Posted on 08/21/2005 7:00:17 PM PDT by KevinDavis
When I fly from Texas to Europe, I pay $3–6 a pound, depending on how well I do buying a ticket. When a satellite or shuttle is launched into space, the customer (or taxpayer) pays over $10,000 a pound. That is the major challenge of space flight: until the cost of going into space drastically decreases, the large-scale exploration and exploitation of space will not occur.
The world currently sends approximately 200 tons of payloads, the equivalent of two 747 freighter flights, into space annually. At $50–500 million a launch, very few cargoes can justify their cost. We have here the classic chicken-and-egg situation. As long as space flight remains very expensive, payloads will be small. As long as payloads remain small, rockets will be expensive.
If annual demand were 5,000 tons instead of 200, the equation would shift. Engineers would have the incentive to design more efficient launch systems. Large, guaranteed payloads could significantly reduce the cost of reaching orbit, ushering in a new, affordable era in space for governments, businesses, universities, and, hopefully, individuals.
(Excerpt) Read more at thespacereview.com ...
I don't even like the chemical fuels we use, solid or liquid. There needs to be some innovation, like you suggest, addressing the fundamental problem of gravity in a whole new way.
Is this where the carbon nanotube space elevator comes in?
Would dumping radiowaste on the moon be cheaper than dumping it in Nevada? Maybe. Dumping one rocket load in the Atlantic would be expensive.
Imagine a gun with a 100 lb projectile which is 40 lbs nuc waste, 50 lbs lead casing and 10 lbs ceramic to withstand the heating until it passes above the atmosphere.
If the duty cycle is one shot per minute with a 90 % duty cycle you can shoot 1300 projectiles into orbit every day. That's 40 lbs time 1300 projectiles is 26 tons per day!!!
These are now in Earth Orbit where an interorbit tug would collect them and carry them to O'Neil Mass drivers which are circling the Earth at a higher altitude. As they the mass drivers circle the Earth they would launch these projectile on a retrograde path. The orbit of the mass driver would be eliptical since on one side their orbit would be raised while firing the projectiles. On the other side their orbit would be reduced by the same thrust of firing the projectiles.
Since the projectiles are fired back along the Earth's orbital path they would slow down and their orbital speed vis a vis the sun would decay. They would begin a long drop passing Venus and Mercury and finally falling into the Sun.
I think it would work. In addition building materials for the Dr O'Neil "High Frontier" habitats could be launched and that Hilton Hotel from 2001 could become a possibility.
Waste is a temporary problem for sure. I think it is very likely a solution will be found in the next 100 years.
Ive never bought into the idea to store it for 10,000 years nonsense.
Escape velocity is about mach 35. If you could get a high altitude ramjet up to about mach 60, maybe it could make it through the thin atmosphere zone to 200 km on inertia alone.
Over 1 g of propulsive force for sufficient time with any sizable payload appears to be out of reach of anything but chemical propellents in the foreseable future. It is conceivable that the propellent could be heated by something other than oxygen combustion. If we could heat the propellent faster, allowing faster ejection, that would be an improvment.
That won't just be an innovation; that would be a fundamental scientific breakthrough that would force the rewrite the physics textbook still in use. Negating gravitational pull requires a lot of energy; more than most people can comprehend.
Recyling "waste" as now defined in the U.S. as fuel would eliminate 90 percent of it.
You don't have to imagine it. Gerald V. Bull did a long time ago. That's undoubtedly the main reason that Bull was murdered while on Saddam Hussein's payroll with Project Babylon.
Geez! Didn't you ever watch SPACE:1999? :)
Exactly. Rescind Carter's order and reprocess the spent fuel rods and eliminate 90% of the radioactive "waste".
We may need the plutonium sooner than we think.
Yep... That is why Carbon Nanotubes development is important...
Who needs a moon anyway?
99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% (and then some) of all nuclear waste is already in space.
Or a big gun that could shoot a Volkswagen into orbit?
It would quickly kill any passengers. No one can survive those kinds of forces.
The innovation has been made. Carbon nanotubes will lead the way to the first space elevator. The first space elevator will lead to many other space elevators and interplanetary travel will finally become a reality. We have to overcome the massive gravity well under which we live. The space elevator is the answer.
And if somebody pissed us off it would make a dandy depleted uranium bunker buster round. Just alter the geometry of the shot.
Seriously, I think it's a viable idea, technically, but I don't believe we could ever get it past the enviro weenies and bureaucracies.
The space elevator idea is psychologically more salable even if, in reality, it would be probably less safe from sabotage.
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