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/sci/ - Science & Math

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5674907 No.5674907 [Reply] [Original]

/sci/, you are some smart people. Theoretical question for you.

Assume you have five years, and endless budget, and about 30 of the correct kind of scientist. (Not being a smart guy, I would not be able to tell you what those are)

What would be the most cost effective way to get into space? I'm thinking to the tune of seriously lowering the price per kilo of materiel sent into space, to where space travel could be economically feasible. I'm not a smart guy, but I'm sure that pointing chemical rockets striahgt up and praying is horribly inefficient.

>> No.5674914

endless budget? as in, you can use the entire global economy? build a structure around the equator that goes all the way to P*r=escape velocity

>> No.5674918

>>5674914
Sorry, limitless budget wasn't very clear. Let's call it...200 million from various sources.

>> No.5674922

>>5674918
200 million will get you nothing in space technology. Its enough for a Falcon heavy and a launchpad.

>> No.5674920

>>5674907

build a nuclear powered electric rail launcher at the equator.

>> No.5674923

>>5674918
>200 million from various sources
pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

lol with that you won't get anywhere.

>> No.5674929

>>5674907

if you had a limitless budget, you could create a solar sail craft that could get to alpha cenatuari in 10-20 years

>> No.5674927

>>5674922
>>5674923
Why won't that get you anywhere? Why does everything having to do with space HAVE to be so damned expensive?

Shift the paradigm. This isn't about going to space. That shit's relatively easy. It's about going to space in as inexpensive a manner as possible.

You don't have to remake the wheel. You just have to use it in a different way.

>> No.5674930

>>5674927
I know, KNOW that you are some of the most creative people on 4chan, and that's saying something. Guess. Make wild statements. THINK, dammit.

>> No.5674932

>>5674922
The Apollo program was 25 billion, that's 140 billion in todays money.

>> No.5674937

>>5674932
That's because the government built it. Hell, it costs something along the lines of 40 million every time congress meets.

>> No.5674942

>>5674907
That guy already got to space in a balloon, with enough gas you could get a pretty heavy craft up there and then pootle around in that

>> No.5674946

>>5674930
Yes because even though all of the worlds aerospace engineers and scientists combined can't come up with a workable cheap solution to get things in to orbit a random group of 18-26 year old college students and newbie scientists surely can.

There is no magic bullet the only way to space leads through a long, expensive and very rough road.

>> No.5674950

>>5674946
It's never been about getting into space cheap. It was about getting into space PERIOD. All of those aerospace engineers and scientists combined have been running on the same ideology of the blank check days of the 50's, and look what it's gotten them.

>> No.5674951

>>5674942
That's the edge of the atmosphere though, it isn't orbit and you can't use it to go further.

>> No.5674955

>>5674950
That's not true. Reducing cost has been a massive effort for a number of years.

>> No.5674958

>>5674955
No it hasn't it's been about pork sent to government contractors so that those administrators can have cushy civilian jobs when they do their 20 years.

>> No.5674969

First of all when someone claims to have "reached space" in a balloon or a plane, what they actually mean is they have reached an altitude of about 80km or so.
Due to a lack of a defined border between space and the atmosphere (because that's how atmospheric physics works) many people claim to have reached space, which may be true, but irrelevant to actually attaining a safe orbital trajectory. The ISS orbits at about 340km.

Most of the world classifies everything above 100km space, although anything less than 340km is usually in a technically "unstable orbit". The US classifies space as anything above 80km.

The way to make space travel less costly, is to give it time. In time the technology should theoretically become cheaper and more mass produced. This will bring the price of chemical rockets down, until a new, less wasteful technology comes along. Although, when that technology does emerge, it will be incredibly expensive. So time must be allowed for the method that produce these technologies to become more efficient and cheaper. This will drive down the cost of the equipment necessary for space travel.

I'm sorry that you will not get the answers you want, but this is how things work. It takes time and research into the production method of the equipment. Unfortunately, research cannot just begin, it has to be funded. It is the job of the government and private investors to fund research, usually based on what will be most profitable and very occasionally out of the spirit of improvement. Most commonly the former.

>> No.5674973

top scientists are 500k a pop. *30 that's 15mil.

175 mil for materials and subcontracting.

well.

alright. two ultralight weather balloons: one, 2 parts hydrogen. the other, one part oxygen.

the hydrogen is gonna have to the lifting. oxygen is dead weight.

the weather ballons need to be partly rigid. materials science should get on that to make it light. more on that later

the balloons are lifting an engine. the payload sits directly on the engine.

the semirigid balloons are fastened to the engine. they must never fall below the engine, even if they become heavier than the engine.

the balloons are also tethered to the engine.

the engine: could be an aerospike.

what's special about the engine: serial roots blower banks suck the fuel from the tethers and compress it for combustion, and also increase the temperature of the gas to get a little extra thrust.

so to recap: the balloons are always held up above the engine. yes drag, but the point is to not start the engine until 50km. balloons will be massive.

>> No.5674981

>>5674951
yeah hence taking the ship up with you

>> No.5674983

>>5674969
Also, in anticipation of

"but OP asked a theoretical question about a limitless budget and lots of scientists"

Ideally, if the countries of the world all worked towards the benefit of all mankind and stopped squabbling and fighting wars we would be able to develop at a much faster rate.
This is a utopian fantasy, an ideal situation, which is just not going to happen. Sure, it would be nice if we could all work to a common purpose but it's in human nature to be unable to look at the bigger picture. Welcome to the real world.

>>5674973
Even with all that said, the highest altitude of a weather balloon was 51km, not even close to stable orbital altitude. Balloons don't work in space.

>> No.5674993

>>5674983
>Even with all that said, the highest altitude of a weather balloon was 51km, not even close to stable orbital altitude. Balloons don't work in space.

hurpadurpa how about reading the whole fucking thing

at 50 or 48km you turn on your thruster and your balloons become repurposed fuel tanks.

you stupid fuck
>but muh bulloons
>what is the hybrid concept

>> No.5675760

>>5674950
>>5674950
seeing as how you're the expert in aerospace, how do we do it for cheaper then? oh wait, you don't know. you're just saying a system is stupid, but you can't come up with anything better

>> No.5675784

>>5674918

200m gets you NOTHING in terms of space technology, the R&D of the saturn rocket was some 500 times the actual cost to build one once it was finished, 200m is enough to buy an already completed spacecraft, but for developing a new one for a function that is demandingly technological you're looking at 6+ billion minimum, and 5 years isn't enough time either.

>>5674927

you are actually remaking the wheel, that is precisely what you're doing here, we're not improving the space shuttle, we're making a new one from scratch.

i realize this thread is around 6 hours old and was just necro'd but i'll put in my 2 cents as this is an entertaining concept.


ideally, you would want the most efficient space-plane possible. a spaceplane is an aircraft designed to take off from the ground like a regular plane, climb to altitudes at which the jet engines would no longer function due to lack of air intake from the overly thin atmosphere, and then switch on chemical rocket engines to go the rest of the way. the problem with spaceplanes is that they are
A: not re-useable, re-entry would typically destroy any spaceplane that wasn't designed to be a 'flying brick' like the space shuttle
B: incapable of going anywhere beyond LEO

while spaceplanes are, at least in theory, very efficient cost/kilo of getting something to LEO, they would be wasteful in that you'd have lots of derelict ones floating in LEO up there after they delivered their payload, unless you manually de-orbit them afterwards.

continued in next post

>> No.5675803

>>5675784

a lot of proponents of space-travel suggest something along the lines of a space elevator for easy, extremely cheap, reliable transport of payloads into low earth orbit, from where they could travel anywhere they wished. i can't remember the source, but the quote was 'once you reach low earth orbit you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system', as it takes roughly half the delta-V of a spaceship to reach LEO, just because of gravity and aerodynamic losses to get there.

a space elevator, while slightly ahead of our current technological level, would most likely be the most effective way to get stuff into space for cheap. the real problems with it though aren't technological, we'll eventually make something carbon-nanotube-esque that'll be sufficiently high tensile strength and low weight to form the cable of the elevator, of that i'm not concerned. the problems are,
where do we put the elevator?
how do we protect it from terrorism and natural disasters/wear and tear?
how would an emergency on the cable up or down be handled? would everyone die, would the elevator collapse, would it be some kind of safe-detach parachute method?
who would run the elevator, determining safety procedures and what goes up/down, scheduling and 'ticket' costs?
most importantly, where do we put the damn thing? yeah, this is #1, but i'm saying it again, its that much of a concern.

the most ideal place to put it is atop an equatorial, geologically quiet region at as high of an altitude as possible. other proposals for areas have also been made, mostly in mobile ocean-bound ships.

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

there is a great deal of math here as well as more detail on every concern, but to answer your initial question, there really isn't a more efficient way of transferring objects to orbit for cheap, estimates for the elevator are around 220$/pound (current with a rocket is 11k$/pound).

>> No.5675810

>>5674907

Most of the cost for space hardware isn't in the hardware itself. Even if reusability can save you the cost of remanufacturing hardware repeatedly; The costs arent necessarily reduced, as was seen by the Space Shuttle program. A huge majority of the costs for space travel is in the skilled workforce required to build and maintain the hardware. The inefficiencies arent in the science, they're in the economics.

If you really want to make space travel efficient, commercialise it. Mass produce. Do to the rocket what Henry Ford did to the automobile.

>> No.5675821

>>5674907
Hire a private army to break into top-secret government installations and get the flying triangle within.

>> No.5675834

Using H2 and O2 for lifting gases and then for fuel, is innovative. But it will be pointless unless you can find a way to drive the gases out of the fuel balloons fast enough. I propose the balloons aren't rigid; rig them so that they have an exit valve on one end, with a compression hoop set on the other end, ready at the flick of a switch to start gathering in the balloon's mylar or whatever it is, so that it compresses the gases inside to drive them out the valve end.

>> No.5675844

At any rate, the only workable solution is a Launch Loop. Google it. Provided we can control the sideways oscillations of such a beast, it's the best way to cheaply get craft off the ground to about 80km up, where the craft's engines can take over.

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

>> No.5675850

space elevator is gonna be a game changer whenever someone gets to making one .. first one would be able to pump so many men and materials into orbit they would own space..just no point in it till we can become sustainable out there

>> No.5676874

So after a day the best option appears to be a balloon hybrid and/or a space elevator.

What's the timeframe on progress towards making something like a space elevator feasible? Is there even a material on Earth with the required tensile strength?

>> No.5676882

>>5674920
Mass driver is literally the most retarded way of putting something in space if the planet or moon you're launching from happens to have an atmosphere, which ours obviously does.

>> No.5676886

>>5676874
Carbon nanotubes

>> No.5676888

>>5676874
Is there even a material on Earth with the required tensile strength?

Nothing is closeNot even remotely. Even the strongest material/lightest material we have would snap in under a second. It requires complex tapering to balance the centripetal and gravitational forces, so it's not a simple "make a cable" problem.

We're at least 50 years away barring a serious, world changing development in materials science.

>> No.5676887

>>5676882
Not the guy who suggested it, but I'm assuming something along the lines of, worst case scenario, setting the upper atmo on fire?

>> No.5676889

>>5676887
No, the atmosphere will be fine.
Whatever you're trying to launch into space, however, will have to contend with atmospheric heating for an extended period of time. There are a few different ways of doing it but all of them are either a tremendous waste of energy or materials.

>> No.5676890

>>5676888
Would the cable for a space elevator need to be particularly elastic, or would that be something you would try to avoid?

>> No.5676892

>>5676874

Closer than you think. Carbon nanotube research was kind of frozen for a few years but its back up and running again, and were making longer and longer strands of it every day. Probably 10-15 years until its possible, and just a few years after til its done, because as soon as that's possible you'd better fucking believe someones jumping on it. Carbon nanotube production is dropping in price even as we make it better, so it'll make up the investment in a big fucking hurry.

>> No.5676893

>>5676887
lol as far as I know there is nothing exothermic/spontaneous enough to sustain a reaction over the entire fucking atmosphere.

The real problem is the drag. You would essentially have to shoot something well beyond the speed of sound. A re usable vehicle or transport would not survive that. It would be a one and done. Additionally, no humans would ever be able to survive it, ever.

>> No.5676894

>>5676888
What are you even talking about? Carbon nanotubes have the required tensile strength now. The only issue is manufacturing a cable of the length required (tens of thousands of miles).

>> No.5676898

>>5676890

Errr, probably not. Elasticity implies ductility, which means the material won't crack easily. That is DEFINITELY something you want to avoid, crack propagation would rape the shit out of a space elevator.

But specifically selecting for elasticity? Probably not, you'd select for a material with a real high fracture toughness (resistance to cracking).

>> No.5676899

>>5675834
roots blowers in series, you moumental fagget. also, you don't want the balloons to get in the thrust line, unless you're an absolute idiot, therefore they need to be rigidly suspended.

>> No.5676903

>>5676894
That's false, they don't have verified properties high enough to be used in a space elevator, and they have only been tested at small scales.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator#Cable

>> No.5676924

Would the cable be solid carbon nanotube bundles? I was thinking maybe it would be possible to use a filler material as well, maybe have the CN wrapped around it?

I'm pretty dumb, though.

>> No.5676939

>>5676924

Probably not. Its going to be a remarkably small cable, just really really fucking long.

The reason a space elevator isn't made already is because it has to be strong enough to hold thousands of miles of itself on the ground without breaking, and we really don't have anything that can do that.

Just for fun though, we could build a space elevator on Mars with kevlar.

>> No.5677125

Would weather be an important factor to consider if a space elevator was planned?

>> No.5677135

>>5676939

Correct. People keep assuming from reading scifi that we can just build a space elevator. The sad reality is that the strength + safety factor required beats the theoretical maximum strenght of the best carbon bonds, which is the strongest atomic bonding, meaning we're done. There's nothing that will do the job. And force fields are also scifi.

But what looks possible to build and operate is the Launch Loop. Google it.

>> No.5678489

>>5674918
raise that to 40, maybe 50 billion, per year, and now we're talking

>> No.5679116

>>5678489
So...aside from taking over a country, how would somebody possibly get THAT kind of cashflow? Call me crazy but I don't think Kickstarter would be able to help with that.

>> No.5679142

>>5674937
Damn what kind of punch are they drinking at those parties?

>> No.5679189

Gah... fastest way? blow up some munitions... cheap too. Already pre-made. That way we can test the drill a hole in an asteroid bit that people love so much. We don't even need to waste the money of putting nukes up there either. (which wouldn't be needed anymore, but oh well.)

See, it's not getting into space which is the important part; It's how long you want to be in space. 1000$+ per lb. is relatively cheap if you can more then double the life-expectancy of having a sustainable capsule.

The next problem is how do you make it profitable for the people who can't benefit from the enterprise? This is the "make it cheap to put stuff up there" approach, as well making a sustainable economic footprint within the economy. (in lieu of R&D)

After that, it's simply a couple nails and a hammer. (oh, and those 30 scientists of the right kind. I'm going with some russian mafia-types, just for fun.)

Even looking at the commercial approaches, you can see a telling value of how well certain companies will become space-farers.

PS: Just look at the tanking economy. We can get cheaper materials now. Simply stock-pile up the crap you need to use to build your lovely lil' fiery ball of salvation.

>> No.5679192

>>5679116
One world government or cutting America's defense spending and installing a benevelont, technocratic, space minded monarch. All of which are impossible of a mirade of reasons. We just have to let incremental change take place. Meanwhile, do some psychedelics.

>> No.5679198
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5679198

What about Mass drivers? or the better question is are we technologically capable of building a catapult powerful enough to launch shit in to LEO and if so how much would it cost to build one?

>> No.5679207

Even if the materials were available now to build any kind of transport or structure to get far into space on a consistent basis, It would have to be sourced to the highest bidder, not the lowest. It would take to be the most motivated and team oriented people to check and quadruple check everything, not just "I have a bachelors in engineering". Then there is actual testing. A project like that would have to come from a company focusing ONLY on that project because it would take decades in the best case scenario.

>> No.5679210

>>5679198
Here's a concept, people. What if we focus every country's effort on teleportation rather than practical travel? It's fairly simple in theory, we should be able to do something if we have a limitless budget with all of earth's scientists focusing on this.

>> No.5679216

>>5674907
It's impossible to start orbiting from start position, as the energy required is high due to air friction.

I think that straight up, and then orbit is the best option.

>> No.5679478

>>5679210
The energy requirements for teleportation put it beyond technology of even the next 20 years.

>> No.5679492

>>5679210
>It's fairly simple in theory
I'm sorry what?
Not without exotic negative-energy materials that we're not sure can even exist yet.

>> No.5679608

>>5679492
They think the theory is, "Move thing from one area to another by MAGIC"

>> No.5679614

>>5679608
That, or
>read article in general press about "quantum teleportation"
>OH EYM DJEE we teleportation now!

>> No.5679871

>>5679614
STAR TREK DID IT AND THAT SHOW WAS IN THE 60's

>> No.5681248

>>5679198
How do you expect to get around the atmosphere?

>> No.5681406
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5681406

reusable shuttle would be a start, we reuse all our other transport and fuel accounts for much less than 1 percent of missions. See SpaceX.

>> No.5681441

>>5674907
>endless budget
>What would be the most cost effective way
Wut
Budget? Current rocket propulsion launch
>>5674918
A few satellite launches.

Limitless?
>a fat ass nuclear rocket with an assload of hall thrusters
>SWAG

>> No.5681449

>30 of the correct kind of scientist
>five years
>facilities for 30 people to do cutting edge research and engineering
>200 million

thats less than 15m per person per year. i guess you could by one highshool level lab to work in..