Let's build a ship

My humble suggestion. Burt Rutan's space plane does not have the velocity to reach meaningful altitudes. That's why it does not require a heat shield.

Some variation on Rutan's theme however could provide a shuttle to space for a transfer capsule which could detach and fire a small booster to reach higher orbit.

My other suggestion is that Gerald Bull's space cannon should be used to provision space ships. The projectiles should be smart projectiles with some manouvering capability.

They could carry propellants for a space ship assembled in space. Projectiles could also supply food and water to a space ship.

Once assembled in orbit the Lunar space ship could be a reusable shuttle to Lunar orbit. It should also transport a reusable lunar lander.

I suggest a chemical rocket for transfer from the Rutan concept space plane to an assembly point.

I suggest the Lunar shuttle uses an ion rocket with a tiny liquid flouride nuclear reactor. The Lunar lander could perhaps use a small chemical engine.

There is no harm in using small nuclear reactors in space and people would be surprised how many have been in use already.

reply to post by Direwolf


Glad you liked the name. Last time I took myself serious was long ago and far away... But every boys gota have a hobby.

Your absolutely correct on earth to moon transit though. We have no method that can delver large payloads to orbit other than chemical reaction systems. You can orbit small stuff from a high altitude launch like Rotans craft but to gain escape velocity the payload and fuel would limit what is a useful payload so we back to just big lift craft to earth orbit and module system of Thrust, Living, Cargo, Lander and the like. And I think a truss system with addons like the space station would make a good flexible earth to moon and return orbitor that would just pop back and forth between orbits and as new technology comes along it is added as required to the bases structure.

The moons not that far away that it requires much in the way of drive just a bit of maneuverability control , A thruster to break earths gravitational well and get the moons to grab you and a set to slow you to orbit and reverse the process and that fuel load is minor as compared to earth to orbit.

The Orbiter needs to be a work horse base design with good structural design as it will be subjected to fairly high stress loads over broad temperature ranges through many, many cycles. The modules would be limited to the number of uses, the main structure of the craft will be critical for any long term moon presence.

As I said we are stuck with the rule that we just can't go all that fast and since all the really neat stuff is so far away we are stuck with the only two balls of stuff we can ever hope to walk on and thats the Moon and Mars. If existing laws are correct thats the limits of mans possible exploration.

I say, we sink a lot of money into space elevator development....THATS how we should get into orbit. Once there, antimatter and/or nuclear rockets should be our ticket to Mars and beyond.

And if Heim's theory proves correct...hoo boy.

I say, we sink a lot of money into space elevator development....THATS how we should get into orbit

To create a cable stretching from orbit to the ground and not snap...

if it was made of steel it would have to be several KILOMETRES wide at the weakest point.


Only something like carbon nanotubes come anywhere close to being able to hold such a weight.

Yeah I agree that to lift large loads from earth you need large chemical rockets, but i also think that once you have assembled a lunar shuttle in earth orbit you only require an Ion rocket, which by the way is ten times more efficient than a chemical rocket.

I also think you can reduce the weight to be lifted with a space cannon based on Gerald Bull's cannon. This could fire pellets of fuel and provisions to orbit in a small smart projectile. The use of a cannon dramatically reduces the overall weights to be lofted into Higher Earth Orbit

While here I wanted to address the space elevator concept. In my humble opinion its an imposable concept for many reasons that are at first not considered. Even if we came up with some super strong material that could withstand the stress we must remember that the top of the cable has to be accelarated to 18,000 miles an hour and its just like any orbital object and must attain escape velocity to make a geo sync orbit. So one tip is 18kmph and the other is 0 ( actually about 500 mph relative to center of the planet. Now you find away to do this you now have a thread thats cutting magnetic lines of force and you end up with one big electrostatic generator with a bit more charge than that that makes your hair stand up.. You would have Billions or Trillions of volts dancing around your thread and making you have to duck and dodge super lightning strikes as you head to the base to push the up button.

Then as this whips around you have 3 or 4 hundred mile per hour winds going one direction at one altitude and other high forces going other directions at other altitudes this would cause your Geo Stat point in orbit to be pulled down then pushed up and at each variance you have to apply thrust to maintain geo stat orbit. But not just thrust to reset the Geo Stat end but to the entire mass of the elevator against all the forces I mentioned.

So after you do all this and find a magic way to get over this, the first time the sun burps you get a pop from the biggest Tasor ever and instead of the Magnetosphere protecting us we now have a Tasor wire attached right to our pumping heart...

Personally It would take a guy with a gun to my head to make me even get within 1000 miles of either end of the thingy....

if we are talking no exspence to great then i think a single stage runway to orbit aircraft is more than achevable even 1 with a larger cargo hold than the current shuttle

and how much would 200miles of cable way in at? so your not only lifting a paload but the cable aswell, and what about " sway" a sky scraper 1/4 mil high swayes about 2 to 3 foot in high winds, so how much would an elevator shaft sway if it was 200miles high?

Apparently the space elevator skeptics don't know much about the advances that have been made in nanoscale engineering and supertensile solids.

Carbon nanotubes could enable the construction of a SE.

en.wikipedia.org...

Angular momentum "danger" debunked:
en.wikipedia.org...

Weather "danger" debunked:
en.wikipedia.org...

Electrostatic charge "danger" debunked:
uplink.space.com...
Scroll down to mlorrey's comment

reply to post by uberarcanist


I'm quite up to date on Nano tubes and state of technology and have read the Links you mentioned and all fail at first blush to make the concept feasible. I won't go into the specifics on each but unless you forget about all that nasty Physical Laws stuff your stuck with getting to orbit with burning stuff out the back of a big roman candle.. or variation of ....

reply to post by Quantummist


With all due respect, QM, I view your rebuttal of my links to be inadequate without a specific discussion of their shortcomings.

Originally posted by just theory
I wonder why nasa etc hasn't considered using a massive balloon to take something to those extreme heights they're capable of then using a rocket to get higher and up to speed for orbit, the balloon could even be part of the ship and get compressed and moved back into pressurised tanks as the rockets start, this way the gas is not wasted and everything is reusable.

Its an interesting idea but is it even possible, weight, cost, complexity etc?

Either that or use a big rail gun on the side of a mountain to get loads into orbit, while using a small reusable space plane for delicate stuff and people.

So does anyone have any idea about this?

Originally posted by just theory

Originally posted by just theory
I wonder why nasa etc hasn't considered using a massive balloon to take something to those extreme heights they're capable of then using a rocket to get higher and up to speed for orbit, the balloon could even be part of the ship and get compressed and moved back into pressurised tanks as the rockets start, this way the gas is not wasted and everything is reusable.

Its an interesting idea but is it even possible, weight, cost, complexity etc?

Either that or use a big rail gun on the side of a mountain to get loads into orbit, while using a small reusable space plane for delicate stuff and people.

So does anyone have any idea about this?

My personal opinion is that all of these approaches would be fraught with more technical difficulties than the current approach or even space elevators.

Hmm i don't know, i think a space elevator is vastly harder to do, i also believe it will have similar issues as that tether experiment and it could possibly have far worse safety concerns, imagine something as long as that coming crashing down if the drag is far greater than we imagine or something else goes wrong, something that long will fall on a crazy big area and rip through anything in its path, its funny to think about i mean how would you even get it up there in the first place, attach it to a huge rocket and let it unreel?

No but it would be cool though and a massive benefit to space exploration, the ability to cheaply move unlimited amounts of stuff into orbit has amazing possibilities, would probably be the greatest achievement of humanity in history and for a long time to come.

reply to post by uberarcanist


Your correct. the reason is that this issue has been beat to death in discussions going back a very long time. I just don't feel like beating the death horse anymore. Lets do this.. The day I can see an experiment that leads to the end result , Say twirling a Tractor Trailer Truck on a wire the size of a human hair over your head Then I'll get back to explaining the Static fields, atmospheric shears, Mass position control, escape velocities of massive objects, Temperature stress, charged particle capture, Lunar wake extensions, and all the other mundane stuff ... Lets get past Buckey tubes 1000th of an inch long first. As was stated in the thread we are trying to stay within the bounds of reasonable technology for replacement craft for what NASA has going on for the next few dozen years.. A space elevator is as likely as my postulate on the Unification of Forces to be correct. So as I said we can see a demonstration of a hair swingin an elephant were stuck with looking for the guy with a match...

mass drivers are only practical for small objects at a few kilometers per second; for example 1kg at 2.5km/s. Heavier objects go proportionally more slowly; and lighter objects may be projected at 20km/s or more. The limits are generally the cost of the silicon to switch the current and the cost of the power supply and temporary energy storage for it. Earth based Mass drivers for propelling one tonne vehicles to orbit are unlikely to be cost effective in the near future.

Originally posted by just theory
No but it would be cool though and a massive benefit to space exploration, the ability to cheaply move unlimited amounts of stuff into orbit has amazing possibilities, would probably be the greatest achievement of humanity in history and for a long time to come.

true, perhaps in a future scenario where we'll be able to launch payloads off into space without regard for how much electricity we expend in the process. but i just had to ask this question, "after accelerating your payload to the required speeds needed in order to achieve escape velocity, how do you get it to stop?"

Wikipedia has this to say:

A possibility for building a mass driver on Earth is a compromise system: a mass driver accelerates a payload up to some high speed which is not high enough for launch. It then releases the payload, which completes the launch under its own power. This would drastically reduce the amount of thrust that would be required for a launch, while allowing the mass driver design to use well-tested maglev components.

IMHO, i think mass drivers (coil/rail guns) would be a feasible solution for when the situation would require us to send payloads off into the far reaches of our solar system (beyond the asteroid belt) in a hurry. till then this launch method will still be deemed "not cost-effective".

reply to post by toreishi


Its doesn't need to stop... Once you hit the right velocity stuff don't just keep going like a rifle shot. If you get the velocity right escape velocity will put your projectile into a earth orbit. Then you just have to match velocity in orbit and pick up your stuff. Its right at 18,000 miles an hour and your parked in a orbit. If you want to hit True Earth Orbit escape speeds you have to get into the 25 to 30 K velocity but unless you have on board thrusters it would slow as it continued until it got to a point that some other body pulled it toward it. You must provide thrust to oppose the gravitational wells of any bodies it might pass by.

reply to post by just theory


The reason is that It just doesn't work.. Lift capability of Helium would let us maybe put a few hundreds of pounds to a good altitude. So then you have to get the Velocity up to orbital velocity so you need fuel, engines and all the bells and whistles.. that leaves a quarter oZ of payload.. So unless you just want to send a bag to a smoker on the Space Station its not a viable idea.

Remember unless you hit exactly the correct speed anything that goes up will come right back down. If you go straight up without trying to orbit you will come straight back down ( well not straight theres corollas effect due to our big blue ball spinning)

Newtonian Physics (And Gravity) Sux but its what we have ....

reply to post by Quantummist


I have noticed that some might not get the idea of how the physics works on getting off this little ball.

When we fire a gun all of the kinetic force to get the projectile accelerated up to speed is spent as soon as the projectile leaves the barrel, This also applies to Rail Guns or any thrust that stops at some point. At that point the projectile is in coast and is under the external forces at play. If you Fire Out the projectile starts to slow and drop as soon as it leaves the Gun. If I fire straight Up the same thing applies it slows and due to angle it travels in relation to earths gravity well it slows faster but the Energy Gain when firing a projectile by converting the energy type of the gun to the kinetic energy sending off the projectile will always be More than the energy imparted into the projectile.

So when We wish to send a object into orbit we must start it out at speeds that far exceed escape velocity. Because at the instant it leaves the gun it slows and to Orbit it must be doing around 18,000 miles per hour at Orbit Altitude.

So Say I want to put one pound into Orbit I have to have it going 18kmph at 200 miles up.. Theres a formula that tells you exact velocity it has to have at the instant it leaves the gun but off hand its in the 30,000 mph range and it must attain this speed before it leaves the gun. So any projectile you want to orbit better be made of some really tough stuff as it will be white hot and have a G load that would crush solids. Never mind what a mess it would make on the back wall if you tried a human passenger.

Once we are out in the space between Moon and Earth sure at some point we will start heading to the moon faster and faster but Just before that point if our velocity drops we will fall right back to earth.

While it seems that a craft heading out to the moon is Weightless and just coasts along thats not the way it works. The Craft has Mass and that mass is drawn to any other object even if that object is Billions of miles away. The draw may be so small that other closer massive bodies pull it this way and that and the pull of a Black Hole a billions miles away may be so small as to be undetectable, but its still there.. Place a earth size planet a light year away from our little craft and if there are no other Planets, stars, Gas bags any where around, we will be pulled at an ever increasing rate to the ball.

We are effected by Gravity of objects across the universe from us, The force effect on us is so small that we could never detect it.

So as long as we are stuck with existing laws of physics any usable payloads to orbit will be by chemical systems. We may send up solid fuel supplies on a small scale but to get anything big enough to support our frail bodies in such a hostile place, we have to light the candle...

Paul