Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Kosh on July 12, 2011, 12:41:19 am
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The economist thinks so (http://www.economist.com/node/18897425)
HOW big is the Earth? Any encyclopedia will give you an answer: its equatorial diameter is 12,756km, or, for those who prefer to think that way, 7,926 miles. Ah, but then there is the atmosphere. Should that count? Perhaps the planet’s true diameter is actually nearer 13,000km, including all its air. But even that may no longer be an adequate measure. For the Earth now reaches farther still. The vacuum surrounding it buzzes with artificial satellites, forming a sort of technosphere beyond the atmosphere. Most of these satellites circle only a few hundred kilometres above the planet’s solid surface. Many, though, form a ring like Saturn’s at a distance of 36,000km, the place at which an object takes 24 hours to orbit the Earth and thus hovers continuously over the same point of the planet.
Viewed this way, the Earth is quite a lot larger than the traditional textbook answer. And viewed this way, the Space Age has been a roaring success. Telecommunications, weather forecasting, agriculture, forestry and even the search for minerals have all been revolutionised. So has warfare. No power can any longer mobilise its armed forces in secret. The exact location of every building on the planet can be known. And satellite-based global-positioning systems will guide a smart bomb to that location on demand.
I don't agree at all with this, and in fact I think they have it completely backward. Because of its design by committee comprimises and overengineering it was never capable of achieving the economies of scale needed to make it a viable launch platform. But now that it is out of the way NASA will no longer be able to monopolize american space flight to the extent that they have, now that we have SpaceX and other astronautics companies sprouting up the Space Age isn't over, but rather it is only just beginning.
Thoughts?
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It depends how you define 'The Space Age', every age, the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron age etc were all based on what we used as a tools at the time, even the 'Nuclear Age' was as much a reference to power as to weapons.
There's a somewhat US-Centric position to the entire article, as though the end of the Shuttle means the end of Space-Travel, when in truth it means exactly what it says on the tin. Europe, Russia and China are still sending up satellites to near-Earth orbits, which is, to be honest, the only bit of Space we actually use.
I'd class 'The Space Age' with reference to going to other worlds to be similar to what is loosely defined as the Age of Discovery, where the Western powers were sending ships off to the Indias and Americas and coming back with little more than trinkets to prove they existed. So there's two real points to be made here:
1: Using space as a tool has not stopped, and is not likely to in the near future.
2: The concept of travelling beyond the Orbit of the Earth has been centred on rare and specialised events.
In that respect, depending on view, the Space Age is still going, or hasn't really even started beyond dipping our toe in the pool to see how warm it is.
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I don't believe Space Age ever properly began.
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2: The concept of travelling beyond the Orbit of the Earth has been centred on rare and specialised events.
That's really the point, so much of what NASA does and is about has been wrapped up in grandstanding and politics, but with arrival of private space companies and the failure to replace the shuttle, in the next 30 years we will start going to outer space for something much more practical and viable than media circuses: to make money.
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I'm inclined to agree, it'd be like going to the Americas, finding all it's natural wealth, saying 'Oh, that's interesting', and then never going back again.
That's not an Age.
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To put it simply, we need to go back to the lab and pull our sleeves up. Sure, right now we have the technology to send people to Mars, but not without enormous technical challenges, extreme risk, and an unbelievable price tag. So we have the technology to - sort of - get to the nearest planet; we don't really have the technology for it to make much sense at an acceptable risk. Anything that's beyond Earth orbit will likely remain the subject of unmanned missions until we develop the technical means to send people further out with a lower risk and cost. Until then, missions like Dawn and New Horizons will have to satisfy us space nuts :)
In the long run, whether or not you occasionally send a few people to low Earth orbit using a shuttle or a Soyuz makes little difference.
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I'm just happy I'm still living in an age that the Earth hasn't been completely ****ed over yet... We're gettin' there though.
My random opinion. :lol:
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Considering that the main point of retiring the Shuttle fleet is to get NASA back to their original focus, pushing the boundaries of exploration, I'd say that the exact opposite is true...we're just getting started. As generally successful as it was, the Shuttle was in practice little more than a glorified cargo ship. It's time to let private companies start in on the "easy" stuff, ferrying people and goods to the ISS and LEO, and let NASA get on with pure deep-space exploration.
Also, this article is profoundly stupid from start to finish. From the short-sighted digs at the ISS to the general tone of ignoring the majority of human history, it's a mess. This is the sort of tripe I'd expect from a tabloid.
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Thing is, every great leap in exploration and expansion in human history have been intrinsically linked with exploitation of what we have found. It may not be an appealing picture to paint, but it is true. If there's Methane on Titan or Silver on the Moon, then, as long as it can be done safely, I'm all for mining the living **** out of them, so long as (a) It doesn't create danger and (b) It can be pretty much proved that no life, even bacterial, is present.
At least this time we won't be displacing, enslaving or destroying thousands of lives purely for the sake of resources.
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Yes, but for such interplanetary mining to even be feasible, we'd need to develop new propulsion technologies that make it a lot less costly to transport the stuff along such distances. Say a metric ton of an ore costs 1000$.. the point is kind of moot when even getting it to earth orbit would cost well over a billion :)
We're probably talking hundreds of years before we're advanced enough for such ideas to become practical. Provided we'll even need such resources at that point.
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what we need to develop is extraterrestrial infrastructure. maned and unmanned. fuel depots, mining, manufacturing, shipyards, refineries, agriculture, etc. the idea is to make access to space pay for itself. resources gathered in space would almost exclusively be used in space. to supply space missions and eventually space colonizations. the main cost of space travel is lifting assets into orbit. the cost is coming down but it is likely to remain prohibitively high for a very long time.
you take a layered approach. nearest body is the moon. so what we need to do first is to send a bunch of automated factories to the moon to produce things like water, oxygen, and fuel. perhaps also building materials, nuclear fuel (uranium, helium3, etc), metals, and so on. their job will be to create and maintain stockpiles of useable resources to facilitate future exploration. when enough resources are available to support a colony, then you send the first wave of colonists. their job is to essentially setup a habitat. underground habitation seems most feasible at first. of course when you start to do agriculture, you will need to start building surface structures. once you can sustain a population, then you start seting up industrial infrastructure, mining and so on to allow improvement of the colony.
with the colony up and going you can begin to build launch infrastructure. compared to earth getting stuff off of the moon is a much simpler task. it requires almost no fuel in comparison. also you could put up a linear accelerator to save fuel. resources provided by the lunar colony can now expedite the manned exploration and exploitation of the rest of the solar system.
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"DArgo, I havent heard of anything like anything before. My planet doesnt even go to the moon anymore."
-John Crichton
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Too busy waging war and stealing people's money to allow us to go to space. The best thing you can expect now is a Alpha Centauri-esque UN mission where only the biggest richest bankers and industry leaders get offworld and leave us with a ruined Earth.
Compare the budget NASA received compared to 2008's banker bailouts, for instance.
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Kosh, I'm with you 200000%.
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To put it simply, we need to go back to the lab and pull our sleeves up. Sure, right now we have the technology to send people to Mars, but not without enormous technical challenges, extreme risk, and an unbelievable price tag. So we have the technology to - sort of - get to the nearest planet; we don't really have the technology for it to make much sense at an acceptable risk. Anything that's beyond Earth orbit will likely remain the subject of unmanned missions until we develop the technical means to send people further out with a lower risk and cost. Until then, missions like Dawn and New Horizons will have to satisfy us space nuts :)
In the long run, whether or not you occasionally send a few people to low Earth orbit using a shuttle or a Soyuz makes little difference.
Most of that extreme risk and enormous cost simply comes from the fact that the only missions selected to do it were trying to be like Apollo: Using a costly, huge, one time use rocket to send people there directly for a short period of time, after which point the entire platform expended and is essentially worthless. A much more sensible approach is to build something strictly for interplanetary travel along with the accompanying permenant spaceborne infrastructure to support it, along the lines of what Nuke suggested. Most of the cost is not getting from Earth orbit to Mars orbit, it's dragging the entire platform into orbit to begin with. The risk is mostly from not having a real permanent presence in space (the ISS barely counts), since that means you have no other spacecraft to back you up if something goes wrong, period. If we can have people completely underwater for 6+ months at a time why do we suddenly not have the technology to have people in a vacuum for 6+ months at a time?
Yes, but for such interplanetary mining to even be feasible, we'd need to develop new propulsion technologies that make it a lot less costly to transport the stuff along such distances. Say a metric ton of an ore costs 1000$.. the point is kind of moot when even getting it to earth orbit would cost well over a billion :)
We're probably talking hundreds of years before we're advanced enough for such ideas to become practical. Provided we'll even need such resources at that point.
Actually we had working prototypes of a propulsion technology back in the 70's that would have done just that, but as I said the cost is not in the interplanetary travel but rather just the launch. To give some perspective, despite being in the same payload class as the Falcon 9, the proposed Ares 1 would, at lowest, have costed $138 million per launch if launched multiple times per year or $1 billion if only flown once a year. The Falcon 9 costs $50 million to launch. Don't underestimate the amount that NASA's bloat jacks up the launch cost. In the future with stuff like the Skylon the launch costs will go down even more.
So hundreds of years? Only if we keep going with government dominated space flight instead of building a real spaceborne economy.
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The world is too risk-adverse IMO. We won't make it if we're so afraid of each other that we have to scan them every time they set foot on an airplane, let alone a spaceship.
Not just that, but space travel is dangerous. Trying to sugar coat it and say it's "safe" is belittling it. People need to accept risk and accept danger and accept that death is a part of life. People rave about the space shuttle not being safe enough; considering what it is, what it's doing, and how often it flies, two accidents with relatively minimal (and of course still unfortunate) loss of life is NOT the doomsayer of the program (various other things should be, IMO). Do you think the astronauts who perished would want the program halted on their behalf? Do you think that they didn't accept he risks and know the dangers?
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space hotel is being built to be launched in 2015.
Just to counter UT's rant a little.
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It's being built by Bigelow Aerospace, is it not? It's one of their inflatable habitats? I didn't know they were planning to build it so soon.
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For long-term lifts to orbit, would building... I forget the name, but basically an asteroid anchored to Earth with an elevator make much sense? Better yet 3 / 4 or more of them so that if something goes crazy wrong with one and you have to jettison it, you still have access.
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Space elevator. We don't have materials that are strong enough to build it. A Space elevator requires materials that are at least 130 GPa. The hardest steel I find in a second is alloy 1090, with a tensile strength of .84 GPa.
Now you see the impossibilities.
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Space elevators are uber cool and even if they are impossible we should still build them
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Can you imagine building it in this environment of total fear? "OMG THE TERRORISTS!".
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Space elevators are uber cool and even if they are impossible we should still build them
This is the mental byproduct of too much FREDding: treating real world barriers as code limits that should be fixable in the new Nightly release of the executable where the limits have been revamped to 64k.
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Space elevators are uber cool and even if they are impossible we should still build them
This is the mental byproduct of too much FREDding: treating real world barriers as code limits that should be fixable in the new Nightly release of the executable where the limits have been revamped to 64k.
lol, that's what they said about goddard
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Can you imagine building it in this environment of total fear? "OMG THE TERRORISTS!".
Hey, that was a legitimate plot point in Gundam 00. :p
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I think we really need to focus on space exploration and retiring the shuttles is a mistake for the following reasons, well ok these one prob need retiring but we need new vessels for space!
1 There will be a point when earth will be unable to support human life.
2 The sun will eventually burn itself out, and also will expand, so the earth will be engulfed.
3 We will eventually use up most of the resources on this planet.
Its only a matter of time
We need to be getting out there if the human race is to survive. i am amazed we have never actually tried to set up a moonbase to be honest, we got space stations but no moonbase?
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Space elevators are uber cool and even if they are impossible we should still build them
Design it. In thinking through the problems you may yet come up with a novel solution. Blimps along the lower length of the elevator to help support it? :D
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I think we really need to focus on space exploration and retiring the shuttles is a mistake for the following reasons, well ok these one prob need retiring but we need new vessels for space!
1 There will be a point when earth will be unable to support human life.
2 The sun will eventually burn itself out, and also will expand, so the earth will be engulfed.
3 We will eventually use up most of the resources on this planet.
Its only a matter of time
We need to be getting out there if the human race is to survive. i am amazed we have never actually tried to set up a moonbase to be honest, we got space stations but no moonbase?
Moonbases are a whole other level of difficulty beyond maintaining a low orbit space station.
You should read up about Space X. There is some promising work being done there that may eventually surpass what we've seen from NASA. We'll see.
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Space elevator. We don't have materials that are strong enough to build it. A Space elevator requires materials that are at least 130 GPa. The hardest steel I find in a second is alloy 1090, with a tensile strength of .84 GPa.
Now you see the impossibilities.
My mom still tells me the story of how one of her grade school teachers told her class that it would be impossible to go to the moon. Granted I don't think I'll see it in my lifetime but a space elevator is not impossible. Cables made from man made spider silk (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/CuttingEdge/story?id=98095&page=1) would do the job. They aren't there yet but they are definitely on the path.
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Spider Silk is nowhere near the *Order of magnitude* required for such a job. Nice try though.
If you tried nanotubes u would be less wrong.
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The problem is inertia to a large degree, a rail-gun system would probably put stuff into space pretty economically, but I would have thought nothing organic would survive the launch. Oddly enough, the emerging system of piggy back as high as possible and then launching may be the best midway option for the forseeable future. Whilst it's still not cheap, taking the 'scenic route' of horizontal flight might prove to be far cheaper than getting out of the atmosphere as fast as possible, which is kind of ironic.
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Spider Silk is nowhere near the *Order of magnitude* required for such a job. Nice try though.
If you tried nanotubes u would be less wrong.
Spider silk is 3x stronger than kevlar which is 5x stronger than steel. I think the order of magnitude is covered, the problem is production. Making enough spider silk to produce a cable that could be used in such a project isn't feasible right now but in a few years who knows. My point was more about limiting peoples thinking by throwing the word "impossible" around.
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Can you imagine building it in this environment of total fear? "OMG THE TERRORISTS!".
Hey, that was a legitimate plot point in Gundam 00. :p
Also a legitimate plot point in the Red Mars trilogy, with super spectacular results. :D
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Currently rereading the series. Excellent stuff. :yes:
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Space elevator. We don't have materials that are strong enough to build it. A Space elevator requires materials that are at least 130 GPa. The hardest steel I find in a second is alloy 1090, with a tensile strength of .84 GPa.
Now you see the impossibilities.
yeah, why you think "hardest steel" would give you best tensile strength I do not know. why don't we talk about CNTs which have been made with a strength of about 60GPa (up from about 4GPa in 2000) and are expected to get to be about 300 GPa. this is a RAPIDLY developing field of materials science that is just getting started, I think if we really put our minds to it we could get it done within 25 years.
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A space elevator would be pretty damn awesome, but there's always this part of me that views it as something of a cop-out. Give me a real sci-fi spaceship, dammit.
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I think we really need to focus on space exploration and retiring the shuttles is a mistake for the following reasons, well ok these one prob need retiring but we need new vessels for space!
1 There will be a point when earth will be unable to support human life.
2 The sun will eventually burn itself out, and also will expand, so the earth will be engulfed.
3 We will eventually use up most of the resources on this planet.
Its only a matter of time
We need to be getting out there if the human race is to survive. i am amazed we have never actually tried to set up a moonbase to be honest, we got space stations but no moonbase?
1 & 2 are very long term concerns perhaps on the order of between thousands to billions of years, but #3 is the one that is gonna bite us in the balls some time within the next hundreds of years, that is unless we do something to curb our rate of population growth or slice quality of life across the board.
retiring the shuttle is actually a good thing. its an old ship, and its time to step away from it so that new technology can take its place. you got skylon, falcon/dragon, etc all gearing up to take over. with them costs go down and you have the competition between private space organizations which will further drive down the price of a space launch. new markets like space tourism. as for a moon base there isnt much reason to build it just to say we did. its going to take something like demand for helium 3 to validate a moon base, and if that mining cant be done remotely with robots then you have a viable reason for lunar habitation. of course this opens up a whole other slew of possibilities which i went into in my previous post.
A space elevator would be pretty damn awesome, but there's always this part of me that views it as something of a cop-out. Give me a real sci-fi spaceship, dammit.
space elevator is not going to be a near term plan. we need to aquire a counter weight first, its gonna need to be pretty big and in a geosync orbit. merely catching this thing is going to be an effort, its going to require a lot of fuel. you might also need to do an aerobreak maneuver with the thing as well, and earths population will not approve of this at all. its a fun thing to think about but right now we need a successor to the space shuttle. the space elevator will likely require in space infrastructure that we dont have yet, new ships are essential to that so that is what needs to be worked on. skylon seems to have the best on paper design, its engine is an awesome concept, and will finally allow for true ssto operations. its gonna be badass.
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Space elevator. We don't have materials that are strong enough to build it. A Space elevator requires materials that are at least 130 GPa. The hardest steel I find in a second is alloy 1090, with a tensile strength of .84 GPa.
Now you see the impossibilities.
yeah, why you think "hardest steel" would give you best tensile strength I do not know. why don't we talk about CNTs which have been made with a strength of about 60GPa (up from about 4GPa in 2000) and are expected to get to be about 300 GPa. this is a RAPIDLY developing field of materials science that is just getting started, I think if we really put our minds to it we could get it done within 25 years.
I did speak of CN. Up here in this same page. Look it up.
EDIT: I mean the idea makes for an excellent sci fi. But come on people. Put some more neurons on this one than the ones you are apparently investing in, and you'll see that it's an utterly gigantic engineering effort with impossible to near-impossible materials required and astonishing luck that nothing gets wrong (I wouldn't like to see a "woops" followed by the falling of a 10 KM "string" of Material X going to the ground).
So ok, let's agree that it is at least "conceivable", and by no means I want to dismiss the excited communities that are trying to ramp up technologies and engineering solutions to this problem, but really nothing of this kind will be started to build in our lifetimes. And I still intend to live throughout this century.
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On one hand, I'd love to see us capture a metallic asteroid, put it in orbit, mine it and use the resources. On the other hand, once we get an asteroid in orbit, it just takes one asshole nutjob to cause an extinction event.
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That aint so easy to do. The orbit in question can be relatively far away as well.
And there's good chance you'll find stuff in orbit anyway already, specially in the Langrangian points
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The problem is inertia to a large degree, a rail-gun system would probably put stuff into space pretty economically, but I would have thought nothing organic would survive the launch. Oddly enough, the emerging system of piggy back as high as possible and then launching may be the best midway option for the forseeable future. Whilst it's still not cheap, taking the 'scenic route' of horizontal flight might prove to be far cheaper than getting out of the atmosphere as fast as possible, which is kind of ironic.
This is irrefutably the way to go - it requires no real brain power to recognize this after one has a basic understanding of physics and aerodynamics. And I do mean basic:
The basic rocket design is an attractive concept because it is readily understood and is fairly simple to make calculations for. A cylindrical design means that your center of mass along the line of action/flight is inherently in the center, and manufacturing components to fit in a cylinder isn't too difficult a task. It's still a lot of manufacturing time when you have a "specialty" product on that order of magnitude, however, and along with the cost of fuel it's not going to be cheap unless there was significantly more demand.
The problem of course is that you're fighting gravity for a long way up, and that fighting will be part of your initial engineering calculations. 0 to mach something almost straight up is not easy.
Fighting gravity at an angle of attack less than 90 degrees is a great way to not have to have a power-to-weight ration of greater than 1-1 when reaching launch-ingress speed and altitude. An easier climb means you use less fuel, less fuel means you have to lift less mass, etc., etc. And less mass is easier to accelerate with. I could go on, but this should be easy enough to understand.
Thus, level flight to altitude and launch point is a great idea. The problem is that now you're not just designing a spacecraft which must climb through the atmosphere (aka rocket), but a true aerospace system. Extra aeroplane is extra mass, which some would complain about with regards to the shuttle. A self-launched system is the ideal, though the combination of tried-and-true technology at this point is the limiting factor. Having separate fuel cells for air-combustible fuel and bi-fuel reactions/SRBs (should a system be so designed) as well as separate engines is a HUGE amount of mass to lug around. The best solution currently thus is a parasite launch vehicle scheme, similar to SS2. Otherwise, you need a system like Skylon, where you can reduce both the propulsion systems as well as the fuel loadings. We really need Skylon.
Another option is the air-launched rocket (which has been experimented with) which would be designed for conventional recovery (ala Shuttle SRB's).
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...and then there's that spinning monstrosity that gets its boost from microwave blasts from the ground.... pretty kewl stuff btw
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The problem with that then is your dependence on ground-based systems.
However, if we begin to see more nuclear-powered spacecraft, the same engine concept you noted above, as see in sources here:
http://grasptheuniverse.com/star-travel/beamed-energies-propulsion/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam-powered_propulsion
...could power themselves in the atmosphere, while using the same reactor in space to drive engines such as VASIMR, etc. I feel this represents a very effective, low-mass propulsion system.
Combining the aerospike engine with the SABRE engine concept would assumably be a great design direction if using chemical reactants as fuel alone.
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My personal take is that the space age will never be over as long as we rely on space-based systems so heavily. We have a constant, if unmanned, presence in outer space, and until that changes, the space age lives on.
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That aint so easy to do. The orbit in question can be relatively far away as well.
And there's good chance you'll find stuff in orbit anyway already, specially in the Langrangian points
Unfortunately only L4 and L5 are stable, and are also quite a ways away from Earth. There's also reason to doubt that many asteroids are there due to the influence of the moon which makes those points unstable in the long term.
On the other hand, asteroids in horseshoe orbits (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_orbit) could make for easy mining targets, as they regularly and predictably get "fairly" close to earth without posing a significant impact risk. Might even be able to capture one someday. :D
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Regarding the space elevators - this concept does not require any new materials, substitutung tensile strenght with momentum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop
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merely catching an asteroid will be no easy task, since it will likely weigh more than every spacecraft and satellite ever flown combined. it would take a lot of missions just to determine if an asteroid is a viable canidate for capturing. you need to determine all this stuff well in advance:
composition (metal/rock/rubble)
mass
center of gravity
orbital parameters (this can be done with basic ground astronomy)
there's probably more you need to know, but thats all i could think of. you also have a couple modes of operation, do you want to catch a flyby asteroid, or do you want to pluck one out of a fairly stable solar orbit. catching a flyby will require that the asteroid come under sufficient gravitational influence from the earth. apophis is actually a fairly good candidate, assuming its not a rubble pile. all you need is a lot of retrograde thrust in a short amount of time while the asteroid is closest to earth. given the mass it would take a huge amount of thrust, and therefore fuel. srbs would probably be the best bet. the window of time for this is very narrow so you cant use slow burn engines like ion or solar sails. you could also use an aerobrake maneuver but thats just asking for trouble.
it might actually be simpler to pull an asteroid from a solar orbit. you could land slow burn propulsion systems, like ion engines. solar sails would be good for this kinda thing if you have time to wait. so over the course of years or even decades you do a low thrust hohmann transfer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohman_transfer). this is also safer because of the low rate of change of the orbit. if something goes wrong you have time to see in in advance, and react to it. using the previous method a misfiring of the srbs could take your pet rocks and drop in into the atmo, and you would have little time to do anything about it. but with low thrust engines you have super fine control of the asteroid's orbit and can completely avoid putting it into hazardous situations.
either way requires landing on the asteroid and installing engines, reaction control thrusters, and other equipment. this can probably be done with robots. it might be better just to mine asteroids in place though. having an asteroid in a less than lunar orbit would certainly provide a good place to build a large orbital industrial complex. you could also hollow one out for habitation, which would protect the interior installation from radiation and solar storms. you would definately need to do this for a space elevator, but i dont see that as being feasible at the moment. so i would use it as an infrastructure platform rather than anything else in particular.
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My main concern with trying to capture an asteroid during close approach from an elliptical orbit would be that since you have to apply a huge amount of thrust in a fairly short time interval you might shatter the asteroid in the process (IIRC many asteroids are essentially fairly loosely-agglomerated rubble piles). If you could grab one from an earth-like solar orbit or horseshoe orbit then you might be able to very gently ease it into a more practical position and also have a lot more time during the process to react to any possible errors or unforeseen circumstances. Might be more economical fuel-wise as well.
I'd imagine you'd also need to be especially wary of imparting unwanted spin to the roid during the maneuver. Would require very good knowledge of its mass distribution (might be obtainable with gravity-measuring probes).
I'm all for trying aerobraking on a roid, that just sounds like a wonderful idea. :D
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My main concern with trying to capture an asteroid during close approach from an elliptical orbit would be that since you have to apply a huge amount of thrust in a fairly short time interval you might shatter the asteroid in the process (IIRC many asteroids are essentially fairly loosely-agglomerated rubble piles). If you could grab one from an earth-like solar orbit or horseshoe orbit then you might be able to very gently ease it into a more practical position and also have a lot more time during the process to react to any possible errors or unforeseen circumstances. Might be more economical fuel-wise as well.
I'd imagine you'd also need to be especially wary of imparting unwanted spin to the roid during the maneuver. Would require very good knowledge of its mass distribution (might be obtainable with gravity-measuring probes).
I'm all for trying aerobraking on a roid, that just sounds like a wonderful idea. :D
youre gonna get spin just from gravitational gradient torque, especially if the asteroid is oddly shaped. you can gimbal your engines and/or add reaction control thrusters and use them to maintain orientation and steer. likely the asteroid will already be spinning when you rig it for moving.
as for aerobreaking (and i hope you were being sarcastic) an asteroid in the earth atmosphere, id completely avoid it for safety reasons. there are many bad things that can happen. the worst of which: asteroid could break up. anything that doesn't immediately hit the ground will come back around and hit on the next orbit. also you could damage the propulsion systems, aerobrake can only slow you down, but you will need to do a small pro-grade burn at apogee to lift perigee out of the atmosphere so that the orbit remains stable. if you cannot make the burn, then when it hits perigee again the orbit will decay further until it just falls out of the sky. a small hard asteroid will be your best bet for aerobreaking, but even with a solid asteroid you risk it breaking up because its suddenly going from freezing to hot which creates a temperature differential between the core and the outside, which could cause the rock to shatter.
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:lol: I wasn't being serious on aerobraking. As cool as it'd be to see it happen in person (if it worked) there is simply far too much complexity and risk involved to be worth trying for real. :)
You bring up a good point on gravity-gradient torque, too. Maybe a good way to go about it is to align the spin axis with the orbital path so that it acts essentially like a giant gyroscope for stability. Then again, with a weirdly shaped rock you've got extra complications there.
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First of all, asteroids aren't readily available in low earth orbit. You have to go further than that to get one - a lot further. The Dawn mission arrives in orbit of Vesta, located in the asteroid field between Mars and Jupiter, tomorrow. It was launched in 2006 and the mission wasn't exactly cheap - and those were just the costs of sending a small probe over there, not something that would bring with it enough power to lug an asteroid back towards Earth. Anyway, in order to get an asteroid mined out in Earth orbit, you'd have to satisfy several criteria.
First, you'd need to know the exact size, composition, mass, and location of your target asteroid. You can't exactly send back Pallas or Ceres, those are way too massive, and right now we lack most of the data on smaller rocks present that would make such a mission feasible (hell, we lack most of the data on the larger rocks, which is why Dawn is out there on final approach to Vesta right now). This means years of sending probes to map out suitable asteroids - Dawn will just study Vesta and Ceres.
Then, you'd need to transport over an incredible amount of whatever it is you plan to use to get your target asteroid out of it's trajectory and on course for Earth. This would involve years of R&D and transporting costly material first into Earth orbit and then towards your target asteroid. Then you'd need to somehow remotely attach whatever it is you're using to propel the asteroid towards Earth - an array of boosters, a large explosive device, whatever. You'd also need to be very accurate or you may very well end up being responsible for wiping out every living thing on Earth. No pressure. Thousands of billions of dollars later, your most expensive space project to date (hell, most expensive project in the history of mankind, period) has produced a giant rock in orbit of Earth you can now mine at a hefty price (since it's still expensive as all hell to transport stuff up and down from just low Earth orbit - and you wouldn't park such an object in LEO due in no small part to extreme risks involved - you'd park it further out exponentially increasing the costs of reaching it). That rock better be made of Unobtanium laced with the purest processed heroin to justify the costs and risks.
Just wishing for a more elaborate space program isn't going to make it feasible. Fact of the matter is, while we have the technology to "get there", barely, we don't have the technology to actually do anything with it while making it cost effective and at least moderately safe. We're simply not there yet in terms of technological advancement.
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seems to me mining would be better do do in place. it would be a lot cheaper to send back refined ore than it would be to send back the whole asteroid. the only reason to put an asteroid into earth orbit is as a building platform. i wouldn't put it in leo at all. you need to at least be at geosync or higher. otherwise youl have a situation like you have with the moons like phobos, which will eventually hit mars due to tidal deceleration. point is you dont have to go all the way to the moon to have a stable platform for large scale industrial complexes. then again we could always build some mega rockets that can lift some serious tonnage, and build our own platform.
when i say layered approach i mean there are things that absolutely need to happen that open the door for other things. before we even think about orbital industrial complexes, moon bases, asteroid mining, or capturing and re-purposing asteroids. good place to start is orbital re-fueling. engine technology really isnt the issue there are plenty of engines on the drawing board and in use that can be used in space and use very little fuel/propellant and can deliver a lot of useful deltav. electric engines (ion, plasma, magnetic) use very little propellant and are meant to operate for long durations. the only thing really holding them back is the availability of electrical power. if those problems could be solved then a mission can be carried out with sufficient fuel for a return trip, refueled and sent out on another mission. so you get two missions essentially for the price of one (assuming the fuel depot can be used multiple times).
problem with electric engines is they are not launch engines. they dont provide enough thrust in a short enough time. you are never gonna see a nuclear launch engine for obvious reasons. launches for the most part will remain a chemical engine buisness for some time. sabre is a step in the right direction. cover as many bases with a single engine as you can, reduce oxidizer requirements, etc. we are going to need to lift a lot of tonnage into space with chemical engines to do anything mentioned so far. point is, one step at a time.
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Just wishing for a more elaborate space program isn't going to make it feasible. Fact of the matter is, while we have the technology to "get there", barely, we don't have the technology to actually do anything with it while making it cost effective and at least moderately safe. We're simply not there yet in terms of technological advancement.
Read my post please. Granted I wasn't referring to capturing asteroids because I'm not totally sold on the idea, but going to them isn't such a bad idea. What that is isn't building a more elaborate space program, it's building private industry in space. As I said, government dominated space programs are not the answer.
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The private sector hates negative profits even more than governments do. When governments overspend they can break the backs of taxpayers to make it up. When private industries overspend they generally go out of business.
That private industry in space would still be completely unprofitable with our current levels of technology. The whole concept would fail financially at the first step - getting your equipment into geosync orbit, let alone traversing the distance to the nearest asteroid belt, mining the stuff and getting back. It's simple math. If 1kg of some ore costs 2000$ on Earth (expensive ore), start calculating the costs of getting the automated mining equipment into orbit, then sending it over there, then sending the stuff back here, landing it on Earth and processing it. The costs rise exponentially if you want this to be manned.
It would make sense if you had some elaborate space infrastructure - space stations, research bases, shipyards, etc. At that point yes, if we find it's cheaper to mine something in space rather than lugging it from Earth we'll probably do that. But we're decades, if not centuries away from this. Before we get economical means to go out there safely and quickly I wouldn't expect the private sector to go much further than LEO.
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Space needs another attraction besides just raw materials or people who want to go to it saying we need to go to it.
Much of my work on my Venus colony concept was based off the idea that space should look like a better place, something that you can't get on Earth. Why would anyone want to live on Mars, if you think about it? Dead, cold, covered in rust...you can't exactly sell photos of the place beyond "hey look we're on a different planet".
The idea behind my Venus concept is that it would offer something you can't get on Earth, something that might make space more interesting to many people. Living in a floating sky ship whose interior looks like something humans would want to live in (as opposed to current space effort) I think would attract more people and more interest in the idea of colonization.
Tbh I view the ISS as a money hole for NASA, and the Shuttle has too much weight in politics for it to fly well, I think.
In regards to future flight, I see things being a lot stranger than many people expect. I see people downloading their minds into mechanical bodies, or undergoing genetic alteration to adapt to the harsh climates of space travel. I think sentient robots (probably us in robotic bodies), and real life furries are in the cards for future space travel.
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Future space **** will start by curiosity by wealthy billionaires that are just plain sick and tired of our planet's shenanigans, AKA luxury tourism. Then some billionaire will die, and the bubble pops. Then quietude again, until it gets cheaper. Then this economy will bubble up again and won't stop until we invent the warp drive. Then the 4th protocol of Zerblexians that state that any space-faring species with the ability to warp should be genocided to the last gene will take place and it'll be all over in less than a day.
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What do you need aliens for? Humans can exterminate themselves faster, cheaper, and with less hassle.
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But not completely. I was going for total anihilation, not "return to caveman age".
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The private sector hates negative profits even more than governments do. When governments overspend they can break the backs of taxpayers to make it up. When private industries overspend they generally go out of business.
And yet NASA was perfectly willing to shell out a billion to launch the Ares 1 while SpaceX was able to launch a rocket with the same amount of payload capacity for $50 million. NASA routinely goes over budget on nearly everything precisely because they are fundementally inefficient, with a bloated bureaucracy and highly protected jobs. One of the biggest reasons the shuttle lasted as long as it did was because it was viewed more as a pork barrel earmark rather than an asset, each shuttle took several thousand people for each orbiter just to keep it airworthy (for comparison the Skylon is intended to have a support crew of just 200).
That private industry in space would still be completely unprofitable with our current levels of technology. The whole concept would fail financially at the first step - getting your equipment into geosync orbit, let alone traversing the distance to the nearest asteroid belt, mining the stuff and getting back. It's simple math. If 1kg of some ore costs 2000$ on Earth (expensive ore), start calculating the costs of getting the automated mining equipment into orbit, then sending it over there, then sending the stuff back here, landing it on Earth and processing it. The costs rise exponentially if you want this to be manned.
Ah but mines crank out continual streams of said expensive ores. Once the machinary is up there it stays there, forever. Once the rock you're currently mining is depleted, you move it to another one. The machinery is a one time investment and people get rotated and resupplied on each trip. But you're also forgetting something important, what happens to the other metals? They stay in space where they will be used to build the infrastructure in space needed for future expansion. That greatly reduces the cost of space construction allowing for great expansion beyond the initial infrastructure you claim wont happen for centuries.
It would make sense if you had some elaborate space infrastructure - space stations, research bases, shipyards, etc. At that point yes, if we find it's cheaper to mine something in space rather than lugging it from Earth we'll probably do that. But we're decades, if not centuries away from this. Before we get economical means to go out there safely and quickly I wouldn't expect the private sector to go much further than LEO.
We've had much better propulsion technology than the simple chemical rockets since the 70's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA), with a greatly improved version developed in the 80's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Timberwind). Granted they aren't the best possible designs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fission-fragment_rocket), they are adequate for getting to the asteroid belt.
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That private industry in space would still be completely unprofitable with our current levels of technology. The whole concept would fail financially at the first step - getting your equipment into geosync orbit, let alone traversing the distance to the nearest asteroid belt, mining the stuff and getting back. It's simple math. If 1kg of some ore costs 2000$ on Earth (expensive ore), start calculating the costs of getting the automated mining equipment into orbit, then sending it over there, then sending the stuff back here, landing it on Earth and processing it. The costs rise exponentially if you want this to be manned.
Ah but mines crank out continual streams of said expensive ores. Once the machinary is up there it stays there, forever. Once the rock you're currently mining is depleted, you move it to another one. The machinery is a one time investment and people get rotated and resupplied on each trip. But you're also forgetting something important, what happens to the other metals? They stay in space where they will be used to build the infrastructure in space needed for future expansion. That greatly reduces the cost of space construction allowing for great expansion beyond the initial infrastructure you claim wont happen for centuries.
But sending the rockets there and back, even unmanned and with an empty hold, is still the most expensive part of the mission. Not only would you need enough fuel to get there, but you'd need to carry enough excess fuel to get back with a lot more weight added onto the ship. I really don't think that any of this is going to happen until current materials are near-expended and it happens to be cheaper for companies to go to the asteroids to mine than search the Earth for whatever scraps of precious materials are left. And at that point I'd bet that the world's economy would already be so crippled from thrashing that simply no one will be able to afford those missions aside from the richest nations and corperations.
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But sending the rockets there and back, even unmanned and with an empty hold, is still the most expensive part of the mission. Not only would you need enough fuel to get there, but you'd need to carry enough excess fuel to get back with a lot more weight added onto the ship. I really don't think that any of this is going to happen until current materials are near-expended and it happens to be cheaper for companies to go to the asteroids to mine than search the Earth for whatever scraps of precious materials are left. And at that point I'd bet that the world's economy would already be so crippled from thrashing that simply no one will be able to afford those missions aside from the richest nations and corperations.
It would not be one craft doing this. Going from Earth's surface to orbit is handled by a specialized craft, like the Skylon or some other launch system, then everything is handed off to another ship that is permenantly in space, where the extra weight of the fuel isn't such a big issue. This kind of thing isn't like anything we've ever attempted, largely because of really short sighted planning.
Fuel costs are surprisingly inexpensive. To give some sense of scale, the space shuttle used ~100 metric tons of liquid hydrogen and ~610 metric tons of liquid oxygen per launch. I've found a number of prices for liquid hydrogen, but I'll go with the upper one of $5.50 per kilo, so the total LH2 cost is $550,000 per launch. LOX prices are $1 per kilo, giving us a $610,000. Adding that up your fuel costs per launch of the shuttle (excluding the two solid boosters since I can't find pricing) comes out to $1.6 million, in other words a tiny fraction of the $450 million in total that NASA shells out for a flight. Where does the rest of it go? Can anyone say pork?
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Fuel is a minority of the price of any launch, but I think that this should be very easy to explain. To downplay the costs of a flight by comparing them to the fuel they spend is somewhat misleading, at best.
Having said that, and while appreciating the back and forth between you guys, I can't see much economic reasons for this space mineral industry to come about. First you need to create the need for these things en masse. I urge you to ponder more on what these reasons might be, i.e., why would a private company invest anything to be in space, considering the major costs and the fact that humankind is fine and dandy enough in this gravity well we call home.
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It would not be one craft doing this. Going from Earth's surface to orbit is handled by a specialized craft, like the Skylon or some other launch system, then everything is handed off to another ship that is permenantly in space, where the extra weight of the fuel isn't such a big issue. This kind of thing isn't like anything we've ever attempted, largely because of really short sighted planning.
Fuel costs are surprisingly inexpensive. To give some sense of scale, the space shuttle used ~100 metric tons of liquid hydrogen and ~610 metric tons of liquid oxygen per launch. I've found a number of prices for liquid hydrogen, but I'll go with the upper one of $5.50 per kilo, so the total LH2 cost is $550,000 per launch. LOX prices are $1 per kilo, giving us a $610,000. Adding that up your fuel costs per launch of the shuttle (excluding the two solid boosters since I can't find pricing) comes out to $1.6 million, in other words a tiny fraction of the $450 million in total that NASA shells out for a flight. Where does the rest of it go? Can anyone say pork?
The Shuttle orbiter using a combination of LOX/LH2 in its external tank. How on Earth does that lead to pork, or do you honestly think that the people that were working on the shuttle program added both just for kicks? IIRC they used a combination because just LOX wasn't the safest thing to use, but I'm not totally sure about that. I do know, however, that the SABRE enginges on the Skylon haven't even been prototyped in space yet whereas the engines on the shuttle have been in service for over 30 years, and given that they're phasing out the shuttles calling their use pork is fairly absurd. Pork doesn't work that way.
edit: my poosts are borky partially because I can't read and partially because elinks makes things complicated. maybe I should use a real web browser.
edit2: christ, who am I even quoting? all I remember is pork and fuel and I don't want to scroll up to check, so feel free to ignore everything in this post. So: pork barrel spending is just money being spent by congress that's generally "overlooked" when it's snuck onto a bill here or there, that no one really opposes just because of how mundane it is, but isn't really important beyond the fact that it garners support for the congressman in his/her constituency. High expense in shuttle launches isn't pork, it's just high expense.
edit3: damn elinks, can't modify posts without quitting once for some reason and scrolling in text boxes is a PITA. I'll stop editing after this one, promise. Using multiple spacecraft for a single mission like this adds lots of overhead for such a simple task. In the future this might be feasable when there is a larger selection of multipurpose craft available for use, but come to think of it midedit I realized that what you could probably do is assume you can get an asteroid in a near geosync orbit or so you could have one launch with a craft to get equipment there, mine stuff, then put it in a large gun and shoot it back to earth. You'd be shooting into the Earth's gravity well from a relatively small asteroid and you wouldn't need to bother with people or spaceships, just put it in a heat shielded box with a parachute and it'll be fine.
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And yet NASA was perfectly willing to shell out a billion to launch the Ares 1 while SpaceX was able to launch a rocket with the same amount of payload capacity for $50 million. NASA routinely goes over budget on nearly everything precisely because they are fundementally inefficient, with a bloated bureaucracy and highly protected jobs. One of the biggest reasons the shuttle lasted as long as it did was because it was viewed more as a pork barrel earmark rather than an asset, each shuttle took several thousand people for each orbiter just to keep it airworthy (for comparison the Skylon is intended to have a support crew of just 200).
Which pretty much means we agree on this point. Private sector hates negative profit more than governments and will be more efficient by definition.
Ah but mines crank out continual streams of said expensive ores. Once the machinary is up there it stays there, forever. Once the rock you're currently mining is depleted, you move it to another one. The machinery is a one time investment and people get rotated and resupplied on each trip. But you're also forgetting something important, what happens to the other metals? They stay in space where they will be used to build the infrastructure in space needed for future expansion. That greatly reduces the cost of space construction allowing for great expansion beyond the initial infrastructure you claim wont happen for centuries.
Machines a one time investment? Mining machines? You're kidding, right? I actually work for a company that, among other things, produces machines used in deep mining. The strains put on these rigs are enormous and even with the best quality control you have a constant need for maintenance. When you drill something, zero g or not, you will produce three things in excess; friction, heat, and fine dust. None of these play nice with your machines. Your drills will slowly dull no matter what super material they're from. Fine dust will catch onto your machine's parts no matter how well you protect them. Heat will do it's thing making sure the degradation is faster. You will have to isolate your constantly drained batteries well and replace them every now and then. And I haven't even gone in the technical challenges of near zero-g gravity environment mining, unknown (so far) tectonic stability of these rocks (you know, a part of a rock breaking off and floating away with your drill attached to it isn't nice) or the fact you have no Earth's magnetosphere protecting your equipment's electronics from solar winds and enormous amounts of radiation our Sun churns out. Mining machines mean a constant amount of maintenance even on Earth. In space, the needs and costs of that maintenance would rise exponentially. And we had real technical challenges just fixing the Hubble for the last time which is right here above us, not in some asteroid field over 2 AU away that took our latest probe over 5 years to reach. Even if that wasn't the case the costs of doing this would be astronomical if run from Earth. With the constant need for maintenance we're talking about sending manned missions for doing this, sending new machines to replace old ones each time they break, or having some sort of automated repair droids that would cost another infinite amount of money, r&d of tech we really don't have yet, and introduce even more parts to maintain in an already convoluted equation.
Or you can go mine your aluminum on Earth and have it shipped over on trucks/ships at a fraction of the cost.
What you're proposing would only make sense if we already had an extensive presence at least in the inner solar system. Otherwise, I don't think you realize just what sort of technical difficulties and engineering challenges you'd run into.
The process would need to work like this;
- cost effective, large scale way of getting to the orbit and beyond developed (don't have it);
- Mankind starts setting up in space. Research outposts crop up on the moon and Mars, following by larger and larger settlements appearing around them.
- We build orbital shipyards to facilitate interplanetary - only travel as we go further and further.
- To support these, we build mines on asteroids and low gravity planetoids as a cheaper way of getting resources that essentially stay in space while mined.
And not like this:
- I want us to be in space so orbital mines, now. We had some rejected space propulsion concepts in the 70's and 80's so surely that means we're technically able to it. In fact let's just use nuclear pulse propulsion or nuclear rockets and launch right from LEO. Getting a bunch of hydrogen bombs detonated over people's heads every time we need to go mine some rock will get approved like a snap.
- Let's find a way to use these mines now! It has to be cost effective, right? It's space, it's cool, I want it now.
Don't get me wrong I want it now too. Fact of the matter is if it was actually cost effective we'd be out there now. And sadly neither one of us will be skiing on Mars for vacations. I don't like it any better than you do but you can't blame the politicians for that. You can blame them for not investing enough in science, new propulsion technologies and space exploration. You can blame them for cutting NASA's budget yet again. You can blame them for canning the shuttle while having no replacement in sight. You can blame them from essentially giving up on putting boots on Martian ground, meaning rather low chances of seeing man on Mars during our lifetimes.
You can't blame them for not having colonized the inner solar system and not setting mines on asteroids. A lot of things need to happen before we get there. Problem is, we're not doing them. As for the private sector, when they smell money in a more serious space presence, with the technical means to make it profitable, don't worry it'll happen. The fact it hasn't so far speaks for itself.
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It would be great to have another age of philanthropy (for the sciences specifically). Now you just need to get Bill gates to set aside a quarter of his net worth, find a dedicated, composite research and development group, and you'll be able to do some wonderful things for space. I for one would do that if I had 40 billion lying around...
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I for one would do that if I had 40 billion lying around...
Same here, in a heartbeat. Though I'm not sure how many people would be comfortable traversing interplanetary distances in a ship Bill Gates had a hand in :P
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paul allen, a co-founder of MS, is actually a very big sponsor of space related crazyness.
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Hmm, about the space elevator... I have an idea that probably wouldn't work... Would it put less strain on the cable if you had a counterweight ever so often attached in-line to the cable? Or does it make no difference? I think probably no difference because the asteroid's mass must be tethered in orbit, so x amount of pressure must be applied to counter it, so somewhere on the cable there will be that strain on the cable. However, it would reduce the strain on the anchor at ground level, perhaps to the point that there is no strain at all and it's more of a positional anchor (tying the line to a specific location on the globe) than a orbital anchor (keeping it from flying out of orbit).
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Thoughts?
By the way, to answer your question, no. The "Space Age" as it was coined ended long ago; the Space Shuttle happened to be what was left at the end. That age ended - IMO, if anything the retirement of the Shuttle signifies the real end of it. We are no longer living in that "age". We will probably still go to space, but I think it will be called something else.
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Hmm, about the space elevator... I have an idea that probably wouldn't work... Would it put less strain on the cable if you had a counterweight ever so often attached in-line to the cable? Or does it make no difference? I think probably no difference because the asteroid's mass must be tethered in orbit, so x amount of pressure must be applied to counter it, so somewhere on the cable there will be that strain on the cable. However, it would reduce the strain on the anchor at ground level, perhaps to the point that there is no strain at all and it's more of a positional anchor (tying the line to a specific location on the globe) than a orbital anchor (keeping it from flying out of orbit).
Hell, just using two cables instead of one should halve the tension required on each. But this seems too simple, I don't know why no one else would've thought about it. :nervous:
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Isn't that the concept behind a woven rope? (Such as in a high strength rope made of steel?)
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You'd think so. So you'd need about 150 strands of Carbon Steel 1090 to get ~130GPa. But looking here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_tensile_strength) there are plenty of other materials that have greater tensile strengths.
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Yeah, guys, srsly. You're not going to use the "hardest grade of steel" to make a tether like this. Generally, the harder a steel is (or just about any material really), the more brittle it is, and you definitely don't want to make a brittle tether. Secondly, you're all squabbling about the tensile strength when you should be comparing yield strength. I mean do you really want your 36 kilokilometer long tether going into plastic deformation? Really?
But what do I know, I'm just a practicing mechanical engineer. :p
EDIT: Although you would use tensile strength in the case of brittle materials. So I guess if you found some brittle unobtainium that was far and away stronger than needed, you could safely use that for a tether.... maybe...
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Hmm, about the space elevator... I have an idea that probably wouldn't work... Would it put less strain on the cable if you had a counterweight ever so often attached in-line to the cable? Or does it make no difference? I think probably no difference because the asteroid's mass must be tethered in orbit, so x amount of pressure must be applied to counter it, so somewhere on the cable there will be that strain on the cable. However, it would reduce the strain on the anchor at ground level, perhaps to the point that there is no strain at all and it's more of a positional anchor (tying the line to a specific location on the globe) than a orbital anchor (keeping it from flying out of orbit).
How big would the counterweight have to be? Also, a counterweight that's woven into the cable itself isn't so much a counterweight as a way of increasing the cable's mass.
Also, before continuing this discussion, I would advise you to read this primer on the subject (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator).
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I think everyone advocating private development has lost the plot. The reason the government has subsidized space-related ventures, the reason we have any at all, is because it's not cost-effective to go there and do stuff privately.
Well, it will be with new technology right?
Who's going to develop new technology for a field nobody's interested in currently? The reason we have, and still need, the government involved in space travel in a major way is so somebody's pushing the stuff forward. The proposed future of glorious private space exploitation isn't going to come unless somebody makes the building blocks first, and private industry isn't going to be the people who do it.
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Well, I mean also the original idea of government was that it was a public thing, it was for everyone. With private interests controlling space travel, they can restrict it as they see fit, and can't be held accountable to anyone for it, really.
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The above post reminds me strongly of a "ZOMG CORPORATIONS ARE TEH EVULS" post. They exist to make money. If space makes money, they'll go for it. If it doesn't, they won't. There's no such thing as them "restricting" anything, espectially not just for teh lulz.
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The above post reminds me strongly of a "ZOMG CORPORATIONS ARE TEH EVULS" post. They exist to make money. If space makes money, they'll go for it. If it doesn't, they won't. There's no such thing as them "restricting" anything, espectially not just for teh lulz.
Tell that to Microsoft and Apple.
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Congratulations! You found the two least applicable exceptions. Software is an entirely different can of worms than something like space exploration.
Now find a decent reason for any corporation to restrict said space exploration and or usage.
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Congratulations! You found the two least applicable exceptions. Software is an entirely different can of worms than something like space exploration.
Armadillo Aerospace?
Now find a decent reason for any corporation to restrict said space exploration and or usage.
Hm...I really can't think of one, to be honest. I'd honestly prefer a mix of public/private for a lot of things, and for space travel I think it would help as well. They're both part of a single society; I think private assets should be thought of with a mind towards making things free and public should be thought of with a mind towards making them sustainable. The two are not mutually exclusive, of course.
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I think everyone advocating private development has lost the plot. The reason the government has subsidized space-related ventures, the reason we have any at all, is because it's not cost-effective to go there and do stuff privately.
Well, it will be with new technology right?
Who's going to develop new technology for a field nobody's interested in currently? The reason we have, and still need, the government involved in space travel in a major way is so somebody's pushing the stuff forward. The proposed future of glorious private space exploitation isn't going to come unless somebody makes the building blocks first, and private industry isn't going to be the people who do it.
Sure, that's an almost perfect point except that you assume that private companies are "there for the money and nothing else". That's true, but only to a certain degree. Take the X Prizes, for instance. Their goal aint to incentivize companies with "money", since it's mostly a net negative for the candidates who invest in the contests. They have a degree of ideological dream, that tries to inspire investment out of the adventureness of it all, rather than the "money aspect". A typical X prize of say 10 million dollars will invite 100 million dollars of investment from all contesters.
There are "crazy" people out there who only do it because it's about their own human nature: they also dream about space (take John Carmack and his own inventions on the field for example).
So while it is true that the government is the only one right now who could pull a "Let's go to Mars" mission, it is also true that such a mission would be a gigantic black hole of resources, and further, it would drain human inventiveness of random citizens just doing their things.
So I'd say, that sure, it may be short-term "bad" for the space age to be left to the private sector, but in long term, to make the whole society think that space is their own as well to take, and to let just human ingenuity free to do what it pleases, it's a better long term solution, IMHO.
It's almost like the difference between an intelligent design process or random darwinistic design. In the long term, the latter is always more efficient.
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I see the concept of advertizing on the X-prizes is lost on you.
The thing is, the government can pay to push the technology forward much, much faster than the private sector is willing to. The Apollo program is an excellent proof of the point, but for a more recent example so are ion engines. If we want to beat the main problem, the propulsion system, the private sector simply isn't going to put up the money to do it. It cannot and it will not.
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It's not lost on me, but you can spare the sarcasm and show the numbers to me and prove your point.
And *even* if your advertizing idea is right, you should ask yourself, what is exactly the motivation for these companies to have the label of "Prize X adventurers"? It means that the capitalistic system is fueled by exactly the human desire to adventure to the stars, even this flows through ads (If you want this idea more clear: the ads that are allegedly financing the X Prize contestants have value because the eyeballs to which these ads are directed do care about space, and so the whole system "cares" about space as well).
And as I said and you willfully ignored, the private sector isn't ready for gigantic investments. We could make the case that the government should step in and fund these extreme researches, and I'll agree with it. For instance, Congress is considering taking out the next space observatory funding and I find that kind of **** just obscene.
But should the government fund gigantic black holes of investment, like a mission to mars, for instance? I'm way more skeptical on that point.
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For instance, Congress is considering taking out the next space observatory funding and I find that kind of **** just obscene.
But should the government fund gigantic black holes of investment, like a mission to mars, for instance? I'm way more skeptical on that point.
See, this is the point where you've got it all backwards. Adaptive optics and other advances make space-based telescopes something of a waste. Absent searches at wavelengths which don't make the ground, there is no reason to build another space-based telescope, and the ones we have work fine for the moment. A mission to Mars would be the sort of jumpstart for pushing the technology forward that we need.
The space revolution is dying around us. The ISS, while it serves a purpose and does so well, symbolizes it. We don't have any competition anymore, we don't have any drive to achieve. At the current rate in 20 years we won't even send manned missions into our own orbit. If we ever intend to go beyond LEO for any time, we need something that will force us to build the technology to do it, because nobody in the private sector with the money to do it is interested in going that far unless there's already a way.
If the future isn't built, it's not coming. Private industry is not going to build it. They're offering prizes to go to suborbit now. Show me progress before you champion them.
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Ok so this conversation reminded me of a video I've seen years ago, luckily I know it was from TED and I found it quickly:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/burt_rutan_sees_the_future_of_space.html
I also don't see investment on the James Webb as a "waste" as you do, but hey. OTOH, I do see further investment on the mars mission as too gigantic. Yeah, we could have new waves of tech going because of it, but the price? Is it worth it? We are not talking about a few billions here.
EDIT: **** I'm seeing the video and he's using the exact same idea I was... or rather the reverse! And one believes one has original thoughts! Ah!
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Congratulations! You found the two least applicable exceptions. Software is an entirely different can of worms than something like space exploration.
Now find a decent reason for any corporation to restrict said space exploration and or usage.
Whenever not restricting space exploration and usage could decrease profits? If a company made money on flights to a space station, would they want to send materials that would make the station completely self-sufficient? In fact, I would go as far to say that any generalized reason for any company to restrict the usage of their money-making device could be potentially used.
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Whenever not restricting space exploration and usage could decrease profits? If a company made money on flights to a space station, would they want to send materials that would make the station completely self-sufficient? In fact, I would go as far to say that any generalized reason for any company to restrict the usage of their money-making device could be potentially used.
This is, as far as I can tell, a complete misunderstanding of the capitalistic system. It's very simple, really. Capitalism works whenever there is fair competition between different private companies. Sure, monopolies skew and turn any economy into an innefficient feud, but they rarely stay in power if they do the kind of stupid thing that you are affirming here.
Basically, if you have a company that manages the referred station, you will look to your choices of materials delivery and pick them according to the terms of contract they are offering you. If one of these companies tells you that they will not send you these materials, they will simply lose the contract and another company will be chosen. Furthermore, if you as the "deliverer" choose to bottleneck such economies, you will fail to watch them grow and become important, and thus you will fail to profit from these markets, because you've just destroyed them.
There are more fallacies embebbed in your reasoning, but these are enough.
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Let's look at this from and angle that makes sense. First, the possible interactions between companies conducting aerospace operations and those that are not.
1) Company A is conduction aerospace operations. For the sake of the example, let's assume they're making a profit. Company 2 has no stake in AS operations, and their profit is therefore not affected. Neither company has a reason to restrict AS access and/or usage. Yes, Company A has a monopoly. No, it does not make sense to alienate the customers. No restrictions.
2) Company A is conducting AS operations. As above, assume they're making a profit. Company 2 is also conducting AS operations, but is being out-done by Company A. This provides a motivation to compete, furthering progress. Neither side can afford to alienate customers. No restrictions.
3) Neither Company A nor Company 2 are conducting AS operations. There is no competition, and no customers. By virtue of not being involved, neither company is restricting anything. No restrictions.
So, what happens if a company has a monopoly and decides to go the "Hey, let's be dicks and restrict this stuff!" route? Quite simply, they go out of business, and somebody who has a more business-savvy CEO and/or governing board rakes in the cash.
What happens if there is no other business-savvy CEO and/or governing board to rake in the cash? The company flops, gives up space exploration, and the point is now moot for someone else to fill the void.
What happens if no one fills the void? There are no restrictions on AS operations by virtue of there not being AS operations.
EDIT for me being forgetful: What happens if there is no profit being made? Some entrepeneurial spirit either finds a way and the options above enact themselves, or there is no private sector AS operations. Which means no restrictions.
Seriously guys, critical thinking skills.
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Actually, the Microsoft / Apple example is the perfect example on how monopolies don't actually work long term. Apple "lost" the PC wars and the end result is that Apple is now the most profitable computer company in the whole world.
Microsoft had a monopoly and behaved in a (more or less) ****ty way. Result? The Windows brand is valueless and MS is completely unable to fight over new markets except for the game industry. MS ****ed Netscape and the end result is that nowadays almost every saavy user will avoid IE, and all browsers try to follow HTML standards, deviating from MS' strategy of purposedly shifting away from the standards. The most used browsers now are open source (Firefox / Chrome / even the WebKit from Safari).
So every time a company able to monopolize stuff will behave in a ****ty way, it will win lots of profits, but its rein is doomed in medium-long term, because it just loses people's trust.
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For the record, IE still holds the most users at something like 60%+ of total used browsers, and Microsoft still has a massive portion of the market. Why? Because the average user doesn't know better. The same logic applies to most other things as well, people will stick with the big company because it is known, they don't WANT to look elsewhere because there isn't a need and/or they just don't give a damn.
Monopolies are bad and competition is good, both for the consumer, but the big guy will likely stay the big guy because he's the one everyone knows. Such as Microsoft.
Also note that to be a true monopoly there must be nothing to compete against it, not mearly an overwhelming advantage.
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thats it, this thread gets the stamp of wank. for degrading an intresting topic into an economic debate.
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Actually, the Microsoft / Apple example is the perfect example on how monopolies don't actually work long term.
How is this a perfect example? More like an exception to the rule.
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You'd knew how I think this was a perfect example if you read the following lines. But apparently you didn't or just ignored them.
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thats it, this thread gets the stamp of wank. for degrading an intresting topic into an economic debate.
in an attempt to defeat the wank and restore interest to the thread, i propose the following salute to the end of the shuttle program:
everyone wear ape suits the day the shuttle returns.
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thats kinda difficult since they all got their brain jizz all over it. and navigating the thread could result in slipping on it and that can cause a concussion, and what do you suppose that would do the the pursuit of knowledge. anyway i dont think i can afford an ape suit. can i just drink a lot of beer instead? besides when your in yer early 20s you want to grow braincells, but by the time yer 30, you want to kill them all because they wont stop torturing you with useless information.