The Astronomy Thread
- Thread starter Araxen
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
BrutulTM
Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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Yeah it's probably more accurate to say that history hasn't been kind to people who make long term predictions, whether they are optimistic or pessimistic.
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Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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Can get hard to differentiate between that. Biggest achievement for spacex will either be their two stage starship landing both stages and then orbital refueling. Both are huge tech and infrastructure gains. The infrastructure they're building for the starship production is incredible.
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Burns
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The vast majority of technology is iterative, not revolutionary, so ten years doesn't seem like that much time for an "amazing" technology, something the likes of no experts can currently think of, but sure, maybe. If I were a betting man, I would say that it is far more likely to happen in the field of space habitation than a more effective way to leave the atmosphere, though.
Burns
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I guess I chose the wrong words, I was thinking more along the lines of it is the only alternative I have seen to rocket power that may work and have all of its (many) problems resolved within the next 100 years.
Mudcrush Durtfeet
Hungry Ogre
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Anything (more or less) might be resolved in 100 years, lol. That's not saying anything meaningful.
Right now, there is no path to making a space elevator. It seems to be impossible by any reasonaable improvement in technology in the next twenty years or so.
There are other possible alternatives to rocket power to orbit. A very large cannon or a magnetic rail gun type arrangement have been proposed. I think the gun is actually possible by today's technology but I could be wrong. There are issues with rail guns but maybe.
Other than that, nothing really comes to mind.
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Mudcrush Durtfeet
Hungry Ogre
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That being said, nuclear powered rockets are an obvious thing that *could* be developed that would take us beyond what is possible with chemical rockets. There are issues.
Otherwise, the only space tech that is reasonably capable of taking us to the other planets in a remarkably cheaper and more reliable way is being developed by SpaceX. The plan is to make a rapidly reusable super heavy lift vehicle. Consider that it will make the Falcon 9 look like a toy. It's going to be amazing.
Otherwise, the only space tech that is reasonably capable of taking us to the other planets in a remarkably cheaper and more reliable way is being developed by SpaceX. The plan is to make a rapidly reusable super heavy lift vehicle. Consider that it will make the Falcon 9 look like a toy. It's going to be amazing.
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Cybsled
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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The next big revolution is already happening: reduction in costs to bring payloads to space. Everything else will springboard off that. It's the same as with railroads and air travel - once you figure out the costs of infrastructure and platform, and get those to reasonable levels, then it opens up all sorts of industry that otherwise would not have been able to take advantage of that, or even exist without that.
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Burns
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Some years back I read an article (or maybe it was a TED talk or the new Cosmos show) about rocket alternatives to put things in orbit (I just tried to find it, with no luck). From what I recall, in order to reach orbit, through cannon or rail gun, it would require acceleration so fast that the gravitational forces would easily rip a human apart, and even damage some inorganic payloads. It also talked about how earth's gravity is rather close to being too strong for any kind of rocket to escape it, at all.
Looks like this Skyhook could be a hybrid alternative that uses rockets to get to the edge of space and a tether to get farther out. I haven't looking into it, other than the following video, so I don't know much about it.
Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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Already been done. They used 16 inch cannons from Iowa class battleships in their testing;
Project HARP - Wikipedia
Pretty much, see the above about HARP. Not only are the gforces monumental, but the payload capacity is incredibly small both in size and weight.
Ideally a similar system or a mass driver on the moon would be amazing. You could build a massive track or gun which would allow much more gentle acceleration. Also no pesky atmosphere to deal with burning you up as youre getting into orbit.
Nah, nuclear rockets would work well. 800-900 isp v 400-450 isp of chemical rockets with theoretical designs up to 2000 isp or more. Problem is well, the left vehemently opposes anything nuclear.
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Mudcrush Durtfeet
Hungry Ogre
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The practical rocketry improvements SpaceX has incorporated is huge. I cannot possibly think of them all, but off the top of my head, you have engines that are cutting edge efficiency (full flow/full cycle), engines that you can throttle and turn on and off many times, large improvements in how quickly they can repeat launch things, being able to reuse rockets at all, their in house production of most of the rocket parts.
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Mudcrush Durtfeet
Hungry Ogre
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One thing that has been brought up by SpaceX is that there's more to rocketry than just using the hypothetical most efficient parts and so on. One reason (if I recall) that they didn't go with Hydrogen / Oxygen is that though it's a very good reaction for rockets you lose a lot of that in the extra complexity of the rocket, and it's a lot more expensive.Already been done. They used 16 inch cannons from Iowa class battleships in their testing;
Project HARP - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Pretty much, see the above about HARP. Not only are the gforces monumental, but the payload capacity is incredibly small both in size and weight.
Ideally a similar system or a mass driver on the moon would be amazing. You could build a massive track or gun which would allow much more gentle acceleration. Also no pesky atmosphere to deal with burning you up as youre getting into orbit.
Nah, nuclear rockets would work well. 800-900 isp v 400-450 isp of chemical rockets with theoretical designs up to 2000 isp or more. Problem is well, the left vehemently opposes anything nuclear.
I imagine a nuclear rocket is going to be a lot more expensive overall and more complex with the problem of what to do if the thing crashes and spills radioactive wreckage all over the crash site.
You can say 'just operate them outside of Earth orbit' which solves that issue, but there's no infrastructure to support such a thing right now. Maybe some day.
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Mudcrush Durtfeet
Hungry Ogre
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No. This is so far beyond our current capabilities you might as well be talking about warp drives.
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Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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Theyre just nuclear reactors that are cooled by liquid hydrogen rather than water, theyre not anything exotic. We built and operated a few prototypes already and was all set to send them into space for use in a mission to Mars in the 70s until it was canceled in favor of the idiotic Space Shuttle.
NERVA - Wikipedia
Mudcrush Durtfeet
Hungry Ogre
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Those prototypes were NOT actual rocket engines from what I recall. The project was cancelled at the time due to the projected expense dwarfing the Apollo program.Theyre just nuclear reactors that are cooled by liquid hydrogen rather than water, theyre not anything exotic. We built and operated a few prototypes already and was all set to send them into space for use in a mission to Mars in the 70s until it was canceled in favor of the idiotic Space Shuttle.
NERVA - Wikipedia
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Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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Looks like a fairly complete prototype here;
Can also take wiki with a grain of salt;
The Hydrogen isnt actually coolant, its the fuel. Could have said it better but meant the nuclear reactor in nuclear rockets isnt all that different from a power reactor. Difference is you run liquid hydrogen through it to turn it into super heated gas for exhaust v running water through a power reactor. Just different plumbing.
Though Im not sure what happens after nuclear rocket is done firing to deal with the residual heat. In that video of a hypothetical mission to Mars it looks like they only use each engine for one burn then discard. Von Braun's idea post apollo was using nuclear powered "tugs" to do all the moving in space, reusing them over and over.
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