/sci/ - Science & Math

The only way I can see it coming to fruition is if the UK and the Euro zone have an immense recovery, or if China/India decide to buy the engines and try making a SSTO themselves.

>>6217930
Currently, there are a few different areas of research involved in getting the cost of orbital insertion down to a reasonable level.

Like this Spaceplane (Skylon) that would cut the fuel cost of orbital insertion by a large amount.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_%28spacecraft%29

Next, we have Extremely high exhaust velocity engines that would also cut the amount of fuel that you would need to bring along (and by that metric, also cut the weight of your orbit-to-orbit ship

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Specific_Impulse_Magnetoplasma_Rocket

Will it fly?

Will it work?

The problem is that nobody wants to get off this planet because there's nothing to do up there. All that's available is a handful of dead rocks several months away.

If you want to get people into space, they need a reason to go up there. We need to look into what we can manufacture in micro-gravity and near perfect vacuum environments. If it turns out these conditions are perfect for making 10 THz processors or batteries that last 5 years between charges, you can guarantee people will want to get up into space.

I would love to go to Mars or the Moon, but not until we get a better way of getting into space in the first place. This shit's never going to happen as long as we keep using oversized fireworks to get ourselves into orbit. We need a space plane, a launch loop, a space fountain, anything better than what we use currently.

I just think there's far easier ways of getting off the Moon than by building a huge space elevator to Earth-Moon L1. A track 1,000 km long along the surface of the Moon could get stuff into orbit at a leisurely 3G.

Hey Murrica, how do you feel about being overtaken in space technologies by a country with practically no space funding?

What NASA needs to do is add some kind of manufacturing module to the ISS. We need to work out the problems involved in building stuff in space, and work out what kinds of things we can do up there that we can't do down here.

If it turns out that micro-gravity and a near vacuum makes it easy to build 10 terahertz processors, you can bet people will want to get a bigger presence up in space.

Also we need better launch systems. Trying to build more and more efficient rockets will only take us so far. We need horizontal-take-off-and-landing, launch from a aircraft, work into some kind of megastructure, anything that isn't the glorified fireworks we use currently.

Skylon spaceplane

"The vehicle design is for a hydrogen-powered aircraft that would take off from a conventional runway, and accelerate to Mach 5.4 at 26 km using atmospheric air before switching the engines to use the internal liquid oxygen (LOX) supply to take it to orbit.[4] It would then release its payload, which can weigh up to 15 tonnes, and re-enter the atmosphere."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(spacecraft)

Is this fully reusable spaceplane the way to finally enable routine and cheap spaceflight capability?

I want to see what Skylon ends up doing. It may not be planned to be all that much cheaper than the rockets we're currently using, but it will be interesting to see if it works, and might pave the way to even cheaper methods.

Fuck big old chemical rockets. Spaceplanes are where it's at.

Same way we made maintaining roads profitable. Generate the demand to get up there.

What would really bump up traffic is if there's something in high demand that can only be manufactured easily in zero-G.

We can discuss space and rockets here if you want, but you'll have to give us something about them to discuss.

Personally I'm pinning my hopes on Skylon for getting the private spaceflight industry moving. SpaceX is just launching rockets which is what everyone else has been doing anyway, and VG is just seeing how fast they can lob space planes into the sky.

Fuck you we'll build all the space planes we want.