Rather than look for an outright shuttle replacement, the $4.5 billion program will study a variety of inexpensive options that would supplement the shuttle.
One such craft, the X-37 from Boeing, is designed along the lines of the X-33, using lightweight composite materials. However, rather than a single stage vehicle, the X-37 would be lofted into orbit using a large, disposable rocket booster.
Once in orbit, the craft could deploy satellites or conduct experiments in space for up to 21 days before gliding back down to Earth. But what makes the X-37 a potential cost-saving vehicle? Unlike the shuttle, the X-37 will be a completely unmanned craft.
I like the idea of a <a href="http://www.highliftsystems.com/"; target="_blank">space elevator</a>. I was very skeptical at first, but upon reading further into the idea, I find the proposition very exciting. Much more even than a new/better reusable launch vehicle design to replace the space shuttle.
If there was a fire, would they have to take the stairs <img src="graemlins/surprised.gif" border="0" alt="[surprised]" /> <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" /> <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
That would be roughly 2.2 million steps to the space station. Maybe an escalator would be better.
The director of the program to build an orbital space plane said Monday that administrators have told him to continue development of the vehicle in time for a 2010 liftoff.
In November, NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe shifted the focus of future research from a next-generation shuttle to a plane that could taxi crews to and from the space station in a safer, cheaper way. <a href="http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/space/1773109"; target="_blank">orbital plane article</a>
Nasa has already proven that low thrust Ion rocket engines are practical and offer more advantages for long space flights than chemical rockets. For the people who like to inspect the mathematics:
Nasa is working on high thrust and high specific impulse Ion engines (also known as ion rockets) that can be used for manned space travel to other planets.
here's some info on a huge untapped enery souce that require very little fuel in the way of mass. That means smaller ships that travel just as fast as bigger ships requiring large fuel tanks. <a href="http://woodmansee.com/science/rocket/r-interstellar/r-interstellar-16.html"; target="_blank">Did somebody say anti-matter?</a> It's a rocket that produces huge amounts of pions as a result of proton/anti-proton interactions and propels them rearward along with alot of other nasties. It's said that the exhaust of an anti-matter rocket would leave a thousand mile long plume of concentrated gamma rays (very lethal if you are tail-gating). But if you get it to space with some rockets, orient it so it's exhaust is pointed away from earth, it would be an ideal way to get to Mars and even the outer planet.
Now for the people thinking there are not many reasons to get humans into space, i'll give you one that would spur lots of development: commercialization. There are so many resources in space, rare metals and materials in asteroids, hydrogen, methane, etc. on the other plantes. The eventual colonization of Mars, even waste disposal (what better place to get rid of waste than to throw it towards the sun? It's gravity would lull it.)
<strong>...even waste disposal (what better place to get rid of waste than to throw it towards the sun? It's gravity would lull it.)</strong><hr></blockquote>
Three big problems I can think of off hand with using the Sun as a giant waste dump/incinerator:
1) It's not as easy to dump things into the Sun as some might think. Yes, the Sun's got a powerful gravitational pull, but anything from Earth has a whole lot of angular momentum to shed before it will neatly drop into the Sun. Unless you do it just right, you're more likely to end up with garbage in highly eliptical orbits slingshotting around the Sun, rather than falling into the Sun as you'd wish.
2) If we're talking about getting rid of toxic and nuclear waste, a major concern has got to be failed launches, where a space-faring garbage scow explodes on the launch pad, prematurely falls onto land or into the ocean, or burns up in the atmosphere during an unintended reentry. The scale of possible ecological damage could be enormous.
3) Cost. Last I heard, it cost about US $7000 per kilo to put something into orbit via the Shuttle. Even if we can reduce costs by a factor of 1000, $7/kilo represents an incredibly high cost for waste disposal. Bulk waste disposal would be out of the question unless you could get the price down to pennies per kilo. The only waste worth getting rid of at such high prices happens to be the same waste that is probably too risky to carry in case there's a launch failure.
If we could safely and cheaply dump waste into the Sun, it would be a great idea... but that's an enormous if. In case anyone is worried about polluting the Sun, on the basis of "Oh, and we once thought the oceans were too big to pollute too," consider that it's very likely that the Sun could swallow the entire Earth and barely notice it. The collective output from the entire history of human industrial activity is nothing more than the barest scraping of the outermost surface of our planet. I believe it's safe to say that on these scales all of our waste a billion times over would be inconsequential to the Sun.
<strong>IMO the anti-matter rocket is unworkable by any conceivable technology. It's not worth taking it beyond the paper concept.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Thank you er.... Dr. Scott. Funny that I've read so much material from the real experts that disagrees with you.
Actually scott does bring up a few good points, but you can safely store antimatter with electromagnetic containers (containers with a high positive charge for holding anti-protons for exapmple) that need to be constantly charged. That's the biggest problem IMO. We can fabricate the proper shielding necessary with modern technology, but to ensure the anti-protons do not annihilate the other matter of the normal matter container you need to have a CONSTANT and stable electical source. Maybe even a nuclear reactor. Fuel cells would always need to be replenished and solar is too unpredictable.
Maybe you can use rare earth magnets... but I don't think it has enough electrical repulsion.
So it can be accomplished once you overcome the huge technical aspect of first, making antimatter, and second, storing it safely. An Anti-matter rocket ship would be strictly for space to space missions. It would need to be augmented by surface to space ships.
Three big problems I can think of off hand with using the Sun as a giant waste dump/incinerator:
1) It's not as easy to dump things into the Sun as some might think. Yes, the Sun's got a powerful gravitational pull, but anything from Earth has a whole lot of angular momentum to shed before it will neatly drop into the Sun. Unless you do it just right, you're more likely to end up with garbage in highly eliptical orbits slingshotting around the Sun, rather than falling into the Sun as you'd wish.
2) If we're talking about getting rid of toxic and nuclear waste, a major concern has got to be failed launches, where a space-faring garbage scow explodes on the launch pad, prematurely falls onto land or into the ocean, or burns up in the atmosphere during an unintended reentry. The scale of possible ecological damage could be enormous.
3) Cost. Last I heard, it cost about US $7000 per kilo to put something into orbit via the Shuttle. Even if we can reduce costs by a factor of 1000, $7/kilo represents an incredibly high cost for waste disposal. Bulk waste disposal would be out of the question unless you could get the price down to pennies per kilo. The only waste worth getting rid of at such high prices happens to be the same waste that is probably too risky to carry in case there's a launch failure.
If we could safely and cheaply dump waste into the Sun, it would be a great idea... but that's an enormous if. In case anyone is worried about polluting the Sun, on the basis of "Oh, and we once thought the oceans were too big to pollute too," consider that it's very likely that the Sun could swallow the entire Earth and barely notice it. The collective output from the entire history of human industrial activity is nothing more than the barest scraping of the outermost surface of our planet. I believe it's safe to say that on these scales all of our waste a billion times over would be inconsequential to the Sun.
I hear you and understand. My primary reason to use the sun as a disposal system would be for off earth disposal, like from stations in orbit and larger ships or asteroid mining industries. If our computers from the 60s calculated the trajectories needed to safely land men on the moon and have them come back to Earth, i think we could probably calculate a trajectory needed to send a huge crate of waste to the Sun .
The anti-proton bottle uses the magnetic field to contain the anti-protons along an axis. After that you use two charged plates to constrain them along the two ends.
If anyone has compelling links to information please post.
<strong>The anti-proton bottle uses the magnetic field to contain the anti-protons along an axis. After that you use two charged plates to constrain them along the two ends.
If anyone has compelling links to information please post.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Scott,
Obviously no one knows how to do this yet. We can't even make a good enough magnetic bottle for hydrogen fusion.
But do you really believe that our technology will remain where it's at?
I hear you and understand. My primary reason to use the sun as a disposal system would be for off earth disposal, like from stations in orbit and larger ships or asteroid mining industries. If our computers from the 60s calculated the trajectories needed to safely land men on the moon and have them come back to Earth, i think we could probably calculate a trajectory needed to send a huge crate of waste to the Sun .</strong><hr></blockquote>
I wasn't concerned about calculating these trajectories. That's easy. It's just that these are expensive trajectories in terms of energy costs -- even if you skip the energy of escaping Earth's gravitational field by presuming a starting point in Earth orbit or in the asteroid belt.
The Earth's speed going around the Sun is about 30 km/sec. In order to get an object in Earth orbit to drop into the Sun, excluding the energy needed to break Earth orbit, you essentially have to impart enough energy into the object to send that object away from the Earth at 30 km/sec tangentially to the Earth's orbit -- in other words, bring the object to a stand-still with respect to the Sun so that it can simply fall into the Sun.
So, for a one kilo object... 1/2 mv^2 = 0.5 * 1kg * (30000 m/sec) ^ 2 = 4.5*10^8 joules, or about 125000 watt hours. At $0.07/KWH, that would cost about $8.75 per kilogram. That's already expensive without counting orbital escape energy or energy possibly wasted on propelling some reaction mass in the opposite direction, and I'm using the pricing of typical terrestrial electrical power delivery for this figure. Space technology may someday yield costs that low, but it would require both new technologies and economies of scale that are a long way off. The point were energy in space is substantially cheaper than current energy costs on Earth is even further away.
By the way, using the same forgiving math out in the asteroid belt, with solar orbital velocities of about 20 km/sec, the cost would come down to about $3.90 per kilogram.
I've also excluded the costs of moving the vehicle that delivers the waste, energy used for course corrections, energy used to return the delivery vehicle *or* the cost of treating the delivery vehicle as disposable. I suppose if you were confident enough about your trajectories not requiring mid-course corrections, and not worried about creating the occasional toxic asteroid in near-Earth orbit, you could launch blobs of waste out of something like a rail gun without any enclosing vehicle. Or maybe strap on a few small rockets in lieu of a complete vehicle, with the major boost still coming from something like a rail gun.
Comments
Rather than look for an outright shuttle replacement, the $4.5 billion program will study a variety of inexpensive options that would supplement the shuttle.
One such craft, the X-37 from Boeing, is designed along the lines of the X-33, using lightweight composite materials. However, rather than a single stage vehicle, the X-37 would be lofted into orbit using a large, disposable rocket booster.
Once in orbit, the craft could deploy satellites or conduct experiments in space for up to 21 days before gliding back down to Earth. But what makes the X-37 a potential cost-saving vehicle? Unlike the shuttle, the X-37 will be a completely unmanned craft.
That would be roughly 2.2 million steps to the space station. Maybe an escalator would be better.
[ 02-10-2003: Message edited by: MrBillData ]</p>
The director of the program to build an orbital space plane said Monday that administrators have told him to continue development of the vehicle in time for a 2010 liftoff.
In November, NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe shifted the focus of future research from a next-generation shuttle to a plane that could taxi crews to and from the space station in a safer, cheaper way. <a href="http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/space/1773109"; target="_blank">orbital plane article</a>
<strong>The space elevator could bring BASE jumping to a whole new level.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Hell yeah! I'm in it for the thrill baby!
<a href="http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/ion/archive/2001/inhouse/iepc-01-096.pdf"; target="_blank">http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/ion/archive/2001/inhouse/iepc-01-096.pdf</a>;
Nasa is working on high thrust and high specific impulse Ion engines (also known as ion rockets) that can be used for manned space travel to other planets.
here's some info on a huge untapped enery souce that require very little fuel in the way of mass. That means smaller ships that travel just as fast as bigger ships requiring large fuel tanks. <a href="http://woodmansee.com/science/rocket/r-interstellar/r-interstellar-16.html"; target="_blank">Did somebody say anti-matter?</a> It's a rocket that produces huge amounts of pions as a result of proton/anti-proton interactions and propels them rearward along with alot of other nasties. It's said that the exhaust of an anti-matter rocket would leave a thousand mile long plume of concentrated gamma rays (very lethal if you are tail-gating). But if you get it to space with some rockets, orient it so it's exhaust is pointed away from earth, it would be an ideal way to get to Mars and even the outer planet.
Now for the people thinking there are not many reasons to get humans into space, i'll give you one that would spur lots of development: commercialization. There are so many resources in space, rare metals and materials in asteroids, hydrogen, methane, etc. on the other plantes. The eventual colonization of Mars, even waste disposal (what better place to get rid of waste than to throw it towards the sun? It's gravity would lull it.)
<strong>...even waste disposal (what better place to get rid of waste than to throw it towards the sun? It's gravity would lull it.)</strong><hr></blockquote>
Three big problems I can think of off hand with using the Sun as a giant waste dump/incinerator:
1) It's not as easy to dump things into the Sun as some might think. Yes, the Sun's got a powerful gravitational pull, but anything from Earth has a whole lot of angular momentum to shed before it will neatly drop into the Sun. Unless you do it just right, you're more likely to end up with garbage in highly eliptical orbits slingshotting around the Sun, rather than falling into the Sun as you'd wish.
2) If we're talking about getting rid of toxic and nuclear waste, a major concern has got to be failed launches, where a space-faring garbage scow explodes on the launch pad, prematurely falls onto land or into the ocean, or burns up in the atmosphere during an unintended reentry. The scale of possible ecological damage could be enormous.
3) Cost. Last I heard, it cost about US $7000 per kilo to put something into orbit via the Shuttle. Even if we can reduce costs by a factor of 1000, $7/kilo represents an incredibly high cost for waste disposal. Bulk waste disposal would be out of the question unless you could get the price down to pennies per kilo. The only waste worth getting rid of at such high prices happens to be the same waste that is probably too risky to carry in case there's a launch failure.
If we could safely and cheaply dump waste into the Sun, it would be a great idea... but that's an enormous if. In case anyone is worried about polluting the Sun, on the basis of "Oh, and we once thought the oceans were too big to pollute too," consider that it's very likely that the Sun could swallow the entire Earth and barely notice it. The collective output from the entire history of human industrial activity is nothing more than the barest scraping of the outermost surface of our planet. I believe it's safe to say that on these scales all of our waste a billion times over would be inconsequential to the Sun.
[ 02-11-2003: Message edited by: shetline ]</p>
<strong>IMO the anti-matter rocket is unworkable by any conceivable technology. It's not worth taking it beyond the paper concept.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Thank you er.... Dr. Scott. Funny that I've read so much material from the real experts that disagrees with you.
Maybe you can use rare earth magnets... but I don't think it has enough electrical repulsion.
So it can be accomplished once you overcome the huge technical aspect of first, making antimatter, and second, storing it safely. An Anti-matter rocket ship would be strictly for space to space missions. It would need to be augmented by surface to space ships.
<strong>
Three big problems I can think of off hand with using the Sun as a giant waste dump/incinerator:
1) It's not as easy to dump things into the Sun as some might think. Yes, the Sun's got a powerful gravitational pull, but anything from Earth has a whole lot of angular momentum to shed before it will neatly drop into the Sun. Unless you do it just right, you're more likely to end up with garbage in highly eliptical orbits slingshotting around the Sun, rather than falling into the Sun as you'd wish.
2) If we're talking about getting rid of toxic and nuclear waste, a major concern has got to be failed launches, where a space-faring garbage scow explodes on the launch pad, prematurely falls onto land or into the ocean, or burns up in the atmosphere during an unintended reentry. The scale of possible ecological damage could be enormous.
3) Cost. Last I heard, it cost about US $7000 per kilo to put something into orbit via the Shuttle. Even if we can reduce costs by a factor of 1000, $7/kilo represents an incredibly high cost for waste disposal. Bulk waste disposal would be out of the question unless you could get the price down to pennies per kilo. The only waste worth getting rid of at such high prices happens to be the same waste that is probably too risky to carry in case there's a launch failure.
If we could safely and cheaply dump waste into the Sun, it would be a great idea... but that's an enormous if. In case anyone is worried about polluting the Sun, on the basis of "Oh, and we once thought the oceans were too big to pollute too," consider that it's very likely that the Sun could swallow the entire Earth and barely notice it. The collective output from the entire history of human industrial activity is nothing more than the barest scraping of the outermost surface of our planet. I believe it's safe to say that on these scales all of our waste a billion times over would be inconsequential to the Sun.
[ 02-11-2003: Message edited by: shetline ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
I hear you and understand. My primary reason to use the sun as a disposal system would be for off earth disposal, like from stations in orbit and larger ships or asteroid mining industries. If our computers from the 60s calculated the trajectories needed to safely land men on the moon and have them come back to Earth, i think we could probably calculate a trajectory needed to send a huge crate of waste to the Sun
If anyone has compelling links to information please post.
<strong>The anti-proton bottle uses the magnetic field to contain the anti-protons along an axis. After that you use two charged plates to constrain them along the two ends.
If anyone has compelling links to information please post.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Scott,
Obviously no one knows how to do this yet. We can't even make a good enough magnetic bottle for hydrogen fusion.
But do you really believe that our technology will remain where it's at?
<a href="http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/prop12apr99_1.htm"; target="_blank">http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/prop12apr99_1.htm</a>;
[ 02-11-2003: Message edited by: jimmac ]</p>
<strong>
I hear you and understand. My primary reason to use the sun as a disposal system would be for off earth disposal, like from stations in orbit and larger ships or asteroid mining industries. If our computers from the 60s calculated the trajectories needed to safely land men on the moon and have them come back to Earth, i think we could probably calculate a trajectory needed to send a huge crate of waste to the Sun
I wasn't concerned about calculating these trajectories. That's easy. It's just that these are expensive trajectories in terms of energy costs -- even if you skip the energy of escaping Earth's gravitational field by presuming a starting point in Earth orbit or in the asteroid belt.
The Earth's speed going around the Sun is about 30 km/sec. In order to get an object in Earth orbit to drop into the Sun, excluding the energy needed to break Earth orbit, you essentially have to impart enough energy into the object to send that object away from the Earth at 30 km/sec tangentially to the Earth's orbit -- in other words, bring the object to a stand-still with respect to the Sun so that it can simply fall into the Sun.
So, for a one kilo object... 1/2 mv^2 = 0.5 * 1kg * (30000 m/sec) ^ 2 = 4.5*10^8 joules, or about 125000 watt hours. At $0.07/KWH, that would cost about $8.75 per kilogram. That's already expensive without counting orbital escape energy or energy possibly wasted on propelling some reaction mass in the opposite direction, and I'm using the pricing of typical terrestrial electrical power delivery for this figure. Space technology may someday yield costs that low, but it would require both new technologies and economies of scale that are a long way off. The point were energy in space is substantially cheaper than current energy costs on Earth is even further away.
By the way, using the same forgiving math out in the asteroid belt, with solar orbital velocities of about 20 km/sec, the cost would come down to about $3.90 per kilogram.
I've also excluded the costs of moving the vehicle that delivers the waste, energy used for course corrections, energy used to return the delivery vehicle *or* the cost of treating the delivery vehicle as disposable. I suppose if you were confident enough about your trajectories not requiring mid-course corrections, and not worried about creating the occasional toxic asteroid in near-Earth orbit, you could launch blobs of waste out of something like a rail gun without any enclosing vehicle. Or maybe strap on a few small rockets in lieu of a complete vehicle, with the major boost still coming from something like a rail gun.
That is the most intelligent, useful reply to this thread yet. Apparently there are some people here that know what they are talking about.
[ 02-11-2003: Message edited by: MrBillData ]</p>