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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.
Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.
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Rockets are fundamentally different contraptions than cars, which require much much leaner margins, more care in construction, must resist relatively extreme conditions & dynamics, and are by nature substantially dangerous to operate by comparison. Then you have the planning, handling, assembly, testing, and fueling before you can fly the thing. Following that then you have the added trouble of capturing the delivered payloads too. Even then, the term "mass production" is a highly relative term, most likely that even a large increase in flight rate wouldn't reduce cost an order of magnitude, especially with the millstone of having to throw the rocket away after each flight.
That said, I think that there is a place for a "middle ground" between throw-away rockets and a full SSTO spaceplane (assuming the latter is ever practical). Unless there is a major national change of heart about NASA, I have doubts they will ever be able to do more than permanently man a small Mars base and intermittently man a small Lunar base, plus some robot work here and there, with expendable rockets.
Lunar mining for PGMs also doesn't have to be a massive operation, since we don't need massive quantities of the rare elements. But such a mining operation is almost certainly beyond the realm of reason if you have to throw away a rocket to send anything there.
And by "near everyman" space tourism, I am thinking of an orbital trip like what you can get on a Soyuz for $1M or less. That can only happen if you have quite a few seats per flight. You will of course need a space station to fly to, as the ISS will be defunct by then for sure, which would be difficult to build & tend economically with expendables.
You get the idea... the USAF might like the lower stage as a hypersonic bomber or rapid transport. The carrier plane will probably not be much bigger than present cargo jets, just being a bit more runway-hungry. A "Saenger-III" is the way to go.
_______________________________________________
SSTOs:
The key to a chemical SSTO is probably the fuel, that such a craft doesn't have the room for the Hydrogen its going to need for Mach 10+/rocket speeds. Slushed H2, perhaps spiked with nanoscopic aluminum dust, is a key technology that doesn't exist yet. Cyclic ozone would also be "really nice," and would make a big difference, but nobody knows how to make that yet...
A nuclear SSTO is right out, nobody will ever make one. Encasing the fuel in ceramic is one thing, but the consequences of failure or a crash resulting in leaks are too great. The reactor(s) will have to be open to the atmosphere to operate in air-breathing mode and would need to be buried inside the fuselage to permit serpentine intakes. Because they would be "open air," a crash or a simple fuel element failure at speeds would result in a least some fuel loss. Thats assuming the core shuts down and doesn't just melt through the engine housing. Then you have the immense cost of ground operations to fool with a hot (literally, what about decay heat?) reactor. But more then that, the benefits are limited because so much of the mass saved will go to the radiation shielding and the larger fuel tanks since Hydrogen is so bulky. I'm also skeptical that an open-air "jet" reactor could double as a Hydrogen-fed rocket, due to the higher operating pressures.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
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Another item in TSTO's favor... it seems reasonable that one lower stage could support a few or several upper stages (depending on flight rate), so you only need one set of big turbine engines or wide "heavy lift" wings for several space craft.
Oh and you can get away with a smaller heat shield too for the upper stage, reducing total mass a bit.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Actually, after reading some technical documents about NERVA they didn't encase uranium in ceramic capsule, rather they mixed uranium evenly in material before hardenning it to ceramic. By making fuel capsules as an even mix of uranium and ceramic, it means splitting a capsule in two doesn't release anything. All you get is another surface, the same as the outer surface. An ingenious design. It also makes a nuclear aircraft crash site no more dangerous than a current aircraft crash site.
Whether nuclear activists will let it happen is another question. Their objections often have nothing to do with reality. I tried to talk rationally with one once when I was a teenager. She was an activist who wanted to get politicians to abolish all nuclear power. I suggested she get the nuclear power industry to pay for its own waste disposal. If they can't remain profitable after paying their own bills without government subsidy, then that'll put them out of business. She didn't want to take that approach; she wanted to just kill it. I told her that'll never happen; she just glared at me.
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Care to take up the possibility of a air-towed TSTO configuration, as opposed to a catapult or stratovolcano rail-launched pair?
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Ummm no, its going to be plain old runway launch as the mated pair dicktice, though perhaps at a bit higher speed than normal. Towing at hypersonic speeds would be impossible.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
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Actually, after reading some technical documents about NERVA they didn't encase uranium in ceramic capsule, rather they mixed uranium evenly in material before hardenning it to ceramic. By making fuel capsules as an even mix of uranium and ceramic, it means splitting a capsule in two doesn't release anything. All you get is another surface, the same as the outer surface. An ingenious design. It also makes a nuclear aircraft crash site no more dangerous than a current aircraft crash site.
Whether nuclear activists will let it happen is another question. Their objections often have nothing to do with reality. I tried to talk rationally with one once when I was a teenager. She was an activist who wanted to get politicians to abolish all nuclear power. I suggested she get the nuclear power industry to pay for its own waste disposal. If they can't remain profitable after paying their own bills without government subsidy, then that'll put them out of business. She didn't want to take that approach; she wanted to just kill it. I told her that'll never happen; she just glared at me.
I am still hesitant to run such a thing in the atmosphere on a regular basis, even a ceramic will melt if it gets hot enough. If this were to happen on the ground the effect would definitely be limited and not too big a deal, but if the core melted down while at speed could disperse the fuel over a wide area anyway. There are then two questions, first can the control mechanism be trusted to shut the core down rapidly enough to prevent meltdown, and even if it does succeed would the remaining decay heating be sufficient to cause meltdown? I think that both could be "yes," but thats a big assumption.
I still think the details deep-six the idea, safety aside. The mass of the radiation shielding will severely detract from the practicality, especially given the very high operating power (100s-1000s of Megawatts). This is far more power, and hence radiation, than say a naval reactor. Arranging the engine such that there is 360 degree radiation protection, including axially (at least on the ground) will be difficult. Burying the core in the fuselage would seem the best bet, with heavily shielded serpentine ducts (ala the B-2 bomber) to "hide" the inlet and nozzle of the reactor. That would be awfully tricky at high Mach numbers though.
Second is what to do about decay heat, that the core will still be putting off a lot of heat for at least a few weeks to a few months following firing. If this heat isn't rejected, it would probably cause unacceptable damage to the engine. While in flight the moving air can probably be relied on to cool it, but in space or on the ground, what do you do with it then? Including a cooling system powerful enough to reject megawatt-scale amounts of heat on the ground at V=0 or in the vacuum of space seems like it would be really hard. And what if that cooling system also failed?
Next is the problem of switching from ramjet to rocket propulsion, that a nuclear rocket engine would need to operate at high pressures to achieve its high efficiency, with the core itself basically being the "combustion chamber," so how do you seal off the intake of the reactor yet still be able to resist the heat and pressure reliably? I also bet that the nozzle of the ramjet and the nozzle of a rocket must be substantially different to maximize their respective efficiencies. Would you in fact have to carry two different kinds of reactors?
Then there is the added bulk of the liquid hydrogen for rocket mode as opposed to LOX/LH2 combustion. Volume minimization is critical to keep the vehicle small and light, so I question how much mass is saved if the mold lines of the vehicle are larger. More structure, more skin, more heat shield, etc and not just fuel tanks. Assuming the larger size and decreased density doesn't make reentry impractical anyway.
Finally, due to the high temperatures the reactor must be run at, just how many times will it be able to fire reliably?
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
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Interesting questions. I would like to see a serious project to resolve these issues. By the way, I first learned of Pluto from an aerospace engineer who wanted to use nuclear jet engines on commercial airliners. That's her solution for fuel consumption. An airliner has more immediate impact on Earth's economy, and much greater market than a space shuttle. Somehow I see resistence, but a shuttle will have few enough vehicles and few enough trips to make it safe. After all, how many trips per year will a commercial shuttle be asked to make?
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I think that the problems are insurmountable for practical use, at least not with technology of our present era. The focus should remain on chemical rockets to do the job, particularly enhanced rocket fuels and light weight superhigh performance engines. By the time we're good enough to make a nuclear SSTO space plane, we can probably make a Scramjet SSTO too.
A few technologies to keep an eye on:
-Fuels
~Spin-homogeneous liquid hydrogen is slightly denser and boils off at a much slower rate. This could turn out to be easy with the right treatment plant, and is already done to a less-than-100% extent.
~Slushed hydrogen is about a third more dense, and could make a world of difference to the aerodynamics, payload volume, and dry mass but might present operational problems (handling, production, settling).
~Spiked hydrogen, doped with ultrafine aluminum powder or something to bump up the efficiency a little. Don't know what ever happened to this idea.
~Cyclic ozone oxidizer, an exotic isomer of ozone with substantially more bond energy has been theorized to be stable. Nobody knows how to make it yet, despite some years of trying off and on. Success would make SSTO much easier, giving hydrogen a major Isp boost.
-Air breathing engines
~Ramrockets, or ducted rockets, permit a smaller rocket to produce a larger thrust since it need not carry all its reaction mass. Reduced engine weight and much higher low-altitude efficiency has been traditionally offset by the mass of the duct and the difficulty of inlet aerodynamics, but what about now?
~Hybrid ramjet/rockets, similar as above but shutting down the rocket from ~Mach 2-6 and operating as a regular ramjet. Could get away with more dense fuel for the ramjet phase at the cost of some efficiency.
~Enhanced jet engines, injecting water, liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen, or even a closed cooling loop in the intake to permit efficient operation at altitudes and airspeeds beyond un-augmented engines (eg >80,000ft and >Mach 4)
~True hybrid jet/rocket engines, where the traditional oxygen turbopump can be bypassed in favor of a jet compressor, using the air directly in the rocket instead of on board oxidizer. The "jet mode" might also be operated independently of the rocket altogether.
~LACE systems, where oxidizer is extracted from the air by a combination of compression (either by turbine or ram effect) and refrigeration. Some designs intentionally use liquid hydrogen to liquefy incoming air and then dump the former overboard since it is so light and then either pump the liquid air into the engine for immediate combustion and/or storage when the air is too thin. Some have proposed separating the liquid oxygen from the mixture and greatly improving Isp, but this adds complexity.
-Materials technologies
~Coming up with a solution for the X-33 honeycomb liquid cryogen fuel tank?
~Early nanocomposites for structure and low-permeation fuel tank liners?
~Status of metallic foam/foil heat shields?
~Ultrahigh temperature alloys for long-life rocket engines and leading edges?
The list goes on I'm sure
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
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Very good post, which deserves to be added to....
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Oh I did forget to add one: regenerative cooling of the vehicles' skin (particularly important for Scramjets) using liquid hydrogen fuel.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
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"Ramrockets, or ducted rockets", this sounds like a ramjet. If you burn fuel, whether liquid hydrogen or kerosene, with air from an intake it's called a jet. If there is no turbine it's a ramjet. If you add some liquid oxygen with some intake air, it can be called a liquid oxygen augmented ramjet or air-augmented rocket, depending on your point of view. If it utilizes supersonic combustion it's a liquid oxygen augmented scramjet or air-augmented rocket. The Rocket Based Combined-Cycle (RBCC) engine is supposed to smoothly transition between subsonic combustion ramjet, to supersonic combustion (scramjet), to air-augmented rocket, to pure LOX/LH2 rocket. Boeing Rocketdyne had a contract to work on it.
ATK has a contract from NASA to continue work on hypersonic technology. From this Sept. 2006 news announcement "In 2005, DARPA, the Office of Naval Research and ATK set another record by flying the first liquid hydrocarbon-fueled scramjet at Mach 5.5 conditions."
ATK Completes Successful Series of Hypersonics Tests
The NASA contract this talks about:
ATK to Build, Test and Analyze Scramjet Engines in Support of Mach 5-20 Flight Operations
"X-33 honeycomb liquid cryogen fuel tank": the solution is obvious and was apparent immediately: don't. The problem was use of paper thin carbon fibre with paper thin kevlar on edge between the inner and out skin to form the honeycomb structure. Materials that thin form microfractures that let cryogenic propellant through. This demonstrates a hollow wall honeycomb structure with walls that thin are compatible with cryogenic propellants. The original design used a solid wall composite tank, use that. The solid wall is not much heavier and immune to microfactures. Or at least it's immune to leakage.
"Status of metallic foam/foil heat shields?": developed and already obsolete. A metallic heat shield was developed that uses titanium plate on the inside toward the aircraft skin, inconel 617 plate outside that contacts high temperature air, titanium bolt stand-offs to hold them apart, and crinkled inconel 617 foil between. It works but it's heavy and has limited heat protection; it only protects against 2000°F.
X-33's Innovative Metallic Thermal Shield 'Ready for Flight'
A more advanced heat shield is DurAFRSI: Durable Advanced Flexible Reuseable Surface Insulation. It's a thermal quilt with Nextel 440 cloth, Saffil fibre batting inside, cloth folded over to form two layers of cloth on the bottom next to aircraft skin, quilted with threads of Nextel 440, Inconel 617 mesh screen on top sewn to the Nextel 440 fabric with Nextel 440 thread, and finally Inconel 617 foil brazed onto the screen. The screen is 0.003" thick, foil is 0.002" thick. Quilting threads are 1/4" apart, and the folded fabric on the back covers the quilting threads. They use standard brazing compound, not anything fancy. This provides a metal foil skin for air flow. It protects against 2000°F, same as metal tiles but lighter.
Reinforced Carbon-Carbon (RCC) works just fine for leading edges as long as you don't impact it with debris at hypersonic speed. Solution: don't shed debris.
I've never heard of spin-homogeneous liquid hydrogen. I tried to look it up on the web but wasn't successful. There are references to "Spin-homogeneous" but they don't appear to apply to liquid hydrogen. If you're suggesting coherent matter, that would be extremely energy intensive requiring heavy magnetic containment coils around the fuel tank to maintain it's coherence. Fuel must be simple, something that just sits in a tank.
I found an article on cyclic ozone; "every oxygen atom is bound to every other oxygen atom, making it look like an equilateral triangle." I don't think they'll succeed because the molecular structure they describe sounds like diamond. If bonded in a planer hexagon pattern, it's graphite. If bonded in a 3-dimensional tetrahedron (triangle base pyramid) it's diamond. Liquid by definition requires molecules to move around, if every atom is bonded to very other atom it's a solid.
Temple Researcher Attempting To Create Cyclic Ozone
I wouldn't bother with exotic molecular structures to create marginal increase in fuel density. Instead focus on scramjet and RBCC engines.
Regeneratively cooled skin is not a new idea. The Avro Arrow used it and was developed from 1953-1959. This isn't new. The problem is weight involved with all that ducting, and complexity together with risk of failure. A refractory or ablative heat shield is much simpler.
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Its not quite a ramjet per say, think of taking a plain old J-2 engine and mounting it in the middle of a big pipe thats significantly wider than the mouth of the nozzle. It does behave much like a ramjet in the atmosphere, infarct surpassing a regular ramjet, but still is a plain old rocket for vacuum use.
This is different than a real live "hybrid" jet/rocket, where the air itself is used as oxidizer in the rocket.
Then there is the LACE systems, which use liquid hydrogen's huge cooling potential to liquefy the air, perhaps extracting the LOX. Thus, you trade Hydrogen for Oxygen in flight.
Anyway, I was under the impression that the honeycomb wall fuel tanks for the X-33 were much lighter and not just a "little bit" compared to a regular solid walled tank. Aren't you the one who has been pushing fluoropolymers as membranes for cryogenic fuel tanks? Sure it might not be flexible at liquid hydrogen temperatures, but it doesn't have to be, it just has to be impermeable.
If the fancy fabric heat shield and RCC panels work well enough for the vehicle, then that sounds all right (esp. for TSTO space planes). But I am unconvinced that they or present refractory materials are good enough for a Scramjet vehicle, so regenerative cooling could be a necessity. It can't have an ablative shield since those aren't reusable, which is a must for an SSTO.
Spin-homogeneous is a chemists' term for it I suppose: all atoms with an odd number of protons+neutrons spin (why? ask a physicist), and Hydrogen molecules have two of them. The spins are coupled to each other, and either spin the same or in opposite directions. One of these coupled spin states is at a somewhat higher energy and isn't completely stable, and decays to the more stable state spontaneously. This higher energy state occupies slightly more volume per molecule, decreasing density, and also releases the excess energy as heat which induces accelerated boiloff.
All hydrogen, when liquified, exists as a mixture of the two spin states, and in fact most LH2 today is treated to convert the high energy H2 to low energy to retard boiloff. Its a pretty simple process too I bet, but isn't done to ~100%. Pushing it this last bit would at least help limit boiloff a little. This process is irreversible unlike some of the really exotic "spin-controlled" propellants proposed, so there is no need for special handling or storage after the process.
Cyclic ozone isn't what you think it is, there is no possibility of any graphite or diamond-like covalent macromolecular solid like carbon does. The shape of the molecule has little to do with whether this happens or not, but on how many bonds each atom can form: oxygen atoms can form two or less bonds to other atoms in the elemental form, while carbon can make up to four. Carbon atoms can form an arbitrary number of bonds with other carbon atoms too, but oxygen can only bridge three, perhaps four atoms before becoming too unstable.
Each oxygen atom forms one bond to its neighbor in each O3 molecule, and so there are no more bonds available to form any macromolecular species. Some good theoretical studies have been done that show it should be quite stable and not especially more difficult to handle than the regular O3. Its density isn't why it is desirable, it is because the bonds contain much more energy per molecule, and hence per mass, than plain old "bent" ozone. Hydrogen/Oxygen rockets with Hydrogen/Fluorine like performance, or even better perhaps.
Since it seems likely that whatever kind of RLV we make will be powered at least in large part by Hydrogen, it seems prudent to me to explore avenues of improving its performance, which would greatly ease the challenge of making such a craft. Slushed hydrogen doesn't provide a "marginal" increase in density, it increases it by ~25-35% in theory. Imagine being able to reduce the volume of the RLV by 20%? Thats a big deal, if it can be done without a vast amount of trouble, it should at east be explored.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
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I was under the impression that the honeycomb wall fuel tanks for the X-33 were much lighter and not just a "little bit" compared to a regular solid walled tank. Aren't you the one who has been pushing fluoropolymers as membranes for cryogenic fuel tanks? Sure it might not be flexible at liquid hydrogen temperatures, but it doesn't have to be, it just has to be impermeable.
Ok, line with PCTFE film. Available under brand names Aclar or Clarus from Honeywell (2 brand names, one company, beware of pricing). Or under the name Neoflon PCTFE from Daikin Industries of Japan. It's only rated to -240°C (-400°F) and liquid hydrogen is -252.8°C (-423°F) at 1 atmosphere pressure (sea level). Would the liner crack or would the stress be handled by tank walls? I don't know. It's one thing to try. I have recommeded this to one individual who works for X-Corp.
The other thing to worry about is hydrogen permeability. PCTFE is the most impermable to water of any polymer, and very impermeable to oxygen and nitrogen. There are a few other polymers slightly more impermable to oxygen, but their service temperature only goes down to -40°C or -60°C. As for hydrogen, it tends to permeate everything. I had thought of an aluminized mylar liner to hold hydrogen, so the metal actually contains hydrogen. I have no idea how thick the aluminum would have to be. Mylar is suitable for cars; it won't handle cryogenic temperatures. However, a rocket only has to hold hydrogen for a few minutes; hours while sitting on the pad. A permeation rate measured in days is acceptable for a launch vehicle. So maybe a PCTFE liner is the solution you're looking for.
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Aries Propulsion Research Labs Enters the "Space Race"
APR Labs has labeled this new technology omni-directional propulsion (ODP) due to its unique property of being able to change its direction of movement 360 degrees instantaneously unlike rocket propulsion.
University of Virginia research developing jet engine for space travel
The project is called Hy-V, pronounced “high-five,” and will test the operation of a scramjet engine, a jet engine that uses supersonic air compression, some fuel and a spark to create speeds up to Mach 10 without the need for an external fuel tank.
It may be rocket science, but scramjet technology is not new. The concept has been around since the 1950s. Scientific and technological advances, however, are making scramjet more appealing and NASA is taking the idea seriously. In fact, the agency recently flew Hyper X, a scramjet-powered aircraft that reached speeds of Mach 9.6.
NASA is also a major backer of the Hy-V experiment, offering a two-stage rocket to lift it to Mach 5 from the NASA Wallops Space Facility in Virginia in 2009.
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APR Labs enters the “space race” by leading the way with new technologies in omni-directional propulsion systems (ODPS). In early 2006 APR Labs was granted the license rights to patent 20060230847 developed by propulsion designer Chris B. Hewatt. With this innovative new technology that eliminates rocket thrust propulsion and introduces non-venting internal propulsion, APR Labs and will be pushing forward to make space exploration and space tourism a thing of the present and not of the future.
"Method and apparatus for gyroscopic propulsion"
Bull s***
These guys are swindlers just like the "microwave rocket" guy in England, hoping to score some money from a major aerospace company desperate to break the stalemate between Boeing and Airbus.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
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APR Labs enters the “space race” by leading the way with new technologies in omni-directional propulsion systems (ODPS). In early 2006 APR Labs was granted the license rights to patent 20060230847 developed by propulsion designer Chris B. Hewatt. With this innovative new technology that eliminates rocket thrust propulsion and introduces non-venting internal propulsion, APR Labs and will be pushing forward to make space exploration and space tourism a thing of the present and not of the future.
"Method and apparatus for gyroscopic propulsion"
Bull s***
These guys are swindlers just like the "microwave rocket" guy in England, hoping to score some money from a major aerospace company desperate to break the stalemate between Boeing and Airbus.
Sure, you can make a microwave rocket, the thrust produced by most microwaves we can generate would be negligible though. There is the idea of the microwave sail, by hitting a thin mesh with microwaves, you could push it away. To levitate something off the surface of the Earth and into orbit would require an ungodly amount of energy though.
Omnidirectional rockets propulsion systems have already been invented though, they are called bombs. A spherical explosion produces an omnidirection thrust in all directions, producing a net thrust of zero.
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Ummm no, you must have missed the thread about this supposed microwave antigravity engine that produced substantial amounts of thrust via relativity without reaction mass. Later debunked, but he recieved some tens of thousands of dollars to "develop" it.
These guys seem to be trying the same trick, and why not? It worked before and no civil court will even understand your idea to guage if it has merit anyway when the investors sue.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
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Ummm no, you must have missed the thread about this supposed microwave antigravity engine that produced substantial amounts of thrust via relativity without reaction mass. Later debunked, but he recieved some tens of thousands of dollars to "develop" it.
These guys seem to be trying the same trick, and why not? It worked before and no civil court will even understand your idea to guage if it has merit anyway when the investors sue.
Gravity is proportional to mass and thus energy through E=mc^2, thus to generate an antigravity field, you need negative energy and alot of it. Another way to wright Einstein's equation is thus m=E/(c^2). If the E is negative, then so is the m. Quite an extrordinary claim, to generate vast amounts of negative energy to congeil into enough negative mass to create a gravitational acceleration equal to +9.8 meters per second squared away from the Earth. I think the amount of negative mass required would have to exceed in magintude the positive mass of the Earth, that way it would repel the Earth in proportion to its mass greater than the Earth would attract it. I think if such a machine were built in close proximity to the Earth, the tidal forces alone would pulverize the planet as the surface of the Earth closest to the antigravity machine would be pushed away much harder than the furthest surface of the planet. The Earth would thus be flattened like a grape that is stepped on by an elephant. I'd be amazed if such a doomsday machine could be built with a mere $10,000.
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