What's with the hate against external pulsed plasma propulsion?

[Anonymous No.8066775]

The only thing people seem to see when thinking about nuclear pulse propulsion is:"Muh nukes r bad and inherently unsafe way of space travel!!!"

What people seem to fail to comprehend is that there is literally no inherently safe method of propulsion. You need much energy to move mass anywhere so you're going to need energy dense stuff to propel you there. Also, whole Orion Mars class mission could be done with crew exposure of only 100-20 Rems, which is less than with nuclear thermal.

Why should one not be content with alternative means of propulsion which are free from obvious biological and political disadvantages of nuclear explosions? The answer to this question is that on the purely technological level, an Orion vehicle has cababilities which no other system can aproach. - Freeman Dyson

Also: "The vehicles were small enough to be lifted into space by Saturn chemical rocket, and the cost of the Saturn boosters turned out be more than half the estimated cost of the whole enterprise." - same dude

So, why the fuck is NASA wasting it's money for a new Saturn V ripoff, when for the same price it could build EPPP vehicles, with first generation having easily over 3500 s specific impulse with clear path for improvement?

Some reading:

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20000096503.pdf

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19720025114.pdf

http://epizodsspace.no-ip.org/bibl/inostr-yazyki/science/1965/Dyson_Death_of_a_Project.pdf

http://file.scirp.org/pdf/JAMP_2016041311280742.pdf

http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/orion/files/19650058729_1965058729.pdf

http://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3218&context=space-congress-proceedings

http://epizodsspace.no-ip.org/bibl/inostr-yazyki/IEEE_Transactions_on_Nuclear_Science/1965/Nance_Nuclear_Pulse_Propulsion.pdf

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/supplement/GA-5009vIII.pdf

[Anonymous No.8066824]

Nuclear pulse propulsion is obscenely expensive
Nukes cost hundreds of millions of dollars apiece
The only practical use for nuclear pulse propulsion today is if we really, REALLY needed to leave the solar system ASAP with current technology

>why the fuck is NASA wasting it's money for a new Saturn V ripoff
Because its program cost is only half of what the Saturn V cost, and it is 86% as capable as Saturn V
>b-but muh flight rate!
Saturn V only flew 13 times and look what they accomplished with that

[Anonymous No.8066854]

>>8066824
Only about 2 kg of plutonium would be needed per pulse unit.

>> Each year about 20 tonnes of the element [plutonium] is still produced as a by-product of the nuclear power industry.

Nukes cost alot because shitty design like needing to replace tritium all the time.

Pulse units would be much more cheaper than fission-fusion thermonuclear weapons.

General atomic projected that a large orion program would only cost about the same as apollo did (spread over longer period), back in the 60's. Nowadays much of what would have been expensive to test (the underground nuclear testing part), could be done by computer simulations.

>>The materials used in the pulse unit, relative to the fissionable material at least, are relatively common and inexpensive. They were costed at
from $2 to $12/kg for nonfabricated materials. Modest quantities of material were required in all but the larger pulse units, which use large
masses of propellant* and channel filler, which, in turn, cause a significant cost increment.

[Anonymous No.8066994]

>>8066775
>"The vehicles were small enough to be lifted into space by Saturn chemical rocket, and the cost of the Saturn boosters turned out be more than half the estimated cost of the whole enterprise.
Grossly implausible claim, comparing the final costs of a realized system to the optimistic estimates of a physicist about an entirely new, untested technology.

Furthermore, he claims that it could send "eight men and 100 tons of cargo on fast trips to Mars and back", but Saturn V only lifts a little more than 100 tons. The smallest Orion I've seen proposed, empty, was at least half a dozen times the mass of a Saturn V payload to LEO, over twice the mass of the International Space Station, by far the largest object assembled in space four decades after Dyson wrote this article.

He says, "if you wish to go to Mars, then Orion will take you there more rapidly and cheaply than other vehicles", but he doesn't make a case for it, and it's an implausible claim. "More rapidly" (in terms of travel time) yes, if it works. But "more cheaply" doesn't make sense. Orion has a large minimum size, and that minimum applies to test vehicles as well -- testing a vehicle before using it to carry people is not optional. New technology of orbital construction would have been needed, in addition to the new technology of the nuclear pogo stick drive itself, which might simply never have worked as intended.

The thing you've got to understand about Freeman Dyson is that, despite being an accomplished physicist, he's also more than a bit of a kook. He thinks big, doesn't worry too much about the implementation details, and talks as if they're all worked out.

This is the sort of optimism for a new technology that predicted that nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter" and practical fusion power was just around the corner.

[Anonymous No.8067029]

>>8066854
>Each year about 20 tonnes of the element [plutonium] is still produced as a by-product of the nuclear power industry.
Weapon-grade plutonium in your hand is not the same as mixed plutonium isotopes in used fuel rods. Fuel reprocessing is serious business which almost inevitably involves leakage of radioisotopes to the environment.

>Pulse units would be much more cheaper than fission-fusion thermonuclear weapons.
Bullshit. The additional low-enriched uranium and lithium deuteride required for a fusion stage are much cheaper than the plutonium and tritium required for the primary.

>Nukes cost alot because shitty design like needing to replace tritium all the time.
This would apply to the pulse units, as well. They would be fusion-boosted so their yields can be adjusted.

[Anonymous No.8067033]

>>8066994
>Saturn V only lifts a little more than 100 tons. The smallest Orion I've seen proposed, empty, was at least half a dozen times the mass of a Saturn V payload to LEO, over twice the mass of the International Space Station, by far the largest object assembled in space four decades after Dyson wrote this article.

The plan was to only lift the Orion vehicle out of atmosphere, minimum of over 120km so as not to cause eye damage on ground and pretty much remove the risk of atmospheric contamination. In space the pulse unit fragments would have not been a problem, for the exhaust velocity of the particles exceeds earth escape velocity, resulting in no permanent contamination of near-earth space.

All the Saturn V first stage was needed was to get the Orion vehicle out of atmoshphere. Saturn V - the first stage mass is about 680 tons. That would have been the upper limit for the mass of the Orion vehicle. The orion would have achieved orbital velocity on its own.

[Anonymous No.8067049]

>>8066775

because various nuclear arms related treaties prohibit their development, construction and usage

[Anonymous No.8067053]

>>8067029
Yeah the fuel processing, unit production and fabrication infrastructure would have been expensive to set up. Which is one of the reasons Nasa shot down the project. They had just spent a lot of money on Saturn infrastructure and it would have looked stupid if it had all been in vain. Of course, they did spend considerable amount of money in the 70's dismantling that infrastructure.

[Anonymous No.8067058]

>>8067053
So big spending is OK for Dyson's concept, but bad when SLS does it?

[Anonymous No.8067089]

>>8066824
>>why the fuck is NASA wasting it's money for a new Saturn V ripoff
>Because its program cost is only half of what the Saturn V cost, and it is 86% as capable as Saturn V
Saturn V cost ~$42 billion adjusting for inflation, with the 13 launches, and that's with 1960s technology and construction of facilities which are still in use by the SLS program.

Constellation/SLS has already cost about $20 billion (SLS is a continuation of Constellation with the same technology and people, the name change largely served the purpose of erasing about $13 billion in red ink from the ledger). Saturn V was initiated in 1962 and flew its first working flight in 1968. Constellation/SLS was initiated in 2005 and its first working flight will be no sooner than 2021, with 2023 or later more likely.

SLS has already taken as much time and half as much money as the Saturn V program and produced no flights whatsoever, with none coming any time soon (EM-1, the only possible launch this decade, is a bullshit test with an upper stage they'll never use again). The work done so far has no value, since better results for money could be achieved by ignoring SLS and starting from a clean sheet.

>>b-but muh flight rate!
>Saturn V only flew 13 times and look what they accomplished with that
Saturn V's flight rate over the project lifetime from 1962 to 1973 is more than one per year. Peak launch rate was 4 in one year. Furthermore, it had a clear mission and was sized to the task.

The likely outcome of Constellation/SLS is to be cancelled in the mid 2020s after four launches and a total cost over $50 billion, with a peak rate of launches spaced two years apart, and an average rate over project life of one launch per five years. It has no clear mission, is part of a system with badly mismatched sizes (Orion capsule twice the mass of Apollo capsule, SLS considerably less powerful than Saturn V), and has no potential for ambitious new accomplishments in manned spaceflight.

[Anonymous No.8067092]

>>8066775
Dumb shit how are you going to get your nuclear spaceship into Orbit without the Carrot V?
>>8066824
Someone saying something good about NASA on /sci/? Well I''l be damned.
>>8066994
>Willing to work on future ideas
>Kook
Remember when Oberth and von Braun were kooks?
>>8067058
/sci/ doesn't like the Carrot V because it's a "boring old 60's design" /sci/ only wants exciting pop-sci meme shit like airbreathing SSTOs or 100 man mars rockets running on memethane. NASA is working on a fusion rocket. This will go on top of the carrot and get to Mars in 30 days. Any other way is dumb. Musk's all chemical approach is dumb and OP's all nuclear approach is even dumber.

[Anonymous No.8067099]

>>8067029
>This would apply to the pulse units, as well. They would be fusion-boosted so their yields can be adjusted.


>> The range of yields required of the nuclear devices (less than 1 KT to approximately 15 KT), assuming current technology devices are used, reportedly do not change the amount of fissionable material required. The amount of fissionable materials used for the three lower-cost pulse units was the cost equivalent of 2.9 kg of plutonium. The plutonium cost used was $18,000 /kg.

The larger bombs used more explosives to super-compress the fissionables, increasing efficiency. The crazy big Orions would have use d fission/fusion devices, with Ispmax around 10^5 s.


>>8067058

I'm just arguing that Nasa's money would be better spent in pursuing external pulsed plasma technologies. SpaceX will propably be able to do what SLS would do for cheaper. Stuff like ISRU and asteroid mining become much more achievable when you're not trying to shave off every gram and when you can actually move asteroids around.

[Anonymous No.8067102]

[Anonymous No.8067106]

[Anonymous No.8067112]

>>8067033
>pretty much remove the risk of atmospheric contamination. In space the pulse unit fragments would have not been a problem, for the exhaust velocity of the particles exceeds earth escape velocity, resulting in no permanent contamination of near-earth space.
...except that they go in all directions and get trapped by the Earth's magnetic field.

You'd have to go a lot higher than 120 km, where Earth takes up nearly half the sky, to prevent fallout in Earth's atmosphere.

[Anonymous No.8067119]

>>8067092
>>Willing to work on future ideas
>>Kook
>Remember when Oberth and von Braun were kooks?
Being willing to work on future ideas isn't what makes him a kook. Being willing to do things like make authoritative pronouncements about the final costs and benefits of completely untried technology is what makes him a kook. And you have to sort through an awful lot of people who superficially seemed like kooks to find a few who were right.

[Anonymous No.8067125]

>>8067119
Someone has gotta do it. No one will build anything without some sort of financial study however speculative.
>And you have to sort through an awful lot of people who superficially seemed like kooks to find a few who were right.
>Few who were right
Exactly, that's why /sci/ should have never laughed at the hoverbike guy. Sure he seems like a kook now but in 10 years you never know. I support him, Freeman and anyone really so long as it's not tinfoil.

[Anonymous No.8067138]

>>8067099
>SpaceX will propably be able to do what SLS would do for cheaper.
Yes, lets throw out the Saturn V class rocket that's nearly ready to fly based on the assumption that a cheaper alternative may or may not be available 10 or 12 years from now

[Anonymous No.8067141]

This shit again?

[Anonymous No.8067151]

>>8067141
It's not even on your shitty chart. Go back to your IQ and degree comparison threada.

[Anonymous No.8067154]

>>8067141
>It doesn't exist yet
>It's /x/

[Anonymous No.8067165]

>>8067112
Yeah 120 km was the minimum.


>>A number of possible countermeasures are proposed to reduce substantially the fission-product trappage in the atmosphere. One of the most obvious is to utilize orbital start-up at a few hundred kilometers altitude and thereby reduce fission-product trappage by factors of 2 to 4 Improvements in the design of advanced pulse units might be achievable whereby fission products could be reduced by factors of 10^2 to 10^3. Such improvements would be obtained by reducing the fraction of total yield due to fission by two to three orders of magnitude, the remaining yield being contributed by fusion. A further advantage from this approach is the improvement in fuel economics.

>>It is also possible to consider the focusing of fission products upward from the point of explosion, at some sacrifice in Isp . This could reduce those fission products likely to be trapped in the atmosphere to approximately 1 percent or less of that estimated in the 2*pi expansion condition.

>>It is believed that some combination of these suggested techniques could conceivably result in a reduction of the trappage to only 10^-6 of current estimates. Considering the longer-term possibilities, if and when pure fusion devices become a reality, fission products, by definition, will not be present.


There's a lot that could be done to mitigate atmospheric contamination.

[Anonymous No.8067171]

>>8067154
>>8067151
>muh alternate history thread
>meme colonization
>nuclear propulsion

[Anonymous No.8067173]

>>8067154
>it was conceived of decades ago
>it's never existed
>this is because of legitimate reasons that make it a bad idea, that were thoroughly explained by professional scientists
>your only counterargument is to call actually-working ideas 'memes' and their supporters 'cucks'

It's /x/.

[Anonymous No.8067174]

>>8067125
>No one will build anything without some sort of financial study however speculative.
It's one thing to estimate the costs, it's quite another to make optimistic napkin-math estimates about new technologies and then talk about them as if you're quite certain they're right.

You look at something like Saturn V, that's the end product of about four decades of work with smaller-scale liquid-fueled rockets, starting with very similar propellant (Goddard built a LOX/gasoline rocket, Saturn V's first stage was LOX/kerosene). In those four decades were thousands of tries and thousands of failures, despite the principles being understood almost perfectly before the first attempt.

The difference between Goddard and Dyson is that, while he claimed a man could be put on the moon, Goddard didn't go around telling people in 1920 that a man could be put on the moon by 1930, for $5 million dollars (based largely on estimates of the cost of the steel and gasoline required).

[Anonymous No.8067177]

>>8067165
#1 thing that can be done to mitigate atmospheric contamination: don't ship dozens of nuclear bombs into space.

[Anonymous No.8067190]

>>8067151
>>8067154
Ignore him.
I suspect it's the same retard that keeps posting the "what singularityfags believe" image in every thread, regardless of whether it's relevant or not.
Still not as bad as the gorillaposter, though.

[Anonymous No.8067207]

>>8067190
What if I told you that I am the gorillaposter?

[Anonymous No.8067217]

>>8067207
>What if I told you that I am the gorillaposter?
Seems unlikely. "w.s.f.a.b." poster is a hyper-realist who derives his sense of self-worth by ridiculing anyone who doesn't see reality exactly as he does.
Gorilla-poster is just a twat (probably actually a woman).

[Winner No.8067221]

Why would you power some item with blood? I do think you are insane. The rocket or vehicle would not run on the nearest energy source.

[Anonymous No.8067274]

>>8067138
>Yes, lets throw out the Saturn V class rocket that's nearly ready to fly based on the assumption that a cheaper alternative may or may not be available 10 or 12 years from now
First of all, the EM-1 launch is not a launch of a Saturn-V-class rocket. Without a proper upper stage, SLS is only about half the rocket Saturn V is. In fact, they're only doing EM-1 to satisfy congressional schedule requirements, or more accurately, to fail to meet those schedule requirements less egregiously.

What's "nearly ready to fly" (still over two years off) is a partial test of an incomplete rocket, in a one-of-a-kind configuration, like the Ares I-X test that flew in 2009. Your "Saturn V class rocket that's nearly ready to fly" is actually still at least five years from test-flying in complete form, about the same amount of time as Saturn V took to develop from its initial announcement.

The truth of SLS is that it may or may not be available for real missions 10 or 12 years from now, in a form somewhat inferior in performance to Saturn V, with a launch rate so low as to be nearly useless and prohibitive costs. The SpaceX BFR may or may not be available 10 or 12 years from now, with superior performance to Saturn V, capable of unprecented low costs and high launch rates as a reusable vehicle.

Falcon Heavy, on the other hand, should fly within a year, start flying routinely within the next few years, with an initial capacity of 54 tons to LEO, lots of upgrade potential, a low price, and a high launch rate. If they implement propellant crossfeed and put a big lox/h2 stage on top of it, it seems likely that it could approach SLS 1B performance, and even without upgrades it can certainly exceed SLS capabilities with multi-launch mission architectures at lower cost than a single launch on SLS.

[Anonymous No.8067292]

>>8067274
Oh look, it's one of those famous "cancel NASA and let SpaceX do it all!" fucking retards, probably from Reddit. Where to even begin?
>First of all, the EM-1 launch is not a launch of a Saturn-V-class rocket. Without a proper upper stage, SLS is only about half the rocket Saturn V is. In fact, they're only doing EM-1 to satisfy congressional schedule requirements, or more accurately, to fail to meet those schedule requirements less egregiously.
So block 1 SLS isn't Saturn V class, but FH is?
Nice double standards, idiot.
Lets compare the specs of these rockets:
Saturn V:
>47 metric tons to TLI
SLS block 1B (will fly in 2022):
>38.5 metric tons to TLI
SLS block 1:
>25 metric tons to TLI
Falcon Heavy
>13.6 metric tons to TLI (Fully Expendable mode ONLY)
Falcon Heavy is literally a few tons away from not even making the "super heavy lift" classification
>like the Ares I-X test that flew in 2009
Not even close. Ares 1-X didn't even use the same size SRM, and everything else was boilerplate.
>The truth of SLS is that it may or may not be available for real missions 10 or 12 years from now
SLS is far more likely to be flying in 10 to 12 years than SpaceX's Mars rocket.
>with a launch rate so low as to be nearly useless and prohibitive costs.
Costs would still be lower than shuttle or Saturn V, and they have said multiple times that flight rates will increase when block 1B is flying.
>The SpaceX BFR may or may not be available 10 or 12 years from now, with superior performance to Saturn V, capable of unprecented low costs and high launch rates as a reusable vehicle.
And Falcon Heavy will first fly in 2013 amirite?
>Falcon Heavy, on the other hand, should fly within a year, start flying routinely within the next few years
only four flights manifested, two of them SpaceX owned flights. literally not much better than SLS for a rocket 1/2 to 1/3 the size

1/2

[Anonymous No.8067298]

>>8067274
>>8067292
>If they implement propellant crossfeed
never going to happen. FH's limitation is the tiny ass fairing not its lift capability to LEO
>it seems likely that it could approach SLS 1B performance
HAHAHAHHA no
How will FH gain a 300% increase in TLI performance from just those two things?
>it can certainly exceed SLS capabilities with multi-launch mission architectures
Except for the part where literally nothing substantial can fit in the tiny fairing.

FH is only "superior" in high density high mass payloads to LEO. It can't even send Dragon to the moon without an all new upper stage and an all new service module to replace Dragon's trunk.

[Anonymous No.8067347]

>>8067292
>>8067298
My nigga, holding the flag for NASA. Fuck SpaceX.

[Anonymous No.8067392]

>> why is NASA not building an orion drive

International nuclear weapons treaties prohibit NASA from doing so. In addition chemical rockets are proven technology and reusing shuttle facilities keeps those space monies going to congressional districts.

If anything, NASA should invest in nuclear reactors for space. At the very least as a replacement for RTGs.
https://youtu.be/KobRfGqlpGc

We really should bring back NERVA though.

[Anonymous No.8067394]

>>8067292
>So block 1 SLS isn't Saturn V class, but FH is?
I didn't say that FH was Saturn V class. Pay some attention:
>>If they implement propellant crossfeed and put a big lox/h2 stage on top of it, it seems likely that it could approach SLS 1B performance, and even without upgrades it can certainly exceed SLS capabilities with multi-launch mission architectures at lower cost than a single launch on SLS.

>Lets compare the specs
You mean, "Let's pretend that upgrading Falcon Heavy or multi-launch missions aren't options."? Most of the performance difference between FH and SLS is the upper stage.

In fact, the performance of Falcon Heavy to LEO with cross-feed should exceed that of SLS with no upper stage. SLS block 1 will actually treat the upper stage as part of the payload all the way to LEO. Rather than a normal staging operation, it will use a non-time-critical payload deployment. Falcon Heavy could carry it and perform EM-1. Even without upgrades, it could certainly perform equivalent missions to EM-1, EM-2, and ACRM with the lighter Dragon capsule. Orion is just crude, heavy, and inefficient.

Anyway, this is dishonest:
>Falcon Heavy
>>13.6 metric tons to TLI (Fully Expendable mode ONLY)
Mars transfer is harder than trans-lunar insertion. This figure is for Mars transfer on Falcon Heavy without crossfeed or a lox/h2 upper stage. The figure to TLI would be a few tons higher.

SLS block 1 is not a working configuration. I've explained this. It's a one-off test configuration, like Ares I-X. Its specs don't matter, since it's not an option for any working flights. It launches an unmanned Orion capsule to TLI, to test Orion. It will never be used for anything else. It will not be available for additional flights before block 1B is ready.

EM-1 and EM-2 are test flights. It seems unlikely for a working flight of SLS to go before 2025.

>SLS block 1B (will fly in 2022)
That's optimistic.

[Anonymous No.8067404]

>>8067392
Didn't NASA basically say that they are leaning towards nuclear powered electric propulsion for exploration missions?

>select all images with a store front
>click verify when there are none left
REEEEEEEEEEEEE

[Anonymous No.8067410]

>>8067404
Words mean nothing until they actually put money down for it.

[Anonymous No.8067415]

Why do I love ULA so much? It's pretty simple when I think about it. ULA isn't just the best launch provider in the country; they might just be the greatest launch provider of all time. Just imaging the Altas V riding through the skies of Earth, the wind on its fairing, the mighty RD-180 below it. As she rides through the red sky, NASA swoons at her very scent. They know how she smells; the essence of burning RP-1 smell is sold in Orlando under the name of "Space Orgasm." The very nature of ULA is mystery. Could they be playing a deeper game than even Tory Bruno realizes? The answer is yes, ULA has transcended such boundaries as the physical world, and has free will to do whatever they sees fit. However, ULA is filled with such guile, such arcane craft that they does not even use these powers. Why, you might ask? You will never know, for the mind of the ULA is not one that is easily penetrated. ULA rockets are such a force of nature in this realm that nothing can truly touch them, the only thing keeping them bound to this world at all is their will to exist within the preordained boundaries understood physics. ULA is not only beyond the comprehension of us, it exists within a plane of true focus and beauty. Observe the plume of exhaust gasses from this Delta IV, the gorgeous and rippling flames, the gallant fairing, and most importantly, its engines. Her engines, like cauldrons straight from hell, provide the only glimpse into the true machinations of ULA. Do not stare into them. Many good men have gone mad in the attempt. ULA is not just a launch provider, a formless collection of engineers and rockets; they are themselves the binding that holds the word together. Without ULA, Musk the Menace takes over and the entire space industry as we know it crumbles. The Mississippi would stop flowing without ULA, Kessler syndrome would take over in orbit, and the space station would fall without their fiery gaze. These are just of a few of the reasons why I like ULA so much.

[Anonymous No.8067495]

>>8067298
>FH's limitation is the tiny ass fairing not its lift capability to LEO
You seriously think that SpaceX would struggle with something as simple as a bigger fairing, if there was customer demand for it?

>>it seems likely that it could approach SLS 1B performance
>How will FH gain a 300% increase in TLI performance from just those two things?
Even by your understated 13.6 ton figure, a 300% increase in TLI performance would bring it up to 54.4, considerably more than Saturn V. It would only need about a 140% performance boost to equal SLS 1B performance, and less to "approach" it.

SLS is shuttle-derived. It can go to LEO with just its boosters and core stage. This configuration is sometimes called "Block 0", and the amount it can take to LEO is about 70 tons. The amount Falcon Heavy can take to LEO will be 54 tons without crossfeed, and over 70 tons with it. SLS Block 0 and Falcon Heavy with crossfeed have similar capabilities to LEO or suborbital, so they can throw similar upper stages, and it's only the upper stage that makes the difference between SLS Block 0 and SLS Block 1B.

>FH is only "superior" in high density high mass payloads to LEO. It can't even send Dragon to the moon without an all new upper stage and an all new service module to replace Dragon's trunk.
What are you even talking about? Sending Dragon to the moon surface? That would be extremely ambitious, and quite an inefficient way to do a moon landing. To low lunar orbit? SLS/Orion can't go to low lunar orbit either. They're just doing high lunar orbits.

FH certainly doesn't need a new upper stage to send Dragon to high lunar orbit, like SLS is doing with Orion. Whether Dragon would need an external propulsion unit in place of the trunk depends on the specific mission -- it carries quite a lot of propellant for abort purposes.

Dragon's much more mass-efficient than Orion. It needs less rocket to get to the same places.

[Anonymous No.8067520]

I must say, leaving pol and b to try visiting a dif board is pleasant surprise. I don't feel like commuting homicide while reading through these replies. Thx sci, redeemed 4chan for me.

[Anonymous No.8067541]

>>8067394
>I didn't say that FH was Saturn V class. Pay some attention:
Whatever arbitrary classes you make up in your mind are irrelevant. Saturn V and SLS block 1 (and even FH) are all super heavy lift vehicles.
>"Let's pretend that upgrading Falcon Heavy or multi-launch missions aren't options."?
Distributed launch has never been done for beyond LEO travel. In fact, the only company in the near future that will be capable of doing this is (ironically) ULA. SpaceX's upper stage is too short lived and underpowered to make it work. They would need an entirely new upper stage, just like what SLS is getting.
>In fact, the performance of Falcon Heavy to LEO with cross-feed should exceed that of SLS with no upper stage
Did you pull those numbers out of your ass? This isn't Kerbal Space Program you fucking retard. Crossfeed doesn't magically boost your performance by 50%.
> it could certainly perform equivalent missions to EM-1, EM-2, and ACRM with the lighter Dragon capsule.
No it cannot you utter retarded reddit shit.
How would dragon execute a lunar injection burn? How would dragon execute a lunar escape burn?
>Orion is just crude, heavy, and inefficient.
Orion has, quite literally, an order of magnitude better protection against MMOD damage and far superior radiation shielding. This doesn't matter for unmanned missions but it matters a ton for manned missions.
>SLS block 1 is not a working configuration. I've explained this.
Yes, and you only compare block 1 to FH despite the fact that it will only fly once.
>EM-1 and EM-2 are test flights. It seems unlikely for a working flight of SLS to go before 2025.
The Europa mission has a nominal scheduling in 2021 (which means it will likely be late 2022) and will use Block 1B.
>That's optimistic.
It's a lot less optimistic than "FH in 2013" and "BFR in 2024!"
SpaceX is absolute shit at keeping proper scheduling.

[Anonymous No.8067558]

>>8067495
>You seriously think that SpaceX would struggle with something as simple as a bigger fairing, if there was customer demand for it?
Considering how long they're taking to fly FH (four years delayed and counting), I'd be surprised if they could develop a fairing in time to compete with SLS.
>Even by your understated 13.6 ton figure, a 300% increase in TLI performance would bring it up to 54.4, considerably more than Saturn V
Oh boy, 13.6 x 3 is 54.4? What numerical system are you using?
>SLS is shuttle-derived. It can go to LEO with just its boosters and core stage.
It will never use this configuration.
>The amount Falcon Heavy can take to LEO will be 54 tons without crossfeed, and over 70 tons with it.
FH with crossfeed is vaporware, so is the "Raptor powered upper stage"
It's about as likely to happen as SLS block 2 (i.e. 0% likely)
>SLS/Orion can't go to low lunar orbit either.
Yes it can.
>FH certainly doesn't need a new upper stage to send Dragon to high lunar orbit
A dragon with enough propellant for orbital injection would be beyond FH's payload capabilities.
>it carries quite a lot of propellant for abort purposes.
It has a few hundred dv, a tiny fraction of what is needed for these maneuvers

[Anonymous No.8067650]

>>8067541
>Distributed launch has never been done for beyond LEO travel.
That doesn't mean it's hard. It means that it hasn't made sense.

>In fact, the only company in the near future that will be capable of doing this is (ironically) ULA. SpaceX's upper stage is too short lived and underpowered to make it work. They would need an entirely new upper stage
ULA won't be capable of it in the near future. They've had it on the drawing board for as long as they've been a company. They're not seriously working on it, they have no customer for it, and their future is very much in doubt. It's not going to happen. It's pretty much always just been a big expensive development project they hoped they could get the government to pay for.

There's a simpler way to do it, based on established technology: storable propellant. For instance, SpaceX could start from the Dragon design. It can do precision orbital maneuvering and docking, and hang around in space pretty much indefinitely. Take away everything for passengers, cargo, or re-entry and landing. Build it around big fuel tanks full of MMH and NTO, and mount SuperDraco engines so they point directly back.

If you made them as 50 ton modules, then 3 of these should be able to push a 50 ton payload from LEO to TLI, exceeding the capability of Saturn V. I'd estimate under $1.5 billion for the first such launch (including development of the propulsive module, contruction of four modules, five Falcon Heavy launches, and one Falcon 9/Dragon launch for the single-propulsive-module test that will also use one of the modules and one Falcon Heavy), under $750 million per subsequent launch, and it could be ready for 2018.

The beauty of this system is that the propulsive modules could also be used for other purposes than Earth departure, such as orbital maneuvering, de-orbit burns, and Earth return. Variants could be further developed to support aerobraking at Mars and propulsive landing on Mars or the moon.

[Anonymous No.8067678]

>>8067650
>and [ULA's] future is very much in doubt
Not really, no. Why do you say that?

>There's a simpler way to do it, based on established technology: storable propellant.
Sure...

>For instance, SpaceX could start from the Dragon design
>Take away everything for passengers, cargo, or re-entry and landing. Build it around big fuel tanks full of MMH and NTO, and mount SuperDraco engines so they point directly back.
>If you made them as 50 ton modules, then 3 of these should be able to push a 50 ton payload from LEO to TLI
That's not "based on established technology" anymore, that's just building something entirely new that happens to reuse some existing parts.
This isn't KSP, you can't just slap a bunch of parts together in an afternoon and call it a spacecraft.

>I'd estimate under $1.5 billion for the first such launch, under $750 million per subsequent launch, and it could be ready for 2018.
I'd estimate you're completely full of shit.

[Anonymous No.8067697]

>>8067541
>Orion has, quite literally, an order of magnitude better protection against MMOD damage and far superior radiation shielding.
I don't know whether you just made that up or you heard some other fanboy say it, but this is simply a lie. Orion's mostly heavier because of primitive tech like the Apollo-era heat shield.

>SpaceX is absolute shit at keeping proper scheduling.
Constellation was supposed to be routinely doing ISS crew rotations with Orion, and putting astronauts on the moon by 2020, and you think SpaceX is worse than MSFC at meeting its goals on time? MSFC gave up on most of its goals and pushed the rest back ten years.

One of the reasons SpaceX has taken so long to launch Falcon Heavy is that they've upgraded Falcon 9 repeatedly, and now it can fly almost all GTO launches, eliminating FH's original purpose.

>>8067558
>>SLS is shuttle-derived. It can go to LEO with just its boosters and core stage.
>It will never use this configuration.
That's exactly what EM-1 is. The upper stage is being treated as a LEO payload, not separating during suborbital flight.

>Oh boy, 13.6 x 3 is 54.4? What numerical system are you using?
A 300% increase is equivalent to multiplying by 4. Did you think a 100% increase is equivalent to multiplying by 1?

>>SLS/Orion can't go to low lunar orbit either.
>Yes it can.
No it can't. To go to low lunar orbit and back with storable propellants, starting from a TLI, requires about 58% of your initial mass to be propellant. Orion's only about 35% propellant. SLS Block 1B doesn't have enough capacity to support an upgrade to add the necessary propellant.

[Anonymous No.8067747]

>>8067678
>>For instance, SpaceX could start from the Dragon design
>>Take away everything for passengers, cargo, or re-entry and landing. Build it around big fuel tanks full of MMH and NTO, and mount SuperDraco engines so they point directly back.
>>If you made them as 50 ton modules, then 3 of these should be able to push a 50 ton payload from LEO to TLI
>That's not "based on established technology" anymore, that's just building something entirely new that happens to reuse some existing parts.
>This isn't KSP, you can't just slap a bunch of parts together in an afternoon and call it a spacecraft.
>>I'd estimate under $1.5 billion for the first such launch, under $750 million per subsequent launch, and it could be ready for 2018.
2018 isn't "an afternoon" away. I allowed two years, a few hundred million dollars for its development, and about a $60 million unit price. Plus, even if it took three times as long and three times as much money to develop, it would still be ready for actual use no later than SLS, and be cheaper to develop, cheaper to use, and a much more capable system for BEO missions.

Tell me, what part of this plan sounds beyond SpaceX's competence to you? It's a much simpler vehicle than a Dragon, made mostly from the same parts.

[Anonymous No.8067772]

>>8067029
You dont' need weapons grade plutonium

The military wants weapons grade/super grade plutonium to allow storing of the bomb for long periods of time

Something unnecessary for an Orion craft

[Anonymous No.8067775]

>>8067747
>2018 isn't "an afternoon" away.
It basically is. Nothing in spaceflight moves fast (ironically).

>I allowed two years, a few hundred million dollars for its development, and about a $60 million unit price.
Okay, can you tell me why you think those numbers are reasonable?
Bearing in mind what you are describing is a large, complex, and entirely unprecedented spacecraft, why on Earth do expect it to be cheap and quick to design? No-one has built anything like that before.

>It's a much simpler vehicle than a Dragon,
No it isn't.
Dragon isn't modular. Dragon doesn't weight that much. Dragon was never intended to tow a payload. Dragon is a fairly traditional crew capsule, that happens to include some newer technology.

Without even touching on whether your idea could work, it's clearly not a trivial thing to attempt.

[Anonymous No.8067824]

>>8067541
>They would need an entirely new upper stage
They ARE making an all new upper stage on their new Raptor engine

[Anonymous No.8067846]

>>8067775
I think you greatly overestimate the difficulties
How much did it cost them to produce the Red Dragon? Not much

[Anonymous No.8067878]

>>8067775
>Bearing in mind what you are describing is a large, complex, and entirely unprecedented spacecraft, why on Earth do expect it to be cheap and quick to design? No-one has built anything like that before.
No-one has built anything with that exact design before. Every function on it is utterly pedestrian, they just haven't been put together in exactly this configuration.

When an Apollo moon mission was launched, the Command/Service Module separated from the launch vehicle, turned around, docked with the Lunar Module, and pulled it free of the launch vehicle. Then it coasted to the moon, and the Service Module served as the propulsion to LLO, and back to Earth after docking again with the ascent stage. This is hardly "entirely unprecedented".

Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and Dragon together cost under $1 billion to develop, starting from nothing. Budgeting hundreds of millions of dollars to produce a simplified Dragon variant with large fuel tanks is not "expecting it to be cheap to design".

The propulsive unit doesn't need more thrust than Dragon V2. It just needs larger fuel tanks. SpaceX has plenty of experience building larger fuel tanks. It doesn't need to be a particularly mass-efficient vehicle or be optimized for delta-V, it's just a simple way to leverage Falcon Heavy's cheap, big LEO payloads into a Saturn-V-like capability. A TLI burn is only about 3.2 km/s. Nothing even close to the efficiency of a true upper stage is needed.

>Dragon isn't modular. Dragon doesn't weight that much. Dragon was never intended to tow a payload.
You understand that Dragon docks with things, but you think that it's meaningful to say it "isn't modular"?

Dragon can operate with large variations of mass depending on what it's loaded with, but you think it's some kind of key difficulty to increase the mass and "tow a payload"?

You're not thinking about how it would be done at all, you're just waving your hands vaguely at every difference.

[Anonymous No.8067957]

>>8067878
If you were doing something like that, you would probably want to use rockets that had more efficiency than the Draco's
Such as the Raptor which is intended to go on the new upper stage they are making

[Anonymous No.8067991]

>>8067824
Wrong. They have a contract to build an upper stage engine (that they were already making anyways for MCT) to be demonstrated on a test stand in 2018, that could potentially be used as an upper stage engine for one of their rockets in the distant future.

There is no solid evidence that this is actually leading to the development of a new upper stage.

[Anonymous No.8068013]

>>8067991
It wouldn't make sense for SpaceX to begin building their big rocket using Raptors without having flight testing done using a Raptor powered upper stage.

Would also increase the payload of Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy

[Anonymous No.8068016]

>>8068013
A vacuum optimized bell wouldn't even fit properly in the tiny diameter falcons

[Anonymous No.8068042]

>>8067957
In the long run you might, but not as the quickest, cheapest, surest way to get a Saturn-V-like capability out of Falcon Heavy, if someone wanted SLS's capabilities for a sensible reason, or the new president decided to try and land a man on the moon again by the end of the decade.

A new engine's a big schedule risk. A high-performance engine poses risks of failure due to pushing materials too hard. An engine with cryogenic propellants poses storage difficulties, and therefore an uncertainty of success.

SuperDracos aren't ideal for the task, just good enough, available, and proven. What they lack in efficiency, they make up for in convenience.

[Anonymous No.8068069]

>>8067697
>but this is simply a lie.
sure it is, champ.
I'll be taking the NASA office of astronaut safety's word over yours in this case.
>constellation and SLS are the same thing
top kek
retard who thinks that if the silhouettes looks similar that they are the same rocket and program
>One of the reasons SpaceX has taken so long to launch Falcon Heavy is that they've upgraded Falcon 9 repeatedly
So excuses are OK for spacex, but not OK for NASA?
>The upper stage is being treated as a LEO payload, not separating during suborbital flight.
The upper stage is not in orbit when it separates from the core stage. removing the upper stage entirely would require a completely different fairing and a complete re-analysis of the entire design.
>starting from a TLI, requires about 58% of your initial mass to be propellant
What is ISP for 400 please
>SLS Block 1B doesn't have enough capacity to support an upgrade to add the necessary propellant.
Are you seriously implying that the lunar lander on Apollo weighed less than 8 metric tons?

>>8067650
>blah blah blah it would be easy
Yeah except for new on orbit tanking that would be needed, all new refrigeration technology to prevent boiloff, the all new tank craft/module, the new non-kerosene engines that would be needed to use propellants that don't boil off, the all new on-orbit propulsion tug that would need to be developed and tested, not to mention all of the crap for actual Mars mission that would need to be downsized to fit in Falcon's puny 4.6 meter fairing.
It would literally take 4-5 (expendable) falcon heavies with distributed launch to assemble an Apollo class mission in LEO. That plus the 16-32 times normal operation costs to maintain the equipment in orbit would push the price sky high extremely quick

[Anonymous No.8068086]

>>8068042
>SuperDracos
>proven

[Anonymous No.8068096]

>>8068013
>It wouldn't make sense for SpaceX to begin building their big rocket using Raptors without having flight testing done using a Raptor powered upper stage.
Why wouldn't it? Testing a single-Raptor upper stage wouldn't tell them much about how a multi-Raptor booster would work.

Anyway, what they could do is build their rocket from the top down. This is supposed to be a fully-reusable vehicle, so they could start with something the size of an upper stage, but with non-vacuum-optimized engines, doing suborbital flights. With no payload, they could probably put one upper stage on top of another, just with different arrangements of engines and the upper only only partly filled with fuel, and still make orbit.

[Anonymous No.8068107]

>>8068069
>It would literally take 4-5 (expendable) falcon heavies with distributed launch to assemble an Apollo class mission in LEO.
How do you get this?
Falcon Heavy lifts 50 tons when it first launches to LEO, could lift closer to 100 if they saw any need for it.
Saturn V took 120 tons
4-5 expendable falcon heavies is still cheaper than Saturn V/SLS

>to maintain the equipment in orbit
wat

[Anonymous No.8068115]

>>8068107
>1 launch for Dragon
>1 launch for lunar lander (which, by the way, would never fit in a 4.6m fairing)
>1 launch for the in space tug
>1 fuel launch

[Anonymous No.8068119]

>>8068107
>wat
They can't launch 4 rockets in 1 day.
They're hardly managing 1 rocket a month, before even introducing FH

[Anonymous No.8068138]

>>8068115
Why would a modified Dragon not be the luna lander?
Why do you believe multiple launches is a negative thing?

>>8068119
The 50 tons payload is the reusable number
So the first stage boosters land back near the launch pad, are put back to together, refueled, launched asap

It costs them nothing to just leave the modules in LEO while they do all the necessary launches.

[Anonymous No.8068152]

>>8068069
Oh, I found the biggest idiot in the thread.

>>constellation and SLS are the same thing
>top kek
Ares I had to be dropped because it was unsafe. Even the basic outline of the Ares V design was never finalized, and the performance figures were basically unreachable with the shuttle parts mandated by Congress.

SLS is simply the realized design of Ares V, the biggest version they thought they could actually make fly. The same people are in charge of the project, the same contractor is building it.

>except for new on orbit tanking that would be needed, all new refrigeration technology to prevent boiloff, the all new tank craft/module, the new non-kerosene engines that would be needed to use propellants that don't boil off, the all new on-orbit propulsion tug that would need to be developed and tested
Go back and read what you're replying to again. None of that is needed.

>It would literally take 4-5 (expendable) falcon heavies with distributed launch to assemble an Apollo class mission in LEO.
You think that's a problem? An expendable Falcon Heavy isn't going to cost more than $140 million, and SpaceX is planning on doing FH launches about once a month. It's not really plausible that in the next ten years, SLS will cost less than several billion dollars per launch, be available for two flights in a year, or be capable of an Apollo class mission.

>That plus the 16-32 times normal operation costs to maintain the equipment in orbit
Jesus, you are a dumb fuck. There is no maintaining equipment in orbit.

>>8068086
SuperDracos are proven. They've been around since 2012, have been extensively tested, and have been used for a pad abort test. They're ready to go whenever the rest of Dragon V2 is.

[Anonymous No.8068179]

>>8068138
Oh nevermind the 54 tons is expendable.
So it'll be more like 40 tons, reusable

Still going to be better than the SLS which isn't even planning on doing a real mission before 2030

[Anonymous No.8068192]

>>8068138
>Why would a modified Dragon not be the luna lander?
Oh I don't know, how about the <200isp engines? Or the fact that dragon has less than 600 dv

Why don't you read this
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/nexgen/Nexgen_Downloads/NexGen_ELA_Report_FINAL.pdf
and come back later?

[Anonymous No.8068225]

>>8068069
>>One of the reasons SpaceX has taken so long to launch Falcon Heavy is that they've upgraded Falcon 9 repeatedly
>So excuses are OK for spacex, but not OK for NASA?
First of all, SpaceX is a NASA creature. Like JPL or the parts of LM and Boeing that contract for NASA projects, it's not technically inside NASA, but they're closely associated in their history, current work, and foreseeable future. So it's not SpaceX vs. NASA, it's SpaceX vs. MSFC.

SpaceX has good excuses: some things have lagged while they've made spectacular progress in other areas. MSFC is just failing, lowering their ambitions, and then failing again.

>>The upper stage is being treated as a LEO payload, not separating during suborbital flight.
>The upper stage is not in orbit when it separates from the core stage
Yes it is, in SLS Block 1.

>>To go to low lunar orbit and back with storable propellants
>>starting from a TLI, requires about 58% of your initial mass to be propellant
>What is ISP for 400 please
Quote the whole thing, moron. Improving on Isp would take R&D that the Orion people just aren't doing. They're using plain-old space storables.

>>SLS Block 1B doesn't have enough capacity to support an upgrade to add the necessary propellant.
>Are you seriously implying that the lunar lander on Apollo weighed less than 8 metric tons?
I don't even want to try and guess at that idiotic thought process that led to this question.

[Anonymous No.8068227]

>>8068152
>Ares I had to be dropped because it was unsafe.
>muh vibrations
Even the Chinese learned how to mitigate vibrations in manned vehicles.
Ares was cancelled because it was extremely over budget and way behind schedule. SLS is amazingly on schedule and on budget by comparison.
>SLS is simply the realized design of Ares V
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA you fucking idiot
How are 6 RS-68s the same as 4 RS-25s?
How is 1 or 2 J-2x the same as 4 RL-10s?
How is 180 tons to LEO the same as 70 tons to LEO?

>None of that is needed.
see >>8068192

>SpaceX is planning on doing FH launches about once a month
They have literally only 4 launches manifested, and only two of them to paying customers
They've lost two (2) FH customers to Arianespace in the last 6 months.

>It's not really plausible that in the next ten years, SLS will cost less than several billion dollars per launch, be available for two flights in a year, or be capable of an Apollo class mission.
And what are you basing any of that on? Your feelings?

>There is no maintaining equipment in orbit.
Why does the ISS cost money then?

>SuperDracos are proven
How many spaceflights have superdracos been on?
They are no more proven than J-2x or 5-segment SRBs

[Anonymous No.8068237]

>>8066775
Could every country in the world be convinced to give up their nuclear weapons to build an Orion spacecraft?

[Anonymous No.8068252]

>>8068192
>The Super Draco engine uses hypergolic propellant (NTO-MMH) with a thrust of
68,169N at an estimated specific impulse of 324s vacuum.
?

[Anonymous No.8068254]

>>8068192
>how about the <200isp engines? Or the fact that dragon has less than 600 dv
Since you're using "Isp" and "dv" as if they're units, I'm guessing you don't understand this stuff even slightly.

>http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/nexgen/Nexgen_Downloads/NexGen_ELA_Report_FINAL.pdf
This estimates the specific impulse of SuperDraco engines in a vacuum at 324s. Wikipedia gives their specific impulse a 240s, but that's at sea level. Rockets perform better with decreasing air pressure, especially with low chamber pressures, as in the case of pressure-fed engines.

It also proposes a modified Dragon as quite a reasonable lunar lander.

>>Why would a modified Dragon not be the luna lander?
>Oh I don't know, how about
Do you even know what the word "modified" means?

[Anonymous No.8068257]

>>8068225
>SpaceX has good excuses:
I wouldn't call a failure rate worse than Proton a "good" excuse
A four year delay on the first flight of FH is quite unacceptable really, especially when 98% of FH is legacy hardware.

>Yes it is, in SLS Block 1.
They will purposefully be leaving the core stage on a suborbital trajectory to crash in the Indian ocean.

>Improving on Isp would take R&D that the Orion people just aren't doing.
Let me ask you. Have you calculated the dv that Orion has? Mass ratio is only one part of this thing.

>I don't even want to try and guess at that idiotic thought process that led to this question.
I don't even want to know what idiotic thought process led you to believe that a 38.5 ton payload rocket couldn't put even a single command module in lunar orbit when a single 47 ton rocket put an entire command module and lander with room to spare in lunar orbit.

[Anonymous No.8068270]

>>8068252
No higher than 230 in atmosphere, likely meaning no higher than 245 in vacuum
http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/media/20140513_DragonFly_DraftEA_Appendices%28reduced%29.pdf

Dragon can't even land on the moon unmodified, let alone land and then return, with crew inside.

[Anonymous No.8068276]

>>8068254
>Since you're using "Isp" and "dv" as if they're units
what?

>http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/nexgen/Nexgen_Downloads/NexGen_ELA_Report_FINAL.pdf
Incorrect.
Use the official FAA report for Dragon Fly testing.
http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/media/20140513_DragonFly_DraftEA_Appendices%28reduced%29.pdf

>Do you even know what the word "modified" means?
Do you even know what SpaceX is doing?
They won't waste time modifying this shit unless someone pays them to do it. They are focusing on Mars and couldn't care less about the Moon.

[Anonymous No.8068290]

>>8068227
>>muh vibrations
That's not the only reason Ares I was considered unsafe. Large solids can explode suddenly. An Air Force study concluded that abort was not possible during a key period of the Ares I ascent due to solid fuel fragments burning the parachute.

>How are 6 RS-68s the same as 4 RS-25s?
>How is 1 or 2 J-2x the same as 4 RL-10s?
You're listing possible features of proposes Ares V designs. They never settled on anything. It was going to have 6 RS-68s, or 5 RS-25s, or 4 RS-25s, or 6 RS-25s. 4 RS-25s was on the table for a long time, and was finally the selected option.

When they finalized the design, they changed the name and struck the design costs off the record.

>see >>8068192
What? For more evidence that you're a moron? See >>8068254

>>It's not really plausible that in the next ten years, SLS will cost less than several billion dollars per launch, be available for two flights in a year, or be capable of an Apollo class mission.
>And what are you basing any of that on? Your feelings?
All available evidence. There are only 4 SLS launches manifested. 2 are test flights. 3 are Orion launches, all to high lunar orbits. The Orion capsule weighs twice as much as the Apollo capsule, while no estimate of SLS Block 1B's performance puts it on a level with Saturn V. The Orion spacecraft is about as heavy as the Apollo CSM, but where the Apollo CSM was 2/3rds propellant, Orion is 2/3rds dry mass. Fat capsule on a wimpy rocket: it's a rocket to nowhere.

Even if the SLS program was free from now on, we pretend that it has nothing to do with Constellation, and all 4 manifested missions actually get done in the next ten years, they'd still cost about $2 billion each based only on funds spent under the SLS name.

>>There is no maintaining equipment in orbit.
>Why does the ISS cost money then?
People this stupid shouldn't try to be glib.

[Anonymous No.8068319]

>>8068270
>Dragon can't even land on the moon unmodified
>unmodified
Nobody suggested it could.

>No higher than 230 in atmosphere, likely meaning no higher than 245 in vacuum
>likely meaning
You're far too stupid to make useful guesses at this stuff. Stop trying.

>>8068276
>>>how about the <200isp engines? Or the fact that dragon has less than 600 dv
>>Since you're using "Isp" and "dv" as if they're units
>what?
Oh look, if you take it in context there's nothing to explain, and yet you still ask for an explanation.

>>Do you even know what the word "modified" means?
>Do you even know what SpaceX is doing?
>They won't waste time modifying this shit unless someone pays them to do it.
You can't even grasp what the conversation is about, can you? We discuss options and hypotheticals, and you feel a need to stupidly "correct" a position nobody is taking.

Go be garbage somewhere else.

[Anonymous No.8068335]

Here's the proposed real orion program cost in 1960 dollars. 1.5 billion in 1960 would be equivalent to about 12 billion, purely on inflation. Cost of labor and stuff like that would increase the costs considerably nowadays.

[Anonymous No.8068343]

>>8068335
Proposed costs by a government organization really are nothing close to real costs

Though looks like it gives numbers for what the pulse units would have cost.
Likely cheaper now due to less needed plutonium.

[Anonymous No.8068347]

[Anonymous No.8068349]

>>8068290
>That's not the only reason Ares I was considered unsafe. Large solids can explode suddenly. An Air Force study concluded that abort was not possible during a key period of the Ares I ascent due to solid fuel fragments burning the parachute.
Again, this is not why Constellation was cancelled. Did you even read my post?

>When they finalized the design, they changed the name and struck the design costs off the record.
Wrong.
https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/510449main_SLS_MPCV_90-day_Report.pdf
See pages 7-10

>See >>8068254
Wrong again. See >>8068276

>no estimate of SLS Block 1B's performance puts it on a level with Saturn V
Nobody claims it will match or beat Saturn V's performance. 82% of Saturn V's performance is not trivial. It is the second most powerful launch vehicle ever made.

>but where the Apollo CSM was 2/3rds propellant
bull fucking shit
>Fat capsule on a wimpy rocket: it's a rocket to nowhere.
You mean a rocket not meant to emulate Apollo. It has more than enough propellant for its mission, which is to bring a crew to EML2.

>they'd still cost about $2 billion each based only on funds spent under the SLS name.
Far cheaper than Saturn V

>People this stupid shouldn't try to be glib.
>no actual rebuttal
fucking retard

>>8068319
Dragon can never be used for manned landings, no matter how much you modify it.
Fucking idiot retard redditor.

[Anonymous No.8068351]

>>8068343
The plutonium required for pulse units was more or less constant at 2.9 kg per pulse unit due to critical mass limitation. I don't know how much smaller we could nowadays make pure implosion nukes.

That's from the general atomics study linked on the top, not a government study.

[Anonymous No.8068354]

>there are people ITT who actually think that SpaceX can take up the mantle of all spaceflight, despite having only 29 launches with a 17% failure rate
TOP KEK

[Anonymous No.8068356]

>>8068349
>It is the second most powerful launch vehicle ever made.
Wouldn't that be the N1?

>Dragon can never be used for manned landings, no matter how much you modify it.
Why not? Isn't that SpaceX's whole Mars plan?

[Anonymous No.8068361]

>>8068356
>N1
never made it to orbit
With power measured as payload to TLI, N1 is behind Saturn V, Energia, and even Block 1 SLS

>Isn't that SpaceX's whole Mars plan?
What is BFR/MCT

[Anonymous No.8068369]

>>8068361
>With power measured as payload to TLI, N1 is behind Saturn V, Energia, and even Block 1 SLS
Huh. Okay.

>What is BFR/MCT
Those are going to be involved, but I'm pretty sure SpaceX is doing the whole "Red Dragon" propulsive landing on Mars thing with a Dragon capsule variant.

[Anonymous No.8068370]

Using solid core nuclear thermal rocket would result in higher radiation dosage than EPPP system.

[Anonymous No.8068373]

>>8068369
Landing on Mars is, ironically, easier than landing on the Moon from a propellant requirement standpoint.

Dragon won't be the thing taking people to Mars. It's too small, amongst other problems.

>>8068370
How do those numbers compare to the dosage from CBR?

[Anonymous No.8068376]

>>8068369
Red Dragon is just something they can do at low cost to bring payloads to mars

SpaceX funds themselves by providing services after all.
So expect to see people reserving mars missions using the Falcon Heavy & Red Dragon

[Anonymous No.8068379]

>>8068376
>So expect to see people reserving mars missions using the Falcon Heavy & Red Dragon
No.

[Anonymous No.8068414]

>>8068373
I don't know of the CBR shielding that would be used in other types of missions, but it would presumably be worse due to mass restrictions.

In EPP-propulsion, the same shielding which would be absulutely necassary would also be used to shield from background radiation and especially solar flares.

I don't think neither SpaceX nor current Nasa mars missions have solved the solar flare issue yet.

[Anonymous No.8068424]

>>8068370
Except NASA cannot do EPPP because the US is signatory to the Partial Nuclear Test Treaty. The Partial Nuclear Treaty bans nuclear tests outright. And yes EPPP would classify as a nuclear test.


Heck it is hard enough to get NASA to do anything nuclear these days. NASA is running low on plutonium, they're making more, but they ain't making much. In addition, they canceled funding for the Advanced Stirling Radisotope generator that would have let them use less of their plutonium.

Oh and not to mention NASA has ZERO flight ready nuclear reactors that work in space right now. They have tried to fund them in the past, but they inevitably got cancelled.


And what the fuck is with all this butthurt over SpaceX and ULA?

[Anonymous No.8068844]

>>8067089
if they gave that money to musk we would now be invading aliens on another galaxy

[Anonymous No.8068876]

>>8068356
>Wouldn't that be the N1?
N1 wasnt a launch vehicle it was a big firecracker

thats like grabbing a pencil, throwing it high and saying it can carry a payload of a billion elefants to the moons of callisto

but when confronted with the obvious reality of yroufailure saying ti was just a test failure right? haha oh the funnies

[Anonymous No.8068877]

>>8068424
>Except NASA cannot do EPPP because the US is signatory to the Partial Nuclear Test Treaty. The Partial Nuclear Treaty bans nuclear tests outright. And yes EPPP would classify as a nuclear test.

Outer space and partial nuclear test treaties could be amended to allow the use of nuclear energy in space for the benefit of all mankind. Pulse units could be weaponized just as anything with high energy density can. You can make thermobaric weapons out of gasoline, but that doesn't mean we can't use it.

>> We can't do it because we say we can't
>How do those numbers compare to the dosage from CBR?

The Curiosity rover measured average of 1.84 mSv/day of cosmic radiation during transit to mars. So shorter transit time and shielding both would reduce the absorbed dose, which Orion Mars class mission profiles would have had.

http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Science-2013-Hassler-science.1244797.pdf
> Table 2

[Anonymous No.8068963]

>>8068877
i think this

radiation exposure to astronauts is negliible, they take much more rads from the trip being long than from a couple of nukes

[Anonymous No.8069005]

>>8068349
>>but where the Apollo CSM was 2/3rds propellant
>bull fucking shit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Command/Service_Module
"Launch mass 63,500 pounds (28,800 kg)"
"SPS engine propellants: 40,590 lb (18,410 kg)"

The CSM had to lower itself and the Lunar Module from a free return trajectory to low lunar orbit, then return to Earth. It needed a high propellant fraction.

>>Fat capsule on a wimpy rocket: it's a rocket to nowhere.
>You mean a rocket not meant to emulate Apollo. It has more than enough propellant for its mission, which is to bring a crew to EML2.
First of all, it's not going to EML2. It's going to high lunar orbit. EML2 is a lagrange point. There are no planned missions on Orion to EML2. Going to EML2 would be something new. They don't want to try anything new, something bad might happen, they might have to solve some problems that NASA didn't solve in the 60s.

And SLS/Orion wasn't designed for the mission. The mission was designed for SLS/Orion, when Constellation was a failure and had to be drastically downgraded, but they wanted an excuse to continue giving money to the contractors. These go-nowhere, do-nothing missions are the best they can cobble together with the scraps of a failed system.

>>they'd still cost about $2 billion each based only on funds spent under the SLS name.
>Far cheaper than Saturn V
File under QUOTE THE WHOLE THING:
>>>>It's not really plausible that in the next ten years, SLS will cost less than several billion dollars per launch
>>>And what are you basing any of that on? Your feelings?
>>Even if the SLS program was free from now on, we pretend that it has nothing to do with Constellation, and all 4 manifested missions actually get done in the next ten years, they'd still cost about $2 billion each based only on funds spent under the SLS name.
>Far cheaper than Saturn V
How can you be such utter garbage? Where's your sense of shame? This is like some kind of mental disorder.

[Anonymous No.8069037]

>>8068414
>I don't think neither SpaceX nor current Nasa mars missions have solved the solar flare issue yet.
You can't shield the whole vehicle, you have to see the flare coming and rush the astronauts into a radiation shelter (or keep them in that cramped space as much as possible).

For small missions, you just have to design your vehicle so most propellant, supplies, and waste are stored together, with a tight hole in the middle for your travellers. For pretty much any realistic mission plan, that will give them enough shielding.

Because it scales with surface area, not volume, if you're sending a lot of people at once this is less of a problem. A few guys need to nest together in their supplies. An ark for a million people might just shield the walls.

[Anonymous No.8069101]

Msnw are working on a design that soesnt require hundreds of nuclear bombs to work
http://msnwllc.com/propulsion-publications

[Anonymous No.8069119]

>>8069101
Its easy, just put your whole space fleet in orbit, detonate one tzar bomba behind them, in about a week they are in alpha centauri

easy

[Anonymous No.8069223]

>>8069119
one 50 mt bomb wouldn't get you anywhere. Now 50000 1 kt ones would let you propable get something to alpha centauri within the next couple centuries.

[Anonymous No.8069230]

>>8068877
The treaty is not getting amended any time soon. And what exactly is the difference between a nuclear bomb test and using nuclear bombs for propulsion?

[Anonymous No.8069248]

>>8069223
you think the "real tzar bomba" had the capacities they said on the news?

you need some redpillin quick

100mt design is what they said to calm the people who doesnt know about real stuff going on

the real yield was closer to 100.000 mt they scaled it down to 500

[Anonymous No.8069328]

>>8069230
Oh and not to mention this isn't the only treaty that prevents nuclear bomb propulsion (NBP). The Nonproliferation and START treaties make it very politically difficult to make new nuclear weapons. In fact it's very difficult politically to even produce new weapons grade plutonium because of these treaties.

Yes pretty much every uranium fueled nuclear reactor's gonna produce Pu-240, but we can't refine it to weapons grade cause politics. Not to mention that waste reprocessing is ILLEGAL in the US. (yes this is stupid)

NBP will become a thing if: a huge asteroid is detected on course to earth, we find aliens, or we have Cold War 2 Electric Boogaloo.

OR we find a way to cause net energy gain fusion detonations without using fissiles. Just think OP, once we crack fusion power, we reengineer whatever reactor works so it only works once and throw it out the back.

[Anonymous No.8069367]

>>8069328
>pretty much every uranium fueled nuclear reactor's gonna produce Pu-240, but we can't refine it to weapons grade cause politics
...also physics.

Pu-240 is an undesirable contaminant. Pu-239 is the good stuff, for fission primaries. Pu-238 is also desirable for RTGs, but it's made in a different way (by separating neptunium, a minor byproduct formed when U-235 fails to undergo fission in two successive steps, from spent uranium fuel, and irradiating it with neutrons).

Pu-239 forms when U-238 (by far the most common isotope of uranium) absorbs a neutron (and then undergoes beta decay). Pu-240 forms when Pu-239 absorbs a neutron rather than undergoing fission. The plutonium in normal used fuel rods will be highly contaminated with Pu-240, because Pu-239 will form continuously as the reactor operates, and then that Pu-239 will be exposed to the neutron flux, so that much of it is burned up as fuel and much of what isn't is transmuted to Pu-240.

To make Pu-239 of suitable purity for fission explosives, you either need to produce it in a reactor designed to allow the Pu-239 to be separated promptly after it has been formed, or you need to do isotope separation, which is more difficult and expensive.

[Anonymous No.8069377]

>>8069367
Thanks for the correction m8!

[Anonymous No.8069394]

>>8067392
NASA is building a fusion rocket ackchually.

[Anonymous No.8069417]

>>8069328
>NBP will become a thing if: a huge asteroid is detected on course to earth

This gets often thrown around, but by the time we find out that an asteroid possesses an imminent threat to life on earth, it might well be already too late. At that time having a EPPP driven vehicle ready in orbit would be pretty beneficial.

>> But the treaty says we can't do that!!

[Anonymous No.8069465]

>>8069394
>NASA is building a fusion rocket
NASA's also "building" a reactionless drive, and a warp drive.

They don't know how to make a fusion rocket, or whether the kind of fusion rocket they'd like is even possible.

[Anonymous No.8069473]

>>8068877
> for the benefit of all mankind
And if it explodes on launch? Who will it benefit then.

Probably nothing to worry about though. It's not like a spacecraft ever blew up or anything.

[Anonymous No.8069481]

>>8069394
No they are not. They are investigating the feasibility of one.

[Anonymous No.8069496]

>>8069473
if it explodes on launch it wont go nuclear you piece of shit asshole non knower of nothing ever ever ever totally ignorant of all facts of all mankind for all history of the all forevers

[Anonymous No.8069500]

>>8069417
If we were going to use nuclear bombs to redirect an asteroid, we probably wouldn't build special new ones, just throw together a launch with whatever we had, quickly jerry-rigging strategic nukes on satellite busses for the maneuvering capability.

Conventional nukes only weigh a couple hundred pounds, so we could probably put several of them on whatever rocket would be ready to launch soonest.

[Anonymous No.8069537]

>>8069496
First of all, that's far from certain. Secondly, it wouldn't really matter, since spreading all of that plutonium into the environment would be about as bad as setting it off, assuming you're launching in a remote location to begin with.

[Anonymous No.8069543]

>>8069500
>If we were going to use nuclear bombs to redirect an asteroid, we probably wouldn't build special new ones, just throw together a launch with whatever we had, quickly jerry-rigging strategic nukes on satellite busses for the maneuvering capability.

This is one of the reasons the dismantling of the B-53 nukes has been "delayed" for so long. NNSA is trying to keep them for planetary defense purposes.

To ensure asteroid redirection, you would need to change its course as far away from earth as you can, which is pretty impossible with delta V budgets available from current launch vehicles. Some of the asteroid fragments might still hit earth if redirection was done closer. You'd also need much more energy (bigger nukes) to do that closer to earth.


>>8069473


> designing a nuke that can accidentally go off

No accidental nuclear detonation of nuclear weapon has ever occurred. If one pulse unit accidentally went off, it wouldn't explode the others. The largest issue then would be radiological contamination downwind and close to the launchpad, depending on the amount of plutonium released.

[Anonymous No.8069545]

>>8069500
its not just the nukes, having an orion vehicle to deliver a mass of whatever the fuck we want to whatever point in the solar system quickly is something super im portant that cannot be accomplished in a short period of time it has to be ready on the go ready to go forever or else is useless at the time of arrival

[Anonymous No.8069550]

>>8069543
you do nott need to explotonate it just obligate to miss the keyhole orbit of the point

[Anonymous No.8069572]

>>8069555
Jesus, did you just have a stroke

[Anonymous No.8069586]

>>8069572
is it me or have the mods become strangely permisive since moot left 4chan?

[Anonymous No.8069664]

>>8067112

The idea was to take the Orion propelled ship beyond the Van Allen belt via chemical rocket propulsion. Then at that point it would fire its primary drive.

[Anonymous No.8069669]

>>8067177

Or build such ships in space, and launch them beyond the range of our magnetic field

[Anonymous No.8069692]

>>8069669
Where do you think fissile material comes from? All of our uranium mines are on Earth, and there isn't enough infrastructure anywhere else to even consider such a project.

[Anonymous No.8069696]

>>8069543

We ended up keeping the frames of the B-53 nukes, interestingly. Turns out they make excellent delivery vehicles for anti-asteroid missions; we don't have anything else large enough to do the job, if such a mission ever came to pass.

[Anonymous No.8069700]

>>8069692

Transport the fissile material and their related components into space.

The ship would be built in modular components, much like the ISS was built.

[Anonymous No.8069726]

>>8069586
>is it me or have the mods become strangely permisive since moot left 4chan?
It seems that way.
I don't really recall seeing this much blatant shitposting on /sci/ in the past. There were trolls and troll threads, sure, but they at least had to LOOK like they were relevant. Now we have gorillaposting and outright keyboard smash bing posted in every thread. Other boards have similar stories - lots of quiet boards like /diy/ are getting shat on, /co/'s had multiple topics banned because the mods don't want to clean up the incredible mess a few posters are making, and /g/ is basically unusable right now with something like 1 in 5 threads even vaguely relating to technology. I don't know about other boards like /a/, but I'd guess they're not happy either.

The dumb thing is that we all already KNOW what an uncontrolled forum looks like - plenty of people have built them over the years. Almost nobody still uses them because they quickly turn into a race-to-the-bottem where obnoxious assholes compete to outdo each other, then leave when there's nothing left to disrupt.

One of the reasons 4chan's lived so long, is that the mods have actually done a passable job of keeping at least most of the boards generally usable to people wanting to talk about things. For them to (apparently) give up on that now is insane.

Why am I even posting this here anyway.

[Anonymous No.8069772]

>>8069367
You can still make nukes with PU-240
Though the uncertainty in yield might not be workable

[Anonymous No.8069866]

>>8069692
If we had a space elevator we could assemble very large ships in space, then use chemical rockets to push them into a higher orbit where there is no chance of nuclear debris making it back to Earth.

[Anonymous No.8069870]

>>8069866
>If we had a space elevator...
Sure, but we're still miles from that.

[Anonymous No.8069883]

>>8069870
True, but I think that once we do build it, most of the opposition to Nuclear Pulse Propulsion will fall away, and we will very quickly be able to colonize the solar system.

Basically Elevator+NPP sometime this century seems more plausible than a huge EM drive breakthrough or doing anything meaningful with chemical rockets alone.

[Anonymous No.8069888]

>>8069866
>>8069870
space eleveatro is more fantasy than the singualritycucks


a billion million miles cable
costing a billion million million dollars


that has to have every square centemeter perfectly inspected every nanosecond perfectly to prevent failure

and any failure is a complete catastrophe that unleashes a 50 megaton nuclear bomb per sq/m2 for a proportion of half the wide whole earth

for those of you unscientific its not a literal youre a nuclear bomb, its the force of impact falling

[Anonymous No.8070143]

>>8069866
If we had a space elevator, we could build the rocket at the countermass and then let it go, sending it on an escape trajectory FOR FREE*.

* for the cost of some of Earth's angular momentum.

>>8069888
Not really, we have used similar lengths of cable in bridges. The rest, well it doesn't seem that you're very familiar with space elevators.

You need the cable to be around 35,790 km long not 170 light years.

[Anonymous No.8070179]

>>8070143
>we have used similar lengths of cable in bridges.
>we have used similar lengths of cable in bridges.
>we have used similar lengths of cable in bridges.


excuse, confirmed inferior, please attend the 5070 years of top tiers college you should attend before even being able to be worthy of being even considered to speak with the intelligence i had when i was half a second old

[Anonymous No.8070183]

>>8070143
>If we had a space elevator, we could build the rocket at the countermass and then let it go, sending it on an escape trajectory FOR FREE*.
Lifting stuff up on a space elevator would cost more energy than sending stuff up on a reusable rocket.

35,790 km is too long for wires, especially when the elevator has to support them. So space elevator plans these days tend to talk about things like microwave power transmission, which is very lossy. Then there's friction losses and things like that.

Then you've got to think about things like the travel time. It's like travelling around the world, except you're climbing a rope the whole way. Even if you go at 1000 km/h, you're talking about a 36-hour trip.

>we have used similar lengths of cable in bridges
Show me the bridge with the 35,790 km long span.

Even if you take the cable for granted, the rest of the project is not easy nor clearly desirable in comparison to a far more modest development effort in the field of reusable chemical rocketry, or other megastructures such as a launch loop.

[Anonymous No.8070236]

>>8070143
You got a cable that can supports it own weight at 35,000 miles long? That can be repaired & maintained?

Space elevator shit is a meme

[Anonymous No.8070286]

>>8070179
The golden gate bridge uses 128, 750 km of cable. Please think before you speak.
http://goldengatebridge.org/projects/maincablephotos.php

[Anonymous No.8070306]

>>8070286
750 EARTH KILOMETERS OF DISTANCE SEEEABLE BY A HUMAN EYE IS NOT HTE SAM E AS ORBITAL LENGHT THAT NO HUMAN INHuMAN PHYSICAL POSSIBLITY S MOTFG OF ;MATERIALS COULD EVER EVER COMBINE BECAUSE OF TENSONATOR STRENGGTTT

[Anonymous No.8070311]

>>8070143
>>8070236
this person is retarded
>>8070236
this person is right

not only would it be titanically expensive to build

assuming you can find the right material
(for now theres not one even theoretically possible)


and even if you build it you have to make sure theres no space garbage ever again, none, zero, just one little bolt of orbital trash and it cuts a hole int he cable

oh and also, you cannot cut the cable, any cut at all and the whole thing, which would probably be more expensive than the us budget for defense for 100 years will be totally and completely destroyed with no possiblity of recovering it

[Anonymous No.8070388]

>>8070143
made a mistake here, cable should be around 100,000 km long

>>8070183
>>Lifting stuff up on a space elevator would cost more energy than sending stuff up on a reusable rocket.
however, electrical energy tends to be cheaper than fuel

>>So space elevator plans these days tend to talk about things like microwave power transmission, which is very lossy.
That is correct. Although one would more likely use a laser as the spot size will be smaller.

Now let's talk about where the 'for free' part comes in, above geostationary orbit the apparent gravitational force on a space elevator goes up. As long as you can overcome friction on the cable altitude keeps increasing and once you reach ~53,000 km, you are at escape velocity. Simply letting go of the cable at this point results in an escape trajectory.

It isn't actually 'free', but it does demonstrate an entertaining point about how space elevators steal angular momentum from Earth's rotation.

Yes, space elevators take a long time to get stuff into orbit(months), but then again so do other forms of transportation such as container ships.

>>Show me the bridge with the 35,790 km long span.
the amount of mass we would need to make a space elevator is less than the mass of the golden gate bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge masses 3.808 *10^8 kg. A 100,000 km space elevator was predicted from the study below to use 97.7*10^3 kg of cable and 52.7*10^3 kg of counterweight.

http://pichak-asanbar.ir/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/PKASpace-Elevators.pdf

>>8070311
>>8070236
Making a cable that can support the required tension force will certainly be a challenge

However, all of this is beside the point: space elevators are less of a fantasy than the singularity. For a space, we have a pretty good idea of what the technical challenges are. For artificial general intelligence, we have no clue what the challenges are.

[Anonymous No.8070400]

>>8070388
>Making a cable that can support the required tension force will certainly be a challenge

By a challenge you mean, not physically possible
It will need to be maintained regularly, be strong enough to survive damage, non-conductive/magnetic, yet allow things to climb it

[Anonymous No.8070406]

>>8070388
>Making a cable that can support the required tension force will certainly be a challenge
give me an existing material that could be manufactured on a lenght longer than one meter that is even one order of magnitude less than the needed force needed

[Anonymous No.8070412]

>>8070388
>space elevators are less of a fantasy than the singularity. F
what a shitty way to think, they are both A BIG fantasy


its like, you say youre gonna get a job as the president of the united states, and then you say you're gonna fart-propel yourself to alpha centauri

one is more fantastic than the other but both are waay waaaay waaaay out of realitys reach

[Anonymous No.8070462]

>>8070183
>Show me the bridge with the 35,790 km long span.

Technically, the cables in suspension bridges consist of a single wire looped back and forth over the length of the bridge thousands of times.

> There are 80,000 miles (130,000 km) of wire in the main cables of the Golden Gate Bridge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Gate_Bridge

Still not strong enough for a space elevator though.

[Anonymous No.8070515]

>>8070388
>>>Show me the bridge with the 35,790 km long span.
>the amount of mass we would need to make a space elevator is less than the mass of the golden gate bridge.
The mass of the thing is really not the issue with a free-hanging cable that could wrap around the Earth.

>Yes, space elevators take a long time to get stuff into orbit(months)
>A 100,000 km space elevator was predicted from the study below to use 97.7*10^3 kg of cable and 52.7*10^3 kg of counterweight.
>http://pichak-asanbar.ir/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/PKASpace-Elevators.pdf
This describes a space elevator capable of supporting a "1000kg lifter". That's one payload of under 1000 kg at a time, which would, by your estimate, take "months" to raise.

We're talking about at least 20 years for it to lift its own mass, maybe 40 or more, a figure which couldn't be expected to improve with scale.

SpaceX is advertising a payload of 2900 kg to Pluto on Falcon Heavy. That's technology which should be routinely available in a year or two, and rockets should continue getting more capable and cheaper.. It's hard to imagine that there's any advantage to a space elevator which can merely replace a few launches per year of smaller rockets.

[Anonymous No.8070753]

>>8070462
>Still not strong enough for a space elevator though.
GRab the strongest material you can muster in your creation mind

multiply it by a number of one figure

is it correct

NO!
orders ofr magnitude less than the gholder

[Anonymous No.8071706]

What about a space fountain, is that a fantasy too?

[Anonymous No.8071758]

>>8071706
Space elevators are not fantasy, they are a way to legitamately derail a thread about using nuclear bombs to propell yourself.

>>8070406
Muh dick.

[Anonymous No.8072583]

/sci/-kun! What is the most realistic end-all form of space travel based off current technology and hypotheses?

[Anonymous No.8072609]

>>8066775
>science doesn't agree with me therefore sciencve hates me

gb2sociology

[Anonymous No.8072623]

>>8066775
We still need the nukes for protection until Daddy makes bros with Putin anon dummy

[Anonymous No.8072811]

>>8072583
Salt Water Rockets?

[Anonymous No.8072814]

>>8072623
fuck off milo

>>8072583
Nuclear Pulse propulsion is by far the best
In terms of hypothesis, maybe fission fragment engines will work, or laser triggered fusion

[Anonymous No.8073663]

>>8067089
>It has no clear mission
SLS has a very clear mission.

It provides employment for the space-industrial complex. The continual delays are actually successes.

Did you think the point was to get into space with it?

[Anonymous No.8073892]

Wtf with the space elevators. They need fancy black magic which doesn't exist. Nuclear propulsion is the thing that's affordable, doable and realistic. Project Icarus showed that they'd need quite a few Saturn V's to divert an 1000m diameter asteroid with nuclear weapons of 100 mt class . We don't have Saturn V's. Now we'd need more than 5 years of time to be able to divert an asteroid over 500m size. So we'd be royally fucked.

[Anonymous No.8074589]

>>8073892
>Wtf with the space elevators. They need fancy black magic which doesn't exist. Nuclear propulsion is the thing that's affordable, doable and realistic.
Yeah if you have an unmanned craft, because the last time this came up three anons ganged up on the nuclear guy and showed that shielding plus shock absorption plus "fuel" was just a massive waste of time and money. Really the only feasible suggestion that came out of that argument was a nuclear reactor powering electric drives, beyond that it was fission fragment propulsion (which would likely work out great, but nobody has put any research into it) and nuclear thermal rockets.

>Project Icarus showed that they'd need quite a few Saturn V's to divert an 1000m diameter asteroid with nuclear weapons of 100 mt class
Or we could do the sensible approach and use a laser in orbit to push the rock slightly out of the way. Nuclear detonations on asteroids is a dumb idea anyway, few are solid and anything significant enough to adequately push a large rock that size would likely split it into smaller pieces. Meanwhile a laser? Constant low thrust as long as the ejected material doesn't get in the way of the beam.

It isn't as cool as sending a nuke to do the job but this isn't something where cool points are tallied, if writing fan fiction could influence the course of asteroids then NASA would pay people to write stupid, unintelligible bullshit all goddamn day.

[Anonymous No.8075493]

>>8074589
EPPP drive would have far more impulse and Isp than any electric drive

You need the shielding anyways, if you are not launching from earths surface you don't actually have to use the pusher plate at the back, you could have elastic cables & an "umbrella" out front catching the nukes detonation

Much improved Isp too

[Anonymous No.8075497]

>>8072623
this

it's funny how there's all this hysteria about him starting WW3 when he's the only candidate who is friends with the undisputed king of the second greatest world power who is friends with the 3rd and 4th greatest world powers.

[Anonymous No.8075693]

Does anyone have any papers on chemical atmospheric pulse propulsion effective specific impulse? It could actually be pretty good seeing as it uses air as reaction mass. This is also the reason very small nukes would be used in atmospheric Orion launches.

[Anonymous No.8075765]

>>8075693
explosives do not use air idiot

[Anonymous No.8075800]

>>8075765
>>>>>>>>>> What are blast waves

[Anonymous No.8075854]

A NPP is decades away from deployment, even as a prototype without human occupants. It's not necessarily a BAD idea,but it's not one that's the subject of active research or development. Those of you who really like the idea should keep working at popularizing it, it might be doable to build one in orbit sometime in the next 30 years if space keeps opening up and you can get the ear of a billionaire or a state.

[Anonymous No.8075867]

>>8073892
Launch loops don't need black magic but they're rather fiddly in other aspects instead.

[Anonymous No.8075899]

>>8075854
Hardly decades
There is no new research, theoretical advances, materials, engines, etc to be produced.

It is merely a matter of actually having the funding and ability to build it.

[Anonymous No.8076066]

>>8075493
>EPPP drive would have far more impulse and Isp than any electric drive
And a gigantic fucking antimatter torch firing out the back would have even more impulse, but it's implausible because we don't have any antimatter on hand. More impulse means precisely dick when the other technical challenges make that option less attractive, why not go for a much less complicated method like a fission fragment drive which would likely need as much research as an EPPP system? That wouldn't be banned by any treaties and it would offer similar performance with less mechanical overhead which means far less things would go wrong.

>You need the shielding anyways
Of course, but the problem isn't radiation shielding, it's the shock absorption and what is essentially armor plating to keep the explosion of a coke can-sized nuclear bomb from annihilating the spacecraft.

>if you are not launching from earths surface
This will never, ever fucking happen, and frankly every time an EPPP/NPP advocate merely brings it up the point destroys their credibility. Either they're delusional and are under the impression that the rest of humanity is okay with "a slight increase in cancer rates" (even from a polar launch, which wouldn't happen anyway) or are bitterly stubborn about the matter. For your sake? Just don't even put it on the table, you look like a quack.

>you could have elastic cables & an "umbrella" out front catching the nukes detonation
Weren't you talking about "fancy black magic" here? >>8073892 What a completely fucking crazy suggestion, it would be less dangerous and less convoluted to just launch up the craft in pieces and assemble it in orbit.

>>8075899
>There is no new research, theoretical advances, materials, engines, etc to be produced.
Except none of that is true, every aspect of the system hasn't even been touched since Orion was first thought up (and it was basic testing at best) and there won't even be a proof of concept design until we can put it into orbit.

[Anonymous No.8076126]

>>8076066
Nuclear bombs and the ability of common materials to withstand the heat/radiation produced by them is a well proven/demonstrated thing
Shaped nuclear charges may also have been tested in secret

Shock absorption is an engineering issue, not a real problem.

There is nothing left to so with NPP other than design & build the craft/pulse units.

Fission fragment anything is merely a drawing board experiment now, aka the whole concept of how do we actually do this is "black magic

I bring up launching from earth because its the ONLY high Isp engine that will ever be capable of it, and the envirionmental effects of clean small airborne fission blasts is negligible

[Anonymous No.8076171]

>>8076126
>and the ability of common materials to withstand the heat/radiation produced by them is a well proven/demonstrated thing
Yeah, the fact that a concept exists doesn't actually mean anything.

>Shock absorption is an engineering issue, not a real problem.
lmao automatically discarding your opinion for this, you have absolutely no fucking idea what you're talking about. Engineering challenges are a very, very real problem because this bloated piece of shit is going to be insanely expensive and you will need to shave off every cent you can.

>There is nothing left to so with NPP other than design & build the craft/pulse units.
Except test every single concept before formulating a design because "hey can you put this plate up at ground zero? we want to see what nukes do to it" is not a thorough test for anything.

That's your testing for the ablative shield by the way, this isn't rigorous or thorough at all and only demonstrates that sometimes things aren't vaporized by nuclear weapons.

>Fission fragment anything is merely a drawing board experiment now
Even less so than NPP and especially less so than EPPP, it's an open-ended magnetic bottle and we've been using MHD generators since the 70's with success. This doesn't make it a good idea exactly, but it's much closer to reality than NPP.

>I bring up launching from earth because its the ONLY high Isp engine that will ever be capable of it
That doesn't matter, your reason why is immediately negated by:
>and the envirionmental effects of clean small airborne fission blasts is negligible
We're talking about nuclear detonations, the "environmental effects" need to be nonexistent period, there is no compromise there. That's why your entire idea gets it's feet kicked out from under it, everyone who advocates it seems to be permanently disconnected from reality. Not only do you think major engineering issues aren't "real" but you forget that most of the planet is vehemently against anything related to fission.

[Anonymous No.8076203]

>>8076126
>>Shaped nuclear charges may also have been tested in secret
>using a hypothetical as evidence

[Anonymous No.8076227]

The main issue is that you need an insanely massive craft to pull low enough G's for humans to survive.
Only way to get this craft to orbit is nuclear pulse propulsion.
Nuclear winter is coming.

[Anonymous No.8076240]

>>8075867
Will a launch loop constructed to have the rotor move in a tapering spiral 50 km high be feasible relative to its 2000km long cousin?

[Anonymous No.8076265]

http://www.icarusinterstellar.org/papers/Evaluation-of-Antimatter-Catalyzed-Fusion-for-Interstellar-Propulsion.pdf

Link related

[Anonymous No.8076371]

>>8076066
>>8076126
>>8076171
Every nuclear-oriented propulsion method aside from nuclear thermal rockets are pipe dreams until we've mastered a viable fusion reaction that produces a large surplus. Arguing for one or the other is pointless, neither would ever come to fruition unless there's a massive shift in policy and society in the coming decades.

>>8076227
>>Only way to get this craft to orbit is nuclear pulse propulsion.
>implying the ISS was sent up in a single launch
Did you even think before you decided to post?

[Anonymous No.8076373]

>>8076371
Implying the ISS would sustain that kind of acceleration.

[Anonymous No.8076386]

>>8076373
>Implying the ISS would sustain that kind of acceleration.
Thank you very much for proving that you're an idiot, not only have you sidestepped my retort but you've also simultaneously proven that you didn't understand it anyway.

I will simplify for you:
We built the ISS in pieces, you said the "only way" to put a massive craft into orbit is send it in one piece. ISS is massive. It's in orbit. It didn't go up in one piece. Therefore orbital assembly has historical precedence while launching an "insanely massive craft" does not.

I've demonstrated here >>8076371 and it's been stated above that a NPP launch from the surface will never happen, anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot.

[Anonymous No.8076400]

>>8076386
Oh, I agree that NPP launch from the surface will never happen. Because it will kill us all.
The thing is, even if you launched pieces with SLS block 2 (~200 mT to LEO), You'd need quite a few launches.
Every, and I empathize EVERY, fucking docking port between pieces has to sustain a 200 mT load at least.
Good luck with that.

[Anonymous No.8076443]

>>8076400
>You'd need quite a few launches.
>Good luck with that.
Which is why this idea becomes increasingly less realistic as it's examined, there are "less efficient" alternatives that are available right now or will be within a decade without the ridiculous hurdles. Even one of the pipe dreams, the fission-fragment drive, could actually be built and tested (arguably it already has, it's essentially a fissile-driven particle cannon) which is a critical stage in development.

Really the question is why, interplanetary craft are already too large to launch in one piece and an alternative method of propulsion available currently would be the most cost-effective option.

[Anonymous No.8076458]

>>8076066
>This will never, ever fucking happen, and frankly every time an EPPP/NPP advocate merely brings it up the point destroys their credibility. Either they're delusional and are under the impression that the rest of humanity is okay with "a slight increase in cancer rates" (even from a polar launch, which wouldn't happen anyway) or are bitterly stubborn about the matter. For your sake? Just don't even put it on the table, you look like a quack.

Atmospheric nuclear testing added a great dose of 0.11 mSv/year of radiation at peak in 1963. It was down to 0.005 mSv/a by 2000. In places where ground emits Radon lot, people get between 10-80 extra mSv per year. Even that doesn't mean instant cancer, but 0-1% increased risk of lung cancer by age of 75 for nonsmokers. Compare that to the amount of radiation released by atmospheric testing. The radiation problem would therefore be almost completely localized, therefore a non-concern for a assumed remote launch location. It was conservatively estimated that one 4000 ton orion ground launch using non-clean nuclear technology would be comparable to one 5 mt atmospheric nuke test. Quite a few 5 mt class tests were done in 50's and early 60's.

The bigger issue in atmospheric launching would have been stuff like gamma scattering, which would have been detrimental to the crew, rather than environmental radiation concern. It would of course have been a smaler issue in larger vehicles with more shielding.

The most realistic plan for launch of 10m diameter class vehicle is boosting the orion vehicle to space via expendable launch vehicle or recoverable one and then achieving orbital velocity on it's own power. A mars exploration mission orion could also have been assembled in orbit with 3-5 Saturn V launches.

[Anonymous No.8076478]

>>8076443
Let's be honest, conventional chemical propulsion isn't that bad when it comes to interplanetary travel.
Classical Nuclear Thermal Engines would help, but are not critical in terms of mass to pursue those missions.
NPP only comes in for interstellar travel.

[Anonymous No.8076497]

>>8076458
After Fukushima happened, I can't help but picture a future where we just gotta get the hell out of Earth to survive.
We were that close to it actually happening.

[Anonymous No.8076501]

>>8076497
Yes, a rare disaster in which 0 people died means that the entire planet may need to be evacuated soon.

[Anonymous No.8076507]

>>8076501
Well there are worker who died in the Tsunami.
Let's be clear. If the nuclear spent fuel pool had ever been cleared of water cooling, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

[Anonymous No.8076542]

>>8076478
>Classical Nuclear Thermal Engines would help


>Nuclear thermal engines
>producing over 10000 rem/hour of radiation
>Good luck crew

[Anonymous No.8076555]

>>8076542
Didn't say it was mandatory.
I'm saying those figures may pale in comparison with what we get on Earth when we get the perfect nuclear accident.

[Anonymous No.8076733]

>>8076555
>when we get the perfect nuclear accident.


Wew lad

[Anonymous No.8076893]

>>8076458
This entire fucking post makes me shake my head. I'm not even going to address it point-by-point since it's all head-in-the-clouds bullshit that misses the point: where the fuck are you going to get both the money and the political clout to do any of this? You need a lot of both, especially the second one.

Really, tell me, because last time I checked an entire country (New Zealand) passed a blanket ban on any nuclear-powered vessel, despite how sensible of a power source it is, from simply entering their ports. Cooled relations between the USA and NZ for over a decade and it still causes issues, and that's dealing with something that is completely fucking benign compared to this conversation. You're saying everything will totally be A-OK if we fly a spaceship up out of a protected wildlife refuge (either pole) using nuclear explosions. So you're looking at either violating international law and being an instant pariah across the globe or somehow convincing 183 nations to be A-OK with it, this dollar amount is on top of the ridiculous pricetag of even a tiny NPP vehicle.

It's a stupid idea.

[Anonymous No.8076929]

>>8076733
It's only a matter of time, really.

[Anonymous No.8077071]

>>8076171
>Yeah, the fact that a concept exists doesn't actually mean anything.
It's a fact that fission fragment anything doesn't exist, meaning getting power or propulsion from it is just a THEORY at this point.

>Engineering challenges are a very, very real problem
It's a big metal plate and big shock absorbers
You calculate and blast pressure of whatever size nuclear pulses you are using, ensure your plates won't be worn away too fast & that your shocks/hydraulics/whatever system will dissipate the force.
The tests have shown that yes, they can survive ground zero, obviously more practical testing would be needed. Which would involve a series of underground nuclear tests.

>the "environmental effects" need to be nonexistent period
Negligible means non-existant. The idea gets kicked out from under it because the politicians see no purpose in space development, and the congressmen/senators are largely owned by anti-nuclear groups.

You aren't lifting megatons of steel off earth with your fission fragment rocket btw

[Anonymous No.8077078]

bois- Cannae Drive

[Anonymous No.8077087]

>>8076443
>Which is why this idea becomes increasingly less realistic as it's examined,

No it stays realistic, because you can build it as large as you want, all in one piece on earth.

SpaceX and Blue Origin will be launching tons of rockets soon anyways

[Anonymous No.8077356]

How many fucking times must I keep posting that international treaties forbid this thing. This. Will. Not. Change. Not now, not for the forseable future. Now get out.

[Anonymous No.8077621]

>>8077356
noone gives a shit about international treaties
They are just an excuse by certain politicians to not do things while pretending to be neutral

[Anonymous No.8077634]

>>8077621
So when was the last time Russia or the US tested a nuclear weapon?

[Anonymous No.8077690]

>>8077634
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_testing
according to this underground tests are not even banned, and the US/Russia clearly stopped nuclear tests in the 90's after the USSR fell

[Anonymous No.8077976]

>>8077634
>So when was the last time Russia or the US tested a nuclear weapon?

When stuff like the Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test Facility came online. You won't need to test underground nuclear explosions when you can simulate them in a accurate fashion.

[Anonymous No.8078288]

>>8077071
>It's a fact that fission fragment anything doesn't exist, meaning getting power or propulsion from it is just a THEORY at this point.
So? NPP is the exact same, except testing fission fragment is at least possible. You are not detonating a small nuke on Earth any time soon unless you convince most of the population of the 1st world that it's okay to do so.

>It's a big metal plate and big shock absorbers
Missed the point of that reply, great job.

>Negligible means non-existant. The idea gets kicked out from under it because the politicians see no purpose in space development, and the congressmen/senators are largely owned by anti-nuclear groups.
Believe whatever the fuck you want, but the fact of the matter is the buck stops at public opinion. I don't know if you're aware but most of the population aren't autistic shut-ins who post on /sci/ and they really, really are concerned about pesky things like "radiation" and "cancer." Things anti-nuclear lobbyists will play up to get this idea murdered in the crib, and you can bet your ass that if there ever was a serious NPP vehicle design put out there would be additional legislation drafted against it.

>You aren't lifting megatons of steel off earth with your fission fragment rocket btw
Why the fuck are you retards so obsessed with SSTO vehicles? You will never, ever, ever launch a NPP from the surface. Ever. Not fucking happening. Anyone with the money to build it would not shoot themselves in the foot unless the planet was going to explode or something. Short of total annihilation of the human species we might as well be talking about using ion drives to launch shit, it's equally as plausible.

>>8077621
>noone gives a shit about international treaties
>They are just an excuse by certain politicians to not do things
"Waaahh it's just an excuse!!!"

Get your head out of your ass, even if it were an excuse this guy >>8077356 is spot-on. Anything related to fission? VERY unpopular.

[Anonymous No.8078300]

>>8077621
>noone gives a shit about international treaties
>>8077634
>So when was the last time Russia or the US tested a nuclear weapon?

Treaties are written in a style that makes them sound like a series of promises between nations.
But they're actually a formalized agreed viewpoint reflecting an underlying political reality.
Treaties aren't there so you can sue some other country in small claims court,
Treaties exist so we can be sure of how the involved parties see the situation.

[Anonymous No.8078711]

Well, for all that people are against nuclear pulse propulsion, in the words of Arthur C. Clarke, the space age won't begin before we start using nuclear propulsion in space. And the best and arguably easiest way to do that is via nuclear pulse propulsion. The B41 nuclear bomb had over 5 mt/ton ratio. Nothing aside from antimatter and pure fusion will come close to that. Of course fission pulse units also won't come near that, but fission-fusion pulse units for interstellar travel (or just large interplanetary) can approach that. Nothing else we have can get the specific impulse close to 10^5. Though even the conservative 2000-5000 from small diameter pusher plates would be enough for large scale exploration of our solar system. Even the more hypothetical future propulsion systems (Z-pinch and antimatter catalyzed fusion ) would still be EPP propulsion, just using magnetic fields instead of pusher plates to transfer momentum to the spacecraft.

The neat thing about orion style propulsion for insterstellar travel is also the fact that you can make most of the shielding and the pusher plate out of depleted uranium (U-238) which could then be bred into Plutonium and used to produce more pulse units en-route, while also providing power for the craft.

> "Even now the only way we could get large payloads around the solar system is by something like Orion, because atomic bombs contain thousands of times more energy, indeed millions of times more energy, than any of the chemical fuels used in existing rockets – hydrogen and oxygen are feeble compared to the energies released by an atomic bomb. So when you talk of sending hundreds of tons, or even thousands of tons of payload, including human beings, to Mars, say, that's the only way we could do it, even now. The space age hasn't even begun yet. I believe the day will come when very few members of the human race will even be able to point at the part of the sky where the earth is."

[Anonymous No.8078722]

>>8078711
>measuring the efficiency of a propulsion system in terms of mt/ton
>taking the claims of fiction writers as authoritative

This is why normal people laugh at you.

[Anonymous No.8078802]

>>8078722
>>>>>>taking the claims of fiction writers as authoritative

[Anonymous No.8078940]

>>8078711
>Well, for all that people are against nuclear pulse propulsion, in the words of Arthur C. Clarke, the space age won't begin before we start using nuclear propulsion in space.
By the time NPP would go over well with the world, we'll have fusion rockets. NPP will be an obsolete, dead-end idea and for good reason.

Honestly listening to NPP advocates talking about space travel is like listening to WH40k fanboys talking about next-generation military equipment. NPP is the Baneblade of space exploration, it's a bad idea for a multitude of reasons even though it does have some nice attractive features.

Oh, and we can absolutely send hundreds and thousands of tons to Mars right fucking now. Often NPP advocates point to the cost of doing that, but even if that would be more expensive than the trillions of dollars needed to fund an NPP vehicle from concept to launch it wouldn't matter. Aerospace is a big industry, it has jobs scattered throughout the country and also provides jobs in ancillary industries, and even though using chemical launches would be less efficient from an energy standpoint it would be more beneficial from an economical standpoint.

Meanwhile NPP advocates are begging for investors for their unattractive radioactive project.

[Anonymous No.8079029]

>>8078940
>we can absolutely send hundreds and thousands of tons to Mars right fucking now
No we can't
>fusion rockets
meme

[Anonymous No.8079039]

>>8069465
Strawman. The Eagleworks bull has nothing to do with other branches of NASA
>>8069481
They are testing it you dipshit.

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2012_phaseII_fellows_slough.html

[Anonymous No.8079051]

why not just use thorium
you wouldn't have to pulse and it would be a ton safer

[Anonymous No.8079150]

>>8078940
>Oh, and we can absolutely send hundreds and thousands of tons to Mars right fucking now. Often NPP advocates point to the cost of doing that, but even if that would be more expensive than the trillions of dollars needed to fund an NPP vehicle from concept to launch it wouldn't matter. Aerospace is a big industry, it has jobs scattered throughout the country and also provides jobs in ancillary industries, and even though using chemical launches would be less efficient from an energy standpoint it would be more beneficial from an economical standpoint.

So you're literally saying that a good reason to choose less efficient space propulsion methods is that they are more expensive, hence they employ more people?

> Meanwhile NPP advocates are begging for investors for their unattractive radioactive project.

There is much that can be done to bring the environmental radiation release close to zero. The soviets managed to build a 15 kt bomb for their plowshare program which was 98% fusion. With modern technology almost pure fusion pulse units could be built. The public opinion is more against fission than fusion so that would help.

[Anonymous No.8079272]

>>8079150
>So you're literally saying that a good reason to choose less efficient space propulsion methods is that they are more expensive, hence they employ more people?
Welcome to NASA since the 1960's, my question is are you new or just ignorant to how things have been? Fuck, look at the SRBs, they were produced in an entirely different state than the Shuttle's main engines despite the cost savings of producing them in one centralized facility: it created more jobs simply through inefficiency. This isn't even limited to the aerospace industry, so many industrial processes that date back to the 1800's have survived to this day simply because the ruckus caused from replacing them would be too disruptive.

>There is much that can be done to bring the environmental radiation release close to zero. The soviets managed to build a 15 kt bomb for their plowshare program which was 98% fusion. With modern technology almost pure fusion pulse units could be built. The public opinion is more against fission than fusion so that would help.
Meanwhile when you do actually get to a point where all of that would even count in the court of public opinion (which is a big thing for the caliber of investor you're going to be courting) spaceflight will be so cheap to begin with that it's largely a moot point; asteroid or lunar mining would be providing enough He-3 for interplanetary fusion-driven spacecraft. All of this is right around the corner and it's where the entire industry is looking.

[Anonymous No.8079361]

>>8079272
>spaceflight will be so cheap to begin with that it's largely a moot point; asteroid or lunar mining would be providing enough He-3 for interplanetary fusion-driven spacecraft

This will take some time to accomplish...
Especially if you're trying to do it with chemical propulsion.

> Welcome to NASA since the 1960's

I'm not saying that the whole current infrastructure should be dismantled and the workforce given the boot. I'm saying that a lot more could and should be accomplished by the resources given to the space program. This would be done with a more efficient propulsion system, letting us have bigger and better actual payloads to accomplish something with. Instead of the payload fraction of under 1% ( Saturn V had about 0.80% actual payload fraction) we could easily be getting 25% payload fraction to Mars with rudimentary EPPP vehicle.

[Anonymous No.8079367]

>>8079361
Listen up autists, no-one and I mean no-one is EVER going to launch a spacecraft into orbit with nuclear bombs. So we may as well stop discussing this

[Anonymous No.8079395]

>No man will ever walk on the moon
>No man will ever go to space
> No machine denser than air will ever fly
> No man will ever sail west and come back from east

[Anonymous No.8079558]

>>8078288
>Short of total annihilation of the human species
And yet if the total annihilation of the species was going to happen, we would need the NPP ship ready NOW, not in 10 years

You greatly overestimate how much public opinion matters, even in a democracy.

[Anonymous No.8079566]

>>8078940
>it would be more beneficial from an economical standpoint.
So you are a retard that believes in the whole "dig ditches then fill them back up" economic strategy?

[Anonymous No.8080141]

>>8079361
>This will take some time to accomplish...
>Especially if you're trying to do it with chemical propulsion.
Look at what you posted, that picture right there is just some rough estimate mockup. Going from that to a concept vehicle is going to take "some time" and I'm not sure you're fully understanding how long it would take.

>I'm saying that a lot more could and should be accomplished by the resources given to the space program.
Nobody gives a fuck about spaceflight, NASA has had to deal with constant budget cuts because many see it as a dickwaving program that lost it's opponent in the 1980's since commercial spaceflight has taken over it's only practical use. I'm sure this is hard for you to swallow, but it's the truth: commercial spaceflight has caused the death of large NASA projects and it's only going to get worse.

>This would be done with a more efficient propulsion system, letting us have bigger and better actual payloads to accomplish something with.
See above, and then tack on the regulatory issues and massive, massive public backlash against whatever private corporation (because NASA won't have the funding) is trying to do this.

>>8079558
>You greatly overestimate how much public opinion matters, even in a democracy.
lmao that is the only thing that matters in a democracy, there's a multi-billion dollar industry wrapped around shaping public opinion every four years. Jesus woodworking Christ, how can you not know this?

>>8079566
>So you are a retard that believes in the whole "dig ditches then fill them back up" economic strategy?
Not me, the entire United States government.

Pitch a fit all you want, but nothing is going to change no matter how hard you cry about it so you might as well accept it. Or kill yourself, I don't care.

[Anonymous No.8080158]

>>8080141
NASA produced the space shuttle and has done nothing for 50 years, of course they get budget cuts

Commercial space flight will kill NASA because they will demonstrate how outrageously inefficient & ineffective NASA Is

[Anonymous No.8080162]

>>8080158
>NASA produced the space shuttle and has done nothing for 50 years
Because of constant budget cuts, the Shuttle fleet was supposed to be larger than it ended up and the Shuttle itself was way, way overbudget along with everything else. Nobody cared because we had to out-do the Soviets, the moment the USSR fell was the moment NASA's business model came under scrutiny.

There's other shit involved like NASA's administrative culture that I think everyone's well aware of by now, but for the most part NASA has little purpose these days.

>Commercial space flight will kill NASA because they will demonstrate how outrageously inefficient & ineffective NASA Is
That is exactly what I said.

[Anonymous No.8081181]

[Anonymous No.8081193]

[Anonymous No.8081196]

[Anonymous No.8081210]

[Anonymous No.8081219]

[Anonymous No.8081225]

[Anonymous No.8081227]

[Anonymous No.8081233]

[Anonymous No.8082118]

>You launch a rocket full of radioactive material.
>.gif related happens 2 minutes after lift off
>what do?

[Anonymous No.8082129]

>>8082118
>> you launch a rocket full of nuclear bombs
Fixed.

[Anonymous No.8082132]

>>8081233
The Outer Space Treaty forbids placing nuclear bombs in orbit, so we can't do that.

[Anonymous No.8082149]

>>8082118
>What is launch escape system

The pulse units could be separately launched and loaded on orbit only. The launch vehicle could be provided with launch escape system which would pull the pulse unit module away from danger.

[Anonymous No.8082173]

>>8082118
The durable container that the nukes are in seperates and propulsively lands

>>8082132
Treaties are meaningless, you could renegotiate or withdraw at any point

[Anonymous No.8082205]

>>8082173
>Treaties are meaningless, you could renegotiate or withdraw at any point
I don't think you understand what treaties ARE.
Treaties aren't magical contracts that bind those who sign them, they're agreements between a group of parties. Of course you can withdraw at any point, but there would be political consequences for doing so.

[Anonymous No.8082217]

>>8082173
It is more than just treaties anon. Do you think that Russia or China or some other country is just going to sit back and let the US put a bunch of nuclear bombs in orbit?

From their point of view the US could use those bombs to launch a preemptive nuclear strike on russia or use them for political maneuvering. Putting a bunch of nuclear bombs on an orbit capable rocket and launching it is pretty much a declaration of war. By the logic of mutual assured destruction, they actually have to launch nukes if the US puts bombs in orbit.

>>the durable container the nukes are in seperates and propulsively lands

Oh so now your nuke container has enough delta V to get away and land. Now it would be functionally equivalent to a FOBS. Enough delta V to land means enough delta V to get a nuke out of orbit and bomb something on the ground.

Alternatively, 'hey woops the launch fucked up, sorry but now a nuclear weapon is landing in your country' is not gonna fly. The politicians in the US would be fucking pissed if a live nuclear weapon lands in say Libya.

[Anonymous No.8082302]

>>8082217
It's not the cold war anymore

>>8082205
The thing is, the globalists & marxists who control our governments were quite scared of nuclear war, so they are the political force behind these treaties/disarmament.

[Anonymous No.8082310]

What if the rocket explodes on the launchpad? Who's going to clean up all that plutonium in the atmosphere?

[Anonymous No.8082327]

>>8082302
>The thing is, the globalists & marxists who control our governments were quite scared of nuclear war, so they are the political force behind these treaties/disarmament.
Good on those Marxist-Globalists, then.

[Anonymous No.8082340]

>use EPPP/NPP to enable high-speed/high-mass travel to outer solar system
>establish long-duration/permanent scientific mission on and around Sedna including sample return and remotely operated/autonomous research bases
Faggots will disagree.

[Anonymous No.8082353]

>>8082340
Still not going to happen.

[Anonymous No.8082438]

>>8082340
Kinda pointless, when if you have a political environment that enables NPP launches from earth, you could be doing truly massive ships travelling to mars/venus.

[Anonymous No.8082504]

>>8082438

>pointless
Exploring an extremely distant and eccentric object that possibly is a member of the Oort Cloud is pointless?

[Anonymous No.8082513]

>>8082504
Was exploring the moon in the 60's meaningful?
Did it result in any practical gain?

[Anonymous No.8082521]

Outer Space Treaty. Can't ship nukes into space.

[Anonymous No.8082529]

I suppose the military had better options than Casaba-Derringer shaped nuclear charges and decided to discontinue Project Orion,

[Anonymous No.8082530]

>>8082513

Are you fucking serious?

[Anonymous No.8082538]

>>8082513
Quite a bit of good geology data that revealed a lot about the Earth's early history, but it's not really anything that a robot couldn't have done better.

[Anonymous No.8082551]

>>8082530
>>8082538
So pointless research data which resulted in various unfalsifiable theories
All for a cool 200 billion

[Anonymous No.8082557]

>>8082538
>but it's not really anything that a robot couldn't have done better.
On the contrary, robots make pretty terrible geologists. They travel slowly, have poor vision, almost no dexterity, and take a long time to do anything.

>>8082551
>geology data that revealed a lot about the Earth's early history
>pointless research data which resulted in various unfalsifiable theories
Go fuck yourself.

[Anonymous No.8082572]

>>8082551
Missile technology is far from unfalsifiable. It happens to be very good at killing people.

>>8082557
Robots don't need food, water, or other heavy life support equipment, enabling them to do much more work over a longer period, even if said work is at a somewhat slow rate. Not to mention they can carry onboard chemistry labs, which are usually more useful in geology than naked eye observation.

[Anonymous No.8082582]

>>8082572
>Robots don't need food, water, or other heavy life support equipment, enabling them to do much more work over a longer period, even if said work is at a somewhat slow rate.
True.

>Not to mention they can carry onboard chemistry labs, which are usually more useful in geology than naked eye observation.
People can also use chemistry equipment, and because of their increased dexterity the gear can be general use rather than designed for a single specific test. A person or group of people with access to basic equipment can not only do work far faster than a robot, they can do work that's outside of the abilities of all but extremely specialized robots.

[Anonymous No.8082604]

>>8082582
If you want to put a general-use chemistry lab that can fit multiple people into a landing craft, you're going to end up adding an unreasonable amount of weight onto the thing.

[Anonymous No.8082913]

>>8082604
Well with EPPP your payload fraction to lunar surface is 30% not 0.8%. 4000 ton craft would get 1200 tonnes to lunar surface. Enough for quite a bit of scientific equipment in addition to industrial equipment for some serious ISRU. You can manufacture solid fuels and concrete equivalent quite easily from lunar surface material. It would even be possible to use Mars as an EPPP base seeing as it has an atmosphere useful for launching and also phosphate rocks which most probably contain uranium in them.

[Anonymous No.8082927]

>>8082513
Are you a mongoloid? I am foaming at the mouth for more data on the Kuiper Belt but it takes 10 FUCKING YEARS to get there with chemical rockets.

[Anonymous No.8082930]

>>8082217
Russia already has a FOBS

[Anonymous No.8083002]

>>8082913
the point of EPPP is why stop at 4000 tons
You can scale that shit up so easily
Unless you are going to the outer solar system, it's unlikely you would be trying to build new nukes out there

[Anonymous No.8083014]

Whatever happened to the EM memedrive?

[Anonymous No.8083024]

>>8066824
I enjoyed this

[Anonymous No.8083049]

>>8082513

[Anonymous No.8083060]

>>8082582
People are not disposable though, robots are
Robot is win

[Anonymous No.8083095]

>>8083002
Well 4000 tons were the same size as the first nuclear submarines build by General Dynamics ,of which General Atomics was a division of, which means they could have built much of the 4000 ton Orion vehicle using same toolings and methods. Would've kept the price down.

[Anonymous No.8083273]

>>8082604
>>8082572
In places where you can keep humans alive to investigate, robots are far inferior.

We have no examples of actual human space exploration. Apollo was not an exploration program, but a tech demonstration project. The human astronauts weren't prepared to conduct serious science, but only plant flags, and perform token acts of observation and sampling.

The tech demonstration was not followed by an exploration program, which would involve facilities for long-term occupation, vehicles for long-range travel, and equipment for deep drilling and chemical analysis.

The first thing you need to understand about robots is that they're actually remote-controlled vehicles, and guiding them from so far away is a huge human endeavor. It takes teams of engineers and programmers, and huge radio communication facilities.

"Somewhat slow" doesn't begin to cover just how arthritic robotic rovers are. The Apollo moon buggy could travel farther in a day than any Mars rover has travelled in a year, because it had a driver who was physically present and could respond immediately.

Rovers remote controlled from Earth are used pretty much exclusively due to the high cost of launch.

[Anonymous No.8083903]

>Nukes cost hundreds of millions of dollars apiece

Nukes actually aren't that expensive to produce. The costs come from upkeep, maintenance and safekeeping. Once nuclear production infrastructure is in place, there is not really that big difference in cost whether you're building 100, 1000 or 10000 pulse units. The actual raw material costs are somewhat negligible. When project orion was conceived, US nuclear arsenal was growing by over 7000 nuclear bombs a year (1959-60).

[Anonymous No.8084145]

>>8083903
Well too bad the US is demolishing a lot of it's infrastructure for producing nuclear bombs. Entire Hanford site is getting demolished(except for some of the historic reactors).

[Anonymous No.8084305]

>>8067415

Why would anyone give more jobs to the company objectively literally responsible for putting the US ahead of the astronaut killing list

i mean, the space shuttle as an execution method is far too cruel and far too complex, but that's a more reasonable explanation to its existence than saying "they were trying to put people into space"

[Anonymous No.8085131]

Someone should seriously start selling elons musk brand colognes and shit.

> Elons Musk

[Anonymous No.8085435]

[Anonymous No.8085440]

[Anonymous No.8085477]

is there any off planet source of uranium?

how about we build the orion and the nukes for it in high orbit, lets say 500 km
only the nukes would be lacking the uranium

if you have an off planet source of uranium you can mine it , take it to the nukes place and voila, you have a way to build an orion without polluting the earth

[Anonymous No.8085478]

>>8082217
>From their point of view the US could use those bombs to launch a preemptive nuclear strike on russia or use them for political maneuvering. Putting a bunch of nuclear bombs on an orbit capable rocket and launching it is pretty much a declaration of war. By the logic of mutual assured destruction, they actually have to launch nukes if the US puts bombs in orbit.

actually, this has been studied, theres no advantage, from having shit delivered from orbit as to icbm or submarine launch

the icbm or submarine launch gets to its target much more earlier

[Anonymous No.8085491]

>>8080141
>Not me, the entire United States government.
>Pitch a fit all you want, but nothing is going to change no matter how hard you cry about it so you might as well accept it. Or kill yourself, I don't care.
this anon is right, people don't know shit about economics and think that all works produce something

most work (yeah , probably yours too) is just designed to make the economy run, it doesnt matter if its actually useful.

anyone who studies economy knows the danger of a paralyzed economies are so great that having a lot of innefficient jobs is peanuts by comparison

Space programs are first of all a huge job program , second of all a way to atract smart people to your country and third and yes for that least a scientific endeavour


the same happens with the LHC, do you think a person as idiotic and inferior as an european politican could care or even know about subatomics sciences?

[Anonymous No.8085508]

>>8085478
A shitty delivery system is still a delivery system.

TempleOS because fuck this thread

[Anonymous No.8085514]

>>8085508
yes of course the chinese and russians would get mad, but not because of chacnes to hit ground, that is still covered

they would get mad because

1) if they do it i wanna do it to

2) chacne to hit satellites

[Anonymous No.8085536]

>>8085514
And why wouldn't they get mad about being able to drop nukes on em'? One could also detonate the nukes in orbit to carry out a nuclear EMP attack.

[Anonymous No.8085553]

>>8085536
it changes nothing of the strategic situation, nuclear subs are king to everything, even something in orbit

[Anonymous No.8085651]

>>8085553
>nuclear subs are king to everything
Nuclear subs were unbeatable when they were new, but now they're vulnerable to several plausible modes of attack, especially when they're being operated by a technologically and economically inferior opponent who isn't keeping up and producing countermeasures to advances.

They dive deep, but not terribly deep. Between passive sonar buoy arrays and computer analysis of surface disturbances observed by satellite, it could be possible to quietly track the position of every nuclear sub for simultaneous destruction.

Novel soft-bodied underwater drones, or fish modified to be steerable by electrical probes in the brain or sense organs, could be indistinguishable from natural ocean life, and used as mobile tracking stations or even payload delivery systems.

An orbital array of large LEO "spy" satellites (which can be twenty tons or more, and which nations launch without letting anyone examine their contents) could provide full world coverage for a secret boost-phase anti-ballistic-missile system.

[Anonymous No.8085662]

>>8085651
The ocean is very big anon. Nobody has had much success at tracking nuclear subs. Wasn't there an incident where a Chinese sub sailed right under a US carrier?

[Anonymous No.8085702]

>>8085553
A magazine of nuclear bombs in orbit above your country does not change the strategic situation? It doesn't matter if it is better, only that it is up there.

Besides the Outer Space Treaty forbids it. NASA is quite adherent to it, do you think they carefully sterilize all their martian spacecraft just for fun?

[Anonymous No.8085710]

>>8085702
>do you think they carefully sterilize all their martian spacecraft just for fun?
thats absolute bullshit, theres no way to 100% sterilize something

they find bacterias on spacecraft all the time

every body visited by probes is contaminated, we are also contaminated by anything that could be on the moon, and if even a millionth of a billionth of a quarter of a picogram of an atom of mars gets here we are also backcontaminated

nasa is a job program, get over it . The planetary defendor post is a fictious job that usually goes to the girlfriend of someone in position at nasa (look it up its for real)

[Anonymous No.8085721]

>>8085662
>Nobody has had much success at tracking nuclear subs.
Nobody has *admitted* much success at tracking nuclear subs.

An ace up your sleeve is hardly the sort of thing you'd broadcast to the world.

[Anonymous No.8085741]

>>8085721
>Nobody has *admitted* much success at tracking nuclear subs.
oh so you have access to le ebin conspiracy that no one else knows abot
please

[Anonymous No.8085765]

>>8085721
They really can't there's no way to do it. We still can't even find MH370 despite knowing the general location of the crash. An enemy nuclear sub could be anywhere on the planet.

[Anonymous No.8085785]

>>8085765
subs can dive like 100 meters top, the hardest ones

plane crashes are at least 8000 km deep, check your facts

[Anonymous No.8085949]

>>8085785
How many cubic meters of water is all the oceans 100 m deep?

[Anonymous No.8085972]

>>8085710
The point is NASA still abides by it. There is no way to get rid of 100% of all bacteria, but we can severly reduce the chances of contamination by doing so.

[Anonymous No.8086228]

tldr

[Anonymous No.8086481]

>>8085491
>second of all a way to atract smart people to your country
Only the west engages in this suicidal immigration agenda
It's not a benefit to the country
Then you have foreigners running everything, and we end up needing a massive security apparatus because each and every one of these foreigners is a threat.

[Anonymous No.8086486]

A Medusa drive is the way to go if we're doing all in space propulsion

[Anonymous No.8086509]

>>8086481
>It's not a benefit to the country
having top tier scientist from all over the world in your country benefits a lot

we are speaking about people much much much much more intelligent than you

if you believe that you are worth more than a person from a top university from anywhere in the world you are very delutional and have no idea what the world is like

beside you are wrong

everyone does it

if you have good college education you can go live anywhere and they will welcome you with open arms

[Anonymous No.8086545]

>>8086509
They don't give you citizenship anywhere outside of the west

[Anonymous No.8086577]

>>8086545
not with YOUR shitty college education
i mean real god tier ones

[Anonymous No.8086904]

>>8086486
>A Medusa drive is the way to go if we're doing all in space propulsion

That would require some spicy materials to be able to withstand the rather high impulses.

[Anonymous No.8086914]

>>8086904
>spicy materials
the taste of the materials had ntohign tot do with it. even if someone could stick their tongue to it while in a vacuum, why would they want to?

they would need to be STRONG materials

[Anonymous No.8086919]

I hate this thread so I'm posting irrelevant images to bring this thread closer to oblivion

[Anonymous No.8087287]

>>8086904
Doesn't take too much to withstand a blast maybe a mile away

[Anonymous No.8088161]

>>8086545
Yes they do you retard, historically bullshit nowhere countries have actually paid for a skilled/educated workforce. Why else would any university-educated white man ever willingly move to Africa?

>>8086919
>I hate this thread so I'm posting irrelevant images to bring this thread closer to oblivion
Good idea, pic related