You are not logged in.
Its going well so far. We have almost clear skies here
The Kwajalein army rocket range which spaceX is launching from has a shortage of some key army personel until after march the 9th. So SpaceX cannot launch until after that time.
There is a lot of things we could do to discover what the long term effects of low gravity is on mammals. It is perfectly feasible to develop an orbiting satelite where we can study generations of mice as they live and propogate under zero, Lunar and Mars gravity to see what the long term effects are.
And we can do it a reasonable cost.
No, you are all wrong
First, Tritium by itself is completely worthless for making bombs, since Hydrogen (fusion) bombs require an Atomic (fission) bomb to initiate the reaction. Thus, you must have high purity Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239 to make a nuclear weapon. Tritium is not a fissile material (able to undergo a fission chain reaction).
But it is a major method to develop more effective bombs. But there is also the need to develop nuclear reactors so that Tritium production can occur. For fusion to be an effective replacement power source for electricity generation then most countries in the world will have to use it. This means even those countries that we have a real objection to will have to have the right to create breeder reactors just so they can power there Fusion reactors. This nuclear waste storage not only poses a security risk for the world but also will be expensive to store.
And again, you are wrong: D+He3 does indeed produce a large amount of electromagnetic radiation (in the X-Ray region mostly) through something called the Bremsstrahlung effect, which occurs in all fusion reactions through nucleus-electron collisions. This radiation is "powered" by the fusion reaction, and hence consumes some of the energy released by said reaction. The catch is that different fusion reactions release different fractions of their energy as Bremsstrahlung radiation, and D+T releases ~26.5 times less than D+He3. There is no effective way to mitigate this effect with any practical reactor design. Its all there in Wikipedia if you know what you are looking for and looking at.
According to Wikipedia the hotter the plasma the less there is a loss of energy from Bremsstrahlung radiation as it is caused by the effect of electrons hitting other electrons or Ions that are cooler. It will be present in all Fusion reactors including D-T, D-D and D-He3 but the best method to mitigate is to have a much hotter Fusion reactor.
Again, I reject your simplistic and irrational view about Tritium storage: its a gas, we can store gasses pretty well now, there is nothing magical or special about it. In fact it acts much like Hydrogen or Helium. We make and store much nastier gasses all the time, Boron Trifluoride, Uranium Hexafluoride, Hydrogen Fluoride, Phosgene, etc etc and these are a whole different world of deadliness than mildly radioactive Tritium. Why aren't you whining about them? Shouldn't we force the closure of all those industries that use them then? If need be, we could even store the Tritium as a solid or liquid by binding it to something like was done for large Hydrogen bombs.
Some leakage is bound to occur, but I maintain that we are good enough now at storing it that its not a hazard if very small leaks occur because its not a terribly dangerous radiation source. A little bit won't hurt anyone. I reject your baseless notion that there will be "routine" leaks either, which is insulting to the tremendously disciplined nuclear engineers. Only if you parrot the mindless environmental radical position that "no leaks or even risk of leaks are acceptable" could you possibly speak against Tritium storage & handling.
We don't need, nor even want Helium-3 fusion, even if we could get the stuff.
It is not my view that Tritium loss will be a constant thorn in the process it is the view of the EFDA-JET team. They have designed means to limit the loss but cannot stop all. It will be at present a constant leak due to not having a process to stop all loss. Invent one and you certainly can make a lot of money especially since it is an extremely expensive product they are leaking.
GCN you state I am whining but unless you find a means to solve this issue you will find another group of people quite willing to use it as a means to stop fusion getting off the ground. Simplistic and Irrational you scream but so what, it is still a radioactive gas probabily going to end up leaking. Coal plants produce a lot more radiation than any nuclear plant but where are the protestors. Staking out the front door of your local nuclear plant. It is this belief that has basically stopped new nuclear plants from being created for a long time.
Only if you parrot the mindless environmental radical position that "no leaks or even risk of leaks are acceptable" could you possibly speak against Tritium storage & handling.
I dont have to from your very post is all that is needed. GCN the problem with your view of the world is that you dont understand perception. The perception of radiation is always negative. Public perception is in one word negative. It is almost impossible to get permission to do anything if the view of those who matter is negative from the start.
The process to make tritium is used to make higher yield fisible material for nuclear weapons. We cannot allow the whole world to use this process when certain countries will use this to develop bomb material. Heat and electrons is what an He3-D reactor produce.
If we use a deutrium/Tritium fusion reactor the financial advantage of such a device will likely be negated and the costs to operate similar to that of a nuclear plant. Containment of tritium is difficult and it is widely accepted that leaks will not only happen but they will be routine. Heavy neutron production will happen as it has to, to be able to heat water to power turbines.
GCN you state that the He3 reaction will create X ray radiation as far as I have seen this is not the case. In fact the radiation produced is usually Neutron but of a much smaller percentage than that of a D-D or D-T reaction. What are your sources.
He3-D will be hard to do but if we want a cheaper to operate system as long as we have the means to get the He3 out of the gas giants then we have it. Still I will probabily not be alive to see it in operation or any fusion in operation the speed it is going. Containment vessels we currently use cannot hold fusion power so new ones will have to be invented. And yes D-T fusion is less hot.
You are simply wrong grypd, D+He3 fusion is in fact much harder to fuse than regular D+T fusion and is little easier than D+D fusion as far as temperature. Where do you get this idea that D+D fusion is "hard to contain" or "hard to keep stable?" in fact because there are fewer electrons per fuel atom similar nucleus-densities are possible at a third less pressure.
While D+D/D+T do throw off a lot of neutrons, this is not necessarily a bad thing: D+He3 suffers a problem that these don't, which is D+He3 radiates a large proportion of its total energy release (about 5/6ths of it) as X-ray and Gamma rays, which are neither reabsorbed by the plasma nor really useful for power. This would also require heavy shielding for use in a space application to protect the crew.
Neutron radiation on the other hand is easy to stop with propellant on a space ship (Hydrogen) or light shielding (inches of plastic or water) plus has a handy trick: the neutrons can be captured by water from the primary coolant loop to heat it up. Handy, no? With space ships, the neutron radiation could pre-heat the Hydrogen propellant too.
And that water becomes radioactive? No problem, put it in a tank and sit on it for a few years, and the Tritium in it decays and goes away. Then its just regular water again, maybe a little heavy in harmless Deuterium. This might actually be the preferred way to get the energy out of a fusion reactor instead of betting on some Star Trek superhigh temperature MHD generator.
And you say that neutron-producing fusion will wreck the reactor? How do you know that? Who told you? How do they know? It takes a really terrific dose of neutron radiation to damage solids much, neutrons tend to fly right through most elements except Hydrogen and a few others. Simply don't build your reactor out of them. Modern-day fission reactors absorb pretty big doses of neutrons too, and have to contain 1000F water under high pressure (which requires far more force than a fusion reactor) for about a century or so without even the barest hint of a chance of failure. And thats with plain old steel alloys. Earth reactors, irrespective of their space counterparts, have no mass restrictions either.
Perhaps its my fault but the damage I was refering to the reactor vessels is not Inferred Radioactivity but that of Thermal radiation. D-D reactions are very hard to keep away from the reactors side so damage and wear is intense. D-T reactions do not interest me as that will Never be allowed to be the defacto fusion reactor. It may be the first reactor fuel but we will move to something that costs less to handle and to store the byproducts from. It may be easier to start fusion reactions but the inert Lithium and the use of what is a nuclear weapon trigger product will stop its use as a universal fusion fuel. Not only that but we will need fission reactors to just make the fuel as even with some being made during the neutron reaction with the lithium it will still not be enough. Then we get to the real problem that of the leaking of radioactive materials and that is what Tritium is and it will leak and certainly more than any current nuclear station is allowed to.
Then we have the inferred radiation which will be 100 times stronger than any nuclear power plant so the reactor vessel will suffer irradiation at a rate of 100 times that of a nuclear reactor and as such the increased cost of storage and replacement of the fusion reactor.
The JET reactor showed us just how dificult it is too do a D-T reactor as just a single test put the reactor in a state where it had to be remotely operated.
Still the efficiency of the He3 is in the ability to get energy out of the process and though its not the Moon that will provide the fuel it can though help us get it. And it will be a long time before we use this fuel is it not. And by that time the actual political and enviromental pressures will determine if we even bother going to fusion.
But He3 reactions can be easily held by magnetic fields unlike a D-D reaction. And you will note I did not state it was radiation free as D-D reactions will occur as well but it is the He3 Deutrium reactions that interest us.
I have never thought that the Moon could provide what we need but we do have the Gas giants where He3 is a lot more common. To the point where if we can go after it we will get enough to keep us running for tens of thousands of years.
D-D reactions are hard to keep stable, Magnetic fields struggle to contain them and they tend to damage the reaction vessels. He3 reactions are a lot easier to control and as such wear on the vessels will reduce.
If Fusion is ever to work it must have plants that operate day in and day out for weeks providing energy and as such the containment vessels as well as the means to get the heat transfered will be irradiated in a D-D fusion reactor. An He3 reduces the need for Turbines and all that extra eguipment to work. This should make an He3 reactor a lot simpler and simple works.
Microwaves can be sent along towers. So there is not as much need to send them up to Lunar orbit and back. There is also the possibility that we use good old fashioned laid cables. At one metre deep the regolith of the Moon is a constant tempature of -20 and we have cables that act very efficiently at that tempature. Much more efficient than we have here on the Earth with its constant tempature changes.
Solar tracking is important for the first solar farms planted on the Moon as we will need the energy but since these are likely to be directly deployed from the Earth they can be sent modules designed for the purpose. But with the first base on the Moon going to be nearby there is not a problem. As we spend more time and are able to develop the Moon a bit using insitu materials then we can start making our own solar cells automatically. As we create the less efficient but tolerant solar cells from just regolith then we put them on A frames so the sun hits them from whatever angle it is at. As we spread the farms further and further around the Moon there will reach a point guite guickly where the sun is always shining on one site or another. Then we have constant electricity.
This can be easily done without the use of people since robots operated from the Earth can do the job and the assembling of simple A frames easily. We have already developed machines that using simulated lunar regolith make sheets of simple solar cells. Digging and laying cable is another thing that we can easily have robots do.
He3 does have some advantages over the use of D-D fusion reactors. For a start there is a lot less radiation and this means there is less effect on the shielding and degradation of the fusion bottles. We are trying to get away from having tonnes of radioacive material needing to be buried in secure sites for thousands of years.
Another advantage is that the He3 reaction can be contained a lot easier by magnetic fields. Also the reaction is a lot more efficient for power generation since it does not reguire the heating of a liguid and the powering of turbines. The HE 3 reaction a direct electricity supply is garnered from the reaction.
This means that the He3 plants will be a lot smaller than needed for normal D-D or Nuclear plants and that is a definite advantage. Especially if it comes to using aboard spacecraft and even warships here on Earth.
For example, the US economy grows at ~3% annualy. More some years, less others, but somewhere around that figure is about right. That means the US's economy doubles in size every 25 years or so. This means that we can expect launch costs to be reduced (if only as a percentage of our GDP) by 4x in 50 years, and 16x in 100 years, even if we do not develope any other cost saving technologies in the mean time. But of course, 50 years our a true RLV looks likely as we could the development cost (in relative dolars) to drop by a similar amount.
The trouble is that as long as we are using current rockets and the basic technology then the cost of operating them will increase just as much just from inflation on the costs to make and launch them. RLVs would reduce launch costs but there is just no economic reason to make them. Apart from a possible military need that is it.
So we will have to find a way to develop the Moon to the point we are going to hunt PGMs with basically the launch infrastructure that is in place or could be in place in the next few years. Sending people to the Moon is expensive as they require a lot more tonnage to go with them just to keep them alive and to return them back safely. Telerobots on the other hand are not as effective as people but they are sent one way and unlike people can be operated 24/7 in situ. No fears over lack of gravity, no need for instant large bases.
PGMs when found and if treated on the Moon reguire a means to deliver only a few tonnes each year back to the Earth but the money value of that cargo would literally be incredible as well as a driver for a lot of industries back here. Of course there is also likely to be the gold and silver that is present as well just as a sweetner.
One of the driving forces of this will be electrical power and a lot of it. We can manufacture farms of solar cells and do it only with local materials. But we also do not really need people present at what will become a routine and constant operation. Robots operated from Earth will do this job.
Another option to reduce costs is to develop AL/O2 rockets that can burn another material easy to get from the Moon and if these simple engines can be made on the Moon then we again can reduce the most cost of operation that of items sent from the Earth.
The internet bubble did burst just like every body threw los of money at computers when they first became possible for home PCs. And there bubble burst too but in each case solid options came out of this and just using the internet as an example the growth in the last year in money terms and buisness done is incredible. The internet bubble was everyone jumping on the bandwagon too fast. The likes of Google and Amazon came out as well as paypal and similar.
PGM's are platinum group metals and this is believed to exist in concentrated sources from delivered asteroids. It is also likely that the main technology needed to get them is to dig them up and cut the parts out. These asteroids will not only have platinum etc but also silver, gold as well as probable large sources of the rare materials on the Moon like carbon and hydrogen needed for the Moon.
The Moon has so many drawbacks that it is not one of these places, while Mars for instance does. It has most of the elements instead of just a few, better thermal/radiation/sunlight conditions, more gravity, but most of all it has a reason for domestic consumption - and hence production - to exist.
Hi GCN, the Moon actually does have better sunlight than Mars. Mars has less than a fifth of the light we recieve here on the Earth and this means that solar as a power source is not really an option. And that is Mars major disadvantage a lack of power sources.
We do have the areas on the Moon that recieve constant or almost constant light these provide electricity and if we can expand solar farms from an intial base both east and west then eventually especially at the poles we will have a solar farm running power all year round. Solar eclipses can be protected by fuel cells and even the possible use of spinning gyro's.
But again there has to be a reason to create industrialisation and though the hunt for PGM's requires a certain amount it does not require people to be actually present. We have shown that telerobotics can do that job guite handily. So what else can require a human presence and the resource utilisation that needs an increased manufacturing base. Obviously there is the possibility of tourism but that is not likely.
Fusion plants could need the helium 3 but again not yet.
Powering the earth by microwaved energy is another proposal but again unlikely as it reguires a severe political treaty and is not necassarily going to be popular.
So that leaves science. There is a lot of experiments that mankind would benefit from doing away from here. This becomes especially important as we progress in biotech and nanotechnology where the ability to control the enviroment as well as ensure it cannot spread would be paramount. These bases will reguire a lot of support and it becomes cheaper to do if it can come from Moon manufactured bases.
Im actually more of the opinion that India will become a major player in Space. As India benefits from globalisation it has more and more resources to put towards the technologies that lead to space. Another point is that India is basically more stable both politically and on a financial basis and is willing to work with the USA and other players.
India certainly has the vision and an indigenous program. It has the engineers and it has a lot lower costs. It has the facilities to make the rockets and it also has of course a good location to do launch from.
So yes India can do it.
I had a colleague who once put whole eggs in a microwave since he was told it heated them internally. It took him at least 30 minutes to clean the oven after the explosions.
Microwaves are very effective things if treated right but plastics can melt and microwaves treat substances differently depending on the nature of the material. We actualy once considered using them to set concrete for buildings. But found that they caused catastrophic damage and actually threatened health.
The longer and thinner compared to length that a rocket is the more unstable it becomes. A six segment SRB is far too long as well as there is the problem that it weakens as it is used and structural supports to stop collapse increase the weight and reduce payload capacity.
Before someone else posts it first, I should also mention another thought I had: Collapsable crew quarters which fold up into the roof when more floor space is wanted. The crew area can be adjacent to the lounge to extend the living space.
The problem is that Mars direct needs all the spare space it can in the hab for supplies and foldaway accomodation is useless if it has no where to fold out to.
There is a high posibility that we can have a return from the Moon that will at the minimum off set the cost of operation and at best pay for it. And we are not talking about the possible use of Helium 3. There is also the potential of the pgms and similar for use on the Earth.
As we later carry on increasing our operations in orbit and if orbital hotels do take off and if they actually create orbital manufacturing then the operations of a moon base in supplying such become even more essential and profitable.
The Falcon was due to launch on the 21st but due to a minor technical glitch the flight has now been delayed to mid february.
Space X quote.
DemoFlight 2 Launch Update
During our final check-outs prior to static fire, we uncovered an anomaly with the thrust vector control (TVC) pitch actuator on the second stage that will result in launch being pushed to February. Since this is not used during the static fire, we have decided to push forward with that test in order to acquire valuable data on engine ignition, pad acoustics, and the overall system response. The static fire is now planned to occur between Saturday and Tuesday (California time). This test will proceed very slowly and then only burns for about four seconds, so will not be webcast to avoid boring people silly. We will post a video afterwards.
Upon completion of the static fire, we will take the rocket back into the hangar to thoroughly investigate the TVC issue. With the range available to us only until January 23 (Kwaj needs to reconfigure for an incoming Minuteman mission), this means launch is now planned for mid-February. As I’ve mentioned previously, don’t hold your breath for this launch. Given the large number of robustness improvements and the fact that our vehicle/pad health verification system has increased from about 30 checks to almost 1000, shifts in the launch date are to be expected. Overall, the SpaceX team is quite happy with the smooth progress so far.
--Elon--
It has been considered on this forum before. The problem is that they rely on fuel cells to operate and this means refueling on the ground. There is also the problem that the shuttle is heavy and increases the mass that the routine supply rockets have to push into higher orbits.
The shuttles wings also increase drag from the small amount of atmosphere present and this increases the rate that the spacestation will deorbit.
The small amount of fuel left in the shuttles tanks are highly corrosive and this cannot be stored for long periods.
And finally just what can we use the shuttle for. It is a transport vehicle and does not really increase the capability of the ISS while it will increase the cost of operation.
The problem is that the US cannot complain about the debris cloud. The 1985 Asat test against the Solwind satelite created just as big a debris cloud and the last part of trackable debris only decayed in 2002. Any complaint and the Chinese will note that the US already did it.
In July 1999 a part of this debris passed within one mile of the nascent ISS spacestation.
Wait a minute, if you blow up a satellite in Geostationary orbit, how will that harm other satellites in Geogeostationary orbit? Do not all satellites in Geostationary orbit in the same direction at the same velocity around the Earth so each can stay above a fixed spot on the Earth's surface? Seems to me that if a satellite in such an orbit blew up, the fragments would only hit other satellites at the relatively small velocity of the initial explosion relative to position of that satellite in geostationary orbit. I don't see how any of the fragments could end up in a wildly different orbit so as to impact with other satellites in that same orbit with orbital velocities such as that of two objects hitting each other in significantly different orbits.
Tom the problem with an Asat test is that the targeted satelite is broken into many pieces and these are given a good degree of momentum. This like a shotgun spreads out the debris and this debris eventually starts its decay back to Earth. This debris will be a risk to everything in orbit not just GEO. If it collides with any other orbiting entity the debris has a momentum in the kms per second. The damage that was done to a spaceshuttle when a fleck of paint hit shows how dangerous debris can be. A collision with the large debris from the Chinese test could easily go through the Shuttle lengthways.
There is also the fact that a development of Mars will eventually need us to use what we send to Mars better.
One of the prime scientific reasons for the first Mars landings is to develop the technologies that will be essential for a permanent presence.
Pressurised structures cost depends on the cost of the material it is made of and Steel is very cheap at the moment and if we also use concrete the cheapest building method of all...
The problem comes down to there is nothing that an underwater colony could do that cannot be done as cheap or a little less expensively than surface operations could accomplish.
Ah yes the formidable UN, it has a big nast army that will stomp on anyone who violates its rules, We saw that in Kosovo, didn't we.
Tom, the law of the sea is one treaty that the USA Cannot afford to break. It may not be a member but it relies on it for many things. The law of the sea allows free access and allows the US navy and merchant marine to go anywhere it needs. If it where not for the law of the sea then the US could well be barred from the straits of Hormuz or even have a lot of the Oil rigs in the gulf absorbed as Mexican.
It also allows the US to sail guite close to venezuela even though the US has signed but not ratified the treaty and Venezuela is not a member as it can use the precedent of international law.
The most energy intensive part of modern buildings is heating and cooling. We have learned that we can use heat pumps to either lose or gain heat from any larger area like a buildings Car Park.
Other options to reduce energy demand is to use more modern LED lighting and increased use of natural lighting.
Still there is a need for power to come somewhere and that is why Nuclear is so popular at the moment. The 70s and 80s produced generations of what where then cheap to build, low emission Gas burning stations. These have been like the Oil burning power stations increasingly more expensive to run. Coal power stations are dirty. But we have learned that we can store all the emissions either in tankage or more effectively in Oil wells which use the emissions to increase pressure and so increase oil production. Hydro has improved but large electricity generators are like large solar plants dependent on enviromental and physical conditions.
So we have the possibility of using solar satelites to provide energy but the cost of the energy they produce added to initial cost will determine if its worth doing.
It comes down to simple economics and at the moment the cost to produce electricity is low enough that solar power sats dont make economic sense they cost too much to send up.
I think we can build a robot that can fit inside a space suit, we could launch that robot to Mars with current space vehicles, and that robot could walk around on Mars as a human could more or less. Since you can't see what's behind the face mask of a space suit, it that way, you could fake a manned mission to Mars. If the public only see's a space suited figure hopping around on Mars, it really can't tell whether there is a human in that space suit.
Yes we can, but if you want it to act naturally like a human then you are going to have to send one that has a fully operational AI. There is no hope for telerobotics to do it
Bold. You'll never get any of that with anything less than a SSTO RLV. A fully reusable vehicle that doesn't drop off any parts, and can be turned around and flown in less than 2 weeks. Ideal is several times a day, like an airliner. A nice vision, but I only see two ways to do it.
1) hydrocarbon fuels:
Turbine jet for take-off and landing. Forget catapult launch, make the thing able to launch from a commercial airport. Yup, able to launch itself from a runway built for a 747. That's still a substantial runway. Fly to high speed where the SCRAM jet can ignite, then accelerate to near orbital insertion speed. Build the SCRAM jet as a Rocket Based Combined Cycle engine: SCRAM, then smoothly transition to air augmented rocket, then transition to LOX/LH2 rocket. Use kerosene jet fuel for the turbine engine, LH2 for SCRAM, and LOX/LH2 rocket for the final push to orbit. Use N2O4/MMH for manoeuvring thrusters; storable propellants keep without boil-off. After atmospheric entry and slowing to subsonic speed, air-start the turbine engine for powered landing.
2) nuclear:
Use a nuclear jet engine for take-off and landing. A nuclear RAM jet was already developed under project Pluto. A nuclear turbojet should also work, you would just need an electric motor to start it like any other turbojet. It would require uranium instead of plutonium for safety, embedding uranium in ceramic to crash harden fuel capsules, placing engines on wing tips to keep radiation away from passengers, and neutron reflector along the inside of the jet housing. Oxygen and nitrogen exposed to neutron radiation doesn't become radioactive. Hydrogen from humidity in the air becomes deuterium. The tiny amount of deuterium in natural humidity will become tritium. Some will, most neutron radiation will miss deuterium atoms. Tritium decays quickly, and produces beta radiation; it beta decays to 3He. Beta radiation is a high speed electron, which can't even penetrate the outer layer of skin. Exhaust from a shielded nuclear jet would be less toxic than exhaust from a standard jet engine. I could work out nuclear decay paths again. For the final push into orbit, operate the engine as a LH2 fuelled nuclear thermal rocket.
I agree that the best method for a TSTO is to design it with as little turn around time as physicaly possible. The lower stage must be easily refueled and by this speeding the ability for it to be used again and again the upper stages may well take longer due to inspections and cargo installing, but if you have two or three upper stages to each lower stage then it can allow quickly repeated flights. Another way to speed up the turnaround is the ability to mate the lower and upper stages quickly. If this then determines that only set spaceports can have this turnaround speed then so be it. Of course it probabily will have to fly out to sea anyway when going to supersonic and taking off as this will be a very noisy aircraft.
I would think that the best design elements for such a TSTO aircraft is to have the lower stage definitly use aircraft fuel. And since we do not have an effective scram engine yet we will have to use a modified version of one of the fastest engines we currently have. If this also takes oxygen and water insertion in flight to get the height and speed needed so be it. These are easy to fill up the lower stage.
The upper stages will be LH2/LOX rocket engined since they must be rockets. And since the faster the lower stage the more the cargo capacity of the upper stage it means the lower stage cannot be a redevelopment of the A380 or similar standard commercial aircraft but that of a newer sleeker designed aircraft. And it will cost unfortunatly but if its Cheaper to run...
The problem with the latter nuclear fuel is that the use of nuclear fuel will be strenously objected to and probabily dooms the aircrafts sale value. Who would let private organisations fly nuclear bombs I can see the headlines now.
Anyway there is always the possibility if the aircraft is very lumbering on takeoff that we take a leaf out of the early commercial jet pioneers book. The early jets had weak jet engines and certain airports where too short so to get liftoff they used rocket motors burnt to get speed for liftoff.