To space and beyond

[TLAM Strike]

This website might interest you:

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/prelimnotes.php

[Blood_splat]

I wish they never canceled Firefly.

[Raptor1]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

This website might interest you:

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/prelimnotes.php

I wish it interested more science fiction authors as well...

[mapuc]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

This website might interest you:

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/prelimnotes.php

Thank you. It have been added to my favorite.

Have red some pages and it makes me wonder, for how long, we the human will be so narrow minded. Building the rocket here on earth. WHEN will we take the next step and start to build our ships in some kind of spaceyard that is orbeting the earth. Offcourse smaller rockets or space shuttle stil have to be launch from earth.

Markus

[Oberon]

Someone needs to add a caveat into the ban on atomic weapons in space so we can get the bloody Orion spaceship going. You'd have to build it in space, but if the math is right, we'd be cruising to Pluto and beyond within a year.
Heck, if we built an elevator it would be built quite quickly.

But no...there's just too much earthly problems...

[mapuc]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Someone needs to add a caveat into the ban on atomic weapons in space so we can get the bloody Orion spaceship going. You'd have to build it in space, but if the math is right, we'd be cruising to Pluto and beyond within a year.
Heck, if we built an elevator it would be built quite quickly.

But no...there's just too much earthly problems...

When I say propulsion, I do not think of atomic propulsion, but more like fusion like propulsion. The Moon have lots of the ingrediens/material to make such a fusion possible. So building some kind of refinery on the moon, could be done during the production of the spaceship.

Markus

[Raptor1]

Originally Posted by mapuc

When I say propulsion, I do not think of atomic propulsion, but more like fusion like propulsion. The Moon have lots of the ingrediens/material to make such a fusion possible. So building some kind of refinery on the moon, could be done during the production of the spaceship.

Markus

Technically, fusion power is still nuclear power, it's just not fission power.

Besides the fact that nobody has yet built a fusion reactor capable of providing actual sustained power, let alone be able to be used as spacecraft propulsion. The moon doesn't really have all that much of the Helium-3 that keeps getting cited as a source for fusion fuel. The outer system gas giants have much more of it, but they're a bit far away...

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Someone needs to add a caveat into the ban on atomic weapons in space so we can get the bloody Orion spaceship going. You'd have to build it in space, but if the math is right, we'd be cruising to Pluto and beyond within a year.

Glad I'm not the only one who thinks that.

Maybe there is hope for the Mini-Mag Orion (a drive that combined fissionable material in a magnetic engine bell). Perhaps that design could then be re-purposed for a M/AM drive if that fuel ever becomes economically feasible.

[MH]

Originally Posted by mapuc

Thank you. It have been added to my favorite.

Have red some pages and it makes me wonder, for how long, we the human will be so narrow minded. Building the rocket here on earth. WHEN will we take the next step and start to build our ships in some kind of spaceyard that is orbeting the earth. Offcourse smaller rockets or space shuttle stil have to be launch from earth.

Markus

Maybe when someone finds oil on the moon.

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by mapuc

Thank you. It have been added to my favorite.

Have red some pages and it makes me wonder, for how long, we the human will be so narrow minded. Building the rocket here on earth. WHEN will we take the next step and start to build our ships in some kind of spaceyard that is orbeting the earth. Offcourse smaller rockets or space shuttle stil have to be launch from earth.

Markus

To cross space, you first of all have to lift your crew, your propulsion system and all your other technology out of Earth's gravity well. That's the biggest and most constant hurdle that must be overcome. We need a cheap way for getting stuff into Low Earth Orbit. Once you are there, you are halfway to anywhere else Then you have to take everything with you - not just food and water (which you have no prospect of stocking up along the way) but also oxygen and some form of sunlight.

Oceans can be crossed in weeks or months in low-tech vessels not much different to existing vessels that keep to the coastline. The interstellar gulf is far more vast. Crossing it either takes more than a lifetime (which nobody is going to want to do) or it has to be done at great speed which a) is hugely expensive, b) carries its own risks such as being smashed to pieces by interstellar dust and c) still takes many years to get there, so that the young people involved at the start of the project will be old or dead at the end.

If we're ever to travel to other stars, we're going to need some magic technology such as a means of uploading our consciousnesses onto computers (in the manner of Greg Egan's Diaspora), or a new kind of propulsion that takes spaceships from 0 to near lightspeed in a short time whilst simultaneously repelling anything that might collide with us, or a means of unraveling higher dimensions so that we can take short cuts through hyperspace.

It might be that we never obtain any suitable magical technology. But until we do, we're not even standing at the docks. One reason the sailing or naval analogy is a poor one is that water movement is normal to the gravitational gradient. A closer analogy (though not very close at all) would be an physical expedition up Everest. You have to carry your food, your fuel, and for most people your oxygen. In this there hasn't been a qualitative change since the days of Mallory.

I'm increasingly of the cynical belief that the human race will perish with the Earth. We might get another half dozen more men (or women) on the Moon, we might even get a token team on Mars. But that probably will be it. Once the public has come to terms with the fact that there are no beings or lost civilizations on Mars or anywhere else close, they won't want to know. Space enthusiasts will eventually come to terms with the fact that exploration depends on public interest. And public interest is increasingly thin on the ground.

[MH]

A book for you from SF author i like very much...