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The problem goes even deeper than that. Let take the example of colonizing of America and look at the rail roads and water ways in that colonization process and US Government impute on that whole thing.
We will start with the Rail Roads. Originally most of the Rail Roads were either State owned or Federally owned enterprise. So there were primarily Federally or State financed enterprises. After they were privatized after the American Civil War, they were still getting government financing to build rail lines and buy rolling stock or equipment. The Transcontinental Rail Road that connected the east coast with the west coast is an example of the government financing a major project they thought was beneficial to the economic prosperity and development of the United States. They also regulated the rail roads too.
All true, but don't forget that the whole Crédit Mobilier scandle came out of this as well. The transconental rail-roads were a mess of graft and corruption, but were succesful despite that. The goverment eventualy had to step in and regulate them heavily to prevent their worse excesses (and maybe bust a few trusts).
Now we will go to the water ways of America. I will dispense with the ports for right now, but we will go with government built canal system and locks on the major rivers of America that make those rivers navigable for the private sector. This project is still government owned and operated. Also the levy system that protect some of those city like New Orleans, which needs to be fix and upgrade, with government money by the way.
Don't forget the Panama Cannal, which was also goverment dug, after a French coporation failed miserably at it. Which is to say that I think this a better model than the gov-fund the corporations one.
But, you say that was then and this is now and things have changed and thing are no longer that way. We don't have to depend on those two government sponsored enterprises any more. .. snip ..
No your wrong, I don't say that all. I primarily agree with you, that the goverment will have to fund the vast majority of any space development. I only argue that the aerospace Coporations COULD fund a bigger chunk of it if they wanted to, and that their might be some money in it for them if they did. They could design usefull things for the space-program like new engines, habs, whatever, and the goverment would probably buy them. But they won't, because they would much rather have contracts to design these items, and the risk is to high for them.
Why should you expect private enterprise to act any different in space where everything cost a whole lot more to build the basic support infrastructure to just an existence in space when they never done that down here inside the United State in the over two hundred years of our existence?
While I primarily agree with you in-terms of infastructure, there are pleanty of examples where coporations did spend large chunks of money on such improvments. The first eletrical systems were all privatly funded for example. In terms of non-infastructure improvments there are LOTS of private coporate tech development.
Any technology they develop, will be very limited. Any infrastructural projects they may do, will also be limited if they don't have a major government backing them.
I primarily agree with this point, but I wouldn't be so dismisive of the "limited" development. Again things like beter Gyros, Solar Pannels, and what not may not be very sexy and flashy, but they are still important.
Better then nothing anyways.
Does that mean that the engine basket is to be retrieveable for re-use? This would add to the complexity. The ET and engine basket would be dropped before reaching orbit. This would either mean that they would burn up or crash as well and smash into the ocean making them not recoverable.
If you mean by basket to dicribe it as engine mounting system well that is alot different and is intended to be disposable. That is one of the reasons to see if they could come up with a low cost SSME but that is not going to happen anytime soon. These engines are very expensive and is while Nasa is going with the RS-68's to power the Calv's first stage. They are by far cheaper as well as intended to be disposed of. Yes this does mean a larger ET to cover the performance differance.
I have been convinced that a recoverable SSME may be a bad idea for the present time, but in the future creating such an item could reduce the per-unit costs dramaticaly (as well as increasing the performance). As the SSME apparently only cost a couple hundread thousand to re-use.
This illustrates one of the advantages of expendable rocket designs in my mind. It's much easier to upgrade their designs. The engines and system we use now we use in the CLV now we don't necessarily have to use 10 years down the road. We can gradualy introduce upgrades to the system, unlike the shuttle which is pretty much a dead end.
Not nessesarrily
You can't really think of Mars like you would the Earth or the Moon: on Mars, there is very little atmosphere to carry heat away from the suit, but there is no super-intense unfilterd sunlight to cause extreme heating like the Moon. Mars is somewhere inbetween, and the wearer's body heat might need to be removed with some kind of cooling system.
Though in fairness, a suit designed for Space or the Moon would work on Mars, but would be overkill for what is necessary. I've read up on the suit designed, and it's actualy not that bad. One of the advantages of a fully inflated design would be that it would not suffer the fatique issues you might see in a mechanical pressure suit, which could become important over the long hall and many Mars walks.
:: EDIT ::
Related to the heat issue, I don't know about the feasibility of using liquid O2 in the suit's air supply, but the ability of expanding gases to remove heat should not be ignored.
science documentary movie film on location Jupiter
How did you get the on location scenes ?
Did the creatures in the metallic hydrogen assist ?
What is the temperature at the core ?
Come on MarsDog, don't feed the trolls.
With an IC engine there is a lot of waste heat which is dumped via the exhaust. This is a very simple process. If you try and collect water from the exhaust much of the heat will be reacted from the exhaust before it reaches the atmosphere, this means a separate, bulky and complex radiator.
I can see several solutions: you accept the hydrogen loss (which entails either a water source for propellant production or a curtailed exploration radius), use of and alternate power source (fuel cell), use of fuels with lower hydrogen content (methanol, ethanol, ethylene, acetylene), or use of CO as fuel (which has the advantage of requiring no hydrogen and being denser than methane).
Jon
It should be noted that fuel cells also produce a great deal of wasted heat during their reaction process as well. Some of this is lost in heating the water and/or CO2 they produce, and some is just waste heat. Although, since they are about 5 times more massive and considerably more bulky than an ICE per unit of energy they produce, the heat is not as "dense." And so the active cooling that is sometimes necessary for ICE is not as great a concurn.
Dumping the exhaust overboard is certianly one of the best methods to remove heat from an ICE, the CO2 component certianly should go as it is mostly useless. If we couldn't recover the water that would be a minus, but one that could be delt with once we have a native supply of water. Storing the water may be impratical in any case for an ICE or Fuel cell as after a prolonged journey (using most of the fuel) there may be a hundred or so kg of it. Throwing this overboard would allow the rover to increase its range as well.
Another note, if we are using liquid oxygen as our oxidiser, the expansion of this gass will could remove a great deal of the waste heat. The fuel stores also could make a very effective heat sink for the rover as well. The waste heat could be stored here while the rover is in motion, and then slowly radiated away when it stops for the night.
We should remember that Mars does have an atmosphere, although a very thin one. This will allow convection forces to come into play on the rover and radiator. Which is great since convection is a much, much better means of removing heat then simple radiation alone.
Shoot the cats and get a dog.
My solution.
Not true, there a still a number of coporations in America with strong intrest in plain old research and development, some of it quite basic. Obviously both the pharmisutical industry (Pfizer, Merc, ect..) and the Chemical industry (Dupont, 3M, ect..) maintain very strong research base. They are not alone though, a number of techology companies (if not most) still maintain large research departments, especial IBM, but those of Intel, Texas Instruments, Sony, and Toshiba should not be discounted. In fact, you would be supprised at the number of companies that employ signifigant research departments, all the major oil companies do, as do a number of the eletric companies for example.
Where flashgorden is espeicaly right is that the large succesfull aerospace companies do not tend to spend as much money on R&D, especialy for the space part of aerospace. They have research departments to be sure, but not a research oriented culture like you see in parts of IBM or 3M, for example. Our space-program could certianly use a company that was so focused. There is a market for fresh, well devloped ideas and concepts, like the Trans-hab for example. Hopefull Boeing and the like will eventualy relise that. The problem, however, is that aerospace research tends to be very expensive, and not as profitable as other types.
As for what you specifical recomend, a primarily goverment funded private research coporation, or haven't you heard of the JPL (Jet Propulsion Labratories). They do good work, but their reliance upon the goverment for funding is a weakness in many senses. They certianly don't have the resources that a company like Boeing could turn to research if they wanted.
I guess in the end what I am trying to say is that yes, there is quite a lot of coporate funded science research. However not so much in the aerospace field (especialy on the space side). I think we could all agree that more aerospace research (or whatever type) is certianly needed.
Private Industries can do spot technology development for a pacific purpose or market that there tying to hit. There they can calculate a rough idea of what it might cost to develop new technologies and what those pay backs might be if they can develop those technologies. Even then, not everything that they developed was 100% there money. Some of that stuff they developed was paid for by government for something that they wanted developed, so the government did partial payment for development of some of that technology. Texas Instruments is a very high military supplier of new electronic technologies, which will sometimes fund there development of new technologies. But, even assuming that we discount things like that, Private Industries still can't fund an open end development of new technologies with no particular use or benefit to the company do it on a multiple bases with virtually unlimited cost for a virtually unlimited time frame. Which is exactly what you would have to do if you wanted colonize some place in space. Compare John F. Kennedy NASA Moon mission project and compare that to anything that the Private Sector ever has done or could possibly do in a fifty year span if they didn't have government breaking the trail for them. You still don't see private enterprise going to the moon even thirty years after NASA did it and showed that it could done and the reason that they don't do it is because it too for private enterprise to go it alone. So they don't do it.
No, I stand by my original statement, Private Enterprise or companies can't develop that technology.
Larry,
I agree with you in part. The aerospace industry does face more challanges in doing private R&D then many other industries do. Primarily of course since the goverment is the primary/solitary customer for most of the R&D products it makes sense for coporations to try and get the goverment to fund any research they do on these projects. However, as the number of private customers for aerospace technology continues to rise, these sorts of R&D projects will have more potential profit. For example if Lockheed Martin was to develope a new highly efficent ion type station keeping drive they might find a signifigant private and goverment satilite market to sell it to.
Indeed I think private R&D reasearch of this type probably allready occurs quite a bit. We just aren't as aware of it as better gyroscopes, batteries, antenas or whatever are not as sexy as new launch systems. But these are the programs it makes the most sense to spend private R&D money on. The costs (and thus the risk) are lower, and the products often have a wider market.
But I do agree with you that I do not think we will be seeing any of the major aerospace companies sinking big bucks into major reasearch projects like SSTO spacecraft, NTR engines, or whatever. At least not without a goverment contract to do it. They may have the funds, but they are unwilling to take the risk to do so.
maybe I was right all along, we need to make a scientific culture - bare minimum, a science cultured corporation, if not a whole country; this is the only way to get space colonization funded.
That wouldn't work either. A corporation that deal's only in a science culture, can't make money so it would go out of business. Any such science culture would have to be government funded so it wouldn't have to make money. Then it might be possible to have something like that.
Larry,
Not true, there a still a number of coporations in America with strong intrest in plain old research and development, some of it quite basic. Obviously both the pharmisutical industry (Pfizer, Merc, ect..) and the Chemical industry (Dupont, 3M, ect..) maintain very strong research base. They are not alone though, a number of techology companies (if not most) still maintain large research departments, especial IBM, but those of Intel, Texas Instruments, Sony, and Toshiba should not be discounted. In fact, you would be supprised at the number of companies that employ signifigant research departments, all the major oil companies do, as do a number of the eletric companies for example.
Where flashgorden is espeicaly right is that the large succesfull aerospace companies do not tend to spend as much money on R&D, especialy for the space part of aerospace. They have research departments to be sure, but not a research oriented culture like you see in parts of IBM or 3M, for example. Our space-program could certianly use a company that was so focused. There is a market for fresh, well devloped ideas and concepts, like the Trans-hab for example. Hopefull Boeing and the like will eventualy relise that. The problem, however, is that aerospace research tends to be very expensive, and not as profitable as other types.
As for what you specifical recomend, a primarily goverment funded private research coporation, or haven't you heard of the JPL (Jet Propulsion Labratories). They do good work, but their reliance upon the goverment for funding is a weakness in many senses. They certianly don't have the resources that a company like Boeing could turn to research if they wanted.
I guess in the end what I am trying to say is that yes, there is quite a lot of coporate funded science research. However not so much in the aerospace field (especialy on the space side). I think we could all agree that more aerospace research (or whatever type) is certianly needed.
Actually the blue colour may well be part of the suits advantages. The Mars crews will be working well away from the lander and could be at risk from accidents. if you need to get to your comrade in a hurry it is best if you can see him. Mars is a patchwork of gray,red,brown and black. Blue especially that colour would stick out like a sore thumb abd in the interests of safety it is better than white.
An excellent point. Blue or maybe green would be smart colors to make the suit out of so that they would be more visible, especialy in the distance. Color descrimination is like the 3rd most important factor the human eye viewing an object.
Our current spacesuits are white not simply for looks, but to decrease the amount of heat absourbed from light. This will probably not be as big a factor on Mars which has an atmosphere to help remove heat and to de-intensify sunlight. I supose the contrast with the black background of space is also a reason.
TwinBeam,
I think the issue here is not that giving your rocket a higher and faster start of cannot give you a boost in getting to orbit. It certianly can. The Pegasus launch vehicle relies exactly upon this. The issue here is that as you scale your rocket up, to something bigger then the Pegasus, it rapidly becomes to heavy for most air-launch solutions to lift. For air-launch to work you need to include alot more of that rocket-mass into the lifting craft itself. IE, making it a real first-stage of some-sort. Otherwise, even with the benifit of high-altitude and some moderate velocity your rocket will simply be to heavy.
Though a scaled-up Pegasus type disposable rocket for launching small payloads like satilites might make some sense though. The B-1B Lancer could carry a heavier load than the B-52, and launch it faster (and maybe higher as well). Outfitted with more efficent engines (dare we even hope recoverable?) it might become an ideal method for putting light payloads into orbit.
The problem with the hang-glider type vehicle you propose is that because of it's shape, size, and nature it cannot go fast enough to be an effective first stage for a rocket.
I usualy try and stay away when insane rambling takes place (don't feed the trolls ya know), but I have to give props to John, good going man. A fine rebutal.
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To bring this more on-topic (or back to what John and I were discussing earlier).
I see to general ways of using micro black-holes as a power source of some sort. One method would be to contain it and feed it matter and capturing the radiation it naturaly produces as it decays. This might be possible for the larger, longer lived black-holes. John, it occured to me (maybe you already realised this) that even if you can't feed these larger, but still micro-ones, matter you could still potentialy capture that orginal 10^10kg of matters worth of energy. Which obviously still be alot.
For the short lived ones we might exploit the rapid/explosive decay of a shorter lived whole, possibly via some ultra-mega orion drive type process (ie. fire off a giant-explosion off behind your vehicle). I think the explosive release of the shortest lived ones is probably to great an impulse to capture by any other means. Of course this assumes you can create some-sort of disposable bomb-like black-whole creation device or somehow create a black-hole at a range. Neither seem vary likely to me, but who knows? In any case your spaceship had better be REALY big (like large asteriod to small moon sized) or carry a shock-absorber of tremendous-stupendous-huge size. Or else the acceleration from such a large blast would squish you flat. Putting such a device on a asteriod/comet/moon and detonating it there would also be heck of a way to get the thing to move!
Either method could realise total conversion of matter, which is why it is exciting the first place. These micro-black holes would not be usefull for pulling or draging your spacecraft via-space time distorions ala star-trek (or whatever). Rember that gravity is still a VERY weak force and the gravity from these black-holes is no more powerfull than the same-amount of matter would be for anything else. The gravity is just much more concentrated, that's all. Alot more concentration in this case, the event horizon of these micro-holes are generaly smaller than a proton. Their gravitational influence does not reach far at all.
And of course, even if it was a usefull amount of force (gravitationaly) there would still be the issue of exactly how you continualy kept it in pushed in front of your vessel. And even if you could do that, it still wouldn't be any more usefull for space-travel then attaching your ship to a pole on a large asteriod or something would be good for space travel. There is no way to use the warpage of space-time to cheat concervation of energy (or even momentum) like that.
"Never" is too strong a word for the solar thermal to orbit concept. (Can't argue with batty...) Conceptually, it's very similar to airship to orbit in that it employs a low thrust rocket engine to move a lifting body from aerostatic equilibrium to orbital altitudes. Tom Jolly apparently just never made the conceptual leap necessary to look past the point of minimum vertical force on its trajectory. I didn't either, at the time.
As for how much more power density a rocket engine requires than what sunlight has to give, you're quite right. Any vehicle expecting to use sunlight to power a serious rocket would need a collector area of several hectares. It would need to be as large as, well, Tom Jolly's BalRoc or JPA's Orbital Ascender.
TwinBeam's parasail idea can't provide as great a boost as those other two schemes offer because it it doesn't start from static equilibrium. At no point during its ascent would all of its aerodynamic lift be translated into upward acceleration. But, it could still get a substantial boost.
A parasail vehicle - no more missile than your average ultralight - powered by a more conventional high thrust chemical rocket engine, could be feasible for a suborbital vehicle.
Suborbital, sure. It might even make sense as some kind of a military vessle. But if you actualy want to get into orbit, that conventional high thrust chemical rocket engine is simply going to mass to much. I could see how the Air-ship to orbit concept could work, but that is because it relies on a super-high impulse ION engine and effectivly mass-free and infinite power solar energy. Replace either one of these, and it's mass simply becomes to much.
Saying as it is.
But the production costs of making rockets is decreasing in the west as technology makes it easier to produce. But in the end it will always come down to the cost of those expensive engineers doing the job and checking again and again.
Come on 3 d printers able to make parts 100% perfect every time.
While I agree with your general point, I disagree with your specific example. Even the most precise automated milling machine (or 3d printer) will ocasionaly produce peices with errors or defects. This may be due to incorrect instruction or calibration, or may simply be due to defects in the source material or drill bits. This is especialy true for rocketry where the tolerances are so tight. This is why it is necessary for a technician to come back and re-measure to make-sure the machine got it right. So while advances can drasticly lower the costs, there are still limits.
-- Side note here, I'm working the calcuations backwards and it seems like the explosive energy is considerably more energy than what should be contained in the matter, so my figures may be off, please double check for me. In any case, the generaly principle remains the same.
I can’t decide if this makes sense or not. On, the one hand I think that packing mass in a smaller area should increase the potential energy. On the other hand I think the increased potential energy should be included in the mass of the black hole. I remember reading before in a chemistry book that the loss of energy in a chemical reaction should by Einstein’s principle of E=mc^2 decrease the mass but it would decrease it by too small an amount to be measurable. It is certainly a good sanity check of the calculations and I would of thought that the energy released from the explosion would have been equivalent to the mass of the black hole.
I think the most obvious answer is that I made an error someplace in my calculations. The figures come out right, I just am getting the wrong order of magnitude, I might give it a fresh look tomorrow.
The other issue is that the process of creating the blackwhole may very well require more energy than it gives off. Certianly compressing 100 MT of mater into a diameter smaller than that of a proton would be a difficult trick. If this turns to be the case then the use of such a short-lived black-whole is obvioulsy a bust.
From my understanding of physics energy can’t be created or destroyed. Although some things I hear are hard to define in general relativity like potential energy. If I understand the theories correctly we can create a black hole by a particle accelerator. All the energy put into the system should come out of the system. That would include the kinetic energy of the particles in the accelerator and the mass of the objects in the accelerator. It is my understanding at these speeds most of the energy is from the kinetic energy and not the mass. Thus, with current accelerators the energy you put into is much larger then the extra energy you get out of it.
Your absolutuly right that energy can't be created or destroyed. However, it can be wasted in various other ways. For example when your car burns gasoline, not 100% of the energy is converted into velocity, a signifigant percent of it (in fact more than the majority of it) is lost as heat and friction. The same could be true of our black-whole generation system. It could very easily waste more energy in the creation of a micro-black whole then the system would actualy generate. For example, the creation of anti-matter requires much more energy than the anti-matter contains. The laws of physics demand this.
On the other hand, there may not be such a law governing the creation of black wholes. It is possible that the generation system might be marginaly efficent, and when you are talking about total conversion of matter, even marginal efficency is great. But without knowing exactly how a black-whole might be generated, there is no way to know.
The only thought I have of getting around this problem is to have a target mass, that is much greater then the effective mass of the particles in the accelerators. I say accelerators, because the target mass would be spherical and the accelerators would simultaneously hit each part of the surface in a perpendicular direction triggering an implosion of the target mass. The target mass should be the densest material known to man so that once compressed by the pressure of the accelerated particles gravitational forces will compress it further before the explosion begins. So basically it is the same idea as an atomic bomb but with much greater force energy and precession.
I think you are getting ahead of yourself. I doubt that any of our current approaches to the problem will generate a solution. Certianly using a conventional partical accelerator to compress 100 MT of matter is simply not going to work. At least not any kind of partical accelerator we currently have developed.
I agree it is fun to dream. Such a concept is a long way off. It probably wouldn’t be tried until we are ready to travel to other stars. We may try an antimatter drive first but I wonder if this is a best path for a hypothetical star traveling civilization. I can’t help but think how easy matter is to store and how hard antimatter is to store. If just wonder if by the time we need an antimatter drive we should just skip it and go to the next best thing.
I see your logic in this. A black whole can be both an excelent energy store and an excelent generator. Anti-matter is only a good energy store, but a total conversion drive (like we are talking about) is much better. I'm not good at predicting the future, but I tend to think that a conventional fusion drive or solar sail/solar mirror will be the power source for the first interstllar vessle. Generating anti-matter is to unecnomical currently for it to be a real alternative. And since we know neither a more economical means of generating anti-matter or a method for making black wholes, that puts them on an even foothold in my mind. Which gives black-wholes the edge since they are obviously supperior.
The capitalist system of economics doesn’t work or what most people consider the capitalist system is non functioning economic system. The socialist/communist economic system is a non functioning economic system too. Neither economic system function as an economic system and both of them are defunct economic system that don't function.
Without going into too much detail of a Government banking System that generating it own credit. It would be financing both government project programs along with private enterprise projects programs all at the same time. You use the Government generated credit to finance a National Mission Project run through NASA which generates business activities or opportunities in the private sector and generates business activity in space also. You use the Government generated credit in the private enterprise to say to build a rocket to take people and resources to the ISS so NASA can do something else and not be tide down by taking care of the ISS space station.
Austin Stanley, what type of economic system is this that I just describe Capitalism or Communism or something else?
Actualy, I think the system you describe is not realy to diffrent then the one we already have. Our goverment treasure department already generates credit my printing money (Federal Reserve Notes) and by selling bonds (US Treasury Notes). It uses this "money" or "credit" it prints to finance both it's opertaions and the operations of our economy at large. Of course the goverment must be carefull how much "money" it allows out into our ecconomy, to much and the currancy inflates making our dollars less valualble, and to little and it deflates makeing them worth more. Modern economic thought is that keeping the currency as close to level as possible is the best course (though I tend to think that since America is a large amount of debt, a small amount of deflation might not be to bad a thing).
Your plan seems to propose to increase the amount of credit the goverment issues, which might lead to drastic hyper-inflation like Germany saw after WWI. This would be a bad thing. But in the end, if your economy is still based upon the principle that people (or coporations) not the goverment own the majority of the factories/buisness/buildings/property and use them and paid labor to generate a profit, then I would say it is still a capatilisit system, regardless of how the banking system is managed.
Now stop assuming that if I don't support Capitalism that I then must be supporting Communism. I do not support either one, but I support a support a third type of economic system.
I did not mean to assume that you were supporting Capitalisim or Communism. In fact my response was primarily aimed at Martian_Tristar who's plan would definetly be defined as Communisim. I do not see how establising a new "Bank of the United States" would in the end be that diffrent from our current Treasury system, however. Certianly our current system evolved from just such a beast long ago.
I don’t know if you really can feed super small black holes. 100 ton black hole has a power output greater then the sun. The photon pressure from such an event would probably be an unrealistic force to overcome. For a microscopic black hole you would basically have to capture all the energy as it is created. Perhaps you could surround the event by something like lead powder or heavy water. You obviously couldn’t use solid lead because that could blow large chunks towards the ship. Then once you vaporize some medium would need some way to control it and direct the energy. Probably some super large magnetic field. We would probably need fusion and super conductors just to power the containment field. The field would have to be very long so that the force exerted could be over a larger distance making it more continuous and less of a space ship shattering impulse.
Sure it puts our more power than the sun, but only for a couple of microsecounds. Still an awfull lot of energy, but not nearly so much as it might seem. Some 6 Zeta Joules, or 6x10^21 J. And as you point out, capturing all this energy would be one heck of a trick as we are looking at considerbly more energy than an any atomic detonations. About 1.5 MILLION Megatons worth of explosive power. Containing such an explosion is downright impossible.
-- Side note here, I'm working the calcuations backwards and it seems like the explosive energy is considerably more energy than what should be contained in the matter, so my figures may be off, please double check for me. In any case, the generaly principle remains the same.
The other issue is that the process of creating the blackwhole may very well require more energy than it gives off. Certianly compressing 100 MT of mater into a diameter smaller than that of a proton would be a difficult trick. If this turns to be the case then the use of such a short-lived black-whole is obvioulsy a bust.
A larger black hole you could feed but obviously there are inertia issues. It would be fun to consider the power output, the efficiency of using that power, and see what is the largest black hole that could give us one g acceleration. The next question would be what kind of speed and precession would we need to realistically feed such a black hole.
I agree with you in principle. If we developed practical ways to create, contain, and control such small blackwholes they may very well end up being usefull powergeneration devices. As I said, a black whole is the only way I know of that we can realisticly totaly concert matter into energy, which is a good as a generator/fuel can possibly get thermodynamicly.
Of coures, we still are a long way away from such concepts, but it is fun to dream.
There may be some merit to eventualy using a micro black whole as some sort of energy store/generator. But I have my doubts about using them in a mobile star-ship.
Going over the figures you listed I see some obvious problems. The two smallest black-wholes have lifetimes far to short to be usefull. Making use of a black whole does not get around concervation of energy. You still have to expend some amount of energy (probably a whole lot of it) to create the black whole. And at lest then 1 secound in life-span the usable life-span of the black whole is insufficent for any power-generation needs.
The larger black wholes may work if you can get around a couple serious issues. Most obviously their mass. The next largest black-whole masses 10 million metric tones. Moving this beast is going to be nearly impossible. However, if you re-direct it's energy twoards moving it it might be possible to move it, but the inertia would still be extream. I'm working on the math for this.
The next serious problem is it's microscopic horizion. Smaller than a proton in most of the examples. It would be very difficult to contain such a small object, I'm not quite sure how you could do it. A black whole has no signifigant magnetic fields which would be the easiest way to hold such an untouchable item. Gravity might also be ineffective as a black whole's pull will be much, MUCH stronger then any of the atoms around it. A big enough object might "snag" it so to speak though, but only if it had next to zero momentum. A black whole with any signifigant velocity is not going to be easily stopped, period. Maybe nuclear forces could be harnesed to contain a black whole, though I have no idea how this might be acomplished or if they would interact with a singularity at all.
Being so small also leads to a the practical problem of how you feed matter into it. A black whole could conceivably be the greates generator in the universe. Feed matter into it, and capture the Hawking radiation it slowly (or not so slowly in the case of one of these micro ones) put out. This might realise near 100% energy efficency, or the total conversion of matter into energy. This would make it a fantastic energy generator, which is why I think it has some merit as a power source.
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Of course there is the minor technical issues as to how you create a min-black whole in the first place as well...
Austin Stanley,
What waffle !!!!!!!, What I am suggesting is an alternative in spaceport management from a loose assembly of different organizations, personnel, and facilities to building an integrated approach right down to managing personnel living environment -- based on a settlement approach in space thus reducing the overall cost of the operations to a minimum without compromising quality standards in both living standards and operational standards.
At the same time use it as a providing ground for technology for space settlements including communications , integrated settlement software applications, integrated computing systems and living environment systems.
I'm sure your idea would work fine, IF you could find people that would go for it. But quite frankly, I don't think you will. I'm just now starting to pull down one of those middle 5-digit salaries and I wouldn't give it up to work in your commune. I'm not a big fan of money, I see it as a necessary evil, but unfortuantly the people at Best-Buy, New Egg, and Game Stop all seem to be quite fond of it. And I DO have a thing for electronic gizmos. Even worse, women seem to enjoy things bought with the green paper even more than I do. And I am rather fond of them as well.
I'm a big fan of Mars and space-flight. I may be less willing to sacrifice my personal pleasures for it than you are, but I also think I am closer to the mean than you are as well. I just don't think you are going to find enough engineers and technicians who are willing to sacrifice their personal pleasures for the Mars vision.
Another killer issue is finding the start-up capital for this high-tech commune. Building a self-supporting society is expensive enough by itself, even more so if you plan to provide (or exceed) the modern standard of living. But doing this AS WELL as devloping the INCREDIBLY expensive capital invesments necessary for spaceflight is even worse. Rockets and the machinery to make, maintain, and launch them is insanely expensive, far more so than the money necessary for the commune itself.
While I'm all for forward thinking about new alternatives to our current capitilist based system, it seems to me that trying to overthrow our well entrenched and functional economic system ON TOP of going to Mars is a bit much. If the only way we get to mars is to overturn our current economic system, then it isn't going to happen.
As for the specifics. I'm certianly not capatilisims greatest fan, but the problems it does have aren't going to fixed by overthrowing it with some-sort of socilist/communist system. The people who do the most important work in any space-program, the technicians and engineers, are well paid, but not extravegently so. We are generaly only talking about 5 or 6 digit salaries here. This is entierly just as these workers are some of the best trained and educated in the world to acomplish these tough jobs. If there is waste, it is in the managment of these projects.
I don't see how overthrowing our current system will fix these problems. If history is any guide, then socilist/communist systems tend to have even more waste then capitalist system, and the workers have less incentive to do the best work possible.
IMHO, if there is to be a revolution, it should be more of a refinment of market driven capatilisim then replacing it with something else. I certianly think there are steps our goverment could (and should) take to ensure people are more adequatly compensated for their labor, to reduce and eliminate much of the waste that is present in the upper levels of management, and to refocus companies upon goals that are more benifical to the community at large rather than just their investors.
But all this has little to do with a succesfull space program.
Getting and staying at high-altitude is not really a problem. The U2, for example, was pretty much exactly like what you describe. A big winged, low weight plane, that could reach extreamly high alltitudes and loiter there for long periods.
But to get to space high altitude is not enough. What you need is speed, and big winged aircraft like the U2 are terrible at that. Those big wide wings create incredible amounts of drag, which increases geometricly as you increase in speed. So much so that a plane like the U2, despite having a powerfull jet enigne, cannot even break the sound barrier. So your carrier plane would be rather like a SR-71 rather than a U2.
To me it seems that the answer for mass-production of anti-matter lies neither in gathering naturaly occuring anti-matter (which I agree would be impratical/impossible), or our current methods of production, which generaly involve partical accelerator collisions, which is far to expensive. For anti-matter mass production to become possible some new way of creating it must be developed.
However, I would also be quick to point out that anti-matter is a total flop as an energy SOURCE. The very best efficency you could get at making it is 50% or twice the amount of energy it contains. It could make a fantastic energy store, but it is not a power source, that energy to create it is going to have to come from someplace else.
To me unless some-crazy new anti-matter production method is found, the most logical use for it is as a catalist for various nuclear reactions.
-Manned spacecraft, with the exception of Shuttle's fuel tank and boosters, do not have self-destruct mechanisms. This is what they are for, to prevent the rocket from becomming a threat outside the launch area.
I was aware that the SRB had range safeties, but not that they were incoporated into the main tank. Not that I doubt you, but do you have a source for this?
-- Actualy I just did some quick research on this. It seems the external tank orginaly incoporated range safeties, but sometime in the 90's they were removed to save weight.
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A mixed bag. The Shuttle external tank is a dangerous source of combustibles no matter how you cut it. No matter where and how it explodes, things are going to be messy. At least it doesn't incoporate any sort of engine so the range it can be thrown off course is limited, especialy in comparision to the SRB.
After the ugly fight over the last drop of oil using the last two bricks of the Uranium, I think that we can look forward to harvesting our own firewood at seventeen acres a year from our 1,700 acre woodlot and giving half of the 340,000lb of firewood we produce to the company that owns us in this new era of serfdom while living off less than the 10,000lb firewood per family member per year that living at the medieval level requires...
Also, we will be eating our own shoes.
Seriously though, I have no doubt that we will be able to sustain (and even accelerate) or current standard of livings. Certianly we're not going to run out of Uranium (and other fission fuels) in the next couple thousand years, much less the next 60. Here is a good sight about the sustainability of human progress. I don't think we are going to have to fall back on firewood just yet.
...SpaceX of El Segundo, CA, is one of at least a half-dozen companies seriously competing to revolutionize space travel in much the way a few savvy entrepreneurs transformed computing in the 1970s and '80s. The new companies are trying a variety of approaches aimed at reducing launch costs by a factor of ten. Many of the companies started out competing for the $10 million Ansari X Prize, awarded in 2004 for the first privately financed rocket to fly into space twice in two weeks. (That rocket, the suborbital SpaceShipOne, was built by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, of Mojave, CA.)
As with the others I don't think the analogies is a very apt one. First and most obviously, rockets simply do not have the potential for geometric advances like computers chips do. We are already at just about the edge of their theoretical performance, and any further advancment is going to have to come at signifigant cost no matter how you slice it. There is no Moores law for rocketry.
The second reason this analogie is not very apt is that the computer pioneers of the 1970's and 80's realy didn't do anything to dramaticaly lower the price of computers, they just figured out a way to market them to a larger audiance. Sure prices dropped some due to increased mass production and reduced per-unit costs, but no multiple order of magnitude cost reduction took place. And that is exactly what space-flight needs. Eliminate of most of the pork might reduce costs 5 fold or even more, but as Musk is finding out (the hard way) spaceflight is still difficult and expensive.
No, you dont need the big launch vehicle to move cargo that can be slingshot slowly out with the off the shelf package that Hughes used to orbit a sattelite from a bad orbit too close to earth to out past the moon. Resupply is a lot less fuel consuming if you are willing to pulse the orbit changes and get there in six weeks rather than six days.
The only thing needed to go to the moon on the big heavy lift is the Hab/lander transporting the crew one way. Continuous Re-supply is cheaper than a continuous stream of send and bring home.
While it very possible to use a more efficent low thrust engine if you take your moon approach slowly, the amount of Delta-V required remains the same. It's important to remember that it's not enough to simply "orbit" the moon. In the case you sight I think the probe actualy remained in Earth orbit, although it's apogee was out beyond the moon, I think Apollo 8 was something like this. Being actualy in orbit around the Moon is something diffrent. After you get your craft out there you have to break and slow down in order to "fall" into orbit around the moon. You have to be in orbit around the moon alone. To return to Earth you have to boost back out from the moon's gravity well (but luckily breaking in Earth orbit is generaly free).