We've already passed the age of unmanned probes only so get over it.
<hr></blockquote>
You continuously reveal that you aren't acquainted with modern technology. Modern robrtics are good, but not great. But until the mid 90s, computers were barely adequate for the developmentof good, cheap, embedded robotics. The time for robotic probes is now. Intelligent probes will be able to navigate through hazardous areas autonomously. Since there,s too much lag for remote control here, and since it's not a god idea to send humans into hazardou areas, the development of smarter probes will have a lot of impact on technology: for space exploration, civil, and military objectives.
If NASA,s ultimate goal is to stimulate technology, then probes really should be the focus at this point. Not only are they financially viable, but they will have great impact on related fields of study.
New shuttle designs have been developed. They continue to provide basically no return back to the taxpayers who fund the organization. There is still no good reason to send humans into space at this point. It gets us essentially 0 return of investment.
This sounds like a broken record because you keep pressing an issue that's not only overwhelmingly against you on this forum, but also against you in the rest of the country. Poeple have thought about this long and hard and have done a lot more research than you or I. They've found that a lot of NASA is a useless money pit.
So what other designs are contenders for possible space cehicles? I read somewhere about a ramjet for transfering payloads into space, but that would only work for non-sensitive items, like some fuels, etc.
Not bad if you wanted to refuel at then envelope, though, and then push outward. It would take less fuel and equipment to get the craft to the envelope, which may be a good thing.
If your point is to have space exploration, then why spend so much money on a space shuttle tour bus/moving van.
Rockets have moved stuff into space for 40 years. The Russians Soyuz and Zenit rockets are cheap compared to our Shuttle missions. He11 UPS or FedEx could probably find a cheaper way than NASA.
Sure have a shuttle, but don't keep wasting trips on silly experiments just to have a NASA PR moment. A shuttle is useful for stuff like fixing the Hubble or transporting engineers to the station to work on it. But to just go up for a few days to do an experiment, that should wait and be done on the Station, is just "Dog and Pony".
They've found that a lot of NASA is a useless money pit.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That seems a bit extreme. Who has ever supported the notion that NASA is a useless money pit? What evidence is there that the people of the United States don't want NASA?
Putting humans into space is a good thing. We need to continue to push the envelope. Robots are good too, but can't replace humans.
<strong>So what other designs are contenders for possible space cehicles? </strong><hr></blockquote>
There have been a couple. There's of course the lockheed X33, then the NASP, -- which is the obvious objective of reusable space craft design -- the DCX, nd many independent designs.
The X33 is basically a shuttle replacement, the DCX was highlighted earlier in this thread, and the rest are plane-like reusable vehicles.
They've all been cancelled because of people like jimmac who want more shuttle missions right now, combined with the fact that NASA doesn't have as big of a budget as they'd like. My take? Kill the shuttle and pool money.
There have been a couple. There's of course the lockheed X33, then the NASP, -- which is the obvious objective of reusable space craft design -- the DCX, nd many independent designs.
The X33 is basically a shuttle replacement, the DCX was highlighted earlier in this thread, and the rest are plane-like reusable vehicles.
They've all been cancelled because of people like jimmac who want more shuttle missions right now, combined with the fact that NASA doesn't have as big of a budget as they'd like. My take? Kill the shuttle and pool money.
-- this one was actully built</strong><hr></blockquote>
Since the 60's NASA has never had the budget they wanted. No, the new designs weren't developed. They tested the some parts of them. They were mismanaged and under funded.
" that should wait and be done on the Station, is just "Dog and Pony". "
This shows that you don't know what you're talking about. You can't build the station without some kind of reusable craft.
__________________</strong><hr></blockquote>
You reply a lot, it would be nice if you actually contributed more that quips and insults.
[quote]Originally posted by jimmac:
<strong>
I'm not talking about the glass I'm talking about the oven safe dishes that weren't around until I was about 11 or 12. Remember I'm old enough to know this stuff.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Oh the ignorance is great in this one...
In 1953, Pyroceram, a white pyrex-ceramic-like material capable of withstanding enormous variations in temperature, was invented and developed by Dr. S. Donald Stookey of Corning research and development division. Corningware, an oven-to-table service made of Pyroceram was introduced in 1958 by Corning Glass. It featured the first little blue Cornflower decoration, designed by Corning staff, which became the trademark of Corning consumer products for three decades.
So the next time someone says it's Pyrex, know that it is for more than just the beakers in science class. <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
<strong>They've all been cancelled because of people like jimmac who want more shuttle missions right now, combined with the fact that NASA doesn't have as big of a budget as they'd like. My take? Kill the shuttle and pool money.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Nasa wants more shuttle missions to make money they are not getting from the government. Stands to reason... and I would do the same.
And it's not just people like jimmac... its the people who run Nasa... I don't see any of them lurking or typing in AppleInsider...
Thanks for the links... I shall check them out later this evening.
Sure have a shuttle, but don't keep wasting trips on silly experiments just to have a NASA PR moment. A shuttle is useful for stuff like fixing the Hubble or transporting engineers to the station to work on it. But to just go up for a few days to do an experiment, that should wait and be done on the Station, is just "Dog and Pony".</strong>
Station is designed for long term high throughput research in biological sciences and materials research. The shuttle is the development platform, seeing how well hardware works and how they should be designed, for the hardware to be put unto station. "Dog and Pony" is mostly pundit rhetoric.
For transporting crew, shuttle is overkill. Shuttle is great for fixing Hubble. It's last mission will probably be to bring the Hubble down, in fact. Shuttle is good for building space stations, though this is more attributable to the station being designed around shuttle's capabilities.
I do agree that shuttle is a ball-and-chain on NASA though. Too complex and too expensive for what it does. The disagreement is that when it flies, it isn't a testbed for "silly" experiments. It is useful work and development.
Build the high lift. Period. It might take a decade and a half to make it happen, but, so what? It would seem that NASA is going to have to back up a bit and spend a large portion of its already miniscule budget on reports. Why did the shuttle break up? We don't know. Let's move on people.
Consider the impact of a system that literally elevates people and equiptment into space. Sure, it takes a week or so to get there, but what's the rush? Cost per kilo decreases by 100 fold, exploratory crafts can be assembled in space without the use of gigantic rockets, and, maybe most importantly, the human race could expand their horizons reasonably and efficiently. Who could argue with that?
Check <a href="http://www.highliftsystems.com/"; target="_blank">this</a> company out, for one example. This tech will be completely feasable in 5 or less years. Are we so mondially stupid that we would pass this up?
<strong>[qb]I do agree that shuttle is a ball-and-chain on NASA though. Too complex and too expensive for what it does. The disagreement is that when it flies, it isn't a testbed for "silly" experiments. It is useful work and development.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The 'silly' experiments which everyone talks about are a bit more than just Nasa doing stuff nonchalantly. There is a program for shchools to design an experiment with limitations on space, constraints on weight and very minimal control from the astronaut crews. In the case of the ant experiment, all it did was sit there with a live feed going down from what basically amounted to a web cam.
The students spent 2 or 3 years determining what kind of ants to use, what medium to put them in, and how to make the enclosure so you didn't have an typical 'ant farm accident'... They wrote the papers to submit the proposal, and they will write a full report on the experiment, along with their views on why it is important.
Here are some liinks to show the amount of effort involved here, with many students, across several grades and over a long period of time.
Read up on these things. Then try to comprehend the amount of work these students, teachers and schools went through to have a chance to try someting on the Space Shuttle.
Then tell us it isn't worth the money to have inspired kids to work together beyond their immediate high school goals and look to the stars...
now if we're purely considering payload lift, one of the best examples of recycling and "swords-into-plowshares" is the conversion of former ICBMs into launch vehicles for spacecraft... two birds with one stone... more mass into orbit, and less potential weapons of mass destruction.
there's a program that ought to get funding boost
one of the issues with the Shuttle SRBs, made by Thiokol, are the toxic byproducts from its aluminium-mix solid rocket fuel... (similar issues sadly exist in some ex-ICBMs) each shuttle launch, the SRBs kill more ozone that a year of hair spray
as a consequence, one of the design considerations for many of the shuttle replacement concepts was "cleaner" exhaust, and ideally obviating the need for SRBs all together.
Venture Star and most of the designs for the Xprize still run LOX/Hydrazine internally stored, but a few of the piggyback-to-orbit concepts burned plain old JP5 to get up to 30000 ft, then the rocket kicked in
the laser propulsion demos i've seen require a rotational stabilization spin of about 3000 rpm to centre the soup lid sized craft in the multi-megawatt laser lift beam to about 100 ft... not there yet
cleanest of all, coolest by far, and almost doable with current technology is the maglev method.
linear accelerated trains are regularly clocking over 300 kph in Japan, (moving multiple ton masses), particle accelerators move miniscule masses beyond .7c at CERN, Stanford, TRIUMF, and would have gone faster had they built the super-collider.
the maglev sweet spot might be the 55 gallon drum, might be the shipping container, but if we could hurl 20 drums of water into LEO a day, in principle we could send the mars fuel and components up the high-g maglev way and devote the maximum payload to the passenger vehicle mass for "traditional lift" which gets mated to its transfer vehicle in orbit
the maglev flinger can be built in a mine (to both keep the high energy systems well underground, and to cheat on the need for a ramp or tall tower above ground. test parcels can get trajectories that drop in ocean if short of orbit, a few test moon deliveries might provide visible impact, and if those wacky N.Koreans continue to cause trouble, we can throw a bucket of cold water on them
<wanders off to find flinger linkage>
if the technological gauntlet is flung down, we also need to consider the space propulsion options once we're out of the atmosphere... Prometheus just got the go ahead, DS1 proved the Ion engine works, and if Franklin Chiang-Diaz's <a href="http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/mars/technology/propulsion/aspl/vasimr.html"; target="_blank">VASIMR</a> rocket gets its funding back, the efficiency of scramjets may not be the only big news in thrust
now if we're purely considering payload lift, one of the best examples of recycling and "swords-into-plowshares" is the conversion of former ICBMs into launch vehicles for spacecraft... two birds with one stone... more mass into orbit, and less potential weapons of mass destruction.</strong>
Well, I disagree. There's already a sustainable expendable launch vehicle market with better payload capability than ICBMs. The most that can be done with ICBMs are probably suborbital experiments.
Atlas V, Delta V, Proton, H2, et al, are already very good at delivering payloads. Atlas HLV and Delta HLV vehicles can be very useful to NASA if they choose to use them.
NASA should really trying to get past the shuttle and return to using expendables. There really isn't a need for reusables if there are only 5 or 6 space missions a year. A reusable will never be cheaper than expendable unless it can fly, probably, 12 times a year. I wouldn't be surprised if that was 20 times a year either. Perhaps the only reusable thing should be a capsule or a small return vehicle.
<strong>Venture Star and most of the designs for the Xprize still run LOX/Hydrazine internally stored, but a few of the piggyback-to-orbit concepts burned plain old JP5 to get up to 30000 ft, then the rocket kicked in</strong>
VentureStar ran on liquid oxygen/hydrogen, or is it X-33 I'm thinking about? Hydrazine is used in most spacecraft because it is the most reliable propellent for on-orbit maneuvers. It's normally used as launcher propellent.
<strong>cleanest of all, coolest by far, and almost doable with current technology is the maglev method.</strong>
Hydrogen + Oxygen is pretty clean
<strong>the maglev sweet spot might be the 55 gallon drum, might be the shipping container, but if we could hurl 20 drums of water into LEO a day, in principle we could send the mars fuel and components up the high-g maglev way and devote the maximum payload to the passenger vehicle mass for "traditional lift" which gets mated to its transfer vehicle in orbit</strong>
Interesting idea. I like it.
<strong>if the technological gauntlet is flung down, we also need to consider the space propulsion options once we're out of the atmosphere... Prometheus just got the go ahead, DS1 proved the Ion engine works, and if Franklin Chiang-Diaz's VASIMR rocket gets its funding back, the efficiency of scramjets may not be the only big news in thrust</strong>
High thrust would be nice for manned missions. So, nuclear thermal is probably our only option for 3 month transit times to Mars. NASA as whole should be investing in propulsion technology a whole lot more.
I'm all for progress in science and exploration...but shouldn't we get our priorities in order first?
Heck, we haven't even figured out the mess we have here on earth and we're looking to go to Mars? Perhaps after we've solved world famine and peace, then we should look at other worlds.
I read somewhere that with the amount of money the NASA spends on the space program, you could easily provide guaranteed health care to every individual in the U.S.
hey brother fish... what are you doing going up on that dry land... we haven't finished exploring the oceans yet.
not to disrespect the necessary needs of the immediate horizon, but only looking down makes you bump into stuff you didn't see coming
i'd say... why build so many overkill weapons to wipe out the entire planet hundreds of times ... feed, learn and explore... but others might say why waste money on synthetic drug research when we have plants... derivatives run both ways, and exploration can reveal new food sources as often as it spreads smallpox.
research into war brought spinoffs too.
we ought to be able to feed everybody AND go outwards (and if we continue to feed everybody, we'll NEED to go outward)
but it's misleading to say "pick one"
spending builds schools, roads, and hospitals sometimes from the same budget. wouldn't want to explain a pick one choice to parents or patient's loved ones.
Comments
[ 02-06-2003: Message edited by: Scott ]</p>
<strong>You can do manned without a money pit of a shuttle.
[ 02-06-2003: Message edited by: Scott ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
You see this basically said nothing. It didn't address what I said. It's just a broken record.
<strong>
I agree completely.
When ever this is brought up to a NASA scientist, the best they can come up with is ...
Velcro and Tang <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[oyvey]" />
.</strong><hr></blockquote>
apparently this isn't true. all made on earth
[ 02-06-2003: Message edited by: burningwheel ]</p>
We've already passed the age of unmanned probes only so get over it.
<hr></blockquote>
You continuously reveal that you aren't acquainted with modern technology. Modern robrtics are good, but not great. But until the mid 90s, computers were barely adequate for the developmentof good, cheap, embedded robotics. The time for robotic probes is now. Intelligent probes will be able to navigate through hazardous areas autonomously. Since there,s too much lag for remote control here, and since it's not a god idea to send humans into hazardou areas, the development of smarter probes will have a lot of impact on technology: for space exploration, civil, and military objectives.
If NASA,s ultimate goal is to stimulate technology, then probes really should be the focus at this point. Not only are they financially viable, but they will have great impact on related fields of study.
New shuttle designs have been developed. They continue to provide basically no return back to the taxpayers who fund the organization. There is still no good reason to send humans into space at this point. It gets us essentially 0 return of investment.
This sounds like a broken record because you keep pressing an issue that's not only overwhelmingly against you on this forum, but also against you in the rest of the country. Poeple have thought about this long and hard and have done a lot more research than you or I. They've found that a lot of NASA is a useless money pit.
Not bad if you wanted to refuel at then envelope, though, and then push outward. It would take less fuel and equipment to get the craft to the envelope, which may be a good thing.
Rockets have moved stuff into space for 40 years. The Russians Soyuz and Zenit rockets are cheap compared to our Shuttle missions. He11 UPS or FedEx could probably find a cheaper way than NASA.
Sure have a shuttle, but don't keep wasting trips on silly experiments just to have a NASA PR moment. A shuttle is useful for stuff like fixing the Hubble or transporting engineers to the station to work on it. But to just go up for a few days to do an experiment, that should wait and be done on the Station, is just "Dog and Pony".
<strong>
They've found that a lot of NASA is a useless money pit.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That seems a bit extreme. Who has ever supported the notion that NASA is a useless money pit? What evidence is there that the people of the United States don't want NASA?
Putting humans into space is a good thing. We need to continue to push the envelope. Robots are good too, but can't replace humans.
<strong>So what other designs are contenders for possible space cehicles? </strong><hr></blockquote>
There have been a couple. There's of course the lockheed X33, then the NASP, -- which is the obvious objective of reusable space craft design -- the DCX, nd many independent designs.
The X33 is basically a shuttle replacement, the DCX was highlighted earlier in this thread, and the rest are plane-like reusable vehicles.
They've all been cancelled because of people like jimmac who want more shuttle missions right now, combined with the fact that NASA doesn't have as big of a budget as they'd like. My take? Kill the shuttle and pool money.
X-33 pics: <a href="http://trc.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/X-33/index.html"; target="_blank">http://trc.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/X-33/index.html</a>;
NASP: <a href="http://redstone.ae.gatech.edu/~olds/mm/I.Future_Space_Flight/33-NASP.jpg"; target="_blank">http://redstone.ae.gatech.edu/~olds/mm/I.Future_Space_Flight/33-NASP.jpg</a>;
DCX: <a href="http://redstone.ae.gatech.edu/~olds/mm/I.Future_Space_Flight/11-DC-X.jpg"; target="_blank">http://redstone.ae.gatech.edu/~olds/mm/I.Future_Space_Flight/11-DC-X.jpg</a>;
-- this one was actully built
<strong>
There have been a couple. There's of course the lockheed X33, then the NASP, -- which is the obvious objective of reusable space craft design -- the DCX, nd many independent designs.
The X33 is basically a shuttle replacement, the DCX was highlighted earlier in this thread, and the rest are plane-like reusable vehicles.
They've all been cancelled because of people like jimmac who want more shuttle missions right now, combined with the fact that NASA doesn't have as big of a budget as they'd like. My take? Kill the shuttle and pool money.
X-33 pics: <a href="http://trc.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/X-33/index.html"; target="_blank">http://trc.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/X-33/index.html</a>;
NASP: <a href="http://redstone.ae.gatech.edu/~olds/mm/I.Future_Space_Flight/33-NASP.jpg"; target="_blank">http://redstone.ae.gatech.edu/~olds/mm/I.Future_Space_Flight/33-NASP.jpg</a>;
DCX: <a href="http://redstone.ae.gatech.edu/~olds/mm/I.Future_Space_Flight/11-DC-X.jpg"; target="_blank">http://redstone.ae.gatech.edu/~olds/mm/I.Future_Space_Flight/11-DC-X.jpg</a>;
-- this one was actully built</strong><hr></blockquote>
Since the 60's NASA has never had the budget they wanted. No, the new designs weren't developed. They tested the some parts of them. They were mismanaged and under funded.
" that should wait and be done on the Station, is just "Dog and Pony". "
This shows that you don't know what you're talking about. You can't build the station without some kind of reusable craft.
__________________
<strong>By MrBilldata,
" that should wait and be done on the Station, is just "Dog and Pony". "
This shows that you don't know what you're talking about. You can't build the station without some kind of reusable craft.
__________________</strong><hr></blockquote>
You reply a lot, it would be nice if you actually contributed more that quips and insults.
[quote]Originally posted by jimmac:
<strong>
I'm not talking about the glass I'm talking about the oven safe dishes that weren't around until I was about 11 or 12. Remember I'm old enough to know this stuff.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Oh the ignorance is great in this one...
In 1953, Pyroceram, a white pyrex-ceramic-like material capable of withstanding enormous variations in temperature, was invented and developed by Dr. S. Donald Stookey of Corning research and development division. Corningware, an oven-to-table service made of Pyroceram was introduced in 1958 by Corning Glass. It featured the first little blue Cornflower decoration, designed by Corning staff, which became the trademark of Corning consumer products for three decades.
So the next time someone says it's Pyrex, know that it is for more than just the beakers in science class. <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
[ 02-06-2003: Message edited by: MrBillData ]</p>
<strong>They've all been cancelled because of people like jimmac who want more shuttle missions right now, combined with the fact that NASA doesn't have as big of a budget as they'd like. My take? Kill the shuttle and pool money.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Nasa wants more shuttle missions to make money they are not getting from the government. Stands to reason... and I would do the same.
And it's not just people like jimmac... its the people who run Nasa... I don't see any of them lurking or typing in AppleInsider...
Thanks for the links... I shall check them out later this evening.
nosey
Sure have a shuttle, but don't keep wasting trips on silly experiments just to have a NASA PR moment. A shuttle is useful for stuff like fixing the Hubble or transporting engineers to the station to work on it. But to just go up for a few days to do an experiment, that should wait and be done on the Station, is just "Dog and Pony".</strong>
Station is designed for long term high throughput research in biological sciences and materials research. The shuttle is the development platform, seeing how well hardware works and how they should be designed, for the hardware to be put unto station. "Dog and Pony" is mostly pundit rhetoric.
For transporting crew, shuttle is overkill. Shuttle is great for fixing Hubble. It's last mission will probably be to bring the Hubble down, in fact. Shuttle is good for building space stations, though this is more attributable to the station being designed around shuttle's capabilities.
I do agree that shuttle is a ball-and-chain on NASA though. Too complex and too expensive for what it does. The disagreement is that when it flies, it isn't a testbed for "silly" experiments. It is useful work and development.
So what other designs are contenders for possible space cehicles?</strong>
<a href="http://spacefuture.org/"; target="_blank">spacefuture.org</a> has a good catalog of designs. Slow and buggy server though.
<a href="http://www.spaceandtech.com/index_current.html"; target="_blank">spaceandtech.com</a> as well.
[ 02-06-2003: Message edited by: THT ]</p>
Consider the impact of a system that literally elevates people and equiptment into space. Sure, it takes a week or so to get there, but what's the rush? Cost per kilo decreases by 100 fold, exploratory crafts can be assembled in space without the use of gigantic rockets, and, maybe most importantly, the human race could expand their horizons reasonably and efficiently. Who could argue with that?
Check <a href="http://www.highliftsystems.com/"; target="_blank">this</a> company out, for one example. This tech will be completely feasable in 5 or less years. Are we so mondially stupid that we would pass this up?
<strong>[qb]I do agree that shuttle is a ball-and-chain on NASA though. Too complex and too expensive for what it does. The disagreement is that when it flies, it isn't a testbed for "silly" experiments. It is useful work and development.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The 'silly' experiments which everyone talks about are a bit more than just Nasa doing stuff nonchalantly. There is a program for shchools to design an experiment with limitations on space, constraints on weight and very minimal control from the astronaut crews. In the case of the ant experiment, all it did was sit there with a live feed going down from what basically amounted to a web cam.
The students spent 2 or 3 years determining what kind of ants to use, what medium to put them in, and how to make the enclosure so you didn't have an typical 'ant farm accident'... They wrote the papers to submit the proposal, and they will write a full report on the experiment, along with their views on why it is important.
Here are some liinks to show the amount of effort involved here, with many students, across several grades and over a long period of time.
<a href="http://www.hardnewscafe.usu.edu/archive/april2001/0423_shuttle.html"; target="_blank">http://www.hardnewscafe.usu.edu/archive/april2001/0423_shuttle.html</a>;
<a href="http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0103/24kidexp/"; target="_blank">http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0103/24kidexp/</a>;
<a href="http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/aria_payload_000908.html"; target="_blank">http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/aria_payload_000908.html</a>;
Read up on these things. Then try to comprehend the amount of work these students, teachers and schools went through to have a chance to try someting on the Space Shuttle.
Then tell us it isn't worth the money to have inspired kids to work together beyond their immediate high school goals and look to the stars...
Gerry Straathof (nosey)
there's a program that ought to get funding boost
one of the issues with the Shuttle SRBs, made by Thiokol, are the toxic byproducts from its aluminium-mix solid rocket fuel... (similar issues sadly exist in some ex-ICBMs) each shuttle launch, the SRBs kill more ozone that a year of hair spray
as a consequence, one of the design considerations for many of the shuttle replacement concepts was "cleaner" exhaust, and ideally obviating the need for SRBs all together.
Venture Star and most of the designs for the Xprize still run LOX/Hydrazine internally stored, but a few of the piggyback-to-orbit concepts burned plain old JP5 to get up to 30000 ft, then the rocket kicked in
the laser propulsion demos i've seen require a rotational stabilization spin of about 3000 rpm to centre the soup lid sized craft in the multi-megawatt laser lift beam to about 100 ft... not there yet
cleanest of all, coolest by far, and almost doable with current technology is the maglev method.
linear accelerated trains are regularly clocking over 300 kph in Japan, (moving multiple ton masses), particle accelerators move miniscule masses beyond .7c at CERN, Stanford, TRIUMF, and would have gone faster had they built the super-collider.
the maglev sweet spot might be the 55 gallon drum, might be the shipping container, but if we could hurl 20 drums of water into LEO a day, in principle we could send the mars fuel and components up the high-g maglev way and devote the maximum payload to the passenger vehicle mass for "traditional lift" which gets mated to its transfer vehicle in orbit
the maglev flinger can be built in a mine (to both keep the high energy systems well underground, and to cheat on the need for a ramp or tall tower above ground. test parcels can get trajectories that drop in ocean if short of orbit, a few test moon deliveries might provide visible impact, and if those wacky N.Koreans continue to cause trouble, we can throw a bucket of cold water on them
<wanders off to find flinger linkage>
if the technological gauntlet is flung down, we also need to consider the space propulsion options once we're out of the atmosphere... Prometheus just got the go ahead, DS1 proved the Ion engine works, and if Franklin Chiang-Diaz's <a href="http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/mars/technology/propulsion/aspl/vasimr.html"; target="_blank">VASIMR</a> rocket gets its funding back, the efficiency of scramjets may not be the only big news in thrust
<a href="http://nmp.nasa.gov/index_flash.html"; target="_blank">flash intro to the New Millennium Program, home of DS1</a>>
<a href="http://members.aol.com/WaterWar83/NASAMagLev.html"; target="_blank">NASA MagLev System (mirror)</a>
<a href="http://www.discovery.com/news/features/spacetrv/antimatter.html"; target="_blank">or why Anti-Matter isn't ready yet</a>
can't find the keywords to use for google? look here
[ 02-06-2003: Message edited by: curiousuburb ]</p>
now if we're purely considering payload lift, one of the best examples of recycling and "swords-into-plowshares" is the conversion of former ICBMs into launch vehicles for spacecraft... two birds with one stone... more mass into orbit, and less potential weapons of mass destruction.</strong>
Well, I disagree. There's already a sustainable expendable launch vehicle market with better payload capability than ICBMs. The most that can be done with ICBMs are probably suborbital experiments.
Atlas V, Delta V, Proton, H2, et al, are already very good at delivering payloads. Atlas HLV and Delta HLV vehicles can be very useful to NASA if they choose to use them.
NASA should really trying to get past the shuttle and return to using expendables. There really isn't a need for reusables if there are only 5 or 6 space missions a year. A reusable will never be cheaper than expendable unless it can fly, probably, 12 times a year. I wouldn't be surprised if that was 20 times a year either. Perhaps the only reusable thing should be a capsule or a small return vehicle.
<strong>Venture Star and most of the designs for the Xprize still run LOX/Hydrazine internally stored, but a few of the piggyback-to-orbit concepts burned plain old JP5 to get up to 30000 ft, then the rocket kicked in</strong>
VentureStar ran on liquid oxygen/hydrogen, or is it X-33 I'm thinking about? Hydrazine is used in most spacecraft because it is the most reliable propellent for on-orbit maneuvers. It's normally used as launcher propellent.
<strong>cleanest of all, coolest by far, and almost doable with current technology is the maglev method.</strong>
Hydrogen + Oxygen is pretty clean
<strong>the maglev sweet spot might be the 55 gallon drum, might be the shipping container, but if we could hurl 20 drums of water into LEO a day, in principle we could send the mars fuel and components up the high-g maglev way and devote the maximum payload to the passenger vehicle mass for "traditional lift" which gets mated to its transfer vehicle in orbit</strong>
Interesting idea. I like it.
<strong>if the technological gauntlet is flung down, we also need to consider the space propulsion options once we're out of the atmosphere... Prometheus just got the go ahead, DS1 proved the Ion engine works, and if Franklin Chiang-Diaz's VASIMR rocket gets its funding back, the efficiency of scramjets may not be the only big news in thrust</strong>
High thrust would be nice for manned missions. So, nuclear thermal is probably our only option for 3 month transit times to Mars. NASA as whole should be investing in propulsion technology a whole lot more.
Heck, we haven't even figured out the mess we have here on earth and we're looking to go to Mars? Perhaps after we've solved world famine and peace, then we should look at other worlds.
I read somewhere that with the amount of money the NASA spends on the space program, you could easily provide guaranteed health care to every individual in the U.S.
not to disrespect the necessary needs of the immediate horizon, but only looking down makes you bump into stuff you didn't see coming
i'd say... why build so many overkill weapons to wipe out the entire planet hundreds of times ... feed, learn and explore... but others might say why waste money on synthetic drug research when we have plants... derivatives run both ways, and exploration can reveal new food sources as often as it spreads smallpox.
research into war brought spinoffs too.
we ought to be able to feed everybody AND go outwards (and if we continue to feed everybody, we'll NEED to go outward)
but it's misleading to say "pick one"
spending builds schools, roads, and hospitals sometimes from the same budget. wouldn't want to explain a pick one choice to parents or patient's loved ones.
frontiers need pushing for their sake and ours