DailyDirt: Flying Through Space With The Greatest Of Ease
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Space travel isn’t exactly a routine thing just yet. In the 70s, some people thought we’d have shuttles going up to space on a regular schedule, but that didn’t exactly happen. Rockets haven’t gotten all that much cheaper or more reliable, but presumably they will someday if we continue to build them and improve upon them. Or maybe we’ll figure out a completely different way to escape Earth’s gravity with a space elevator or rail-gun system to launch vehicles at extremely high speeds. Check out a few of the links below if you think human space exploration isn’t a complete waste of time.
- Thoth Technology has been granted a patent for an inflatable “space elevator” that’s (only) 12 miles tall. Disregarding the fact that this design wouldn’t actually reach space, it still seems pretty impractical barring an amazing advance in materials that allows such a tall structure to withstand all the forces it would need to in order to remain standing, much less support cargo and launch vehicles. However, this isn’t actually the first patent on a space elevator, and everyone should know by now that patents don’t actually need to correspond to actual functioning products. [url]
- If you haven’t been following the progress of space travel, this WaitButWhy article might be a good starting point. It’s a long, but good, read — and outlines why/how Elon Musk’s goal of creating a Mars colony is a good idea. [url]
- While Elon Musk might sound credible and non-crazy for talking about a mission to Mars, the CEO of Mars One doesn’t seem to be getting much benefit of the doubt when he says his company’s plan to go to Mars is “feasible” still. Bas Lansdorp’s company has identified lots of space fans literally willing to die to go to Mars, but the time table and plans behind that project make Mars One sound more and more like a outright suicide mission if it even gets off the ground. [url]
After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.
Filed Under: bas lansdorp, elon musk, mars colony, mars one, space, space elevator, space exploration
Companies: thoth technology
Comments on “DailyDirt: Flying Through Space With The Greatest Of Ease”
If it could be built, it would still have an import function:
The ideal rocket nozzle shape at sea level is different from the ideal rocket nozzle shape up in the thin upper atmosphere. A big reason why rockets to orbit use multiple stages is to swap in more efficient nozzles for the upper atmosphere. Which usually means throwing away entire engines and stages.
Launch from 12 miles up, and you could probably do it with one stage.
Re: Re:
Another big reason is the weight of the now empty container in which the spent fuel was contained – is causing inefficiency.
Great strides have been made wrt the nozzle issue.
Re: Re: Re:
Well sure. But two containers also means carrying the weight of a second set of engines, fuel pumps, etc.
Carbon Nanotube Fiber
Rice University developed a method for spinning cabon nanotubes of whatever properties they desire. They created thread that both conducts electricity pound for pound 100 times better than copper wires. It also has a tensile strength so high that we are probably going to have to redefine a number of charts. If you made pneumatic and hydraulic cables out of it, you could pump liquids up to orbit. They could also be deployed by pumping them up from the ground.
Makes more sense to colonize the moon, or orbit for that matter.
Re: Re:
Colonization means having children. You want their bones to develop normally. The problem is that in micro-gravity we LOSE calcium from our bones.
We don’t know the minimum amount of gravity needed. The Centrifuge Accommodations Module would have done research on this, but its launch to ISS was cancelled in 2005. It’s sitting in a parking lot.
Still, it’s safe to say that you want gravity as close to earth-normal as possible to promote the kids’ bone growth. With Mars’s gravity being twice that of the moon, its the clear winner.
Consider the following...
The launch loop is also a potential stepping point towards space elevators.
My powers of engineering are too inadequate to determine which is better, or if one is a suitable precursor to the other.
But man, SPACE!
The problem with missions to Mars
…according to drunken rocket scientists in the Pasadena area, continues to be that pesky problem with creating a lighter, smaller equivalent of eleven feet of concrete to prevent the energy of coronal mass ejections baking our astronauts until they’re a crispy golden brown.
We still don’t have a solution for that, but on Earth it’s our magnetic field that stops CMEs from cooking the surface by turning them into a pretty light show in the north.
Of lesser concern (but concern still) is the light show caused by cosmic rays hitting the eyelids keeping astronauts awake at sleeptime.
Re: The problem with missions to Mars
It’s called a “cave” and was used by man for thousands of years. Funny that man will go back to being a “caveman” on Mars.
Re: Re: The problem with missions to Mars
Um…
Assuming we time the trip so it will take the shortest amount of time, our astronauts will have to spend nine months in space.
That’s the part we haven’t figured out.
I’m sure Martian caves will be useful, but not for getting our colonists there.
Re: Re: Re: The problem with missions to Mars
No, that’s easy, too. Long term flights will use tiles of high-temp superconductors for shielding. Current “high” temps may be too low for use on Earth (outside a lab), but are plenty high enough for space use if you also block direct exposure to the sun. So your Mars craft will have a light aluminum mirror over top a tile patchwork of HTSC angled to be between the sun and the craft. Easy peasy.
Re: Re: Re:2 CMEs
If you’re thinking of creating a magnetic mirror, I’d be curious how much power it takes to repel high-energy (X-class-plus) solar flares, and if that’s affordable by a Mars-bound shuttle. Even with the Earth’s magnetic field, CMEs smack around our low-orbit satellites and even cause power outages on the ground. So I think they can pack a solid punch.
Still, a direction worth considering. Doing a lazy search, I found the Dartmouth publication considering high-temp superconductor shielding that suggests it’s promising.
Not sure I’d call it Easy peasy. Very little in space flight is Easy peasy.
Re: Re: Re:3 CMEs
Easy compared to other issues, like keeping the crew sane after a year in close quarters. 🙂
Actually, the one thing that really keeps a Mars mission from being reality, reactionless drive, looks like it might be closer than ever. Get one of those and you can just use a nuclear reactor to power both the drive and the SC shielding. At that point, fuel isn’t an issue, so you can devote carrying capacity to stocks instead.
Of course, instead of a nuclear reactor, you could maybe use a LARGE solar panel array. Since you’re only going to Mars, solar power should still be good enough. Not like going to Neptune or Pluto. In fact, rather than a mirror in front of the HTSC shield, put the solar panels in front of it. Instead of blocking or reflecting that heat-generating light, put it to use powering the shield.
Re: Re: Re: The problem with missions to Mars
…our astronauts will have to spend nine months in space…
…given present propulsion technology. I’ve often wondered if there was a physical speed limit in the vacuum of space. Else why couldn’t a mission have 2 extra engines and fuel tanks: use one to accelerate to the fastest possible speed to get there and the other to decelerate when you got there.
(Then again I’m no rocket scientist!)
Re: Re: Re:2 Shortening the trip through longer accelleration
Sure. The more force you apply, the more fuel you’ll need to reach the same velocity or cover the same distance. Human beings are squishy and can only handle so much force, or so many
The most comfortable would be to accelerate at 1G for the first half of the trip and then decelerate at 1G for the second half, which also solves the too much time in zero-G problem. IANARS either but more so I’m lazy. It takes algebra to compute the duration of such a trip (still enough time for solar flares to be a risk) and integration to compute the fuel cost (the mass gets lighter as fuel is expended, so fuel-expended-over-time decreases with time).
Right now, however, fuel in space is very dear, and requires multiples of that quantity to get it into space in the first place (hence our ambitions of space elevators and launch loops and such). It’s actually the fuel problem and not the safety problem that prevents us from tossing our burned reactor cores into the sun.
So our current mission programs have to balance fuel efficiency into the equation.
If someone could hurry up and develop an Alcubierre drive, preferably one that doesn’t rip apart the space-time continuum, we’d be most grateful.
Re: Re: Re:2 Oh yeah, to answer your question...
Provided you could accelerate a rock indefinitely (say through external means, such as via the LHC, the speed limit of vacuum is the speed of light, though things start getting wicky as you approach C. I’m pretty sure the mass-increase effect is detectable around 0.5 C but I am totally not a particle physicist and am guessing there.
There’s a lot of velocity between what we know and lightspeed. For instance, the space shuttle enters the atmosphere at 17,500 mph. Light speed is 671,000,000 mph. So we can accelerate a space ship a whole lot using our biggest rockets without noticing the shape of the manifold.
Re: Re: Re:3 Oh yeah, to answer your question...
I minored in physics, and you can push it to .8 c before things get too weird for most folks. I don’t think we have to worry about that in the near future. 😉
@6
it would take about 10000 years to bake off a fraction of the atmosphere
and when our magnetic shield goes in a few hundred years it does so for about 3K years
and its done this many times in the past and life found a way…
gold will help as will lead and thne you could prolly make a electro magnetic shield that falls behind the craft much like say a shield of sorts…this is do able for really long flights
Re: @6
“and when our magnetic shield goes in a few hundred years”
If you are referring to the potential for a magnetic pole flip, as has occurred several times in the past, then your prediction of a few hundred years is a bit presumptuous as the timing and duration is a topic of debate in the scientific community. Do the numbers you posted represent a consensus of knowledgeable researchers or simply a snippet from some dentist office magazine?