Trump Tower?

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-11-11 01:50:10

We have a new president, Donald Trump, and he likes to build stuff. with government funding, what sort of things might he direct NASA to build? Particularly if Trump likes to build towers, what if he tried to build a particularly tall one for launching satellites? How tall a tower could we possibly build? Assume the time frame is the next 8 years. Would their be an advantage in building a tower as tall as we can and ten launching a rocket from the top of it?

RobS · 2016-11-11 07:07:58

It'd be cheaper to build a road to the top of a tall mountain, and rich people don't get rich by spending money unnecessarily! If you tried to build a tower on top of a tall mountain, it'd be horrendously expensive and you'd have to deal with lots of weather problems. I don't think you can build a tower tall enough to make much of a difference, either.

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-11-11 08:43:58

Well Trump wouldn't be spending his money in this case if he were President. A tall mountain is made of rock, the highest tall mountain there is, is Mount Everest, I think with modern construction techniques, we can build something that was even taller because the construction material we would use would not be rock. Mount Everest is about 5 miles high, using a compression structure, I think we could build a structure that was 10 miles high or 52,800 feet. In the center of the tower, we can build an elevator big enough to carry a rocket.
1 second
32 ft/sec
16 feet

10 seconds
320 ft/sec
1600 feet

20 seconds
640 ft/sec
6400 feet

30 seconds
960 ft/sec
14,400 feet

40 seconds
1280 ft/sec
25,600 feet

45 seconds
1440 ft/sec
32,400 ft.

50 seconds
1600 ft/sec
40,000 ft.

55 seconds
1760 ft/sec
48,400 ft.

56 seconds
1792 ft/sec
50,176 ft.

57 seconds
1824 ft/sec
51,984 ft.

by accelerating up this shaft at 2 times the acceleration due to Earth's gravity, we can achieve a velocity of 0.35 miles per second, if we accelerate up this shaft at 3-g then we end up cruising at 0.7 miles per second at an altitude of 10 miles, this is about 0.5 km/sec and you till have 10.5 km/sec to go to achieve escape velocity or about 7.5 km/sec to achieve orbit. The rocket would continue to ascend for 114 seconds after having accelerated up the tower at 3-g for 57 seconds, starting at an initial upward velocity of 3648 ft/sec, it would reach a maximum height of 207,936 ft. or 39 miles, if the rocket fired its engines in a horizontal direction for the 114 seconds it took to reach that height and accelerated at 3-g, it would reach a horizontal velocity of 10,944 feet per second or 2 miles per second, almost half orbital velocity, it would take another 114 seconds to fall back to 10 miles altitude after that, if we ignore the curvature of the Earth., If we added another g of acceleration, we could probably reach orbit in another 120 second by canceling our downward fall.

elderflower · 2016-11-11 11:42:12

I woder,will it be built with Mexican bricks?
Seriously though, the top of your tower is still well within the Atmosphere. Therefore it might be partially supported with buoyant gas bags (Hydrogen or Helium).
It would be handy if it had a vacuum in it, but that would only be possible if the top could be closed off, then you wouldn't need to push a large quantity of air out of the top. Perhaps a burstable cover?
To evacuate it would be difficult unless it could be charged with Ammonia which could then be scavenged by a water spray. I don't know how much of a vacuum this would make, but it might be quite good, considering the solubility of Ammonia.
The bore of the tube should be non conducting so that a linear accelerator could surround it to accelerate the fuelled rocket and payload to very high velocity at the exit from the tube, before ignition.

Last edited by elderflower (2016-11-11 11:43:27)

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-11-11 12:54:26

elderflower wrote:

I woder,will it be built with Mexican bricks?
Seriously though, the top of your tower is still well within the Atmosphere. Therefore it might be partially supported with buoyant gas bags (Hydrogen or Helium).
It would be handy if it had a vacuum in it, but that would only be possible if the top could be closed off, then you wouldn't need to push a large quantity of air out of the top. Perhaps a burstable cover?
To evacuate it would be difficult unless it could be charged with Ammonia which could then be scavenged by a water spray. I don't know how much of a vacuum this would make, but it might be quite good, considering the solubility of Ammonia.
The bore of the tube should be non conducting so that a linear accelerator could surround it to accelerate the fuelled rocket and payload to very high velocity at the exit from the tube, before ignition.

They don't need to be boyant, simple air pressure within the bags can support the tower I don't think the shaft need be evacuated, you simply push hard enough to overcome the air resistance, as you go faster and higher the air thins out and there is less wind resistance. In fact you could even push the air upwards with your payload

Antius · 2016-11-11 15:54:09

Elon Musk already has a semi-practical vision. Trump is in a position to throw a lot of government money behind a plan that could lead to a US colony on Mars. Everything starts with a cheap superheavy lifter. It is an American industry after all and the sort of high tech industry that the country really needs more of.

Last edited by Antius (2016-11-11 15:55:09)

Void · 2016-11-11 18:04:49

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/space … y-1.319473

GW Johnson · 2016-11-12 11:46:01

Why wait another half century to a century developing a new tinkertoy that makes a relatively minor improvement? Why not just go now with the tinkertoys we already have?

Our ancestors did not wait for the invention of steamships to cross the Atlantic and settle the Americas, they used the sailing vessels they had. They went as soon as they could manage it.

The trick isn't the tinkertoys, it's how we employ them. Our ancestors' sailing ships were not expendable, nor did they just look over the rail and sail home, nor did they just visit one site.

When they first got there, they stopped and visited multiple sites, staying a while to assess each. That's how they set up the colony voyages to the selected sites.

We should do the same. We have known what is important, and we have had propulsion, life support, and crew health-and-safety knowledge adequate for the task since the late 1990's. We already have the tinkertoys we need.

Now, how do we employ them without all that one-way expendable payload and rocket horseshit? That's why it's been expensive. And it's why we only did flag-and-footprints on the moon.

GW

Void · 2016-11-12 20:56:22

Hi GW, I will try this again:
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1726947 … ace-tower/

I had no intention of arguing this case, I just though I would provide it to Tom.

However, since we are here, I will make comments.

On the positive side the owner of the patent claims to be able to save 30% fuel to orbit, which if accomplished, would certainly allow for some new alternatives for spacecraft. However if you read to the bottom of the article, the ability of the tower to deal with wind seems quite questionable.

Speaking of wind however, the tower will make money by harvesting energy from the wind supposedly, so that could be a plus. Also in this article the potential for tourism is mentioned.

As for your particular objections, I sort of agree. Now is not the time for this, unless they want to do it themselves somehow.

But supposing you did believe in the development of bird flight, from an ancestor that did not fly to an Eagle which is likely a very fragile thing, but somehow, has the precision to grab fish out of a lake, and then to fly up to the top of a tree, and perch on a branch, consider evolution guided by a higher power if you like, or reject the whole thing. It is up to you.

One thing is true, given time the primitive landing successes of SpaceX and Blue Origins will likely progress over time, if there is a profit to be made in continuing down that path.

So, someday, maybe such a capability as to land on that tower (If they can build such a tower).

So, in other words, without the development of advanced landing techniques, and being able to land time after time without severe mishaps occurring too often, then the tower is a thing too soon.

But what SpaceX and Blue Origins are doing could be a precursor to the skills needed later to possibly get the 30% savings on fuel.

But this is not a thing I would have any desire to make you unhappy about. You are correct in the way that matters just now.

Another article with some other interesting information:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 … othx-tower
quote:

A Canadian space firm is one step closer to revolutionizing space travel with a simple idea – instead of taking a rocket ship, why not take a giant elevator into space?
Thoth Technology Inc has been granted both US and UK patents for a space elevator designed to take astronauts up into the stratosphere, so they can then be propelled into space.
The company said the tower, named the ThothX Tower, will be an inflatable, freestanding structure complete with an electrical elevator and will reach 20km (12.5 miles) above the Earth.
“Astronauts would ascend to 20km by electrical elevator. From the top of the tower, space planes will launch in a single stage to orbit, returning to the top of the tower for refueling and reflight,” Brendan Quine, the tower’s inventor, said in a statement.
Traditionally, regions above 50km (31 miles) in altitude can only be reached by rocket ships, where mass is expelled at a high velocity to achieve thrust in the opposite direction. Quine said in the patent that rocketry is “extremely inefficient” and that a space elevator would take less energy.
In the patent, Quine explained that rocket ships expend more energy because they “must counter the gravitational force during the flight by carrying mass in the form of propellant and must overcome atmospheric drag”.
In contrast, by using an elevator system, “the work done is significantly less as no expulsion mass must be carried to do work against gravity, and lower ascent speeds in the lower atmosphere can virtually eliminate atmospheric drag”.
“Part of the limitation on space travel is the cost of getting to space,” Quine told the Guardian. “The tower could change space travel because professional rockets are very energy intensive and not very environmentally friendly.”
The elevator cars can also be powered electrically or inductively, eliminating the need to carry fuel, Quine wrote. The technology offers a way to access space through reusable hardware, and will save more than 30% of the fuel of a conventional rocket, Thoth Technology said in a July statement.
Quine said when a traditional rocket ship launches from Earth, it flies vertically about 15-25km (9-15 miles) before hitting drop-off stages, when sections of the rocket drop back to Earth, usually falling into the ocean. During the final stage when it enters space it is flying horizontally.
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The ThothX Tower will eliminate the need for the vertical flight and drop-off stages, which are very energy intensive.
“In our concept, you ascend electrically and remove the whole vertical launch phase,” Quine said. “Then you get into a space plane, which is like a passenger jet, and take off horizontally.”
An elevator to space has been a longstanding idea as an alternative to rocket ships, but has always been believed as unfeasible because no known material can support itself at such a height. Thoth’s design sidesteps this problem by building the elevator to 20km so it sits within the stratosphere rather than all the way in the geostationary orbit, where satellites fly.
The tower, pneumatically pressurized and actively guided over its base, could also be used for wind-energy generation and communications, according to Thoth Technology.
Quine said the tower will also be open to tourists, providing a way for people to experience space-like conditions without losing gravity.
Citing science-fiction author Arthur C Clarke’s proposal of a space elevator in his 1978 novel The Fountains of Paradise, Quine explains in the patent that a space elevator could be constructed with a cable and counterbalanced mass system.
Thoth’s president and CEO, Caroline Roberts, said space travel, coupled with self-landing rocket technologies being developed by other companies, will bring a new era of space transportation.
“Landing on a barge at sea level is a great demonstration, but landing at 12 miles above sea level will make space flight more like taking a passenger jet,” she said in the statement.

So, it is not a vertical take off, I was wrong. I wonder how they land? I suppose aircraft carrier technology might relate.
Quote:

“In our concept, you ascend electrically and remove the whole vertical launch phase,” Quine said. “Then you get into a space plane, which is like a passenger jet, and take off horizontally.”

Last edited by Void (2016-11-12 21:21:08)

SpaceNut · 2016-11-12 21:01:52

There is history that even reed boats and large canoe structures were able to traverse large areas of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans....
So we have a near term ship in the Red dragon capsule to work with but we will need other parts to go with it such as Bigelows inflatable, the Cargo cans from ATK and other products made from the Italian company which has made the ISS modules possible to make the trip possible. What we make it not is mission drift, increases in crew size or duration of stay, then there is the science payload and mission that will doom the cahnces of going with what we have.

Void · 2016-11-12 21:18:11

This thread deals with a method proposed, to find a loophole in the law of gravity and friction.

Other fantastic possibilities are Metallic Hydrogen, and air breathing spacecraft.

None of these are ruled out yet, but of course perfection of current methods, is a path that can get us from point A to point B without waiting for these possibilities.

But the article states that the tower would be build with private investor money, so it is no skin off of our noses. Cheer them on, what do we have to loose?

And here is another interesting quote:

The tower, pneumatically pressurized and actively guided over its base, could also be used for wind-energy generation and communications, according to Thoth Technology.
Quine said the tower will also be open to tourists, providing a way for people to experience space-like conditions without losing gravity.

So, presuming they could somehow pull this off, they would have several revenue streams to justify it.

I would like to see it happen.

Last edited by Void (2016-11-12 21:23:04)

SpaceNut · 2016-11-12 21:34:14

Tom's linear accelerator is simular to a rail gun system for propulsion via an air ram elevator to launch the rocket which moves the rocket upward lowering the delta v to orbit but its not by much.....

Void · 2016-11-13 11:12:43

August 22, 2016 (Pembroke Ont.)
Here is recent news, which indicates that thothx still is active, at least in it's imagination. (With patents).
http://thothx.com/news-2/

Animation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVsUyPE … e=youtu.be

It interests me that for the horizontal take off to space vehicles with wings, I see a hope that if you had a propulsion malfunction, you might be able to glide to an abort to a ground runway.

As for SpaceX or Blue Origin and others with vertical landings, I can imagine the potential to boost up from the ground to the platform, with less than full fuel and Oxygen tanks, and then on top of the tower, fill the tanks to full.

Although they have a means to carry passengers and cargo up the walls, I wonder if a jet vehicle could go from ground to tower top. What about an airship to lift large loads.

And of course at the tower top Liquid Oxygen could be extracted from the atmosphere. A pipeline up the tower to convey Methane or Hydrogen? Maybe.

So, if they do it they may have space business, wind power, information broadcast, and tourism as income streams. That diversification would bode well for a business model, to ride out a bad market for any of those products.

I am also thinking of Venus and Titan. Venus is quite hot at the base of any tower put there, so, I presume new materials required.

Titan, just a funny game. How low can you go for launch costs on Titan with towers like this?

And then there are Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. If you could make a tower that floated, without a grounded base. Probably way off, but just mentioning the notion.

Last edited by Void (2016-11-13 11:27:08)

JoshNH4H · 2016-11-14 09:47:17

I don't really want to comment on this thread (I think it's a bit silly), but I just want to point out this unit conversion error from earlier:

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

0.7 miles per second at an altitude of 10 miles, this is about 0.5 km/sec

0.7 miles/second is 1.1 km/s, and 0.5 km/s is 0.3 miles per second.

I always use metric numbers because the units make more sense and you'll never screw up a conversion if you don't have to do one.

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-11-15 01:03:46

Void wrote:

I am also thinking of Venus and Titan. Venus is quite hot at the base of any tower put there, so, I presume new materials required.

As someone mentioned in another thread, carbon has a high melting point. I think we can manage a 10 mile high tower on Venus. The base may have to be wide, and we may need anchor cables to hold the tower erect. I am thinking this would not be a launch tower. Maybe instead as a means of paraterraforming the planet.

The towers anchor the sky sphere, keeping it centered on the planet. the sky sphere serves the same function as the inner cylinder on my artificial planet, it provides illumination, and creates the illusion of a 24-hour day, a normal sized Sun as seen from Earth, a fake moon, and also directs the air currents underneath by sucking in air from the top and redistributing it elsewhere to mimic the weather patterns of Earth.

RobS · 2016-11-15 12:06:18

Regarding the original topic of this thread--would Trump want to spend money on the space program--there's an article in Forbes that says a Trump administration is bad news for Elon Musk (short version of the story: he's a liberal): http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthomps … 7bdb1c4c56 .

Void · 2016-11-15 12:15:30

I think they will use him if they can. I believe they want lots of contracting in LEO. I don't expect that Trump will micromanage the work. He will find people to do that for him, and all he will want is results. I don't think he will care about who it is getting results.

Actually:
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/article/t … take-shape
Quote:

November 14, 2016
As the impending Trump administration begins to form, there are indications that NASA's agenda may drastically change under the new President.
A senior advisor to the Trump campaign, Congressman Robert Walker, told Forbes that the goals of America's space program will shift away from scientific missions in low Earth orbit towards something far more ambitious.
He told Forbes that the "Trump space policy anticipates human exploration far beyond low-Earth orbit and even beyond Mars."
Outlining the key facets of this policy, Walker forecast the development of technology for humans to explore the solar system "by the end of this century" and a change in NASA's budget to focus on this goal.
Additionally, Walker proposed "an aggressive program for development of hypersonic technology" as well as ensuring that work on the ISS continues well into the future.
Along with another Trump space advisor, Walker also indicated that the administration will be keeping an eye on the potential militarization of space by Russia and China.
As to the private space industry, the advisors suggested that collaboration between NASA and various companies could be further extended by the Trump administration.
Lest one think these proposals are merely talking points issued in the wake of a stunning campaign victory, the ideas were put forward by Trump last month during a campaign stop in Florida.
"I will free NASA from the restriction of serving primarily as a logistics agency for low earth orbit activity," he declared at the time, "instead we will refocus its mission on space exploration."
Clearly looking to leave his mark beyond even our own planet, Trump promised that, "Florida and America will lead the way into the stars."
With such lofty goals in mind, perhaps we laughed too soon this past summer when anomaly hunters spotted that Trump face on Mars.

Last edited by Void (2016-11-15 12:21:48)

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-11-15 12:28:12

RobS wrote:

Regarding the original topic of this thread--would Trump want to spend money on the space program--there's an article in Forbes that says a Trump administration is bad news for Elon Musk (short version of the story: he's a liberal): http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthomps … 7bdb1c4c56 .

Elon Musk launches satellites for a profit, here's what Trump might do, he might offer SpaceX tax credits if they launch a mission to Mars that NASA wants done, and after accounting for that cost, they can use that in lieu of paying taxes for that year, So SpaceX can launch several rockets to launch satellites and then they do something for NASA, and in return they don't pay taxes on the profits they earned, how does that sound?

JoshNH4H · 2016-11-15 14:00:26

Sounds like exactly the same thing as paying him to do it

SpaceNut · 2016-11-15 18:26:52

Lets broaden the credit on taxation to all space companies in the US that achieve the goals of cargo to LEO, creating other LEO facilities, Labs in orbit at near earth asteriods, stations in orbit around the moon, moon bases, orbital research labs or on mars moons, bases on the planet Mars and cloud cities for Venus....
So what would the level of the prize be for each and also we need target costs per person for each of these goals....

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#1 2016-11-11 01:50:10

Trump Tower?

#2 2016-11-11 07:07:58

Re: Trump Tower?

#3 2016-11-11 08:43:58

Re: Trump Tower?

#4 2016-11-11 11:42:12

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#5 2016-11-11 12:54:26

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#6 2016-11-11 15:54:09

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#7 2016-11-11 18:04:49

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#8 2016-11-12 11:46:01

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#9 2016-11-12 20:56:22

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#10 2016-11-12 21:01:52

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#11 2016-11-12 21:18:11

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#12 2016-11-12 21:34:14

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#13 2016-11-13 11:12:43

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#14 2016-11-14 09:47:17

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#15 2016-11-15 01:03:46

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#16 2016-11-15 12:06:18

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#17 2016-11-15 12:15:30

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#18 2016-11-15 12:28:12

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#19 2016-11-15 14:00:26

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#20 2016-11-15 18:26:52

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