Return to Space.

A word from our sponsor:

Submitted by on

Printer-friendly version

Author: 

On 7/21/2011 I posted R.I.P. America Space Program. Today Astronauts were launched into space from Cape Kennedy. Congratulations on a return to space. We have regained our role in Space exploration. Next step Mars.

Rami

Comments

Nice

Submitted by on

It looked to be a nice smooth launch.

Capitalism in Action

Submitted by on

BarbieLee's picture

Granted a lot of Gov funds tossed into the offering to get SpaceX and several others to take a stab at winning the award for launching into space once more. However it is a corporation not government launching that ship. I still don't understand why a vertical launch, ungodly amount of thrust needed to get it moving, instead of a horizontal one, less than a tenth amount of thrust need to get it moving and rotate.
But then I'm a dumb cowgirl and don't know anything.
hugs people, congrats to the resume of the space program
Barb
Life is a gift. Treasure it.

Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl

I imagine

Submitted by on

I imagine she meant a large ramp where the intial acceleration is like that of a jet taking off, but then inclines upward, like an inverted rollercoaster. I think it's something I've seen in fiction, but I'm sure people smarter than me have determined there are issues with that approach in real life.

Has to be a Fire Breathing Dragon

Submitted by on

BarbieLee's picture

Air breathing birds (jets) are like pilots and crew, they can only manage so much altitude.The heaver the payload the lower the absolute ceiling. 43,000 feet normal absolute top for large jets is more than the same jet with a moon launch capable rocket as a payload. Russia's Antonov An-225 Mriya can lift 280 tons or 560,000 lbs. Is that enough to carry SpaceX up to launch status? SpaceX weighs 510,000 lb but remember the size of the primary booster can be cut down or possibly eliminated unless they are going for a moon launch instead of the space station.
Are we there yet? The maximum speed of the An-225 Mriya is 850 km/h or 530 MPH. Let's launch our hypothetical bird shall we? We carry our SpaceX up to 35,000 ft. It's our max altitude with the heavy payload. We do a Dippsy Doodle, nosing over in a shallow dive gaining max airspeed. Bring the nose up to fifty degrees elevation bleeding airspeed like a lame horse even at full throttle, Gravity and weight remember. We drop our payload and bank away. The SpaceX has been tossed toward space moving close to 470 MPH as they ignite their rocket and head for the space station or the moon. Basically the main booster has been replaced by the aircraft. And economically less expensive per launch.

The rocket toss is nothing more than the bomb toss the military does five to ten miles from their target. The idea was developed to stay away from the guns and missile batteries around strategic targets.
Think outside the box. Humanity is going to be stuck on this starship we were born on and call home until we stop tossing pop bottle rockets into space. This hasn't changed since the eleventh century.
hugs people
Barb
Life is a gift. Treasure it.

Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl

Lost their focus

Submitted by on

BarbieLee's picture

Saenger was trying to be an all in one Swiss pocketknife. Space craft, passenger airliner. When one only wants to drop a satellite into orbit what is all that big dead cabin space and weight going to do? One can't take it off like a camper shell and leave it behind. Launching all that into space for a free trip out and back is very expensive and the return on the fuel invested is not zero but negative.
To compare operating costs of launching pilots and payload plus that extra weight against using a single purpose rocket launching a satellite with every extra lb scraped off is going to end up the same way the U.S. space shuttle did. Which was a showboat for the U.S. space program. "Look what we can do! Match this."
There is no question of the intelligence of those who look to the stars and plan spaceships. Their failure to calculate the cost of sending weight up and bringing it home again with no purpose except to provide a damn terrific view to pilots and crew is never going to be economically feasible. Provided as long as we are using expendables (jet fuel, rocket fuel). It's like driving a semi down to the Get and Go for a hamburger. Might look cool as hell but the economics is going to be a bitch.
Pssst, I'm building the Infinity Spaceship. Travel to the moon, Mars, the furthest planets will take no time. Now's your chance to get in on this once in a lifetime offer. Remember MS, Apple, Amazon, Google and think if you had purchased shares when they first began? Mortgage your home, indenture your SO, the kids, max your credit cards and send me all you got. TRUST ME!
LOL, there was a company promised to make Clinton Sherman AFB the space port for America. Thank God it was a scam. The noise would have been unbearable and I would have moved.
Hugs all you gifted writers and readers
Barb
Life is a gift. Treasure it.

Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl

Nutty Ideas

Submitted by on

Daphne Xu's picture

Think up a dozen nutty ideas. Perhaps 11 of them lead nowhere -- they're nutty, after all. The twelfth might turn into something valid or doable. (If the ideas come from ignorant cranks, crank it down to 1% or lower.)

Likewise, non-nutty ideas might turn out non-doable for various technological reasons.

How about three aircraft flying in formation, carrying the spacecraft and two booster rockets? At (say) eight miles up, they attach the boosters to the spacecraft and let it go.

How about building a space center on top of Mt. Everest? Use a cog-rail to transport everything up there. (Any time something is propelled forward by shooting gas backwards, the lion's share of the energy goes into moving the gas, with a very small part into moving the object.)

Anyone remember the "hydrogen economy"? What's the nearest large reservoir of elemental hydrogen? The second nearest? So why not mine Jupiter for hydrogen? (Why not the sun? Apart from the temperature, it's easier to go to Jupiter than the sun.) Of course, in reality, hydrogen would be manufactured on earth using another energy source: nuclear, solar,...

Or how about extracting the hydrogen from human and animal farts?

The thermodynamics-defying plot element in Atlas Shrugged of extracting work from thermal energy of the atmosphere? Well, build a Carnot engine with the high-temperature end just south of the Tropic of Capricorn, and the low-temperature end in Antarctica. The Carnot (absolute maximum) efficiency would be about 25%.

Barb, I didn't intend to denigrate or insult you. This just motivated various ideas.

-- Daphne Xu

Insult me?

Submitted by on

BarbieLee's picture

Daphne, my love, I'm not sure there is an insult deep enough to offend me. People can annoy me but that's different. Hon, I've been called every derogatory name that is and isn't in the English language. I'm positive some other languages too. If you believe I'm crazy you're about X amount of years too late and it's a really long line.
Ever own businesses? Did you go around and do every job for every employee because your way was the only way of doing it?
"How do I do that?"
"Figure it out."
"What if I mess up?"
"Do it again until you get it right."
Haven't I told you I had my fifteen minutes of fame? My name was splashed in every major newspaper, a lot of trade papers, and on TV around the world. Big deal..., Means nothing. Intelligent I'm not. Determined I am and have made a kiazillion errors and mistakes. Seems that is what I do best. The only ones who don't make mistakes never try.
Hydrogen power? Receive more energy output than the input? Been there done that and it works but insanely not for everyone. For some ungodly reason I seemed to be the only one to achieve results that could be documented. Five of my friends failed to make it work and basically we all built our generators on the same general design.
The Carnot engine as described is a joke. A ten thousand foot chimney with a turbine generator at the bottom wouldn't be and would work most anywhere in the world seasonally in most places. The air drag would be a big factor. Think of water through a garden hose. The longer the hose the lower the water volume and pressure. Would it be economically feasible? About as much as those wind turbines subsidized by taxpayers. What it would do to the environment would be a major disaster. All the pollution down here would be sent up there without the filtering effect of atmosphere layering.
What else hair brained, "it's gotta fail just because" idea would you like to discuss? Remember when everyone bought into Einstein's theory nothing could travel faster than light? Low and behold you people discovered neutrinos do just that. Every theroem is made to give us a target to achieve and to be broken when we get there. The barriers we carry in our mind are our biggest obstacle. Impossible is a word we use so we can sleep at night. The here and now is a comfort zone the majority don't want to escape from.
Hugs doll, you're so much fun, and I do love you even if you are one of those insane physicists.

Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl

FTL Neutrinos

Submitted by on

Daphne Xu's picture

... turned out to be a false alarm. A cable was misconnected or miscalibrated.

-- Daphne Xu

I'm not sure how much I've forgotten.

Submitted by on

Daphne Xu's picture

I still know enough (possibly from memories of strenuous data analysis of a nuclear physics experiment, as well as difficult classwork) to know that if I think that working scientists and engineers in a particular field are being stupid (or are missing something), the stupid one is probably me. That's where cranks fail.

Example, nuclear fusion as attempted by humans (very much distinct from stellar fusion):

     Deuterium-tritium fusion producing helium-4 plus neutron is the easiest fusion mode.
     Deuterium-deuterium fusion producing helium-3 + neutron or tritium + proton is the second easiest. (Any tritium produced also fuses with deuterium.)
     Tritium-tritium fusion is (surprisingly) harder than both. It produces two neutrons, so there's no advantage here.
     Helium-3-helium-3 fusion is harder still, now because of the stronger repulsion. It has the advantage of producing no neutrons, and there appears to be reservoirs of helium-3 on the moon. A second advantage is no radioactive material is used.
     Proton-lithium-7 producing beryllium-8, fragmenting into two helium-4s.
     Proton-boron-11 producing carbon-12, sometimes fragmenting into three helium-4s.

Other reactions are discussed as well. Completely absent from discussion: the solar-fusion proton-proton reaction, for a very good reason.
    Proton-deuterium fusion -- why? That's where my stupidity comes in.

Getting a proton up next to a deuteron is easier than all but the first two reactions above, and is a piece of cake compared with most of the others. So why isn't it considered? I just had to make the connections.

On the one hand, radiative corrections are negligible. On the other hand, the reaction is proton + deuteron --> helium-3 + photon (light, electromagnetic radiation). Radiative corrections being negligible, the probability of a hard photon being emitted is practically zero. This contrasts with the other situations where, once the nuclei get close enough together, the reactions are highly probable if not practically certain.

I knew enough; it just took me a while to make the connection.

-- Daphne Xu

Bought Into

Submitted by on

Daphne Xu's picture

"Remember when everyone bought into Einstein's theory nothing could travel faster than light?"

Apart from who presented it historically, working physicists (MIT, Caltech, Cornell, pretty much any graduate physics department at any university) bought into Einsteinian physics because Einsteinian physics is extremely accurate. They understand the material, independent of who introduced it to the world.

Try reading the chapters on relativity in Jackson's "Classical Electrodynamics" or Goldstein's "Classical Mechanics". How about Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler's "Gravitation"? Then there's Thorne and Blandford's "Modern Classical Physics" -- a textbook based on a course I took many years ago as a senior. (It was promised and in production then. It came out in 2017.) How about Itzykson and Zuber, "Quantum Field Theory"?

Anyone who discovers something beyond relativity will be a working expert in the field -- emphasis on working.

-- Daphne Xu

Thankfully...

Submitted by on

for all concerned, it wasn't 'Lost' in Space.

Samantha

Aircraft single purpose spaceship launcher

Submitted by on

BarbieLee's picture

This design is for one purpose only. To launch spaceships. The Russian aircraft is a lot more to my taste and I believe more durable. This resembles too much of a kite and what happens in strong updrafts, downdrafts, micro bursts? I love flying but no way I'd get into that puppy if it was leaving the ground. And they want to carry heavy loads to altitude for launching? I remembered reading about it but didn't find it until now.
https://tinyurl.com/y9wuakfc
Hugs people
Barb
Life is a gift. Treasure it until it's time to return it.

Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl

More like this