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/sci/ - Science & Math


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File: 57 KB, 640x480, NERVA.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1789603 No.1789603 [Reply] [Original]

Realistic future spacecraft and space technology thread!

This is the NERVA engine its uses nuclear fission to heat hydrogen to create thrust.

>> No.1789626

I remember in Stephen Baxters 'Voyage' a Saturn-IVB fitted with a NERVA rocket exploded during its test firing in low Earth orbit, irradating the crew in the attached Apollo command module.

>> No.1789635
File: 195 KB, 1280x854, 1281381263068.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1789635

This is the SKYLON spaceplane

it it a SSTO spaceplane capable of carting 24 passengers to LEO

it is being designed by the British company reaction engines limited

it uses new air breathing engines to get into orbit

If all goes according to plan it should be operational in 10 years

>> No.1789644

>>1789626
In reality the project was making excellent progress

until Richard Nixon shit down the project

>> No.1789652

>>1789635
I read that as

>it is being designed by the British company reaction images limited

>> No.1789663

and......?

>> No.1789672

>>1789652
also I'd like to add skylab was cooler than iss

>> No.1789686

>>1789672
its the most sci-fi spacecraft iv'e ever seen

>> No.1790142
File: 370 KB, 1024x717, Bigelow_5 446Kbytes.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1790142

This the a bigelow space complex

Construction is slated to begin in 2014

>> No.1790654

bump

>> No.1790661
File: 114 KB, 647x415, Spacex.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1790661

>> No.1790663

>>1789652

>it is being designed by the British company reaction images limited
>reaction images limited
>Reaction Engines Limited
>Reaction Images Limited

Oh God I lol'd harder than I should've.

>> No.1790693

>>1790663
been on /b/ to long?

>> No.1790696

>>1789635
mothballed and would never work

it requires chilling 700°c super heated air to cryogenic temperatures by running it into thousands of millimeter diameter tubes that run past hydrogen. Thats all fine and dandy but they forgot that watter was in this air and it will turn solid and clog shit up.

>> No.1790700

>>1789603
>1963

>> No.1790711

>>1790696
are you sir an engineer?

>> No.1790717

>>1790696
I sir am not, I don't even go to school I just post angerly online refuting others with my vast sums of wikipedia knowledge.

>> No.1790756

>>1790711
NO HE IS NOT! I am and I know the the thing will fucking work... because I was trying to do the exact same thing. So cheers to these guys for beating me to it and doing all the work for me, and fuck them for taking away my chance at the cash.

Anyway, the idea is to get "air trying to melt the engines" down to "1400C or lower, but hey we can get this shit as low as 700". Not 700 to cryogenic, what the fuck is that shit?

>> No.1790767

>>1790756

Finally an opinion I can trust.

>> No.1790775

>>1790756
learn to SKYLON you homosexual
the whole point of this ugly pos was to liquefy air by cooling it and burn air / lh2 in the rocket engine

>> No.1790778

>>1790767
It are a fact, I know because of my learnings. Seriously, 700c air down to cryogenic? God damn if the air only got up to 700 celsius there would be no fucking heating problems and the entire ramjet and scramjet hullabaloo would have been entirely different.

>> No.1790781

>>1790778
This is no fucking ramjet, its a liquified air rocket.

Well it dose have ramjets also but they are not the main engine.

>> No.1790794

>>1790775
Wow, either you do not know how this thing is supposed to work... or THEY don;t know and they haven;t beaten me to shit. As ego boosting as it would be to find out you're right, I am gonna have to go with the big company and a team of engineers beating me by myself with less experience. Sorry dude, they just can't be that stupid.

>> No.1790802

>>1790781
I know it's not a ramjet, I know it has a ramjet, and ... wait, a liquefied air rocket.... You really have no fucking idea what SKYLON is. Nevermind all the shit I was going to tell you about heating problems in aeronautical engineering and high speed engine tests, you don't even know what we are talking about.

>> No.1790808
File: 24 KB, 650x359, shit.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1790808

>>1790802
here you dumb fuck

>> No.1790818

>>1790808

>Simplified

>> No.1790821

>>1790808

...oh my God, they are really going that direction with it... they are really, really that fucking stupid...

>> No.1790824

>>1790808
ad hominem

I back boomer on this

and boomer that nuclear cannon is still stupid

>> No.1790828

>>1790818
Colonel, you're right, its clearly not the whole picture. A billion dollar company would not miss major details they themselves publish about high altitude flight. Clearly this promotional image for investors is in error.

>> No.1790836

>>1790824
You're stupid! Unless you got a better way to put 200,000 tons into orbit yesterday, we are digging a hole in Kenya!

>> No.1790841

>>1790836
I actually do

its called a mass driver

even a space elevator is more likely to happen

>> No.1790848

>>1790841

Stop it with the mass driver bull:

http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/Nowicki/SPBI1SI.HTM

>and our two examples become $830 and $830 billion dollars respectively.

Unless you've got magical room-temperature superconductors and other such awesomeness, you can forget about the mass drivers.

Also why Kenya, Boomer?

>> No.1790854

The SABRE engine (Synergistic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine) [1] is a concept by Reaction Engines Limited for a hypersonic precooled hybrid air breathing rocket engine [4] for propelling the proposed Skylon launch vehicle into low Earth orbit (LEO).

It seems like in 2009 they changed from completely liquefying the air to cooling it to a couple hundred °c and using a jet style turbine to push it into the rocket. They probably changed the plan because I kept emailing them about how stupid they where.

>> No.1790859

>>1790841
Mass drivers are nice, but seriously a mass driver doing a 200,000ton launch is just all kinds of crazy. Really, why are you opposed to the "whatever crazy name the Colonel has for it this" week gun? Are we still on Schroeder?

>> No.1790863

>>1790848
mass driver to mach .7-2.5 ish flowed by ramjet is not a bad idea but mass driver to orbit is just silly.

>> No.1790866

>>1790859

Verne Gun or Schroeder Gun. Whatever.

>> No.1790888

>>1790848
Kenya is on the equator, has TONS of very nice flat, smooth land, GREAT soil for foundations and constructions, et cetera. It is where I would want to put as much space based projects as possible.

>> No.1790903

So boomer I've been wanting to make a turbo pump for quite some time. I have a cnc mill but it only has four axis, I also have a cnc lathe. But what I don't have are good 3d cad drawings.

>> No.1790918

>>1790888

*takes notes for sci-fi*

>> No.1790925

>>1790888
If you want to use Kenya for something useful you must first kill the Kenyans. I suggest creating an incurable fatal disease spread by the lack of self control.

>> No.1790929

>>1790903
Well I'd love to help you out, but after this post >>1790854 I cannot help but feel you are one damned masterful troll, you magnificent bastard. Otherwise I'd quote you a price for my designs and get on it.

>> No.1790943

>>1790848
at least a room temperature superconductor does not defy the laws of physics

like a nuclear cannon

>> No.1790965

>>1790918
Heh, Robert Heinlein did stuff with Kenya for those reasons. Halo referenced him with their Kenyan centrism. It just really is a good place so many authors have used it. Keep in mind many of those authors are scientists and engineers that worked for NASA.

>> No.1790971

>>1790929
I hail from newmars where i post as adaptordie visit us some time, we have some interesting people and more are welcome. I have learned allot in the past two years of being obsessed with getting stuff into space.

and ty I do try to be the best troll possible

here is a thread about ramjets
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6729&start=80

>> No.1790972

>>1790943

Republican slander!

Alternatively, anti-nuclear bandwagoner

>> No.1790979

>>1790943
...you be trollin'. The Nuclear cannon is the one not violating the laws of physics. Nuclear reactions, concrete, and steel are all real. Room temperature super-conductors are not real and are highly unlikely with known physics.

>> No.1790991

>>1790971
Yeah but seriously you need a drafter? Turbopumps are falling off a log easy... to just draw one for the heck of drawing one i have no idea what your desired parameters are yet... so if you have 275 dollars I am yours for at least a week.

>> No.1791012

>>1790991
I am willing to pay if you produce good work. Do you have an online portfolio I can see?

>> No.1791015

We should use antimatter catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion simply 'cause it sounds awesome.

>> No.1791032

>>1791012

Sadly, no portfolio online. Sorry.

>> No.1791037 [DELETED] 

>>1791032
contact me at my junk email, I will reply tomorrow from my real email

being.someone.human@gmail.com

>> No.1791043

>>1791015
Antimatter anything does sound awesome, but honestly antimatter is horribly expensive. SABRE, NERVA, those are the good ones. VASIMR also is good.

>> No.1791046

>>1791037
I shall contact from my junk e-mail. boomer-tiro@hotmail.com

>> No.1791052

my goal is to make a rocket to send a 1kg payload to leo
First stage auto gas or ethanol rocket + turbo exhaust / cooling fluid to power side mounted ramjets.

>> No.1791060

>>1791052
Oh that'll be fun. Definitely, definitely get into contact with me.

>> No.1791072
File: 76 KB, 247x253, 1284512142434.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1791072

With some luck I might get to become an aerospace engineer (First step: Get accepted by some uni in the US, lol some luck) and get to go out for drinks with Elon Musk and make nerdy jokes about Robert Bussard and fuck bitches.

>> No.1791075

>>1791043
vasimr is full of meh, its not lighter than competitor, not cheaper, it dose not offer more thrust per kwh that competing technology when you compare it to arrays of Hall effect thrusters it dose not even scale better.

The only major difference is that it is expected to last longer in space, so it would be good for a long term tug say to go back and fourth from mars and earth.

>> No.1791079

>>1791075
Also, like with the SABRE, I thought of something similar independently... so it just has a soft spot in my heart. NERVA, however, yeah that thing is made of pure awesome and it beat VASIMR to the scene.

>> No.1791087

>>1791072
I have been trying to become an "aerospace engineer" and many other kinds for about ten years. If you are lucky, you can get by designing plastic widgest for people while working some other shit job to supplement the income. The bullshit "recession" is fucking nuts.

>> No.1791089

Big dumb rockets are where it's at.
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/searagon.htm

>> No.1791090

>>1791060
http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ipp/innovation_incubator/centennial_challenges/nano_satellite/index.html

I have loads of cool manufacturing toys I get to play with after hours at work.

I have not quite worked out the detales on the second stage, I'm wondering if the decomposition of high test peroxide is hot enough to be used as a bypropellent pseudo hypergol. I kinda wanted a restartable He pressure fed second stage but H2O2 sucks as a monopropelent and I don't want to mess with toxic stuff like hydrozine.

>> No.1791106

>>1791090
I want to believe this is legitimate so badly... but you could just be reading relevant info as you need it for the gag.

>> No.1791113

>>1791106
Dude I don't know if I will succeed but I surly wish to try.

>> No.1791133

>>1791113
It's entirely doable. Similar things have actually been done already. But the problem is you might not really be trying and are just here to "fuck with some nerds'.

>> No.1791153

>>1791133
Well I don't know what to say... This stuff is my passion. If you wanted I could change my sig on newmars all that would prove is that I've been talking about it for two years. In the end I suppose it doesn't really matter if you believe me right now, but there are some aspects of my plan that I am unable to do on my own at this point if the required skills and knowledge and where willing to help it could make things easer.

>> No.1791207

>>1791153
Alright, you're not e-mailing me back and I am not shy about this because it is part of the hard fucking truth about doing this.

Give me $275 USD, now.

This is,
1)Not a joke
2)Not unreasonable
3)Should be possible if you want to do this
4)Entirely Necessary

The drafting program I use costs close to $5000 USD and you can bet I have a lot of other payments I need to make. My time is valuable and this would not be the only job or project I am looking at. Just to keep listening to you and begin running some roughs requires an investment on my part and loss of time and investment on other projects. I have bills to pay, time is money. The materials alone to complete your project will be in the thousands of dollars. A realistic budget for this thing puts it in the $10'000 - $20'000 dollar range. And if you cannot accept, handle, or be a part of any of that, than this is just one interesting thread I spent some time on and I have to let it go at that while dealing with refrigerators and stoves.

$275, now, or this is a load of shit. Trolling or not if you cannot do that then you are nowhere near able to do this yourself, let alone get another drafter. And most drafters are gonna charge WAY fucking more than $275 a week.

>> No.1791229

>>1791207

check your email buddy

Also I am not paying anyone anything until I'm convened they can do what they are being payed for.

>> No.1791235

I don't mean to brag or anything, but my mom helped design the toilet on the space shuttle.

>> No.1791239

>>1791235
Well I do mean to brag, nasa payed for me to fly on the vomit commit.

>> No.1791241

>>1791235
anyhow i need sleep, I plan in keeping touch

good night

>> No.1791242

>>1791239
well then i guess you're not special enough to use my mom's space toilet

>> No.1791246

>>1791242
I would much rather try to form a successful aerospace company than be an under payed us astronaut stuck in leo.

>> No.1791250

>>1791242
also the russians made a better toilet. :P

>> No.1791253
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1791253

Can't you just have a really big magnet in space PULL the spaceship up?
Or better yet, attach the magnet to the ship and angle it downwards so it pulls it up infinitely, genius!

>> No.1791256

>>1791253
WORLD ENERGY CRISIS SOLVED

>> No.1791258

>>1791250
that hurts deep man
hurts deep

>> No.1791263

>>1791246
I would form a successful aerospace company specifically to become that underpaid astronaut in LEO.

>> No.1791276
File: 115 KB, 1280x854, skylon-desktop-7_1280.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1791276

>>1791263

<FutureHype>
Once the nanotech revolution comes we'll be making spacecraft out of backyard materials and we won't have to worry about anything!
</FutureHype>

But seriously, I'd love to be some underpaid astronaut in LEO.

>> No.1791314
File: 80 KB, 472x472, 1278886201546.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1791314

>mfw kesha

>>>/b/274195394

>> No.1791327

>>1791314
...you get a pat on the back. Stay here and talk about engines.

>> No.1791329

>>1791327
I enjoy the internal combustion system

>> No.1791335

Tell me /sci/ what happened to laser powered Spacecraft? Spaceships shot into space by a laser beam simply kicking it in the ass. It seamed such an elegant and cheap solution to space launch costs What happened?

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

>> No.1791343

>>1791335
I LOVE THAT THING!

Well after the initial research and proof of concept proved it viable, the air force canceled the project and seized all materials relating to it... and we have heard nothing ever since.

>> No.1791352

>>1791343
Or thats the OFFICIAL story and there are several laser launch sites working overtime at Groom lake putting satellites up for $90 per launch. Or i can dream anyway damnit.
Seriously they could be working on it behind the scenes i suppose.

>> No.1791361

>>1791352
Well yes, the official story is indeed no story at all and they could be doing anything.

However, keep in mind the intended laser to make this work is more powerful than the lasers the navy wants to use as weapons. Of course that is true of every launch vehicle when compared to it's smaller military brother. So laser tech has not quite caught up with this one yet, but we are getting there.

>> No.1791378
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1791378

Orion propulsion is best propulsion.

>> No.1791386

>>1791361
I hope so because this really seems like the most likely 'Cheap' tech to get stuff into space.

>> No.1791424
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1791424

We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to ours. Resistance is futile.

>> No.1791429

>>1791424
on spike right now motha fucka

>> No.1791431

>>1791424
Fuck you Borg. You stole transwarp corridor tech from some sucker civilization that wandered into your path didn't you? DIDN'T YOU!!?!??!

>> No.1791448

>>1791429
I am watching all seasons of Voyager. I am on season 5 I can't wait to We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

>> No.1791939

>>1790972
I support nuclear space technology(like NERVA)

just not stupid nuclear space technology

>> No.1791955

>>1791072
Yeah our immigration program can be a bitch

>> No.1792120

bump for spaceships

>> No.1792161
File: 92 KB, 1024x638, vasimr.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1792161

This is the VASIMR engine

with its very specific impulse it can be used as a very cheap cargo hauler between worlds

>> No.1792214

combine
>>1792161
and
>>1789603
and make the ideal thermonuclear fusion engine !

needs some improvements anyway.

>> No.1792233

>>1792214
not really

Use nerva to transport people

use vasimr to transfer cargo

and you're good

>> No.1792632
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1792632

>>1791250
the russians did make some good space shit

>> No.1793678

bump

>> No.1793832

>>1789686
Have you seen the russian Proton rocket? It looked awesomely sci-fi.

>> No.1793850

inb4 ion thrust systems suck bawls and would never send humans anywhere in space.
remember kids:


no matter WHAT, no matter how much electricity you can produce using fusion, fission, or whatever.


no matter how advanced your structural materials OR your electronics.....


you still need to accelerate MASS out of the back of your space ship.


this means you will STILL need fuel, and you cannot get that fuel in space.


you need to bring it from the surface of the earth.


and this is the reason why "space exploration" will never be a true reality.

it is simply too expensive to lift hundreds of tons of chemicals into space, especially if all you are going to do is blast it out the back, when your whole mission profile involves seeing if you can grow yeast cultures in deep space.

>> No.1793880

My idea for an interplanetary spacecraft:
- Carrier aircraft like White Knight lifts off horizontally using turbojets, gains altitude, and accelerates to mach 2.
- Switch to scramjets to accelerate to mach 10.
- Carrier aircraft drops spacecraft and returns to base. Spacecraft uses chemical rockets to reach orbit.
- Once in orbit chemical rockets are dropped, spacecraft then travels anywhere in solar system using its second stage: ion drives powered by a fusion reactor.

>> No.1793902

>>1793850
That's not entirely true, you can propel yourself with pure energy, using light as your reaction mass. It's called a photonic drive. Unfortunately it requires massive amounts of energy. A fusion reactor would not be powerful enough, you'd probably need a black hole for matter->energy conversion.

>> No.1793906
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1793906

>> No.1793910
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1793910

>> No.1793911
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1793911

>> No.1793916
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1793916

fuck shuttles

>> No.1793933

>>1793916
>>1793911
>>1793910
lol perpetual motion

>> No.1793940

>>1793850
Uhm, with NERVA and VASIMR engines, the propellant can be freaking dirt. You have a nuclear core that lasts for months and you just shovel anything in there and away you fly. Every little asteroid or bit of foil junk you can feed in there you can blast out of the back. So propellant production, as well as materials production, taking place in space solves a lot of the problems you wish to force into space travel.

For space travel to work, it simply will not be dominated by ignorance or inexperience.

>> No.1793952

>>1793902
>>1793902
>>1793902

lol only a monkey would assume its called a "photonic drive"

you assume that because it is in the title of a wikipedia article, that the name must be true.

read the references. did any scientists ever call it a "photonic" drive?
anyway, even mentioning this is retarded. the sun itself cannot push Mercury via blackbody radiation and bosonic momentum.

>> No.1793956

>>1791378
Agreed. Orion is a fucking incredible idea since it uses current technology. On wikipedia it claims that with a large enough bomb you can get to .1 c and potentially .8 c !!!! We could hit the nearest solar system in a human lifetime. It's the butthurt "no nukes" crowd that would keep it from taking off.

>> No.1793957

>>1793940
or, better yet, dip into a gas giant, take in some helium/hydrogen/argon/etc, dump your waste heat into the giant's atmosphere, and then continue on your merry way, farting a trail of gas giant guts behind you.

>> No.1793959

NERVA is useless for long term space travel.Except for planetary shuttles, any realistic future spacecraft should provide for at least 800 years worth of energy, light, food, water, and possibly Artificial gravity via centrifugal force

>> No.1793961

project orion si doable today. And if it wasn' t for the politics we would allready have it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3Lxx2VAYi8

>> No.1793962

>>1793940


if you exclude the asteroid belt, junk in orbit, the rings of saturn and the other gas giants, etc...


there is more mass in the tanks of the space shuttle than in all of the interplanetary space in the entire solar system and beyond (all the way to the Oort cloud).


even if you could accelerate massive particles to 99% of the speed of light and shoot them out of the back of your space ship....


there STILL isnt enough crap floating in the vacuum to supply the mass you would need to generate enough thrust to leave the solar system (sun's well).


you think you could use physically massive shit like floating debris?


we will NEVER develop materials strong enough to handle an encounter with even pea sized debris.


unless you mean a space ship would leave earth with some fuel....

fly to the asteroid belt.... slow down... perform complicated velocity matching maneuvers.... mine the asteroid for more fuel.... then ACCELERATE AGAIN (burining most of the new fuel)....


you are fucking retarded.

"mid flight" capture of material in space is impossible for anything heavier than the mass of a bacterial cell.

>> No.1793986

>>1793962
You're absolutely right, if we apply needless restrictions to ourselves and give up because one method will not work, than space travel is clearly impossible.

Or we could just do what I mentioned, invest in space based infrastructure, and begin using resources and material we need already in space. You seem to forget that there are some NEOs massing in the millions of tons, too. In fact you seem to get your entire view of the solar system from a 3rd grade picture and your entire idea of the scale from sci-fi movies. You honestly believe the thousands of tons in a space shuttle tank outweighs a single million ton NEO, after all.

>> No.1793988

>>1793952
Chill dude, it's just a name, that kind of drive has been referred to by many names. What name would you prefer I use? For all your bluster you do not suggest an alternative.

The Sun does indeed push Mercury with blackbody radiation and solar wind. How could it not? The force is very small and the mass of Mercury is very large so it doesn't disrupt its orbit.

By the way, "bosonic momentum"? Lol and you complain about my nomenclature. The solar wind is more than bosons, it also contains leptons.

>> No.1794045

>>1793988


true. but you were discussing "photonic drive."

photons are bosons. they are massless bosons.

the entire concept of using light to push massive objects (solar sails for example) is that Bosons (specifically fundamental or discrete, rather than composite bosons like 4He nuclei) carry momentum....

EVEN WHEN THEY CARRY NO MASS!

so the concept is the transfer of momentum by bosons.


"photonics" is a name that has been attached by scientists and engineers (for decades by the way) to the field of CREATION or ABSORPTION of photons by engineered materials (eg: semiconductor photonics, photonic crystals, or simply "photonics" the field of engineering/materials science that studies these materials)


comparing the thrust produced by the blackbody radiation of the sun, calculated across the entire exposed area of the closest planet mercury, was to explain that even with the power of the sun (which produces both blackbody radiation, AND high energy X-rays, gammas, UV-Vis, etc) cannot even push hard enough to affect Mercury's orbit in such a way that a 2nd year physics student couldnt still predict mercury's orbit within 5% accuracy (eg: neglecting effects of all other masses in the solar system, neglecting relativistic effects, etc which are all many many orders of magnitude stronger than the effects under discussion)

>> No.1794051

>>1793986


so you do admit that your plan involves mining space debris.


just wanted to make that clear.

>> No.1794459

>>1794045
Yes, the thrust produced is extremely small. To be usable as a space drive, you would need matter->energy conversion, and then the photon drive is basically a mechanism to eject your fuel at lightspeed. That gives you the theoretical maximum specific impulse.

You could build one using small black holes. Feed it mass, and it produces blackbody radiation and matter, which you can feed back into the black hole. A ten ton black hole would produce 1.2 * 10^18 N of force, about a million times more than the space shuttle's engines.

>> No.1794465

>>1794459
Oops typo, it's actually 10^16 N.