/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.2692938]

Cost of human launches with the Shuttle is close to 2 million dollars. But the cost of human launch with Reaction Engines Skylon is 10k dollars!

Why the fuck isn't the government funding this?

[Anonymous No.2692952]

source?

[Anonymous No.2692956]

listen, if there is one thing history/evolution has taught us. traits and designs become extinct and removed for a reason, it may not be clear or evident, but there is a reason.

[Anonymous No.2692969]

Yes, because we should only focus on the way to get there and not on upgrading our terrestrial adapted biology, or primitive ideals and norms.

[Anonymous No.2692984]

>>2692952
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmbis/writev/735/73522.htm

£650 per kg is 1000$ per kg, which is 10,000 dollars per 100km person with space suit

[Anonymous No.2692994]

people on /sci/ have no idea how difficult it is to get through nasa bureaucracy. they've got a shoestring budget and are not allowed to fuck up (even though they do anyways), they are not exactly the forefront of new and radical space technology.

take a look
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level

[Anonymous No.2693010]

>government
Found the problem

>>2692994
SSTO would be at TRL6

Engine has been tested

[Anonymous No.2693306]

We had an SSTO but NASA canceled it because Congress hates progress

[Anonymous No.2693807]

[Anonymous No.2695274]

[Anonymous No.2695292]

Because a space elevator is predicted to be here a few years after they could have the first one of those flying.

[Anonymous No.2695337]

Because reality.
Ever single time you see one of these ridiculous stupid pie in the sky designs, it's always accompanied by some cretin, some real intellectual tadpole, hooting about how cheap it will be compared to x, and then how the only reason it hasn't been done is because hurr big business or hurr government

YEAH GUESS WHAT

IF IT WAS THAT CHEAP PEOPLE WOULD HAVE FUCKING DONE IT ALREADY

THERE ARE LITERALLY HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE OUT THERE WITH HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF CASH RESERVES, SOME WITH MANY BILLIONS, NOT AFRAID TO TAKE RISKS

THEREFORE, LOGICALLY, THE ONLY REASON THERE ISN'T AND INDUCTION LOOP/SPACE ELEVATOR / ELECTROGRAVATETIC MAGIC SKY DRAGON HOVER BUS / SKYLON IS BECAUSE

*drumroll*

IT
IS
NOT
FUCKING
POSSIBLE
PROBABLY
FOR
DECADES
IF
NOT
LIFETIMES
BUT
MOST
LIKELY
NEVER
EVER
EVER

Just think about it. It's a known fact that every large government in the world wastes enormous amounts of cash on projects that are obviously stupid, so in order for these fantasy projects to not get funded it must mean that they are so immeasurably stupid, so impossibly, gut wrenchingly fucktarded as to defy belief.

carry on wanking over your stupid impossiprojects you retarded morons

[Anonymous No.2695369]

>>2695337
Actually the RE Skylon is being funded by someone with "billions of dollars"

First units are to be delivered by 2013

[Anonymous No.2695434]

Pretty bird

[Anonymous No.2695519]

>>2695337
Sea dragon disproves all of that.
OP's crap is expensive and impractical, but the sea dragon design looks amazing, and uses already existing and deployed systems.

Its probably just been overlooked within nasa since they cut it in the 60s under their future projects umbrella, and while most of the other things developed in that era were batshit crazy, sea dragon was built with coast and practicality in mind. I really think they should take a second look at it for ultra heavy lift launches. This motherfucker could have laubched the entire ISS and have 150 tons to spare.

Again, im not sure nasa is aware how popular the design has become, or has had trouble getting funding for final r&d and actual design

Hell, spaceX could probably snatch it up and make serious bank on bargain equipment lifts into LEO. $600 a kg? Dayum

[Anonymous No.2695553]

>>2695434
Dat spacedock.

>>2695519
As the guy who started spamming /sci/ with Sea Dragon months ago, seeing other people talk about it feels good man.

[Anonymous No.2695576]

>>2695553
Its infectious isn't it? I mean for ducks sake, you could design and build the platform and rocket in a few years, and use a nuclear aircraft carrier as the elecrltrolysis source to make the fuel on site. Storms could be a bit of an issue but the thing is on its side right up until launch anyway

[Anonymous No.2695629]

>>2695576
I love the whole fucking concept.
It's made of SHEET METAL for fucks sake! How awesome is that!

It's like someone took one of those juvenile scifi stories with boiler-made spaceships and made it reality.

Sure, high tech is fun, but we could literally produce these by the mile and shoot them up wholesale.

Fucking backyarders!
Fucking backyarders everywhere!

[Anonymous No.2695808]

>>2695629

Fucking redneck. This is the same nonsense that is responsible for American muscle cars. Why bother doing something 'right' when you can do it the stupid american way by lumping a massive inefficient engine onto something and putting up with the massive poor performance.

[Anonymous No.2695817]

>>2695808
what the fuck does reducing the costs of rocket launches have to do with american muscle cars

[Anonymous No.2695823]

>>2695808
>implying efficient and inexpensive space flight is doing it wrong

[Anonymous No.2695827]

>>2692938

What's that America? I can't hear you over how awesome we are.

[Anonymous No.2695829]

>>2695808
Knows nothing about anything

[Anonymous No.2695832]

>>2695808
see:
>>2695817
>>2695823

Also, finfag non-redneck here. I think you misunderstood the economy of Sea Dragon compared to other possibilities?

[Anonymous No.2695876]

>world is entering a massive energy crisis which will reshape human society and attitudes forever, if it survives. Logically, every government body with the resources should be focusing on developing technologies and processes to help civilisation continue and prevent billions from starving to death or being vaporised in wars over the remaining resources
>hay guys lets carry on lobbing pointless and incredibly energy intensive penis substitutes into space, because it might pay off in two thousand years time and we'll be able to visit loads and loads of totally uninhabitable rocks after journey times of centuries

space exploration should have finished with the end of the Apollo program. railroading vast amounts of money into wasteful vanity projects just because you masturbate over star trek is such a shit use of resources it beggars belief

[Anonymous No.2695882]

>>2695817

Big dumb rocket that has plenty of power but wastes a fuckton of fuel

OR

Heavily developed and highly efficient rocket that saves on fuel, weight and brings new technological goodies to the table.

[Anonymous No.2695887]

>>2695876

No satellites 4 u

[Anonymous No.2695888]

>>2695832
Finfags, finfags everywhere!

Sage for no relevance.

[Anonymous No.2695900]

>>2695876
>cute-boy-laughing.jpg

the fuck were you searching for to get that imagine you sick fuck

[Anonymous No.2695902]

>>2695519 Sea Dragon

Oh yeah, that thing that never got past conceptual sketches.

[Anonymous No.2695912]

>>2695832
>finland
>talking about space

there is nothing in your country apart from dark, wet and pine trees
shouldn't you be drinking yourself into a stupor or committing suicide?

[Anonymous No.2695926]

>>2695876
>progress is bad because bullshit explanation and prejudice

>>2695882
While it wastes a lot of fuel, the system itself is extremely cheap. Ynlike with Skylon. While Skylon is beautiful and advanced, it's fucking expensive to build because of all the high-strength and high-temperature-resistant materials needed for production.

TL;DR: if you actually check, and don't just dismiss facts outright, you will see that the Sea Dragon is magnitudes more economical than Skylon can ever be.

[Anonymous No.2695928]

>>2695912
Multi-tasking. Even Symbian does it.

[Anonymous No.2695946]

>>2695902
>The design was reviewed with Todd Shipyards, who concluded that it was well within their capabilities, and not too unlike making a submarine hull. 8 mm thick maraging steel was used, similar to the Aerojet 260 inch solid motor of the time. NASA Marshall gave the Aerojet designs to TRW for evaluation. TRW fully confirmed Aerojet's costs and engineering, a great surprise to both TRW and NASA. Aerojet was considering purchasing Sudden Ranch as a launch site for Sea Dragon. This property included several kilometers of coastline between Santa Barbara and Vandenberg AFB. This was the only site on the continental United States that could launch directly into a polar orbit without overflying populated areas (and was later incorporated into Vandenberg).

Snippets:
>TRW fully confirmed Aerojet's costs and engineering, a great surprise to both TRW and NASA.

>Aerojet was considering purchasing Sudden Ranch as a launch site for Sea Dragon.

>>2695912
We have education. Also, aren't you too prejudiced to be a scientist?

[Anonymous No.2695960]

>>2695946
>too prejudiced to be a scientist?

sheeet niggah, the nazis produced some of the best scientists ever, and you can't get more prejudiced than that

[Anonymous No.2695964]

>>2695926

Any cost analysis you are reading will have been done in the 1960s and will be wildly inaccurate.

It's going to need all of the same high strength and high temperature materials as the Skylon.

[Anonymous No.2695981]

>>2695964
>>2695964
you fail forever either at research or engineering

[Anonymous No.2695991]

>>2695946

If it was such a good idea then why didn't they go with it?

When you build something dumb and heavy intending to lift heavy stuff, the size of it quickly increases because of the extra, unnecessary fuel required. The more the size increases the more difficulties you run into when actually building the thing.

It's good to be refined.

[Anonymous No.2695997]

>>2695991
>But this came just as Apollo was being cut back and the Viet Nam war was eating an ever greater amount of the US budget. NASA dissolved their Future Projects Branch (dropping almost all the manned Mars landing work). Prospects for Sea Dragon essentially disappeared, and Aerojet could no longer fund it on IR&D.

[Anonymous No.2695999]

>>2695981

Why did NASA waste most of their budget developing lightweight temperature resistant tiles instead of just skinning the shuttle with 8mm steel plate?

U r moran.

[Anonymous No.2696009]

nasa gets funding for like half the missions that they want to do. and then those missions that they pick to do get scaled down.

i doubt they have a really heavily funded research and development arm as that would be something that could easily yield no useful results for the cash investment. if something like this project is to be done i think a private company will have to step up and assume the risks.

[Anonymous No.2696010]

>>2695997

I've read that article so don't copypasta it to me and do some thinking by yourself.

[Anonymous No.2696016]

>>2695999
Your comment shows that you haven't thought this through, or done your research.

[Anonymous No.2696036]

+ the pollution from the Sea Dragon would be immense.

[Anonymous No.2696094]

>>2696016

U r moran tho

The sea dragon was a concept on paper, no intensive research or development was done on it.

Yeah it could have worked but what the fuck are you going to use it for? We don't need 500t of payload everytime we go up and there's certainly no point in lifting almost 20,000t of heavy junk into orbit any time you need to get there.

Waste of time for minimal gains.