/sci/ - Science & Math

Shit flies out of a tube and, due to classical mechanics, the forces act on each other in opposite directions. IE rockets shits crap out, crap pushes rocket.

Actio-Reactio

Imagine you are in an ice rink with a heavy bowling ball, if you throw the ball forward you move backwards. Rockets work the same. Stuff goes out, shit goes up.

1. push gas really, really hard

2. gas pushes back really, really hard

3. ????

4. ORBIT!

>>4019013
>>4019018
>>4019020

Solid answers. Is there any chance we'll be upgrading from chemical rockets any time soon? Surely it's extremely expensive and inefficient to use all that fuel.

>>4019027

I'm no engineer, but I don't think you can get around the need for some kind of mass to push. Newton's laws and all that.

I suppose there are mass drivers, though.

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

>>4019027
Only once we are able to manipulate one of the other forces with the dexterity we do with the electromagnetic force.

its not rocket science

>>4019046

I laughed far more than I should have.

>>4019039

>mass drivers

But will there be blue breasted beauties?

OP whatever you do don't ask thjat question around the Russians...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15631472

>>4019027
Agrren My money as far as fa guture goes is beam propulsion...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam-powered_propulsion

>>4019091
>Agrren My money as far as fa guture goes is beam propulsion...

Jesus Fucking Christ maybe I coulda proofread this before I sent it out into the universe. Hows about I resend THIS time WITHOUT it reading like a 4 year old wrote it....

"Agreed, My money as far as the far future goes is on beam propulsion."

There I apologize.

>>4019091
>>4019039
>>4019027

>Implying we haven't had access to gravitational propulsion technologies for years

>>4019117

How embarrassing.

>>4019087

>Moscow has despatched a total of 16 missions to the Red Planet since the 1960s. None has successfully completed its goals, with the most recent endeavour - the sophisticated Mars-96 spacecraft - being destroyed in a failed launch.

Sad days for mother Russia.

>>4019145
well, sad for Russia, but for all of our sakes, at least Spirit and Opportunity far exceeded expectations.

>>4019027
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAdj6vpYppA

Also the fuel is the cheapest component of the rocket

>>4019225
>mfw Opportunity will probably keep running for another 10 years, chugging along Endeavour Crater's rim

>>4019230
But the systems that contain it, channel it correctly, prevent it from igniting inside the rocket, ignite it before it's all the way OUT of the rocket, and so on, those are pretty damn expensive.

>>4019238

They should take the time to drive it across the to broken rovers and attempt to fix them

>>4019240

Nope. The majority of the expenses goes into Labor, the Materials and fuel are the cheapest things in a rocket

>>4019243
The labor that goes into constructing complicated fuel management systems is a substantial part of that labor. Of course, so is flight control.

>>4019238
>The primary surface mission for Opportunity was planned to last 90 sols. The mission has received several extensions and has been operating for 2845 days since landing.
>yfw your car, if you've had a new one, probably needed repairs sooner than that

>>4019259
>yfw Opportunity is one of the most badass and farthest-exceeding-expectations missions ever
>yfw you want to hike Endeavour Crater now
>yfw you want to fucking go to Mars

>>4019027
>Is there any chance we'll be upgrading from chemical rockets any time soon?
Why the hell would you want to go and do a thing like that?

>>4019253
One problem with orbital rockets is they take a lot of engineering for comparatively few launches. Planes and cars get a lot more mileage to amortize the cost of the initial engineering. That is one reason why Soyuz is relatively inexpensive, its R-7 rocket family has been chugging along since the 1950s. SpaceX hopes to realize the same economies of scale by designing their Merlin engine for mass production (10 per flight actually helps) and keeping prices low to up the launch tempo. They also attempt to use more automation so fewer personnel are required for manufacturing and launch operations.

>>4019753
You'd think they'd make a staged rocket where every stage was the same and they snapped together like ejectable rocket Legos. Then they could feasibly have each stage at a different power. Besides, are those Merlins expendable? If there were a way to produce a large number of one-use components, the cost would go down.

>>4019381
Dunno, man, space elevator sounds pretty good.