moonandback.com: QuickLaunch Interview

With John Hunter and Eric Robinson

Discusses history of the company, why aquatic basing, how Eric became the "spark plug" of the company, recent developments, moon and Mars concepts and advantages, 400 hundred meter entry level system does 100 payloads, John's career story, real world stuff, young kids love this project, Eric's career, his space projects (on Mars).

Bottom line: This is an enabling technology for space exploration and development.

In two parts

1. Part One 
2. Part Two

Life on other planets far, far away

I may be interested in space, but I am also quite practical.  Some may say too practical.  This bit of news about a planet in a habitable zone on a planet hundreds of light years away just doesn't do anything (practical ) for me.  That's because there is practical no useful value in this information.  Even if you find something, what do you do with it?

The distances are so great that even if you can go the speed of light, it would take hundreds of years to go there and come back.  Nobody could have any emotional connection to such a journey.  You can't even communicate with them because it would take a message that long to get back and forth.  What good is this knowledge?

All of this curiousity about Mars also isn't very useful either.  Even though we could possibly get there and back with today's technology, what useful value can be derived from it? 

This may all seem to contradict my interest in space, but if anyone thinks so, they aren't paying attention.  There are practical useful things that can be done in space, but looking for life on other planets either in this star system or in another-  is not one of them.

I suggest starting with the moon.  If can't do anything on the moon that is useful and practical, you probably can't do it anywhere.  The cost of going to far away destinations will be too prohibitive, the danger will too great.  It just won't happen in anybody's lifetime.  But we were on the moon over 40 years ago.  We haven't done anything with that knowledge either.  But getting there was a start in that direction if anyone would just bother to see it that way.

In this age of budget austerity, it would make a lot of sense to reorder our priorities.  There is too much waste, and programs like searching for earth-like planets is an example of that.  We need to concentrate our efforts on goals that are reachable, not on goals that can never be reached in our lifetimes.  We should concentrate on useful information, not information that we can't possibly do anything with.

NASA prepares for moon tourism

USA Today

some day space tourists may be on the way to the Apollo mission lunar landing sites

And you know the one thing that tourists love to bring home.

Souvenirs.

So, the space agency released guidelines this summer on protecting lunar landing sites and artifacts.

Comment:  Good luck on that.  Unless you set up some kind of enforcement mechanism, how are you going to protect the sites?

 

Skylon spaceplane

NextBigFuture post on Feb 7 , 2011


This looks like a promising SSTO concept. It really looks like a flyable rocket. It combines rocketry with jet engines in an all-in-one package, which confers reusability and fast turnaround potential via mass reduction. Mass is your number one enemy in getting to orbit. The more mass, the more propellant needed.  Since propellant itself has mass, this increases the mass penalty even further, and so on.

Consider the now retired Space Shuttle: it's liftoff mass was 4.47 million pounds, with a payload capacity of 53000 pounds.  The the liftoff mass to payload mass ratio was 83 to 1.  On the other hand, the proposed Skylon does much better - 23 to 1.

The Skylon people hope it can be reused up to 200 times.  Presumably, since it will take off and land like a plane, it should have a fast turnaround time.  Thus, it promises to fulfill what Elon Musk of SpaceX once described as the Holy Grail of rocketry.

I will study the pdf file about it and report more on this as I learn more.

Blue Origin's pedigree, second stage recovery IV

The title may appear to be an oxymoron, but stick with me.

I'll start with the present and work backwards in time.  Blue Origin is developing the New Shepard, which is a suborbital craft.  It appears to be designed for space tourism, not for space exploration.  Perhaps at some point, there may be more ambitious projects for this concept, but this is all I know for now.

The New Shepard is based upon the DC-X design.  It was developed in conjunction with Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative , and subsequently transferred to NASA in the Clinton era.  This craft was intended to start with suborbital flights and then orbital flights as experience and knowledge was gained.  It was intended to be a SSTO project, which had its roots in some research done in the Apollo Era, looking forward to post Apollo, now known as the Shuttle Era.


The DC-X really didn't get that far in achieving its goals.  But let's look at its origins, as we continue going back into time.   A European variant of an integral Single Stage to Orbit design, called BETA, was itself a consequence of a design that didn't get off the drawing boards.

Excerpt:
The BETA concept is characterized by the following features:

1. A short conical body (small length/diameter ratio, low c.g.) with heat-shield for re-entry
2. Use of the heat-shield as a plug-nozzle for performance increase
3.  A propulsion system consisting of 12 or more single high-pressure LH2/ LOX engines arranged around the central plug-nozzle (heat-shield)
4.  6 retractable legs for the final vertical landing phase.  

Space Future.com

The author (Dietrich E Koelle?) came to the following conclusions:

1. The development of a single stage ballistic space shuttle is feasible with the present technology.
2. The transportation cost Earth-to-Orbit can be reduced to some 200 $/kg or less.  
3. The single-stage concept allows new possibilities for launch ranges since no
   danger by expendable parts or stages has to be expected. This means that launches from and landings within Europe would be feasible.
   
4.  The BETA Concept seems to be a solution for specific European requirements since there is no manned space flight programme, there does not exist the 500 km/550 space station target orbit, and there is no requirement for a large cross range capability.
   

and,

"From the very principle the BETA Concept seems to be the final solution for the space transportation problem since it combines operational simplicity with lowest cost both for development and specific payload cost."

But it wasn't implemented.

But where did the BETA come from?  It was an updated version of Douglas SASSTO, from the Apollo Era.

The SASSTO was intended to put a small capsule into orbit by using ideas from S-IVB upper stage of the Apollo Era Saturn rocket.

Alright, now note this:

Bono noticed that the S-IVB stage, then just starting to be used operationally, was very close to being able to reach orbit on its own if launched from the ground. Intrigued, Bono started looking at what missions a small S-IVB-based SSTO could accomplish, realizing that it would be able to launch a manned Gemini capsule if it was equipped with some upgrades, notably an aerospike engine that would improve the specific impulse and provide altitude compensation.[2] He called the design "SASSTO", short for "Saturn Application Single-Stage To Orbit". [comment: emphasis mine, quite impressive that this rocket existed almost half a century ago.]

It appears that a renewed effort at an SSTO could achieve the results desired.  The inflatable heat shield could be used in place of aerospike engines, if these are too difficult to perfect.  They may even be used as a safety margin, since the mass of such a device should be small.

A second stage recovery wouldn't be necessary if there's no second stage.  You will need a powerful enough rocket to get to space, plus solve the knotty problem of finding a way to get back without destroying the rocket on reentry.  That's a technical problem that may be solvable.

Blue Origin may not be interested in tackling this problem, but somebody may be able to.  Anybody listening?

Thorium near Lunar North Pole

"The red spots are small volcanoes made up of felsic rocks. We know from data returned by the DIVINER thermal imaging spectrometer on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that these landforms are rich in silica. From the Lunar Prospector gamma-ray data, we have determined that they are also enriched in the element thorium, a key indicator of chemically evolved rock types."

It wouldn't take much thorium to make a lot of energy.  Plus, it is near the North Pole, which makes it near a source of water.

Study of the Shuttle RTLS abort mode

Why? Well, it occurred to me that if the Shuttle was designed to do this, perhaps it isn't an impossible maneuver.

It was designed to do a RTLS abort after the SRB's discontinued firing, which is a little over 2 minutes into the flight.  Up to T plus 4 minutes, the maneuver was still possible.

The idea is to design a RTLS for the first stage of a reusable rocket.  The second stage continues with the payload to orbit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Space_Shuttle_vs_Soyuz_TM_-_to_scale_drawing.png

 The trick in this proposed system is to have almost 95% of the entire mass at launch supported by this airframe.  On second thought: why?  You only need the structural support for the stack at launch.  On the return to launch site, your mass is going to be much less, meaning the wings only need to support less than 5% of the launch mass.  Therefore, the strongest part of the structure needs to resist gravity, which means straight down the middle.

On return, the wings can support the much lighter craft.  My original thought was to have the tanks in the wings, but that means more weight supported by the wings, which is a non starter.  That appears to be the stumbling block.  Perhaps the wings can support the engines?  The fuel would stay in the "fuselage".

Science: Earth's Dirty Secret: Our Magnetic Field Traps Antimatter

by Jason Mick (Blog) 

  The respectively bountiful supply in orbit could be, in theory, harvested at a sustainable rate. The harvested particles could be used for a variety of purposes.  

Here's another post about the antimatter story, which I wrote about earlier today.   A point I neglected to mention was that it isn't necessarily about mining antimatter.  It seems somewhat akin to "farming" it.  You see, it isn't making it, as in a particle accelerator.  Rather, it is using cosmic rays to make them and then trap them before they can escape.

NASA Working on LENR Replication and Theory Confirmation (Piantelli-Focardi)

This is not to be confused with the Rossi Focardi

According to Bushnell, NASA is not working on a replication of Andrea Rossi’s Energy Catalyzer device.

“We do not have enough details, by far, to even start to think of a replication of Rossi,” Bushnell wrote.

This looks like "cold fusion" except that nobody likes that phrase.  You might say that it was "nuked" two decades ago.

Fusion and Fusion propulsion

This was written up nearly a year ago at NextBigFuture.  The link provided doesn't work anymore.  It combines MHD Airbreathing with IEC Fusion (polywell).  Here's a link to the discussion of fusion propulsion.

Well, back one moment to this idea of muon catalyzed fusion. It doesn't appear to be a likely candidate for rocket propulsion though. It seems that you need a mechanism for making the muons and that doesn't seem likely in space.

I had a speculation yesterday about muons being used is Rossi -Focardi experiments. Based upon factors like this, it doesn't appear likely.

Elon Musk on why space colonization is important

From the post about the 3 inventions that will change the world.

Posting on space is light

Because of what's happening in Wisconsin.  This is a very, very big deal.  I can't ignore it or downplay it.  If this has the wrong outcome, a lot won't matter any more.  That includes space.  Don't think so?  It may not be, but on the other hand, NASA has done virtually nothing in manned space program since Apollo.  Can we really depend upon NASA for a serious space program anymore?

I am reading ( or was) John M. Logsdon's book which was discussed on the Space Show recently.  I haven't got much to say about it yet.

A short blurb on the following post

from Nextbigfuture.  I have it listed at my stumbleupon page.  Well, I haven't been on my stumbleupon page in a couple of years.  All the links are still there.  And I saw this one from 2008.  It was about in vitro meat.  Reminds me of the post I wrote recently about aquaponics and aeroponics .  Here you are, you can also produce meat without the animal.  If you're interested, there's a paperback that covers the topic:  Meat Substitutes: Tofu, in Vitro Meat, Soy Protein, Quorn, Wheat Gluten, Tempeh, Textured Vegetable Protein, Bk Veggie, Laetiporus

Thoughts on future space policy continued

This is another speculative post about the future of the US Manned Space Program.

With this post, I will cover what the policy is now and speculate on what its
future course may go.  This post won't be too long, because it the latter is
about the future which is too hard to see.  But it is the most interesting, no
doubt.

To illustrate current policy in the most succinct manner, let's look at the following
chart from Obama's commission that reviewed US manned space program.  There are
eight options listed that would give the most realistic scenarios going forward-
these are based upon the interplay between budgetary constraints and national goals.
I made a screen shot and edited it into this form for display here.  Then, I added
my own comments in column to the far right.  Let's go over each of these rows of
options.  The first column is an option, the second column is budgetary assumptions,
and the remaining columns are goals and means to goals.  I added the column in which
I think the likely outcome of the option may be.  This includes my opinion, based
upon the projected likelihood of a Republican victory in the midterm elections
being held as of this writing.

The first option is already dead as far as I can tell.  It won't be picked up again
by the new Congress.

The second option might have a chance if the ISS is cancelled early.  This would
free up some money.

These first two options are consistent with Bush's Constellation program of record
as of the time the report was issued.  Obama has already decided to not to do it
that way.  Congress will have to change directions in order to go back to this.
Not likely.

The next three options are also not favored by Obama (as far as I know).  These
are not likely either.  The Republicans will want to cut spending, not increase it.
The best the Republicans can do is to look for areas to cut.  Looking at option 3,
the Ares program could become a target for replacement.  This is already happening
anyway and could accelerate.  Ares V is probably in trouble here and will at least
be replaced by Ares light configuration.  This cuts out the Ares I configuration.
This means instead of two rocket systems- Ares I to launch crew; Ares V to launch
cargo- there will be one Ares light system to launch cargo and crew separately.
Option 4 will extend the ISS to 2020 which could become a target of budget cuts.
Option 5 will scrap the Ares program altogether and use a shuttle derived crew
and cargo option, while keeping the ISS to 2020.  I consider this least likely
because Obama's opposition.  The Republicans might consider this though, because
using the Shuttle derived system can get you back to the Moon and would not require
a substantially new launch system to be developed- such as Ares.  The cheapest
option would be Option 5 modified to include a de orbit of ISS.  Won't happen.

The next options are more likely to favored by Obama (again as far as I know).  As
a matter of fact, Option 5A would keep the Ares light configuration and the ISS.
But the Republicans may want to de orbit the ISS.  This is likely not to happen
because of Obama's opposition.  The next option is most intriguing, but would
require a new launch system based upon the Delta system being currently used for
unmanned missions.  It would create the most upheaval at NASA, but would result
in lower costs over the long run.  The last option is to use the Shuttle system,
but with in flight refueling.  This one is also a possibilty, but is the least
capable system considered.  It would also have higher life cycle costs.  The
cheapest possible system would be this one combined with the early end of ISS (not
listed here as an option).  But it would be the least appealing scientifically and
technically.  It's virtue would be in the least disruptive configuration to NASA
and low up front costs.  Life cycle costs would be higher in the long run.

If the Republicans are bold, they will take the Delta option with refueling.  If
they are timid, they will follow Obama's current pathway with Ares light flexible
path.  They might try to cut ISS, but won't likely be successful.  The most likely
path will be these two in my opinion.  The last option is possible if the political
scenario favors it.  At this point, I wouldn't hazard a guess.

The last option, a shuttle derived system, is the one I would favor.  I would forego

a trip to Mars and a manned trips to asteroids in favor of developing the most capable

moon base possible.  From the moon base, it could be possible to build a new launch

system directly from the moon, which would ( I hope ) solve the launch problem.  In

such as system, the moon would serve as a way station to the rest of the solar

system.

Advanced Propulsion Design for Space Exploration

Here's another one I got via Instapundit and Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence blogs.  I read the abstract and thought it interesting, so I downloaded the pdf file and spent the last few hours perusing this thing.

Not that I know anything about the subject matter, just as a matter of curiosity.  A few items of interest, to wit:
1) it is not necessarily feasible for putting humans in orbit because of high g forces  2) it may have the potential to transport very large objects into space at low cost per kilogram 3) the technology required is not unreasonably demanding.   Now I am taking the guy (Parkin) at his word that thing will do what he says it can do.  If he is right, then this concept has a chance.

How does it work?  It uses microwave energy to heat hydrogen and uses that as thrust to lift the rocket into space.  For a more detailed explanation, see the abstract and pdf file if you are interested.

Update:  It uses hydrogen as a propellant, but this would seem to be a problem when the hot
hydrogen meets the oxygen in the atmosphere.  Maybe it would go boom instead of going up.
This idea was a doctoral thesis, so I don't how that turned out.

Update 2:  I skimmed over the document again and found no discussion of this hydrogen issue.  Perhaps it isn't an issue and I am mistaken.  Or it could be an oversight by Parkin.  At any rate, I'll still say this looks like an interesting proposition.