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/sci/ - Science & Math

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5605181 No.5605181 [Reply] [Original]

hey /sci/,
Not very physics smart anon here but I want to launch my own satellite into outer space. I'm thinking of the satellite being small about the size of a tennis ball.

My idea of getting it there is to launch a weather balloon with a remote controlled airplane or one with a micro controller, equiped with model rocket engines to help get the satellite into orbit.

Is this feasable? Can anyone think of a better idea to go about this?

>> No.5605204

>microgravity
>balloon will still go up

Yeah try again.

If we could launch shit that easily then I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be worrying about escape velocity.

>> No.5605211

>>5605204
I guess I didn't explain it well enough, when the balloon reaches it's peak it'll release the plane which will fly into orbit.

>> No.5605220

>>5605181
>My idea of getting it there is to launch a weather balloon with a remote controlled airplane or one with a micro controller, equiped with model rocket engines to help get the satellite into orbit.

You have no idea how long model rocket engines fire, do you?

They are suitable for a few hundred feet, perhaps.
But you are asking how to get from perhaps 40 miles to 90-120 miles.

>> No.5605225

>>5605211
>when the balloon reaches it's peak it'll release the plane which will fly into orbit.

The AIRPLANE will take it to orbit?
By flying through what?
With an engine pushing on what?
and the wings provide lift using what?

>> No.5605232

>>5605220
I know, I also know gravity get's weaker the higher up you. I don't know if it be significant enough to make the model rockets feasible.

>> No.5605231

I think I see part of the problem, here:
conceptually, you are reducing the scale of your payload, which is smart and, of course, critical.

But you haven't scaled down the distance you have to go, or the air density you have to deal with to get to that distance.

>> No.5605265

>>5605232
>I don't know if it be significant enough to make the model rockets feasible.

But this is the point:
you can't approach this problem without making this calculation,
or at least having something that tells you the amount of force/mass and distance you can achieve.

>> No.5605287

>>5605265
Is there a table or formula to find out the strength(force?) of gravity based on distance from sea level?

>> No.5605297

I like your ambition, op.

Too bad you won't ever succeed at this, even if you did get "good at physics"

>> No.5605334

>>5605297
Doesn't matter, I've learned a bunch of stuff working on this project. So far I have a handheld ham radio which I'm interfacing with an arduino. Once I get around to getting an amateur radio license I'll try to transmit data.

One step at a time, who knows maybe in the next few years there will be a cheap service to get items into space and I'll have a satellite ready.

>> No.5605349
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5605349

>>5605334
>ham radio

That always gets me.

>> No.5605413

Your model rocket would have to be flying 7.5 km/s horizontally in order to reach orbit. Too bad its impossible.

>> No.5606344

look into cubesats, you can get a kit to build one and launch it with like 50 other cube sats stuffed into various normal satellite launches that have spare room in the payload bay

i think you can build and launch one for like, less than ten grand, which is awesome

>> No.5606353

>>5606344
>ten grand
more like a hundred
http://www.vtspacegrant.org/cubesat_vtproject.php

>> No.5606355

It's easy to get things into space.
It's hard to get things into orbit.

Reminder that the winning private individual that one the xprize only could manage a suborbital flight, and that was millions of dollars spent. What hope do you have?

>> No.5606357

>>5606353
more like $600 if elon musk's "$500 per kg" quote carries any weight in ten years

>> No.5606362

>>5605287

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation

>> No.5606368

>>5606362
I lol'd

>> No.5606375

>>5605225

I guess you didn't read his post. He said rocket engines. Model rocket engines I'd guess. Big ones.

>> No.5606377

>>5605220

They have big model rocket motors dude.

>> No.5606395

Has anyone privately attained orbit yet?

>> No.5606398

Holy crap. This is EXACTLY what i have been thinking about haha.

You equip it with a balloon and just when it is about to reach it's
peak you fire the rocket and proceed into a orbital course.

>> No.5606401

Even if you could get it into orbit how would you adjust it's orbit eccentricity OP?

>> No.5606403

Outside of the technical limitations with your crazy idea, anything sent into orbit is regulated by federal or supernational organizations. Orbital debris are a real problem that the space agencies of the world are trying to prevent, they don't need your garbage up there.

>> No.5606406

You need either an unrealistically low-density rocket or tons of helium. Just stick to suborbital flights.

>> No.5606409

A balloon or aircraft would mainly achieve one thing: to get the rocket into thinner air. This would be a signficant benefit for a small rocket, since they suffer more from drag effects due to scale. However, it wouldn't reduce delta-V requirements to much less than a normal large rocket requires for a ground take-off.

This means you'd either need a remarkably light and efficient liquid-fuelled motor, or some kind of staging. Either way, it would require a serious development effort, and you could not simply use model rocket motors.

>> No.5606416

>>5605334
>giving a fuck about license
>letting the government limit your freedom
Break free of your chains

>> No.5606420

>>5606403
Who's going to stop you?

>> No.5606423

>>5606420
Except elementary physics, that is.

>> No.5606419

>>5606395
SpaceX is pretty much it, for truly private spacelaunch. All the rest were government, quasi-governmental, or closely-overseen military contractors.

And even SpaceX got a bunch of government money.

>> No.5606434

>>5606419
Well, that's not entirely fair. Orbital might count, too. They claim to, and they were before SpaceX. However, they are a military contractor.

>> No.5606484

This is what i had in mind.

>> No.5606487
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5606487

>>5606484
forgot image.

>> No.5606507

>>5605181
Remember to use helium OP! For pathetic science and the hope that an american citizen could take out a chink spy satelite with their own ordnance, come to think of it why arnt the CIA operating like that? For Glory Anon!

>> No.5606527

>>5606355
This.

Ignoring air resistance, you would have to shoot a bullet 1.4 km/s straight up to reach space = 100km altitude. To reach orbit you would need 30+ times more kinetic energy.

>> No.5606531

>>5606487

OK, you like many other layman's don't have the right idea about what orbit is.
When something is in orbit, like the astronauts on the ISS, they look weightless and people instantly think that it's from a lack of gravity acting on them.

That is not the case. The ISS is about 200 miles above ground, which may seem high but when considering that the diameter of the Earth is about 40 times larger than that, even without doing the easyass physics there's no way that being 200 miles away from the Earth suddenly eliminates all it's gravitational attraction. Instead what happens to things in orbit is that they are falling toward the Earth. The thing that keeps them in orbit is their angular velocity so that as they fall toward the Earth they are moving away from it just enough that the curvature of the Earth prevents them from crashing into it.

If you were to do this, and managed to get into the upper reaches of the atmosphere that a balloon could carry it. It would then need that rocket to propel the payload from essentially 0 to whatever speed i dont have time to calculate it i need to go to work

>> No.5606549

>>5606531
>It would then need that rocket to propel the payload from essentially 0 to whatever speed i dont have time to calculate it i need to go to work
LEO orbital speed is around 7 km/s.

Objects in orbit have a little more kinetic energy per unit mass than gasoline has chemical energy.

>> No.5606572

please understand, just because you're very high up doesn't mean acceleration due to gravity has dropped from 32 feet per second per second, at least not any noticeable amount.

you STILL need to reach escape velocity. the entire point of aircraft assisted launches is so that you don't waste as much fuel "swimming" through the thick lower atmosphere, and can instead skim straight through the wispy upper atmosphere.
but you still need to reach orbital velocity.
a big model rocket won't get you very far.

>> No.5606584

>>5606572
>you STILL need to reach escape velocity.
Escape velocity doesn't put you in orbit, it puts you on a trajectory where you fly away from Earth and never come back.

>> No.5606590
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5606590

>>5606531
Okay then how about this.

You attach 4 balloons to it and add some extra mass
to the bottom of it so it stays upright. Then as
you are about 2/3 of the way to the balloon pop
point you start the rocket/rockets on a slow burn so it gathers speed and while you are
doing that you release the content from the
balloons so that it doesn't slow you down due to
air resistance. And when high enough you let the balloons go and continue on a orbital trajectory.

>green marks are balloon attachment points.

>> No.5606592

>>5606590
I have the feeling you would enjoy playing kerbal space program
The main problem is that the rocket has to be very light for balloons to lift it, and therefore cannot reach any useful speeds

>> No.5606613

>>5606584
meant to say orbital velocity, which as another guy said is about 7 km per second

>> No.5606611

>>5606592
How light are we talking about?

>> No.5606632

>>5606611
Maybe 50-100 kg at most, and you'd need multiple cubic meters of helium for that.

>> No.5606638

>>5606572
>>5606590
>>5606487
I thought /sci/ was one of the more intelligent boards

>> No.5606648

>>5606638

Potato to thermodynamic mechatronics in 60 seconds.

>> No.5606653

>>5606632
I see. Well then i guess that plan is scrapped.
Although i would still love to try it and see
how high it would reach.

>> No.5606668

>>5606632
There's no sense in using helium for a weather balloon. It only makes ground-handling a little safer. Hydrogen is far cheaper and lifts slightly better.

Anyway, you can lift just about any mass you want with balloons. You just need more/bigger balloons.

And if you can lift 50-100kg to launch height, that should be enough mass to put a 1-3 kg payload in orbit.

The reason such tiny rockets haven't been done is that many of their development costs would be as high as a large rocket, while launching only a miniscule payload. Who wants to spend $1 million/kg launch rates?

>> No.5606693

>>5606668
What would be the main expenses with making a
small rocket?

>> No.5606705

>>5606693
Mostly, the research and development of figuring out how to make one.

Check out Armadillo Aerospace for people working on small liquid-fuelled rockets. It ain't cheap or easy.

>> No.5606745

I found some papers on the subject of balloon rockets.
May be interesting.

http://www.ricknewlands.webspace.virginmedia.com/downloads/technical-papers/Launching%20rockets%20from%20a%20high%20altitude%20balloon.pdf

>> No.5606786

OP would do well to spend a few days playing Kerbal Space Program, May help you understand some of the fundamentals a bit more clearly.

https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/