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The public may be more interesseted in space, like their intresst in pro sports, but I don't see how that will help the space program to any great degree. A sport like intresst will not cause the public to vote differently, nor will it make the public write letters. It happened before, if the public loved space so much in the 60's why didn't it vote for some one who would continue the space program? I think that the only hope is private space flight where people get to go themselves in a safe and economical way, in otherwards, some breakthrough technology, like a space elevator.
As to PR, well I'm not really fond of advertising, but I think a grass roots aproch might work. How about this, you have a private space society which has an idea on how to get to orbit safer and cheaper, perferably something along the lines of a big dumb booster. Then in different cities, the members get together and build one small part, or larger part depending on how many of them there are. they are given the general picture and they pay for, and optimize the part. then all the parts are shipped to a warehouse and assembled by volenteres and a few paid workers in the largest city and people can go there and help. That would get people enthusiastic, to actually build part of a space ship, thought it probably wouldn't be really efficent.
Very interesting, I think that the public non-space addict is not enthusiastic, not because they can't go, but because they really don't have a burning desire to go. Why do some people climb mountains even when there is a significat risk to themselves? Because they really want to get there, to go where few have gone before as a matter of speaking. I don't think you are going to be able to change this with advertising or advicacy, so the only way to promote space is to make it less risky.
At least the germans have a semi-reasonable plan with just a robotic probe mission as the long term goal. These other countries that say, sure we're going to the moon in 10 yearsand probably start a base there even though we haven't put a man into orbit yet are ridiculious.
Whatever. I still wouldn't call Russia a police state, but the only ones who can judge that honsestly are those who live there. There is a lot of propaganda left over from the cold war and bad feelings going around. Anyway, Putin seems willing enough to let someone take his place in 2008, so whatever the situation now it can change. I'll let a better politically minded person debate it.
Tom, please don't insult the russians, Putin does not have absolute control over the media nor has he enroched on any liberties. I admit he's not perfect and there have been some abuses, but he's not Hitler. I also don't think it's fair to compare the problems of the US to those of Russia. The US has a huge economy, and economic growth, 3 times as many people, and little internal coruption. They won. Russian needs some serious work to turn it around. I'm not a liberal by the way.
Okay, there's another example of how ignorat of chemistry I am, I didn't know that salts could be disolved in steam. In the intressests of economics, you're right, since there's no way any one is going to build one of these for a long time, building a bigger tank will be cheaper with the next generation launch systems.
Don't get down on Putin, without him Russia would be in even worse shape. He has sky high popularity, unlike bush, and the russian economy is finally starting to catch up with less corruption. He's not a dictator either, since he was elected, and can only stay in for two terms. If the russains take advanage of the US in space, it's regretable, but the main thing is that america put it's self in a bad position with the ISS partners because if they want to keep their reputation, they need to honour their promisses to the partner countries. I doubt that military funding will be used to suport the space program any further, america has a few other costly military projects on the go right now, like two wars.
You're probably right that just brining a bigger fuel tank would be better for the short runs, but on a long trip like to the kupier belt, were peak thrust isn't as important, you might want to reduce the tankage mass by making the engine smaller. The main tank, has no neutron absobtion, but the pumps do, so you could take the absorbing salts out as slowly as was practical, by precipitating them or with a magnet. Or, when the solution goes into the engine it turn to steam because of the low presure, so maybe a large magnet could pull the cobalt to the edges then, when it wouldn't be in solution but just suspeded in the gas. If it could be made to work it would be a lot safer, as with a boron tank, if there is a small spill or leak, the whole thing blows up.
Oh well, how about using cobalt though? Then magnets could pull it out, if cobalt formed a solution. Or, perhaps there is something that could be added to the boron solution that would make it precipitate? Is there any thing that would bind to boron but not uranium at a reasonable temperature?
I'm no chemist, but if uranium salts can be disolved in water, then how about some boron compound at the same time? That would act as a neutron absorber, so the tank could be just be thin aluminum or composite, uless those are netron reflectors, but composite should be alright at least. Then when you want to fire up the engine, you have small centrifugal pumps, so it can't go critical in them, and the diferance in the densitys of Boron salts and Uranium salts seperates them. Then most of the water is used as normal, and the boron water can be added to the edges for extra reaction mass.
http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw56.html
I think a NEO would be a wonderful mission, without the gravity well that the moon presents. In regard to resorces, besides metals are there any heverie elements, like sulfur or chlorine? Any atempt to do anything really big on the astoroids is going to need for of the heavier nonmetals.
Oh, sure, but you still get the prize money even if global warming doesn't turn out to be so dire as we thought. You have to admit that the weather has been pretty eratic lately, even if not too much warmer.
Sure, why not use he money to fund space exploration? How about this, CO2 has a density that is from the other gasses in that atmosphere, so in a centrifuge the gasses would pile up from densiest to least dense. Suck up the CO2 and pump it into and aqufier or something. Not sure how efficent that would be though.
Wow what a facinating thread! I had no idea venus was so habitable. I have a few questions though, Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, and Oxygen don't seem to be horribly rare in the solar system, but how about other elements that humans need for industrial processes like halogens and other non-metals? Can these be found on say titan, venus, or on near earth objects?
I agree with GCNR. Building factories on the moon is not a good idea. The only reason to even consider the moon is because you can build a space elevator out of reasonable materials, but still, the lack of hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen is going to make it uneconomical to actually assemble anything there. Just get that AL, Si, and basalt off there and build whatever you're making in space. Then you can get you light elements from near earth objects and provide a full g of gravity for your workers.
If NASA or the military needs an escape pod, they can use the orion capsule. All of their crew members will be trained enough to fly it. If the private companies need an escape vessel they can use what ever they used to get up there in the first place, by the way the space x capsule is pretty much developed if not tested, an almost space ready mock up has been built.
So NASA nor private companies need a special, emergency use only escape craft.
If the only reason for this escape vehicle is to keep the tourist's safe then let the private space comepanies come up with something. It's not NASA's job. Plus, if you want an automated escape craft, why a space plane? That's complicated cutting edge technology. Just use a t-space capsule of the Falcon launched dragon capsule. http://www.transformspace.com/index.cfm … 270F2B83AA
look at point three in survivability.
Don't get me wrong, for the industrialization of space, I think a sea dragon would be wonderful, (60$ a kg to LEO!) but I don't think bringing the 2nd stage to the moon is going to be worth while. To build Quonset huts you don't need a metal cylinder, just bring an inflitable mylar tube ~ 0.5 ton and push dirt onto it. Then microwave the dirt as you drive/walk over it. It's too easy to build a shelter on the moon to warant the complexity of putting all those thrusters and guidance systems to land the second stage, and then you have the payload reduction from carrying that giant stage. Likewise I don't think the engines would be useful. Sea dragon's "small" engine had almost 60 million newtons of thrust, which means even with a 100:1 thrust to weight ratio it would weigh about 63000 kg. Even if you could import the fuel, that's way to big to be practical, unless you have some very heavy exports that need to go all in one shot.
I'm going to take a leap of faith here and assume that we're talking about the upper stage of something like the seadragon. It would seem very unsafe to me to use the upper stage as a jery rigged habitat, there is only one wall, and it probably was weakened by it's flight. There would probably be little thermal insulation, and there wouldn't be any radiation shielding. So to change them around, and mess with them on the moon would take a significat amount of infrastructure, buldozers to cover them, welders to conect them. Might as well just bring a microwave and do it with the moon dust. I really don't think the engines would be useful either, if they are anything like seadragon, they are going to be way too big and you'd need to import fuel to use them.
Dicktice, I don't think bringin the whole rocket to the lunar surface is going to save much. The only advantage would be you'd get the tanks and the engines on the lunar surface, but what's the point? The tanks will be probably alluminum or steel, but with a lunar base you'd be able to mine your own alluminum with only a little more effort than smelting the tanks. The engines would like wise be difficult to re-use. That leaves you with the payload only, so why not use more stages and maximize that? I'm not even sure that a lunar base will need metal. Moon dust is basically glass and alluminum oxide, and you can use microwaves to sinter it into building blocks, like bricks. If you need something lighter, try basalt fiber. Doesn't sound to hard to manufacture and I think you could find basalt on the moon. Instead of epoxy, maybe you could use moon dust and sinter it to keep the fibers in place.
http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra_mo … 60223.html
http://www.sfsti.uzsci.net/basalt.htm
Why not build the sea dragon? With all those motors that need to all run perfectly everytime, I think you would have a real reliablity problem. The sea dragon would probably be cheaper too.
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/searagon.htm
hopefully, the propellent would stay liquid as it was pushed out of the small chamber, only the bit that combusted with the oxidizer would become gasseous, and could be vented seperatly once all the liquid was emptied.
That's it exactly, Michael. I think a car engine's pistons make about 30 cycles per second, and this should be pretty simmilar, so maybe only 4-8 small chambers. Don't know if that would be an advantage over turbopumps by weight, but possibly in simplicity of design.
I wasn't really thinking of pressurizing the propellents in the main tanks, but having them under slight presure and emptying them into a small really tough presure vessel. Then a little bit of fuel or oxidizer in added, and the pressure in the small vessel get up to chamber pressure. A valve allows it to dump the propellent into the chamber, and a one way valve prevents it from going back up to the main tanks. Then it repeats. That way the main tanks don't have to be so strong and heavy.
I read that rocket pumps make up somehting like half the cost of a rocket engine. The alt space groups seem to favor self presurizing fuels like propane and nitrus oxide, but I have a had time beliving that that's going to work for a low cost orbital rocket. Has anyone considered a sort of pulse jet pump? My thought is that if one had quite a few high pressure cylinders and then filled them with the fuel and a little bit of oxidizer and ignited it, it would get up to the chamber pressure and could be emptied with a one way valve. Sound fesible? Sort of like a piston pump without the piston.