysteries of the Universe". Topics which can grab people's attention include:
- Explaining Nuclear Space Propulsion Methods - Investigate Red Mercury, whether it exists, and its potential uses - Explain how Fission and Fusion actually work - Explain Relativity, String Theory, etc. (Oh wait, someone did that.) - Investigate the Ancient Vimanas
The secret to making these subjects interesting is to place them in the context of the common person. Lay low on the mathematics, and go heavy on the computer graphics.
As long as the public isn't hearing the same 50 year old science AGAIN (look, it's a Saturn V), they'll be interested.
One of the concerns of Freeman Dyson, one of the originators of Orion was that the radiation placed into the atmosphere by a single launch produced a statistical guarantee that 10 people somewhere in the world would get cancer who otherwise would not have.
But that wasn't what killed the project. What killed the project was the Nuclear Test Ban treaties of the 1960's. The Orion team actually felt that they could reduce the fallout further, potentially to levels where no one would die from a launch. This was due to the fact that the Orion actually attempted to contain its explosions rather than the military goal of causing the maximum damage possible.
Truth be told, if Red Mercury really does what it's supposed to (the Russians ARE selling the stuff), we may have a way of making Orion launches 100% safe. Of course, our government claims that Red Mercury is a hoax all the while other countries are buying the stuff up. Hmm...
Speaking of which, does anyone know what the heck Mercuric Pyro-Antimonate is useful for besides "creating" Red Mercury? There appears to be a whole bunch of the stuff on the open market, but no documents actually stating what it's useful for.
Yeah, the sensors were designed wrong, but, huh, check it out, they were installed backwards too
No, not quite. They're saying that the manufacturer designed them to be installed backwards on the circuit board. i.e. The assembly guys did everything right (it probably only fit one way), but Lockheed-Martin screwed the pooch.
You didn't read the article very well. It says that the specs said the part should go in backwards. From the article:
The sensors, which are estimated to be less than an inch (2.5 centimetres) wide, were apparently installed in a circuit board in the wrong orientation - rotated 180 from the correct direction. But the problem stemmed not from the installation but the design, by Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Maryland.
Look on the bright side. The craft was not a complete loss, and it was the first probe to successfully test the Interplanetary Superhighway. (Article with pictures) Now that we know the IPSHwy works, we have the capability to launch cargo ANYWHERE in the solar system.
The primary limitation is the maximum weight we can get to the Earth/Moon Lagrange points. Once at the L-points, the cargo pretty much travels one gravity slingshot to the next with nearly no fuel expenditure. This could be a massive boon for sending Interplanetary mission cargo, especially when staging manned missions!
The only down side is that the IPSHwy is simply too slow for manned travel. Not too bad of a tradeoff, however, when you consider the amount of mass that can be more easily staged at Mars in advance! It's certainly reasonable that we could have a complete microsat network at Mars before a human ever sets foot there. Services that could be provided include:
- Mars GPS system - Deep Space Network Uplink - Satellite Radio Communicators for landing teams - Detailed mapping and emergency surveillance of problem areas
In short, we could have a complete technological infrastructure on Mars before we risk anyone's life going there. It wouldn't have to be like the moon mission. We could go to stay.
With less deltaV than that, NO amount of acceleration will be sufficient to change your orbit to an atmospheric entry orbit
That's not quite 100% correct. It is possible to lose *more* velocity in an acceleration maneuver rather than a deceleration maneuver. The trick is to modify your orbit such that it becomes an ellipsoid with the Earth at one end. With such an orbit, you could theoretically reenter the earth's atmosphere on an orbital flyby. The temporary reentry would result in strong aerobraking which would reduce your speed *without* reaction mass. Of course, you're quite likely to burn to a crisp in such a maneuver, but that's just minor details.;-)
In other words, this really tells you nothing useful about how long a space ship will take to get to Mars since you have two unknown velocities... or are you assuming something that I'm missing?
For rocketry, Delta-V does indeed determine flight time. The reason is that there are different ways of achieving an orbital transfer. Slower methods require a lower Delta-V, while faster methods require a greater Delta-V.
The cheapest maneuver used to be the Hohmann Transfer, but it has recently been supplanted by an even more efficient (and slower) transfer called the Interplanetary Superhighway.
The Question 2 you raise is a good one. Presumably, since it's in earth orbit, we could keep shuttling fuel of some sort to it w/out too much effort (hah!).
I had considered that they might do that, but the end result is that you need *twice* the energy as a simple rocket. i.e. You've got the propulsive force from your plasma cannon and then you've got the force required to cancel out the former. Granted, it's not that hard to continuously boost LHOx tanks to LEO (~10-50 million per launch on a Delta II), but if you're going to do that you could have just strapped them to the Mars craft and ejected each tank as it ran out of fuel.
Honestly, the idea is not all that different from that of riding a laser "rail" via a solar sail. The engineering of a laser platform is certainly easier, and you could plant a bunch of them somewhere stable (like the moon or a Near Earth Asteroid).
The biggest problem I still have is that the launch window would be EXTREMELY tight for these devices. Launch *must* occur as Mars approaches Earth in its orbit, or you'd lose alignment as Mars passes around the other side of the Sun. The return trip would be pretty much the same issue. What that means is that either you get there and back in 90 days, or you'll spend the next 3 years on Mars.
Ah, ok. Allow me to explain. If I want to go from Low Earth Orbit to the moon, it will take a minimum Delta-V of 4.4 m/s. That means that from my starting velocity in LEO (~8 m/s) I must increase my velocity by 4.4 m/s to reach the moon.
If I want to get to the moon faster, I need to adjust my velocity by a much higher Delta-V. So obtaining a Delta-V of 7.2 m/s would allow me to get to the moon way faster than my 4.4 m/s friend. (Actual time differences are only determinable by orbital mechanics.)
So yes, Delta-V for rockets is about the change in velocity. But it's about the amount of change necessary to move from point A to point B at travel time C. Does that clarify it?
In the 50+ years that software has been a part of business procedures, how many companies have you seen give a damn about proper engineering?
I hate to be the pessimist here, but 99.9% of the time, projects succeed (and/or are properly engineered) in spite of companies' non-attention to proper engineering.
The main thing in favor of American developers is the same reason why Indian off-shoring tends to fail. The big reason why off-shoring often fails (first hand experience over here) is that the programmers take less initiative in forcing proper design and engineering.
That's not a slam against Indians (or other off-shoring cultures), but more a fact of life. They are disconnected from the project to such a degree that they have no real grasp of it other than to produce *exactly* what the specs document says. This is the same type of problem you see in using consulting firms like Anderson, nay, Accenture in developing your software.
In short, a software project can't succeed unless developers truly understand and care about what they are doing to the degree that they will *make* it succeed in spite of itself.
1. If not nuclear, what is supposed to power this thing? Highly charged, magnetic plasma is pretty energy intensive stuff.
2. What is their plan for dealing with the negative propulsion imparted on the orbiting station? (i.e. Newton's Third Law of Motion)
The only viable solution I see to both of these problems is to make the firing station ground based. If we do that, then alignment would be temporary at best, and the atmosphere would cause a massive amount of diffusion and interference in the beam.
Cassini Apollo 12 Apollo 13 Apollo 14 Apollo 15 Apollo 16 Apollo 17 Pioneer 10 Pioneer 11 Voyager 1 Voyager 2 Galileo Ulysses Viking 1 Viking 2 Nimbus Transit Les
All of the above carried highly radioactive Plutonium into space. The above list does not include Russian launches, nor does it mention missions (like the Mars Exploration Rovers) which used plutonium heaters to prevent mechanical damage from low temperatures.
Speaking of Ablative Shielding, one has to wonder if reactive armor might be an effective counter to micro-meteorites. It would certainly be lighter and cheaper than trying to construct the hull like that of an iowa class Battleship.
The biggest downside is that as the impacts accumulate, the armor would develop a variety of weak points. The crew would then need to either replace the panels, or hope that lightning doesn't strike twice in the same spot.
then that would indeed be acceleration -- which doesn't necessarily mean faster.
No. Delta V is the desired change in velocity. How fast you accelerate has nothing to do with that. So I could thrust toward Mars at 1/100 gravities and still obtain the same Delta-V (for the same fuel!) as someone who thrusted at 2 gravities.
In other words, Delta-V for rockets is all about the final velocity obtained. Thus a slower thrusting craft that obtains a higher delta-V over time is still likely to beat out a high-thrust craft that only burns for a few minutes.
What's all this about a "new method" being required for short trips to Mars? What about the 101 old methods we have? Nuclear Thermal, Nuclear Electric, Orion, Laser Lifters, Nuclear Salt Water (this seriously needs to be developed!), Fission Fragment engines, Nuclear Steam ships, etc, etc, etc.
We've got high powered propulsion options pouring out of our ears. It all comes down to getting funding. Wave a plan near congress and they're sure to kill it before breakfast.
I remember back in '96-'97 timeframe hearing from a number of Sun vendors about experiments with NT on Ultrasparc, but could never get a demo (and we had Sun workstation vendors falling all over us to give us hardware at the time).
That's because Sun played Microsoft for a bunch of fools. Microsoft realized that Sparc was *the* platform to support at the time. As a result, they were falling over themselves when Sun offered to sign an exclusive contract to develop NT for the UltraSparc.
After the papers were signed, McNealy laughed as he happily sat on the port of NT and used his newfound legal authority to prevent Microsoft from bringing it. That's why there was a port for MIPS, Alpha, and PPC, but no port for Sparc.:-)
Wally World is a nickname for Walmart. It's sort of a play on the whole "Everything Emporium" type of stores. i.e. They are a world unto themselves. Thus Wal-mart becomes Wally-World (which sounds mildly more amusing than "Wally's Emporium").
Our other favorite type of business chain to pick on is fast food restaurants. e.g.:
McDonald's -> MickeyD's Taco Bell -> Toxic Hell Burger King -> (actually this one can be kind of disgusting due to references to nasal fluids)
Slashdot Mirror
There may be an Interplanetary Superhighway some day like in A.C. Clarke's books, but NASA won't be around to make it happen.
Amazing. Did you read my post? The Interplanetary Superhighway is a fact of nature, not a man-made construction.
Dude, you are seriously preaching to the choir.
And if you remember, the Discovery channel used to be a big thing. My opinion on why their ratings dropped for a while is that the general populace was temporarily enamored with all the new technology. (Computers and the Internet) Now that they've become comfortable with such things, they are looking for more interesting things again. That's why CNN, Fox News, CBS, C-SPAN, NBC, ABC, etc. all picked up the story of Rutan's flight. The populace is again ready to be fascinated by the unknown.
Honestly, people do like the Discovery Channel and hearing about "Mysteries of the Universe". Topics which can grab people's attention include:
- Explaining Nuclear Space Propulsion Methods
- Investigate Red Mercury, whether it exists, and its potential uses
- Explain how Fission and Fusion actually work
- Explain Relativity, String Theory, etc. (Oh wait, someone did that.)
- Investigate the Ancient Vimanas
The secret to making these subjects interesting is to place them in the context of the common person. Lay low on the mathematics, and go heavy on the computer graphics.
As long as the public isn't hearing the same 50 year old science AGAIN (look, it's a Saturn V), they'll be interested.
colonization of mars does not seem possible because the body does not rotate on it's axis.
1. What the hell are you talking about? Mars rotates just fine, and even has seasons.
how is this problem to be overcome when you must grow plants to sustain your existance?
2. Maybe the same way we do it on Earth? High powered, wide spectrum lamps.
One of the concerns of Freeman Dyson, one of the originators of Orion was that the radiation placed into the atmosphere by a single launch produced a statistical guarantee that 10 people somewhere in the world would get cancer who otherwise would not have.
But that wasn't what killed the project. What killed the project was the Nuclear Test Ban treaties of the 1960's. The Orion team actually felt that they could reduce the fallout further, potentially to levels where no one would die from a launch. This was due to the fact that the Orion actually attempted to contain its explosions rather than the military goal of causing the maximum damage possible.
Truth be told, if Red Mercury really does what it's supposed to (the Russians ARE selling the stuff), we may have a way of making Orion launches 100% safe. Of course, our government claims that Red Mercury is a hoax all the while other countries are buying the stuff up. Hmm...
Speaking of which, does anyone know what the heck Mercuric Pyro-Antimonate is useful for besides "creating" Red Mercury? There appears to be a whole bunch of the stuff on the open market, but no documents actually stating what it's useful for.
I think a more interesting list would be the list of launch accidents involving spacecraft with nuclear materials onboard.
Transit
Nimbus
Apollo 13
The above list does not include the Russian RTG accidents. (They were nice enough to burn up plutonium over Canada.)
Linky
Yeah, the sensors were designed wrong, but, huh, check it out, they were installed backwards too
No, not quite. They're saying that the manufacturer designed them to be installed backwards on the circuit board. i.e. The assembly guys did everything right (it probably only fit one way), but Lockheed-Martin screwed the pooch.
KHAAAAANNNNN!!!!
You didn't read the article very well. It says that the specs said the part should go in backwards. From the article:
The sensors, which are estimated to be less than an inch (2.5 centimetres) wide, were apparently installed in a circuit board in the wrong orientation - rotated 180 from the correct direction. But the problem stemmed not from the installation but the design, by Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Maryland.
Look on the bright side. The craft was not a complete loss, and it was the first probe to successfully test the Interplanetary Superhighway. (Article with pictures) Now that we know the IPSHwy works, we have the capability to launch cargo ANYWHERE in the solar system.
The primary limitation is the maximum weight we can get to the Earth/Moon Lagrange points. Once at the L-points, the cargo pretty much travels one gravity slingshot to the next with nearly no fuel expenditure. This could be a massive boon for sending Interplanetary mission cargo, especially when staging manned missions!
The only down side is that the IPSHwy is simply too slow for manned travel. Not too bad of a tradeoff, however, when you consider the amount of mass that can be more easily staged at Mars in advance! It's certainly reasonable that we could have a complete microsat network at Mars before a human ever sets foot there. Services that could be provided include:
- Mars GPS system
- Deep Space Network Uplink
- Satellite Radio Communicators for landing teams
- Detailed mapping and emergency surveillance of problem areas
In short, we could have a complete technological infrastructure on Mars before we risk anyone's life going there. It wouldn't have to be like the moon mission. We could go to stay.
With less deltaV than that, NO amount of acceleration will be sufficient to change your orbit to an atmospheric entry orbit
;-)
That's not quite 100% correct. It is possible to lose *more* velocity in an acceleration maneuver rather than a deceleration maneuver. The trick is to modify your orbit such that it becomes an ellipsoid with the Earth at one end. With such an orbit, you could theoretically reenter the earth's atmosphere on an orbital flyby. The temporary reentry would result in strong aerobraking which would reduce your speed *without* reaction mass. Of course, you're quite likely to burn to a crisp in such a maneuver, but that's just minor details.
In other words, this really tells you nothing useful about how long a space ship will take to get to Mars since you have two unknown velocities... or are you assuming something that I'm missing?
For rocketry, Delta-V does indeed determine flight time. The reason is that there are different ways of achieving an orbital transfer. Slower methods require a lower Delta-V, while faster methods require a greater Delta-V.
Here is a list of orbital transfers and Delta-V requirements.
The cheapest maneuver used to be the Hohmann Transfer, but it has recently been supplanted by an even more efficient (and slower) transfer called the Interplanetary Superhighway.
The Question 2 you raise is a good one. Presumably, since it's in earth orbit, we could keep shuttling fuel of some sort to it w/out too much effort (hah!).
I had considered that they might do that, but the end result is that you need *twice* the energy as a simple rocket. i.e. You've got the propulsive force from your plasma cannon and then you've got the force required to cancel out the former. Granted, it's not that hard to continuously boost LHOx tanks to LEO (~10-50 million per launch on a Delta II), but if you're going to do that you could have just strapped them to the Mars craft and ejected each tank as it ran out of fuel.
Honestly, the idea is not all that different from that of riding a laser "rail" via a solar sail. The engineering of a laser platform is certainly easier, and you could plant a bunch of them somewhere stable (like the moon or a Near Earth Asteroid).
The biggest problem I still have is that the launch window would be EXTREMELY tight for these devices. Launch *must* occur as Mars approaches Earth in its orbit, or you'd lose alignment as Mars passes around the other side of the Sun. The return trip would be pretty much the same issue. What that means is that either you get there and back in 90 days, or you'll spend the next 3 years on Mars.
Ah, ok. Allow me to explain. If I want to go from Low Earth Orbit to the moon, it will take a minimum Delta-V of 4.4 m/s. That means that from my starting velocity in LEO (~8 m/s) I must increase my velocity by 4.4 m/s to reach the moon.
If I want to get to the moon faster, I need to adjust my velocity by a much higher Delta-V. So obtaining a Delta-V of 7.2 m/s would allow me to get to the moon way faster than my 4.4 m/s friend. (Actual time differences are only determinable by orbital mechanics.)
So yes, Delta-V for rockets is about the change in velocity. But it's about the amount of change necessary to move from point A to point B at travel time C. Does that clarify it?
In the 50+ years that software has been a part of business procedures, how many companies have you seen give a damn about proper engineering?
I hate to be the pessimist here, but 99.9% of the time, projects succeed (and/or are properly engineered) in spite of companies' non-attention to proper engineering.
The main thing in favor of American developers is the same reason why Indian off-shoring tends to fail. The big reason why off-shoring often fails (first hand experience over here) is that the programmers take less initiative in forcing proper design and engineering.
That's not a slam against Indians (or other off-shoring cultures), but more a fact of life. They are disconnected from the project to such a degree that they have no real grasp of it other than to produce *exactly* what the specs document says. This is the same type of problem you see in using consulting firms like Anderson, nay, Accenture in developing your software.
In short, a software project can't succeed unless developers truly understand and care about what they are doing to the degree that they will *make* it succeed in spite of itself.
In that case, I've got two questions for you:
:-)
1. If not nuclear, what is supposed to power this thing? Highly charged, magnetic plasma is pretty energy intensive stuff.
2. What is their plan for dealing with the negative propulsion imparted on the orbiting station? (i.e. Newton's Third Law of Motion)
The only viable solution I see to both of these problems is to make the firing station ground based. If we do that, then alignment would be temporary at best, and the atmosphere would cause a massive amount of diffusion and interference in the beam.
Thanks for the info!
Cassini
Apollo 12
Apollo 13
Apollo 14
Apollo 15
Apollo 16
Apollo 17
Pioneer 10
Pioneer 11
Voyager 1
Voyager 2
Galileo
Ulysses
Viking 1
Viking 2
Nimbus
Transit
Les
All of the above carried highly radioactive Plutonium into space. The above list does not include Russian launches, nor does it mention missions (like the Mars Exploration Rovers) which used plutonium heaters to prevent mechanical damage from low temperatures.
Linky
There's really no way around it. What do you think is going to power the mag-beam? Magic?
Given the mass restrictions of rocketry, nuclear power is the only game for the necessary power requirements.
Sorry, link on reactive armor.
Speaking of Ablative Shielding, one has to wonder if reactive armor might be an effective counter to micro-meteorites. It would certainly be lighter and cheaper than trying to construct the hull like that of an iowa class Battleship.
The biggest downside is that as the impacts accumulate, the armor would develop a variety of weak points. The crew would then need to either replace the panels, or hope that lightning doesn't strike twice in the same spot.
If, by "Delta-V" you mean "change in velocity,"
Yes.
then that would indeed be acceleration -- which doesn't necessarily mean faster.
No. Delta V is the desired change in velocity. How fast you accelerate has nothing to do with that. So I could thrust toward Mars at 1/100 gravities and still obtain the same Delta-V (for the same fuel!) as someone who thrusted at 2 gravities.
In other words, Delta-V for rockets is all about the final velocity obtained. Thus a slower thrusting craft that obtains a higher delta-V over time is still likely to beat out a high-thrust craft that only burns for a few minutes.
That should be "at what Delta-V?" More Delta-V == faster.
What's all this about a "new method" being required for short trips to Mars? What about the 101 old methods we have? Nuclear Thermal, Nuclear Electric, Orion, Laser Lifters, Nuclear Salt Water (this seriously needs to be developed!), Fission Fragment engines, Nuclear Steam ships, etc, etc, etc.
We've got high powered propulsion options pouring out of our ears. It all comes down to getting funding. Wave a plan near congress and they're sure to kill it before breakfast.
I remember back in '96-'97 timeframe hearing from a number of Sun vendors about experiments with NT on Ultrasparc, but could never get a demo (and we had Sun workstation vendors falling all over us to give us hardware at the time).
:-)
That's because Sun played Microsoft for a bunch of fools. Microsoft realized that Sparc was *the* platform to support at the time. As a result, they were falling over themselves when Sun offered to sign an exclusive contract to develop NT for the UltraSparc.
After the papers were signed, McNealy laughed as he happily sat on the port of NT and used his newfound legal authority to prevent Microsoft from bringing it. That's why there was a port for MIPS, Alpha, and PPC, but no port for Sparc.
Wally World is a nickname for Walmart. It's sort of a play on the whole "Everything Emporium" type of stores. i.e. They are a world unto themselves. Thus Wal-mart becomes Wally-World (which sounds mildly more amusing than "Wally's Emporium").
Our other favorite type of business chain to pick on is fast food restaurants. e.g.:
McDonald's -> MickeyD's
Taco Bell -> Toxic Hell
Burger King -> (actually this one can be kind of disgusting due to references to nasal fluids)