Then they made the (right, IMHO) decision to do things more cheaply with the understanding that things won't always work out
Boeing, LM and the rest of pork barrel gang make sure that things won't be done cheaply but they are quite happy if NASA accepts that they don't even work. More to study, more to fix, more pork.
Sure did. But since we have clear evidence of huge sand storms and propably smaller ones cleaning solar cells then maybe there was something wrong with NASAs wind tunnel setup? Did they simulate all aspects of martian atmosphere, the composition and temperature too?
Why is it so hard to for the 'communities' to realize that bittorrent protocol itself is all you need for ratios? The built-in tit-for-tat mechanism makes sure there can be no leechers, everybody participates in uploading by default, everybody is happy. Tracking ratios the oldfashioned BBS-way is just plain stupid.
But in all seriousness, this is probably a result of the reliance on the cooperation of multiple nations to do the right thing according to the schedule.
Terrorists cancelled moonbase plans after they found out that hijacking airplanes, storming consulates and brainwashing youngsters into TNT-packing 'expendable launch vehicles' is more cost effective.
US moon invasion is postponed until the Russians agree to give them a ride.
Screw smart clothes...
Hopefully this stuff can be made into next generation pressurised (200-300 atm) rocket fuel tanks. No turbopumps, reliable pressure fed engines without weight penalty in bulky tanks and cheap RLV is one important step closer to reality.
It's fiction but the facts are solid. NASA remains clueless and SS1 is really just a toy. The Rocket Company story gives you robust design and even a business plan to start with. Some billionaire should make this into reality (and in the process himself/herself into world's first trillionaire!).
Hey, what about equal and opposite forces? If the beam generator was mounted on a space station like they say it could be, wouldn't the space station need to be much more massive than the object it is propelling?
In a word, yes. At least an order of magnitude more massive, preferably more. Conservation of momentum applies so if you propel your spacecraft to 11km/s a ten times more massive pusher station would experience dV of 1,1km/s the opposite way.
If your station is at LEO you definetly want fire your magbeam 'backward', giving station more orbital speed and sending it to more elliptical orbit. Otherwise your station would crash to earth.
Next time you might want to fire magbeam 'forward' near perigee (point of orbit where closest to earth) to slow down the station and enter LEO again. This way by alternating forward/backward firing your station wouldn't crash or escape the planet/moon it's orbiting. A massive and therefore large station at LEO would experience some serious drag and needs periodical thrusting, magbeam firings would suit this job nicely.
Trip to Mars using nuclear powered rocket would be extremely slow because all the greenpeace protestors along the way, not to mention dozens of them chained to the hull.
As said in their site the goal was to get off the pad. Anything puffing hot gases generally downwards while being guided by quite a long launch rail achieves that, including 'several' seconds of stable flight. Engineers in the 60s could have done the same easily but they knew the result without even trying and their goal was in the orbit, not one foot above the pad.
Real innovation in this engine is the use of ablative shielding inside the chamber. But that makes it even harder to overcome the original problem of this type of engine; having steady and stable burn/gas flow (ie. equal thrust) around the annulus. Linear aerospike engine does this by replacing one large chamber with numerous small ones which are easier to control.
Correct, the elevator can be used as slingshot to escape earth. Not for the average person though since precise timing (and floor?) is required to reach correct destinations. Especially if you have to catch other swinging elevator at the other end. There have been proposals that mars-expeditions could use the elevator concept to descend and ascend mars and then slingshot back to earth.
BTW wouldn't it be possible at least in theory to build similar elevator from earth to moon? The gravity center should be at the point where the gravity of each bodies cancel each other and the whole thing would rotate the same period as the moon. Moon would conveniently have the same side always towards earth so cable could be anchored there. Earth-end would have to be at altitude of LEO or higher due to delta-Vs.
Not sure if practical, would the earth-GTO and earth-moon elevators inevitably collide? Too high tension for even carbon nanotubes? Reaching the the earth-end would still require a booster but required deltaV is not very big, a supersonic jet would do if the end could be lowered to atmosphere. But the drag makes it impossible.
One more thing about the normal GTO elevator and possible threats (hurricane, terror etc). In pictures you see the cable anchored to oil rigs and such, giving the impression that there's a huge tension. In reality the original tension at ground level is nil, growing possibly to the same size as the maximum weight of climbers.
So imagine that you are the the ground (or sea) station, attach a climber to the cable that is exactly the same weight as cables tension to the station and then release the cable, what happens? Right, nothing. Now the climber is the counterweight needed to keep the cable at still. Make the climber to reel the cable in while it ascends and you have a neat way a avoid any threats at atmospheric levels. The climber might need some sort of balloons and controllable ballast in order to keep the cable's center of gravity not shifting from desirable point but that's all lowtech.
People seem to be genuinely worried about ~250t (the mass below GTO that can fall down) of pure carbon burning in the atmosphere into CO2. Rather... funny... considering the US enviromental policy during Bush administration (Kyoto, gas is not pollutant etc. etc.)
There are only two practical floors for average people. Earth and GTO. Getting off before GTO would send you plummeting back to earth. Getting off after GTO would send you to either elliptical orbit or even escape velocities to Moon, Mars etc. but that is not for an average person.
You are absolutely right. My quick calculus had a hole big enough to send Chinese military navy into orbit. (mach 1 ~1200km/h somehow managed to turn into 1200m/s). Well, I'd still qualify into NASA mars-probe team!
But still, all that complex trouble to get to just mach 1 seems wasteful. For pure rocket-based design such initial speed wont make much difference. If the ramp exit speed is increased a lot, the ramp must be must much longer and exit point should at some high mountain peak to reduce aerodynamic stress. NASA would have to rent... Kilimanjaro?
One good thing about ramp assisted launch (versus horisontal take-off) is that the landing gear needs to support empty returning plane only, allowing quite a lot mass reductions. If air-breathing engines are present (preferably some form of rocket-based combined cycle) the ramp can be used to give the initial speed needed for ramjet/scramjet. But practical scramjet won't be here for several years and RBCC is gonna take even longer so until then the atmosphere is just a nuisance during early stages of lift-off. For that, vertical take-off with brute force is not that bad.
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With 100Gbyte/sec memory bandwith, no.
...now that you can...almost...use two-button mouse it's time to learn this new fancy 3D sphere UI!
Boeing, LM and the rest of pork barrel gang make sure that things won't be done cheaply but they are quite happy if NASA accepts that they don't even work. More to study, more to fix, more pork.
Sure did. But since we have clear evidence of huge sand storms and propably smaller ones cleaning solar cells then maybe there was something wrong with NASAs wind tunnel setup? Did they simulate all aspects of martian atmosphere, the composition and temperature too?
NASA forgot to tell the martian atmosphere that it cannot move dust.
NASA can ill afford to jump into such obvious conclusions, it has $16B to blow.
Oh please, NASA did this 40 years ago
Allen practically owns SS1 so he decided to shelve his expensive toy into the museum.
Why is it so hard to for the 'communities' to realize that bittorrent protocol itself is all you need for ratios? The built-in tit-for-tat mechanism makes sure there can be no leechers, everybody participates in uploading by default, everybody is happy. Tracking ratios the oldfashioned BBS-way is just plain stupid.
Like regular shuttle flights...
What a cosmic irony it would be if US were more concerned about pollution in space than on earth.
US moon invasion is postponed until the Russians agree to give them a ride.
in the news soon: 'BrainPorted' specula becomes a huge hit among male gynecologists. Reports indicate customers like it too...
Hope they don't develope mimetic polyalloy while you sleep...
Screw smart clothes... Hopefully this stuff can be made into next generation pressurised (200-300 atm) rocket fuel tanks. No turbopumps, reliable pressure fed engines without weight penalty in bulky tanks and cheap RLV is one important step closer to reality.
Here's a nice story how to achieve that.
It's fiction but the facts are solid. NASA remains clueless and SS1 is really just a toy. The Rocket Company story gives you robust design and even a business plan to start with. Some billionaire should make this into reality (and in the process himself/herself into world's first trillionaire!).
In a word, yes. At least an order of magnitude more massive, preferably more. Conservation of momentum applies so if you propel your spacecraft to 11km/s a ten times more massive pusher station would experience dV of 1,1km/s the opposite way. If your station is at LEO you definetly want fire your magbeam 'backward', giving station more orbital speed and sending it to more elliptical orbit. Otherwise your station would crash to earth.
Next time you might want to fire magbeam 'forward' near perigee (point of orbit where closest to earth) to slow down the station and enter LEO again. This way by alternating forward/backward firing your station wouldn't crash or escape the planet/moon it's orbiting. A massive and therefore large station at LEO would experience some serious drag and needs periodical thrusting, magbeam firings would suit this job nicely.
Trip to Mars using nuclear powered rocket would be extremely slow because all the greenpeace protestors along the way, not to mention dozens of them chained to the hull.
...Nigeria entered back to stone age.
Real innovation in this engine is the use of ablative shielding inside the chamber. But that makes it even harder to overcome the original problem of this type of engine; having steady and stable burn/gas flow (ie. equal thrust) around the annulus. Linear aerospike engine does this by replacing one large chamber with numerous small ones which are easier to control.
BTW wouldn't it be possible at least in theory to build similar elevator from earth to moon? The gravity center should be at the point where the gravity of each bodies cancel each other and the whole thing would rotate the same period as the moon. Moon would conveniently have the same side always towards earth so cable could be anchored there. Earth-end would have to be at altitude of LEO or higher due to delta-Vs.
Not sure if practical, would the earth-GTO and earth-moon elevators inevitably collide? Too high tension for even carbon nanotubes? Reaching the the earth-end would still require a booster but required deltaV is not very big, a supersonic jet would do if the end could be lowered to atmosphere. But the drag makes it impossible.
One more thing about the normal GTO elevator and possible threats (hurricane, terror etc). In pictures you see the cable anchored to oil rigs and such, giving the impression that there's a huge tension. In reality the original tension at ground level is nil, growing possibly to the same size as the maximum weight of climbers.
So imagine that you are the the ground (or sea) station, attach a climber to the cable that is exactly the same weight as cables tension to the station and then release the cable, what happens? Right, nothing. Now the climber is the counterweight needed to keep the cable at still. Make the climber to reel the cable in while it ascends and you have a neat way a avoid any threats at atmospheric levels. The climber might need some sort of balloons and controllable ballast in order to keep the cable's center of gravity not shifting from desirable point but that's all lowtech.
People seem to be genuinely worried about ~250t (the mass below GTO that can fall down) of pure carbon burning in the atmosphere into CO2. Rather ... funny ... considering the US enviromental policy during Bush administration (Kyoto, gas is not pollutant etc. etc.)
There are only two practical floors for average people. Earth and GTO. Getting off before GTO would send you plummeting back to earth. Getting off after GTO would send you to either elliptical orbit or even escape velocities to Moon, Mars etc. but that is not for an average person.
But still, all that complex trouble to get to just mach 1 seems wasteful. For pure rocket-based design such initial speed wont make much difference. If the ramp exit speed is increased a lot, the ramp must be must much longer and exit point should at some high mountain peak to reduce aerodynamic stress. NASA would have to rent ... Kilimanjaro?
One good thing about ramp assisted launch (versus horisontal take-off) is that the landing gear needs to support empty returning plane only, allowing quite a lot mass reductions. If air-breathing engines are present (preferably some form of rocket-based combined cycle) the ramp can be used to give the initial speed needed for ramjet/scramjet. But practical scramjet won't be here for several years and RBCC is gonna take even longer so until then the atmosphere is just a nuisance during early stages of lift-off. For that, vertical take-off with brute force is not that bad.
You better hope for pretty rigid wings and sturdy G-suit since zero to mach one in two miles requires more than 20Gs of acceleration.