Rockets, spaceplanes, orbiters, Von Braun and other topics

[DeaconBlues (imported)]

I know, I must sound like some brat screaming over and over and over again the same thing. But really, this will become a very critical thing, the capability to launch into space with economy, reliability, and in volume never even considered before, this will be one of the "discovery of the wheel" or "dicovery of fire" type turning points in the development of human civilization.

This Orion type propulsion seems to me to be very interesting, it would be wonderful to have such a vehicle available for missions to other planets. It seems that it would be the perfect propulsion system for use in space, not only able to accellerate a craft quickly and economically, but also able to decellerate it, and that is just as important as accelleration when your ship is zooming past the planet you wanted to orbit and maybe even land upon. But I seriously doubt it will "get off the ground" without first figuring out how we are going to litterally get it off the ground and into space.

The space shuttle is NOT going to be able to do it. For living payloads yes, it is good, it would be great to put crews and certain biological expiroments into space. But the majority of what we need in space is non-living, and with a little design work it can be made to tollerate the horrendous g-load of a super-gun launch...

We could very well have the parts for the Orion space craft up and in a stable orbit in few hours, where the assembly crew would intercept them and put the parts together. From a geosynchronous orbit, the Orion propulsion vehicle could wait for the optimim launch window with no worry what so ever about the weather on earth - which has caused numerous mission scrubs for earth launches. The super-gun system would probably be effected by weather, but not nearly to the degree that rocket propulsion launches are.

I really do think, that we the American taxpaying citizens, would be very well served by the investment of some money into the development of a super-gun system.

[A-1 (imported)]

Heh, heh. One of the most interesting propulsion ideas.

We could have had a functioning Orion type spaceship a couple of decades ago but people are put off by the use of a series of nuclear detonations.

It would work and people shouldn't be afraid since the detonations would occur in space. The ship isn't designed to lift-off from earth.

Actually, the idea is being quietly dusted off by NASA but to keep people from getting into a tizzy, they are removing any reference to nuclear, detonations, explosions, etc.

----

RE: Brute force. If it isn't working, you aren't using enough.

I have a friend who has a similar saying: It it doesn't fit, get a bigger hammer.

T.

Actually, if you read closely, the original plan was to launch the thing from JACKASS FLATS, Nevada.

... :-\ (Notice how I refrained from making snide remarks about Republicans and spike strips in the desert)

[Arab Nights (imported)]

Actually, if you read closely, the original plan was to launch the thing from JACKASS FLATS, Nevada.

QUOTE]

And why not Pahrump?

[A-1 (imported)]

Because it is too embarrasing to Yoli.

[Il Musico (imported)]

I fully agree that the money the US spent (and is still spending) on the Iraq war is a big waste, producing little good and much bad, including a large count of innocent deaths. But in this very same line, it's not a tad better if that money was spent on in-orbit weapons! Spending it on in-orbit solar energy systems is certainly very much better.

Anyway, the solar shadowing device isn't feasible. It would require holding this big screen at a fixed position between the sun and the area to be shadowed, and no earth orbit works like that. You can make a satellite stay over a fixed position on the earth's equator, and you can make a satellite orbit around earth in such a plane that it almost always sees the sun (that requires a nearly polar orbit), but you cannot make a satellite stay over an arbitrary fixed location, much less track that location relative to the sun!

And sending power by microwaves, while possible, is extremely lossy. First, the conversion from DC to microwaves incurs at least in a 50% loss, but typically greater. And then, the loss from the inevitably broadening beam not being fully picked up by the receiving antenna is immense. For a link from low earth orbit to the ground, it would be on the order of 10,000,000 times, give or take two or three zeros according to the size of the antennas. For this reason, power transmission by microwaves is not economically feasible, at least not while nobody comes up with a totally revolutionary transmission system.

Illumination of large ground areas from in-orbit mirrors is feasible. But is it desirable? Today already ecologists are asking to break hydroelectric dams, and often for good reason. Ask them what would happen to life on earth, if the day-night cycles were disrupted! Nothing good, I can assure you! And if you ask me, I love to get a full night's sleep, in real, total, complete darkness. Even the moon is much to bright for my taste, so I have really thick, black curtains in my bedroom. Which lets me sleep soundly, and dream of you know what...

Il Musico

[A-1 (imported)]

Il Musico,

So good to hear from you!

Glad to know you are still amongst us.

You might be interested in reading about "broadcast electricity" another idea from the mind of the genius Nicola Tesla...

Click here... (http://www.mind-course.com/wireless.html)

Click here for a FASCINATING read... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower)

Patents of Tesla... (http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/new/tesla.htm)

More ideas & explainations.... (http://amasci.com/tesla/tesceive.html)

Il Musico, GOOD to hear form you! Best regards,

[DeaconBlues (imported)]

I fully agree that the money the US spent (and is still spending) on the Iraq war is a big waste, producing little good and much bad, including a large count of innocent deaths. But in this very same line, it's not a tad better if that money was spent on in-orbit weapons! Spending it on in-orbit solar energy systems is certainly very much better.

Anyway, the solar shadowing device isn't feasible. It would require holding this big screen at a fixed position between the sun and the area to be shadowed, and no earth orbit works like that. You can make a satellite stay over a fixed position on the earth's equator, and you can make a satellite orbit around earth in such a plane that it almost always sees the sun (that requires a nearly polar orbit), but you cannot make a satellite stay over an arbitrary fixed location, much less track that location relative to the sun!

And sending power by microwaves, while possible, is extremely lossy. First, the conversion from DC to microwaves incurs at least in a 50% loss, but typically greater. And then, the loss from the inevitably broadening beam not being fully picked up by the receiving antenna is immense. For a link from low earth orbit to the ground, it would be on the order of 10,000,000 times, give or take two or three zeros according to the size of the antennas. For this reason, power transmission by microwaves is not economically feasible, at least not while nobody comes up with a totally revolutionary transmission system.

Illumination of large ground areas from in-orbit mirrors is feasible. But is it desirable? Today already ecologists are asking to break hydroelectric dams, and often for good reason. Ask them what would happen to life on earth, if the day-night cycles were disrupted! Nothing good, I can assure you! And if you ask me, I love to get a full night's sleep, in real, total, complete darkness. Even the moon is much to bright for my taste, so I have really thick, black curtains in my bedroom. Which lets me sleep soundly, and dream of you know what...

Il Musico

First off, THANKYOU! Thankyou Il Musico, even if you disagree completely with what I suggest, at least you read what I wrote and thought about it. I would actually prefer to be confronted with your well reasoned disagreement rather than apathy or just being ignored.

Now, to address some of what you wrote: "...

this big screen at a fixed position between the sun and the area to be shadowed, and no earth orbit works like that...

" Very true, no earth orbit would do that using only one sattellite, but I had suggested a fleet of positionable sattellites. As each sattellite passed in the zone between the sun and the targeted shade area on the surface of the earth, it would pirouette to provide maximum shade, albeit for only a few minutes, but it would be followed in it's orbital track by many more positionable sattelites. But after I wrote that, I got to thinking even more about a space based reflector/umbrella system, and you know, it would make a lot more sense to place the reflectors in a solar orbit, farther out from the sun than the earth, just holding position in front or just behind the earth, and ready to direct a relatively small beam of sunshine on specific areas when they needed that night time sun. As for the sun blocker, it would also be in a solar orbit, holding a position between the earth and the sun, acting like an adjustable shutter, with the slats left open most of the time, but able to somewhat attenuate the full solar radiation on parts of the earth that we might want to cool off sometime. You hit it exactly on the head, no earth orbit would be right for the sun reflector/blocker sattellites, a solar orbit stabilized in relation to earth's position would be best.

As for the usefullness of my crazy idea... I ask that you imagine with me for a moment any number of scenarios, one that I think of is a search and rescue operation. Just for a moment imagine, an airliner goes down at night in a snow storm, searchers are hopeless of finding the wreckage much less survivors, but then, the sun comes from the dark night sky, only for the search area since the beam is going to be only as large as the surface area of the space reflectors. The snow thins, and melts to rain in the search area, eventually the clouds themselves clear up in the small warmed up area. Search aircraft will be able to fly there and actually stand a chance of finding survivors before they freeze to death.

Another scenario, recently, here at my home in Arizona, we had an increadibly late snow, and freeze. This snow came well after my almond tree and fruit trees had blossomed, so now I am looking forward to a scant harvest, that is NOT a big deal, my fruit trees are just for me, but what about the whole of Florida's citrus crop being threatened? Currently, orchardists know they need to keep smudge pots, circulation fans, and several other things at the ready to protect their crops from a late freeze, and still, we lose millions of dollars worth of produce the the fickle nature of nature. My solar reflectors could keep that from happening.

Finally of course, there is the weaponization of the idea. This is always the case, every scientific idea is somehow applied to the military use. Though I would much rather see the space reflectors used only the help earth's agriculture, there will no doubt come times when we will use it to force a hostile enemy to reconsider. Imagine the third scenario, North Korea's mentally ill leader, Kim Jong ILL finally gets his nuclear bombs on his missiles and is talking mean about "liberating" Tokyo and parts of the U.S unless they are paid rediculously high "war reparations" for previous invasions of their homeland. The rest of the civilized world strongly condemn's the madman's threats and as ever, the North Korean regime ignores the rest of the world... Then they have "a day without a night" for a couple of nights in a row... the North Korean generals finally grow some backbone and tell their lunatic leader that this is one fight they really don't want to get into.... and maybe they don't need all those nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles anyway to secure their borders.

Now on to another point you made, and I concede that you may be absolutely right, but seriously, I do think there is or soon will be a practical way to transmit energy without wires. You wrote: "...

sending power by microwaves, while possible, is extremely lossy...

" OK, well, I know that some Canadian radio broadcasters had transmitted electricity the other direction, that is from the surface of the earth up, to an unmanned electic motor driven airborne radio relay transmitter. The aircraft had microwave antenna on the underside of it's wing, and would stay at about 50,000' altitude, just holding it's position over the target broadcast area. The aircraft was BIG for an unmanned craft, looked like just one giant wing, no real fusalage, and had multiple electic motors driving propellers. It was successful, and made CLEAR line-of-sight VHF broadcast possible for a MUCH larger area than any surface antenna could have (no antenna tower could possibly be built to the height of 50,000' with today's building materials.) This application of microwaved electricity was practical from the surface to the craft 50,000 feet up, I think we could do something similar with microwaves beamed down from space to a surface array of collector antennas. And thankyou A-1 for those most interesting links to some of Tesla's ideas on the matter of long distance power transmission without wires.

[fhunter]

So you suggest to put attenuators on orbit around sun? A big controllable reflector in L1 (Lagrange point 1 - between earth and sun)? at least this position is gravitationally stable as far as I can remember. And this would be better for future space exploration - no need to avoid the fleet of satellites on launch .

On microwaves and generation of power on satellite - it is a dual use thing if it goes on receiving antennas - it's first use.

Just change orbit a bit and direct it on enemy country - it's second use.

That concerns me is that microwaves are harmful.

[fhunter]

A bit offtopic, but still about wirelesly transmitting power.

Tesla would be proud

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMEzUp_8az8#

[Dave (imported)]

A bit off topic, but still about wireles

sly transmitting power.

Tesla would be proud

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMEzUp_8az8#

The transmission loses are too large to make it economical. You know the answer even though you might not know the science... Think about it.

What has less resistance-- ground with worms, dirt and rocks or a continuous copper wire?