INTPForum Space Program

[Cognisant]

There has to be better ways of getting into space than launching rockets off the ground, what ideas have you got?

And once we (hypothetically) get into space what should we focus on, tourism? Mining? Setting up giant mirrors? Further exploration?

 

[John_Mann]

We could upload our mind to a swarm of foglets and stretch our swarm configuration to use wind currents to float until the space.

The purpose would just be the challenge to accomplish that. And enjoy the view.

 

[Architect]

It's simply the problem of being inside a gravity well, and thereby is a matter of energy. There's plenty of energy in the solar system; planetoids covered in hydrocarbons for example, all we need is to get at them. Once we set up habitation in near space then we can grow indefinitely.

The best idea and one that NASA is actually working on is the space elevator. First popularized by Arthur C Clark I believe it's literally a cable or ribbon that goes from a point on the equator to near space. The the method of propulsion can simply be an electric motor that just has to lift the the weight of what is going up (and not it's fuel) and through gearing can make this quite easy and efficient, at the cost of speed.

That's about it.

 

[Duxwing]

To get into space, use a space elevator with a dock and shipyard at its end to lift, launch, assemble, and maintain prefabricated craft, parts, supplies, and crew. The fixed and permanent nature of this solution will require considerable funds and political will, but once in place, need never be replaced and can even be expanded into a space city of nearly arbitrary size, complete with running water, entertainment, and artificial gravity.

The principal benefit of the space elevator is the ability to lift almost anything into space and then keep it there at very little expense: ships, parts, supplies, factories, farms, centrifuges, entertainment complexes, police stations, fire stations, hospitals, businesses, people! Indeed, a space elevator could allow us to construct an entirely new civilization, an international, space-faring one. If only such an ideology could spread back down to earth.

Once in space, and hopefully with a unified planet behind our efforts, we could go visit the other nine planets and conduct all sorts of low-gravity experiments for very little money because launching a craft would no longer require a huge booster. Thereafter, anything is possible.

-Duxwing

 

[Cognisant]

I have looked into space elevator ideas, one is to use a large counterweight structure in orbit, I mean for something to be in geosync it has to be in quite a high orbit which means the cable will be very long which puts more strain on the centre of it, however if a tower was built down from the orbit point with another end going out into space the structure could come down far enough to graze the upper limits of the atmosphere, then on the ground a dynamic structure is built up as high as possible so that between the two structures the cables wouldn't have to be quite so long.

Although how such things are built in the first place is still a problem.

 

[Cognisant]

Another idea, my favourite, is to have a massive flying wing craft take off from a custom airfield on the salt flats in Australia or the US, once it reaches its maximum airspeed and altitude another smaller (but still huge) craft launches from inside it which is designed solely for high speed & high altitude flight (likely using scramjet engines) and when that reaches its maximum speed/altitude the final craft is launched from it and uses rockets to achieve escape velocity.

The whole system is recoverable, it was inspired by the anti-satellite missiles that some fighter craft can use whereby the fighter will fly up until it stalls before firing the missile which being a rocket can make the rest of the trip by itself. Surely that has to be more efficient than launching a gigantic multistage rocket vertically from the ground, I mean c'mon VTOL is notorious for inefficiency, and by using massive precisely engineered planes some efficiency of scale may be achievable too.

 

[Duxwing]

I have looked into space elevator ideas, one is to use a large counterweight structure in orbit, I mean for something to be in geosync it has to be in quite a high orbit which means the cable will be very long which puts more strain on the centre of it, however if a tower was built down from the orbit point with another end going out into space the structure could come down far enough to graze the upper limits of the atmosphere, then on the ground a dynamic structure is built up as high as possible so that between the two structures the cables wouldn't have to be quite so long.

Although how such things are built in the first place is still a problem.

Alternatively, we could trail the cable--which is fixed to the earth at one end--from a rocket and then use a space-elevator car running on that cable to lift the rest of what we need by using the rocket and the payload of each successive lift as our ever-growing counterweight.

-Duxwing

 

[Cognisant]

But how does that address the cable length problem?
Y'see the Earth doesn't rotate that fast, most satellites orbit in only a few hours, to maintain orbit in one spot the space side anchor has to be moving relatively slowly and thus has to be a relatively long way out and the longer the cable is the more of its own weight it has to carry.

A tower built down from the anchor point with a counterweight going in the other direction (so it doesn't fall out of orbit) moves the cable's begging and end points closer together, so there's less cable and therefore less cable weight to support.

 

[John_Mann]

But how does that address the cable length problem?

Graphene?

 

[GodOfOrder]

Space elevator is the way to go. First begin with a rather large space station, resting in a geostationary orbit. Then, under the desired point on the equator build a massive base for the tether. At multiple intermediate areas, place smaller less significant space stations, at more intermediate altitudes. (Due to their altitudes these couldn't be geostationary) Then, instead of one big ass cable, you link the way point stations to the mother station, lying in geostationary orbit. Finally, when all of that is in place, lower the last cable to Earth. Due to the nature of my suggestion, the elevator could only be constructed during a certain time interval, requiring almost perfect timing to catch the intermediate stations. It would be done from top down, starting at the Anchor station, then station two, etc. until we work our way down to earth.

I imagine a clockwork construction. The linkage of station to station would likely cause a lot of spin. It may even knock the stations out of their original orbit. To counter act this, simultaneously link a counter tether to a counter weight (equal mass to each station) on the other side of Anchor station each time a link is made to an intermediate station. Lest is start spinning over its axis. If that happens, the project fails as there is no way to link it to Earth without destroying it. The final link would rip it apart.

After all of this, lower the final cable down to earth, or simultaneously raise and lower two cables to meet in the upper atmosphere.

Each segment is secured when the station in the higher orbit lowers a line and hooks the station below it. As they pass in a sub orbit of the superior station, they will be caught and grabbed by the line. In the final grab, earth catches the space station chain.

Spoiler

Yes yes, bat-shit insane method. Needlessly convoluted, and disregarded physical law entirely. No thought was put into this message. No physics actually consulted. Unsubstantiated sci-fi dreamt up in my mind.

 

[Cognisant]

Meanwhile at INTJforum:

Spoiler

 

[walfin]

I'm not sure about propulsion method but i think things could be launched horizontally (i.e. tangential to earth's surface) to make use of the earth's spin better.

Though I've no idea how it could overcome gravity, or how to solve the problem of needing a huge area of land.

 

[scorpiomover]

There has to be better ways of getting into space than launching rockets off the ground, what ideas have you got?

Ummm..

Transporter?

Stargate?

TARDIS?

Flying monkeys? (just for a giggle)

And once we (hypothetically) get into space what should we focus on, tourism? Mining? Setting up giant mirrors? Further exploration?

How about more of what we've been doing here? Arguing over who is cleverer and more moral, liberals or conservatives, and playing video games?

 

[Pyropyro]

Ummm..

Transporter?

Stargate?

TARDIS?

Flying monkeys? (just for a giggle)

How about more of what we've been doing here? Arguing over who is cleverer and more moral, liberals or conservatives, and playing video games?

I vote for flying monkeys!

 

[scorpiomover]

I vote for flying monkeys!

Nooooo!

I spent the last 20 minutes re-editing my images to get them to fit, and you went and copied the big ones! Now the post sizes won't be consistent! Waaaaah!

 

[Cognisant]

Waaaaah!

 

[Hawkeye]

 

[NSINTP]

Space elevators...come on we are better than that and we know it. It appears to me that we are stuck in a world where physics has been dumbed down for reasons of making the math more domesticated. Take for instance the Heaviside and Lorentz transformations of the Maxwell electromagnetic equations. Have any of you ever seen the original equations put forth by Maxwell or just the vector translations we see today in our text books. Maxwell and Faraday firmly believed that the lines of force of electrostatics and magnetism were not just theoretical constructs used to relay a number of concepts but actual physical constructs. I wish I didn't have to do this on my phone because then I could use references (which I hope to post later) but for now I cannot. With the vector transformations of quaternion mathematics we have lost several components to our concepts of field interactions with physical space such as scalar quantities. Had Maxwell intended to use vector mathematics to describe electromagnetism then he would have, but he used a higher topology. I don't think Tesla was just jawing when he claimed to not be using transverse waves in his magnifying transmitter. Also I think that we should reconstruct TT Brown's electrogravitator and advance it in an open source forum to determine if it is just ion wind that causes this so called electrogravitic principal. Furthermore I think we need to consider the work of Joseph Newman in the concept of magnetism being produced by gyroscopic particles (to which I think is an extremelly tight vortex ring rotating in more than one dimension). I know that those in "government" have been working on this technology since the before WWII since Brown was working on electrogravitation since he was 16 in 1921. This technological research needs to be completely declassified such that we can determine if it is a viable solution.
Call me a community (though I am on the other side of the political spectrum) but our greatest obstacle is money (which is not really what we think it is in todays world at least). If we didn't have to take that into consideration, like the military black budget, then we would have this figured out in no time.

As far as I see things there are three types of people in this world. The brains, the administrators, and the laborers. Why do we brains continue to allow the administrator types screw things up for us with their petty nonsense?

 

[scorpiomover]

There has to be better ways of getting into space than launching rockets off the ground, what ideas have you got?

And once we (hypothetically) get into space what should we focus on, tourism? Mining? Setting up giant mirrors? Further exploration?

How about Cavorite?

What about astral projection? That one can take you to another galaxy in a millisecond.

 

[Mantis Toboggan]

I vote for Heim Theory. It allows anti-gravity field propulsion, although most people say that it is about as real as astral projection, it does allow 330c. Also, Heim transcended hands.

 

[HAL9000]

Space elevator = impossible.

The only part of the WHOLE thing that would actually be 'floating' is the top part in geosynchronous orbit at 36'000km. Everything lower than that point would not have a high enough velocity to have the correct centripetal force to negate the pull of gravity. So the weight of the whole thing would have to be taken by a base on the ground, which is obviously ridiculous.

May as well try finishing the tower of Babel first.

 

[Lacplesis]

Two words: Project Orion

Possible with current technology, can take up into space staggering mass of cargo (possibly 6000 tons of raw materials and equipment), or, over time, achieve speeds greater than 3% of the speed of light, so we could reach Proxima Centauri in about 130 years travelling at the top speed at a straight line. Much faster than chemical rockets. My calculation however did not took in account acceleration from standstill to top speed, nor did it accounted for deacceleration at the other end, so the journey would take longer, but then again, traveling at these speeds, time slows down a bit.
You can read more on Wikipedia. There is even documentary on YouTube.

With this post cold war apocalyptic monster we could not only leave the Earth, or indeed go to Mars, we could go interstellar and leave home for good.

All this at a cost of smothering our planet in nuclear fallout, only burning every potencially flammable thing at the line of sight, super-heating the atmosphere, and flattening every rigid structure for miles. I guess when we finish ignition sequence of this thing, there is really no coming back.

Yeah, and since device was only intended for fission reaction, we can put it on steroids with fusion reactions