Promethius is not a launch solution. It's a nuclear powered Ion Drive. Energia Vulkan, Sea Dragon, and the Gas Core Nuclear "Liberty Ship" are all cool launch solutions he forgot.
IMO, we're "losing" engineers because we're not making real engineers.
Isn't that what I just said?
And by the way, if you're not a teenager and you're looking to find what you can do to become a good engineer, you probably ought to find another career.
I'm quite happy in my current engineering role, thank you. I'm not looking to "improve myself" (I'm quite good already), I'm looking to improve the way the "system" indentifies engineers. Currently the "system" says "Master's goooood, self-learning baaaaaddd!" I shouldn't even have to explain how messed up that is.
Most people would say that it would be impossible if not futile to attack windmills and believe you could win over them. But Don Quijote never doubted his abilites, no matter what Sancho Panza thought.
Personally, I love the name. It's good to know that the ESA scientists have a sense of humor. Especially when Sancho sits back and watches the fireworks while our brave hidalgo charges into battle!:-D
sure you can. that particuler part will no longer be effective, but you can recharge the overall system.
I looked over some of the links you provided. As I said, it's still ablative armor. The primary difference is that it's designed to make certain anti-tank weapons less effective. You'll note that they didn't discuss other forms of anti-tank weapons such as DU rounds. A DU round would pass through this barrier like a hot knife through butter.
The batteries can drain and be recharged, but that does not change the effectiveness of the system. It's either providing enough energy or it's not. Thus its usage is somewhat different from the "hull plating" of Enterprise. Even if Enterprise were to use something like this, there terminology should be chaging to match. Instead of "hull plating is down to XYZ%", they should be saying that "Plating has been ablated by X% in Y area. Capacitors/Batteries are at Z% charge."
Not only would this be more realistic, but it would provide more plot elements for writers to latch onto. Instead they persist in this concept of "invulnerable forcefields" when they're simply not.
It'll be like that until everyone realize that it takes a scientist to properly control output of other scientists.
I'm an engineer you insensitive clod!
Joking aside, I think it's important to point out that what we need a lot of are engineers, not scientists. Scientists are wonderful people who advance our knowledge from a 50,000 foot level, and do so for little pay. These guys dream math calculations that make my mind gloss over just thinking about it.
Engineers OTOH, use a combination of scientific research and intuition to develop real and practical devices that advance civilization. Most of these guys are also very smart, but from a far more practical standpoint. Their job is to use all that research done by really smart scientists to exploit the laws of nature for the purpose of creating advanced machines that can do "work". (In CompSci, that would be a matter of applying the proper data structures and formulas to derive a computational machine that does work.)
The primary difference here is that Scientists tend to do the research because they love it. They have a keen insight into the universe and its working, and generally won't stop research even if they can't find funding. In addition, country borders rarely mean anything to their research. They could be American, Russian, Indian, British, French, or whatever. When their research gets published, everyone benefits.
Engineers (being more practical by nature) tend to aim for either the fortune of working for hire, or the fame of engineering some really amazing project. Their focus is to find a way to achieve whatever goals are put in front of them. I could tell some Aerospace engineers that I wanted to colonize Alpha Centauri, and they should be able to tell me how it can be done, how long it will take, what technologies must be developed, and at what cost. The idea that it *can't* be done is not the way they think. It's only about whether someone is willing to fund the project to its needs.
While I'm painting something of a rosy picture here, I do have a point to this rant. The US is losing *engineers* for various reasons. One reason is lower pay. Another reason is today's poor education system that often denies potential engineers from becoming such. The most damaging thing, however, is the continuously laxing standards for "engineers". A construction worker is not an engineer. Neither is a programmer a "software engineer". Yet kids fresh out of school have scented money, and said "I'll be an engineer! I'll cram my way through the schoolwork, then I can stop learning because no one will ever make me prove myself again!" As a result, the signal to noise ratio of engineers is ever dropping.
I'm not sure what the solution is yet, but I do know one thing: we need a different system for separating the wheat from the chaff. Traditional thinking says that School Degree == Knows His Stuff. Yet the reality is that you have a lot of people who go to school, but aren't really qualified for the job. At the other end of the spectrum, you have a lot of people who've made use of today's information mediums to become qualified without a degree. It's all a very confused situation.
You're right. When they introduced the Defiant on DS9, I recall it having ablative armor.
It wasn't the same thing. The DS9 ablative armor was a "recharging" armor. Supposedly replicators were used to constantly deposit armor on the outside the ship so that weak spots would eventually cover over. Real ablative armor (like the kind used on Battleships) is simply a thick plate of something protective (like steel). As it takes enemy fire, it "ablates". i.e. It starts to chip away. It generally takes a complete replacement panel to fix damage to the armor. (Although I wouldn't be against some sort of "super-bond" stuff that they can spray and cure.)
The problem was that when the reset button was hit, things didn't go back to normal. I really had no problem with the "Age of Apocalypse" story line. I thought it was intriguing. It was the switch back that was the killer.
Basically, it's a fancy ablative armor. Like "Reactive Armor" on US tanks. The trick is that you can't just recharge it and say "Hull plating is back up to 75%". That crap just steams my bacon.
I still enjoy the fact that Andromeda doesn't appear to have any energy shielding
That's another show I wish they hadn't screwed up. (I lost track of it after they converted it from "good storyline" to "Hercules in Space".) There was nothing quite like Andromeda zipping out of slipstream, and opening up with forward cannons, missiles, and slip fighters. And if that failed, go for the nova bomb.
Probably my favorite sequence was Dillan's Machiavellian maneuver with the giant robots. "How to seriously kick ass in three easy steps."
See, this is what happens when you give ships to people who deserve them. (As opposed to touchy, feely, "hair-bun of steal" captains.)
Now that they have, they are free to do whatever they want in regards to the timeline.
That's exactly why the show sucks. If you want to do Star Trek, do Star Trek. If you want to do some other show, do some other show. If you want to make Star Trek into some other show, you can expect that fans are going to be ROYALLY PISSED.
X-Men did the same thing in the comic with the "Apocalypse alternate universe". I stopped reading it about then.
Then again, at least we can be fairly sure there won't be a holodeck in this movie
You forgot that Holodecks were introduced in Enterprise. For example, there was the episode where everyone on this crashed ship was really a hologram.
and no Data either.
Several posts in this forum have stated that Data's character will somehow work into the new movie. It might not be true, but I wouldn't put it past B&B.
In other words, behold the unmatched, creative idiocy of Berman and Braga!
No no, wasn't offended. Actually I should be the one apologizing with the 'sorry I'm not a nerd' comment.
It's okay. I'm actually not that much of a stickler for continuity, but the way that B&B off handedly destroy everything that's known and cherished about the Star Trek series is truly a disgusting sight to see.
BTW, here's my post about how the movie *should* be done. All they need is one big reset button, or the whole movie premise will be shot.
Yeah, I saw the episodes. I STILL want to know what happens next. With half the team dead, the ladies crash landed, and an Armada on the Chig doorstep, you can't get the suspense any higher. Of course, Fox cancelled it before we found out what happened next.
It's kind of pathetic and twisted that Star Trek fans like you, who'll still be virgins at 40, keep complaining about the small amount of sex appeal that's been put in to appeal to us normal guys.
I'm married and have two kids. I don't think I'm the one with the problem. You might want to stop projecting on others. It tends to give away things you might not want them to know...
Whoa. No offense was intended there. If I came off a bit strong, it's probably my anger at B&B showing through. I was just pointing that out as one of the biggest barriers to doing a decent Star Trek movie. If we just accept B&B's screwed up timeline, then we'll have to accept that Star Trek is finally dead.
You're not the only one to complain. I have a few wishes that had better be met if this movie is going to be any good:
1. There better be a reset button hidden in that Temporal Cold War. We need to wipe out that idiot Enterprise episode where the Romulans were able to cloak. Not to mention the "invention" of phase cannons and photon torpedos.
2. NUKES! BIG FRIGGIN' NUKES! There's only one way to fight a space war before phasers and photons, and that's with Gigawatt lasers/masers and BIG ASS NUKES!
3. No hull plating. That stuff is the stupidest invention yet. They can use M2P2 shields for protection against radiation and nuclear explosions. Fine. But "charged" hull plating that "wears away" is just stupid. Ablative armor is the way REAL wars are fought.
Think they'll listen?
NAH. It will all be "photons", "phasers", "Oops, I fell on [bimbo of the series] boobs", and "Oh, yeah. There's like this... war... thing, going on. Guess we better save the day. Let's act REAL angry and tell them they're wrong. That always works."
You forgot the Cloaking device before the Cloaking device was invented. Personally, I'm a bit worried about B&B doing this project. These are the same guys who are PROUD of the fact that they never watched the original series.
Actually, the War was supposedly fought entirely in space. The treaty was handled over audio COMMs only, so the Federation never managed to find out what the Romulans looked like.
Of course, they could just do like Space: Above and Beyond and goo the bad guys every time someone tries to peek inside their suit.
I said the email "sounded" reasonable. As in, fairly easy for someone to believe if they're not the brightest bulb in the bunch. I didn't say the story wasn't without holes. At the very least it annoys me because it makes it through the spam filter.
See, a 419 with links is a new one to me. Most of them seem to think that they can convince you BY SHOUTING AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS. Others try to spin an interesting story about being a lawyer or some such. Never seen such a convincing 419 before now, though.
...the new Spam mail with links? I just received a very reasonable sounding spam that talked about how some official was involved in a money scam, and recently died. It then backs up those statements with the following links:
The thing was so convincing, that it went right past Google Mail's SPAM filter and landed in my inbox. (All other Nigerian scams ended up in the SPAM folder.) Takes things to a whole new level.
In case anyone's interested, here's the complete text:
Subject: Hi...partner needed
I do not want to intrude so I will be brief and try and get to the point. I have to use this way to contact you because it is quicker and more secured for me. In today's world, I know it is sometimes hard to believe stories from someone you dont know because I know we have never meet. In our world a female's rights are not equal to a man's. Hence I need to look for contacts outside our shores. My name is Angela Afolabi. My father, Sunday Afolabi, just died some weeks back in a London Hospital of Cancer. He was a former Internal Affairs Minister inmy country up till last year. This was before he fell out with the present government. And since then and up till his death, life was not easy for me and the family, but I give thanks to god that I am still alive. Before the death of my father, things were not easy and though my father died leaving a fortune to us, the Government has refused to release the funds. My father was imprisoned for several months last year and I am sure this is what hastened his death. He had been arrested for being involved in a National Identity contract scheme involving a lot of money. For more on this, go to:
I and my family have gone through alot. Currently, I need an agent for reasons which I will say later. I was close to my father and you see my father revealed to me certain information about some bond certificates and money with a firm abroad when he was sick. I never realised he would die so soon. I am unable to act on it now for security reasons. As a young woman here in this country, my options are limited. So I need an agent or a partner in this endeavour.
Zepellins can't attain the high altitudes if they have any considerable weight on them. It's a bit like trying to raise a sunken ship by tying it to balloons - even though the balloons want to float, they weight offsets their buoyancy.
I recently spoke with a gentlemen well educated on Zeppelins. The problem as he put it was that the gas bags had to be BIG. At the time we were discussing the issue of a military Air Carrier. By his calculations, you could lift something the size of a Nimtz class carrier IF your Zeppelin was about a mile long. Thus it seems not a question of "can" it do it, but more of "how big" to get the required amount of lift. (He actually liked the idea of a mile long carrier, BTW.)
Then I'm thinking big blimp, small weights - they should be cheap to run. But there's another possible problem... I think the lack of airspeed would actually be crippling because without any speed it would have no stability, no orientation control, and it'd be liable to fly right into the Zep. If it fired up while attached to the bottom, it would probably just rotate the Zep instead of speeding it forward.
Hmm... again, I think it depends on the amount of lift. Zeppelins are amazingly stable and tend to have very few roll problems. Conceivably, you could also use the Zeppelin's engines to help offset any roll factor introduced by the engines firing.
In my head, I'm starting to imagine a three bag superstructure (one bag above, two on the sides) that are attached to launch rails. Perhaps the launch rails could be magnetic launchers? That should allow the space craft to clear the Zeppelin.
That still leaves the issue of airspeed. That probably is the biggest hurdle. Hypersonic wings like those of the space shuttle would tend to produce very little lift at low airspeeds. (On landing, the damn thing hits the ground at 200 mph! And the shuttle is practically a lifting body! Falling refrigerator indeed.) Launching a more traditional rocket might work, but the backwash from the engines could severely damage the Zeppelin.
Speaking with others, it seems that the max speed for Zeppelins tends to be somewhere around 70 knots. If a craft could be developed that could produce enough lift at that speed, it might be workable. Of course, I'm starting to reach into Rube Goldberg land here. #1 engineering principle: KISS.:-)
I want one of those. Make it a bit bigger (so it can carry the weight), put in a cockpit, add a few lightweight props, and you've got one tricked out air ride.;-D
Yeah, whatever. And transporting materials for heavy industry into a high orbit is going to cut costs.
It would severely cut costs if the materials come from a higher orbit, IIRC, the moon has quite a lot of construction materials such as Iron. You could mine the materials from there, and mass drive them to your factories. "Rare" materials could potentially be mined in large quantities from passing asteroids. Given the DeltaV necessary to move the material into the proper orbit, these materials probably won't drop prices by much, but they will provide an abundant supply.
Slashdot Mirror
Project Promethius
Promethius is not a launch solution. It's a nuclear powered Ion Drive. Energia Vulkan, Sea Dragon, and the Gas Core Nuclear "Liberty Ship" are all cool launch solutions he forgot.
IMO, we're "losing" engineers because we're not making real engineers.
Isn't that what I just said?
And by the way, if you're not a teenager and you're looking to find what you can do to become a good engineer, you probably ought to find another career.
I'm quite happy in my current engineering role, thank you. I'm not looking to "improve myself" (I'm quite good already), I'm looking to improve the way the "system" indentifies engineers. Currently the "system" says "Master's goooood, self-learning baaaaaddd!" I shouldn't even have to explain how messed up that is.
Most people would say that it would be impossible if not futile to attack windmills and believe you could win over them. But Don Quijote never doubted his abilites, no matter what Sancho Panza thought.
:-D
Personally, I love the name. It's good to know that the ESA scientists have a sense of humor. Especially when Sancho sits back and watches the fireworks while our brave hidalgo charges into battle!
sure you can. that particuler part will no longer be effective, but you can recharge the overall system.
I looked over some of the links you provided. As I said, it's still ablative armor. The primary difference is that it's designed to make certain anti-tank weapons less effective. You'll note that they didn't discuss other forms of anti-tank weapons such as DU rounds. A DU round would pass through this barrier like a hot knife through butter.
The batteries can drain and be recharged, but that does not change the effectiveness of the system. It's either providing enough energy or it's not. Thus its usage is somewhat different from the "hull plating" of Enterprise. Even if Enterprise were to use something like this, there terminology should be chaging to match. Instead of "hull plating is down to XYZ%", they should be saying that "Plating has been ablated by X% in Y area. Capacitors/Batteries are at Z% charge."
Not only would this be more realistic, but it would provide more plot elements for writers to latch onto. Instead they persist in this concept of "invulnerable forcefields" when they're simply not.
It'll be like that until everyone realize that it takes a scientist to properly control output of other scientists.
I'm an engineer you insensitive clod!
Joking aside, I think it's important to point out that what we need a lot of are engineers, not scientists. Scientists are wonderful people who advance our knowledge from a 50,000 foot level, and do so for little pay. These guys dream math calculations that make my mind gloss over just thinking about it.
Engineers OTOH, use a combination of scientific research and intuition to develop real and practical devices that advance civilization. Most of these guys are also very smart, but from a far more practical standpoint. Their job is to use all that research done by really smart scientists to exploit the laws of nature for the purpose of creating advanced machines that can do "work". (In CompSci, that would be a matter of applying the proper data structures and formulas to derive a computational machine that does work.)
The primary difference here is that Scientists tend to do the research because they love it. They have a keen insight into the universe and its working, and generally won't stop research even if they can't find funding. In addition, country borders rarely mean anything to their research. They could be American, Russian, Indian, British, French, or whatever. When their research gets published, everyone benefits.
Engineers (being more practical by nature) tend to aim for either the fortune of working for hire, or the fame of engineering some really amazing project. Their focus is to find a way to achieve whatever goals are put in front of them. I could tell some Aerospace engineers that I wanted to colonize Alpha Centauri, and they should be able to tell me how it can be done, how long it will take, what technologies must be developed, and at what cost. The idea that it *can't* be done is not the way they think. It's only about whether someone is willing to fund the project to its needs.
While I'm painting something of a rosy picture here, I do have a point to this rant. The US is losing *engineers* for various reasons. One reason is lower pay. Another reason is today's poor education system that often denies potential engineers from becoming such. The most damaging thing, however, is the continuously laxing standards for "engineers". A construction worker is not an engineer. Neither is a programmer a "software engineer". Yet kids fresh out of school have scented money, and said "I'll be an engineer! I'll cram my way through the schoolwork, then I can stop learning because no one will ever make me prove myself again!" As a result, the signal to noise ratio of engineers is ever dropping.
I'm not sure what the solution is yet, but I do know one thing: we need a different system for separating the wheat from the chaff. Traditional thinking says that School Degree == Knows His Stuff. Yet the reality is that you have a lot of people who go to school, but aren't really qualified for the job. At the other end of the spectrum, you have a lot of people who've made use of today's information mediums to become qualified without a degree. It's all a very confused situation.
You're right. When they introduced the Defiant on DS9, I recall it having ablative armor.
It wasn't the same thing. The DS9 ablative armor was a "recharging" armor. Supposedly replicators were used to constantly deposit armor on the outside the ship so that weak spots would eventually cover over. Real ablative armor (like the kind used on Battleships) is simply a thick plate of something protective (like steel). As it takes enemy fire, it "ablates". i.e. It starts to chip away. It generally takes a complete replacement panel to fix damage to the armor. (Although I wouldn't be against some sort of "super-bond" stuff that they can spray and cure.)
The problem was that when the reset button was hit, things didn't go back to normal. I really had no problem with the "Age of Apocalypse" story line. I thought it was intriguing. It was the switch back that was the killer.
Basically, it's a fancy ablative armor. Like "Reactive Armor" on US tanks. The trick is that you can't just recharge it and say "Hull plating is back up to 75%". That crap just steams my bacon.
I still enjoy the fact that Andromeda doesn't appear to have any energy shielding
That's another show I wish they hadn't screwed up. (I lost track of it after they converted it from "good storyline" to "Hercules in Space".) There was nothing quite like Andromeda zipping out of slipstream, and opening up with forward cannons, missiles, and slip fighters. And if that failed, go for the nova bomb.
Probably my favorite sequence was Dillan's Machiavellian maneuver with the giant robots. "How to seriously kick ass in three easy steps."
See, this is what happens when you give ships to people who deserve them. (As opposed to touchy, feely, "hair-bun of steal" captains.)
Now that they have, they are free to do whatever they want in regards to the timeline.
That's exactly why the show sucks. If you want to do Star Trek, do Star Trek. If you want to do some other show, do some other show. If you want to make Star Trek into some other show, you can expect that fans are going to be ROYALLY PISSED.
X-Men did the same thing in the comic with the "Apocalypse alternate universe". I stopped reading it about then.
Then again, at least we can be fairly sure there won't be a holodeck in this movie
You forgot that Holodecks were introduced in Enterprise. For example, there was the episode where everyone on this crashed ship was really a hologram.
and no Data either.
Several posts in this forum have stated that Data's character will somehow work into the new movie. It might not be true, but I wouldn't put it past B&B.
In other words, behold the unmatched, creative idiocy of Berman and Braga!
Seems you're the second person who need this exact text.
No no, wasn't offended. Actually I should be the one apologizing with the 'sorry I'm not a nerd' comment.
It's okay. I'm actually not that much of a stickler for continuity, but the way that B&B off handedly destroy everything that's known and cherished about the Star Trek series is truly a disgusting sight to see.
BTW, here's my post about how the movie *should* be done. All they need is one big reset button, or the whole movie premise will be shot.
Yeah, I saw the episodes. I STILL want to know what happens next. With half the team dead, the ladies crash landed, and an Armada on the Chig doorstep, you can't get the suspense any higher. Of course, Fox cancelled it before we found out what happened next.
*sigh*
It's kind of pathetic and twisted that Star Trek fans like you, who'll still be virgins at 40, keep complaining about the small amount of sex appeal that's been put in to appeal to us normal guys.
I'm married and have two kids. I don't think I'm the one with the problem. You might want to stop projecting on others. It tends to give away things you might not want them to know...
That sounds supisciously like Sci-Fi pr0n to me.
:-)
In S:AAB, the characters actually referred to the problem as "The bad guys spooge every time their suit is opened."
I was trying to find a more polite term for it.
Whoa. No offense was intended there. If I came off a bit strong, it's probably my anger at B&B showing through. I was just pointing that out as one of the biggest barriers to doing a decent Star Trek movie. If we just accept B&B's screwed up timeline, then we'll have to accept that Star Trek is finally dead.
You're not the only one to complain. I have a few wishes that had better be met if this movie is going to be any good:
1. There better be a reset button hidden in that Temporal Cold War. We need to wipe out that idiot Enterprise episode where the Romulans were able to cloak. Not to mention the "invention" of phase cannons and photon torpedos.
2. NUKES! BIG FRIGGIN' NUKES! There's only one way to fight a space war before phasers and photons, and that's with Gigawatt lasers/masers and BIG ASS NUKES!
3. No hull plating. That stuff is the stupidest invention yet. They can use M2P2 shields for protection against radiation and nuclear explosions. Fine. But "charged" hull plating that "wears away" is just stupid. Ablative armor is the way REAL wars are fought.
Think they'll listen?
NAH. It will all be "photons", "phasers", "Oops, I fell on [bimbo of the series] boobs", and "Oh, yeah. There's like this... war... thing, going on. Guess we better save the day. Let's act REAL angry and tell them they're wrong. That always works."
You forgot the Cloaking device before the Cloaking device was invented. Personally, I'm a bit worried about B&B doing this project. These are the same guys who are PROUD of the fact that they never watched the original series.
Actually, the War was supposedly fought entirely in space. The treaty was handled over audio COMMs only, so the Federation never managed to find out what the Romulans looked like.
Of course, they could just do like Space: Above and Beyond and goo the bad guys every time someone tries to peek inside their suit.
I said the email "sounded" reasonable. As in, fairly easy for someone to believe if they're not the brightest bulb in the bunch. I didn't say the story wasn't without holes. At the very least it annoys me because it makes it through the spam filter.
See, a 419 with links is a new one to me. Most of them seem to think that they can convince you BY SHOUTING AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS. Others try to spin an interesting story about being a lawyer or some such. Never seen such a convincing 419 before now, though.
...the new Spam mail with links? I just received a very reasonable sounding spam that talked about how some official was involved in a money scam, and recently died. It then backs up those statements with the following links:
l eId=2696 / f111052004.html
i cl eId=26962 /headline/ f111052004.html
http://www.businessdayonline.com/index.php?fArtic
http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/headline
The thing was so convincing, that it went right past Google Mail's SPAM filter and landed in my inbox. (All other Nigerian scams ended up in the SPAM folder.) Takes things to a whole new level.
In case anyone's interested, here's the complete text:
Subject: Hi...partner needed
I do not want to intrude so I will be brief and try and get to the point. I
have to use this way to contact you because it is quicker and more secured
for me. In today's world, I know it is sometimes hard to believe stories from
someone you dont know because I know we have never meet. In our world a
female's rights are not equal to a man's. Hence I need to look for contacts
outside our shores. My name is Angela Afolabi. My father, Sunday Afolabi,
just died some weeks back in a London Hospital of Cancer. He was a former
Internal Affairs Minister inmy country up till last year. This was before he
fell out with the present government. And since then and up till his death,
life was not easy for me and the family, but I give thanks to god that I am
still alive.
Before the death of my father, things were not easy and though my father died
leaving a fortune to us, the Government has refused to release the funds. My
father was imprisoned for several months last year and I am sure this is what
hastened his death. He had been arrested for being involved in a National
Identity contract scheme involving a lot of money.
For more on this, go to:
http://www.businessdayonline.com/index.php?fArt
http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/200
I and my family have gone through alot.
Currently, I need an agent for reasons which I will say later. I was close to
my father and you see my father revealed to me certain information about some
bond certificates and money with a firm abroad when he was sick. I never
realised he would die so soon. I am unable to act on it now for security
reasons.
As a young woman here in this country, my options are limited. So I need an
agent or a partner in this endeavour.
Thank you.
Angela.
Zepellins can't attain the high altitudes if they have any considerable weight on them. It's a bit like trying to raise a sunken ship by tying it to balloons - even though the balloons want to float, they weight offsets their buoyancy.
:-)
I recently spoke with a gentlemen well educated on Zeppelins. The problem as he put it was that the gas bags had to be BIG. At the time we were discussing the issue of a military Air Carrier. By his calculations, you could lift something the size of a Nimtz class carrier IF your Zeppelin was about a mile long. Thus it seems not a question of "can" it do it, but more of "how big" to get the required amount of lift. (He actually liked the idea of a mile long carrier, BTW.)
Then I'm thinking big blimp, small weights - they should be cheap to run. But there's another possible problem... I think the lack of airspeed would actually be crippling because without any speed it would have no stability, no orientation control, and it'd be liable to fly right into the Zep. If it fired up while attached to the bottom, it would probably just rotate the Zep instead of speeding it forward.
Hmm... again, I think it depends on the amount of lift. Zeppelins are amazingly stable and tend to have very few roll problems. Conceivably, you could also use the Zeppelin's engines to help offset any roll factor introduced by the engines firing.
In my head, I'm starting to imagine a three bag superstructure (one bag above, two on the sides) that are attached to launch rails. Perhaps the launch rails could be magnetic launchers? That should allow the space craft to clear the Zeppelin.
That still leaves the issue of airspeed. That probably is the biggest hurdle. Hypersonic wings like those of the space shuttle would tend to produce very little lift at low airspeeds. (On landing, the damn thing hits the ground at 200 mph! And the shuttle is practically a lifting body! Falling refrigerator indeed.) Launching a more traditional rocket might work, but the backwash from the engines could severely damage the Zeppelin.
Speaking with others, it seems that the max speed for Zeppelins tends to be somewhere around 70 knots. If a craft could be developed that could produce enough lift at that speed, it might be workable. Of course, I'm starting to reach into Rube Goldberg land here. #1 engineering principle: KISS.
They're working on an inflatable shuttle too.
;-D
I want one of those. Make it a bit bigger (so it can carry the weight), put in a cockpit, add a few lightweight props, and you've got one tricked out air ride.
Yeah, whatever. And transporting materials for heavy industry into a high orbit is going to cut costs.
It would severely cut costs if the materials come from a higher orbit, IIRC, the moon has quite a lot of construction materials such as Iron. You could mine the materials from there, and mass drive them to your factories. "Rare" materials could potentially be mined in large quantities from passing asteroids. Given the DeltaV necessary to move the material into the proper orbit, these materials probably won't drop prices by much, but they will provide an abundant supply.