Space Travel

[Big Brother]

This is my first post and I figured I start a thread over the reason I found this site.......

Space Travel....during the Cold War era the US made leaps and bounds into the wide Universe of space travel. This seemingly exponential growth ended with the death of the USSR among other reasons...... we have made improvements in our space etc. technology over the past 30+ years but not even close to the advancements made during the early years of the space program.

Virgin Galatic and other such companies seem to give us some hope with a renewed interest in Space travel/exploration. The privatization of Space travel could be the best thing for the process of renewing our ability to explore and progress. One of the best motivators for scientific developments is improving the bottom line of some corporation.

I'm just putting it out there what new improvements have anyone heard of? Any wacky ideas that could possibly work? (I've read some on the Orion Project which seemed promising even though it ended 40 years ago....) Just any thoughts put them down.........

 

[Madeline]

This is my first post and I figured I start a thread over the reason I found this site.......

Space Travel....during the Cold War era the US made leaps and bounds into the wide Universe of space travel. This seemingly exponential growth ended with the death of the USSR among other reasons...... we have made improvements in our space etc. technology over the past 30+ years but not even close to the advancements made during the early years of the space program.

Virgin Galatic and other such companies seem to give us some hope with a renewed interest in Space travel/exploration. The privatization of Space travel could be the best thing for the process of renewing our ability to explore and progress. One of the best motivators for scientific developments is improving the bottom line of some corporation.

I'm just putting it out there what new improvements have anyone heard of? Any wacky ideas that could possibly work? (I've read some on the Orion Project which seemed promising even though it ended 40 years ago....) Just any thoughts put them down.........

I'd like to go down as well as up, Big Brother. Deep ocean travel would be amazing...imagine the things we'd see, eh?

BTW, welcome to USMB...have you dun up an Intro post? I dun think I saw one.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

I am not sure, but I think visiting Mars takes 6 years one way.

And getting a payload large enough to feed a crew for six years is way to expensive.

Plus the accumulated waste products. What to do about them.


Right now the engineering isn't up to it, the amont of money is prohibitive, and the population isn't interested.

And since the Reagan administration it is no longer a race. It is a cooperative venture. Which is cheaper and more productive, but boring.

 

[konradv]

This is my first post and I figured I start a thread over the reason I found this site.......

Space Travel....during the Cold War era the US made leaps and bounds into the wide Universe of space travel. This seemingly exponential growth ended with the death of the USSR among other reasons...... we have made improvements in our space etc. technology over the past 30+ years but not even close to the advancements made during the early years of the space program.

Virgin Galatic and other such companies seem to give us some hope with a renewed interest in Space travel/exploration. The privatization of Space travel could be the best thing for the process of renewing our ability to explore and progress. One of the best motivators for scientific developments is improving the bottom line of some corporation.

I'm just putting it out there what new improvements have anyone heard of? Any wacky ideas that could possibly work? (I've read some on the Orion Project which seemed promising even though it ended 40 years ago....) Just any thoughts put them down.........

I think we should back off space and make it a national goal to develop fusion power. Once that's working space travel would be much more economical.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

This is my first post and I figured I start a thread over the reason I found this site.......

Space Travel....during the Cold War era the US made leaps and bounds into the wide Universe of space travel. This seemingly exponential growth ended with the death of the USSR among other reasons...... we have made improvements in our space etc. technology over the past 30+ years but not even close to the advancements made during the early years of the space program.

Virgin Galatic and other such companies seem to give us some hope with a renewed interest in Space travel/exploration. The privatization of Space travel could be the best thing for the process of renewing our ability to explore and progress. One of the best motivators for scientific developments is improving the bottom line of some corporation.

I'm just putting it out there what new improvements have anyone heard of? Any wacky ideas that could possibly work? (I've read some on the Orion Project which seemed promising even though it ended 40 years ago....) Just any thoughts put them down.........

I think we should back off space and make it a national goal to develop fusion power. Once that's working space travel would be much more economical.

Bullshit.

Space travel will always require reaction mass, and that is not going to go away simply because fusion power exists.

 

[rdean]

Our planet is surrounded by junk.

 

[R.C. Christian]

Space Elevator, enough said.

 

[konradv]

This is my first post and I figured I start a thread over the reason I found this site.......

Space Travel....during the Cold War era the US made leaps and bounds into the wide Universe of space travel. This seemingly exponential growth ended with the death of the USSR among other reasons...... we have made improvements in our space etc. technology over the past 30+ years but not even close to the advancements made during the early years of the space program.

Virgin Galatic and other such companies seem to give us some hope with a renewed interest in Space travel/exploration. The privatization of Space travel could be the best thing for the process of renewing our ability to explore and progress. One of the best motivators for scientific developments is improving the bottom line of some corporation.

I'm just putting it out there what new improvements have anyone heard of? Any wacky ideas that could possibly work? (I've read some on the Orion Project which seemed promising even though it ended 40 years ago....) Just any thoughts put them down.........

I think we should back off space and make it a national goal to develop fusion power. Once that's working space travel would be much more economical.

Bullshit.

Space travel will always require reaction mass, and that is not going to go away simply because fusion power exists.

You're not thinking this through. Given enough energy, less fuel would have to be onboard, since you'd be able to synthesize fuel along the way from available resources in space, like the moon, asteroids, comets, the planet you're visiting and possibly even the sparse matter collected from space itself.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I think we should back off space and make it a national goal to develop fusion power. Once that's working space travel would be much more economical.

Bullshit.

Space travel will always require reaction mass, and that is not going to go away simply because fusion power exists.

You're not thinking this through. Given enough energy, less fuel would have to be onboard, since you'd be able to synthesize fuel along the way from available resources in space, like the moon, asteroids, comets, the planet you're visiting and possibly even the sparse matter collected from space itself.

What?

Newton's Three Laws of Motion

It does not matter what your power source is, you still have to push with something. Synthesize all you want, you still have to throw something out the end to speed up, and then throw more out to slow down. Fusion power is not going to allow you to create mass from nothing.

 

[Old Rocks]

I am not sure, but I think visiting Mars takes 6 years one way.

And getting a payload large enough to feed a crew for six years is way to expensive.

Plus the accumulated waste products. What to do about them.


Right now the engineering isn't up to it, the amont of money is prohibitive, and the population isn't interested.

And since the Reagan administration it is no longer a race. It is a cooperative venture. Which is cheaper and more productive, but boring.

No, less than two years.

Manned mission to Mars - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mars Direct (early 1990s)
Main article: Mars Direct
Because of the distance between Mars and Earth, the Mars mission would be much more risky and more expensive than past manned flights to the Moon. Supplies and fuel would have to be prepared for a 2-3 year round trip and the spacecraft would have to be designed with at least partial shielding from intense solar radiation. A 1990 paper by Robert Zubrin and David A. Baker, then of Martin Marietta, proposed reducing the mission mass (and hence the cost) with a mission design using In Situ Resource Utilization to manufacture propellant from the Martian Atmosphere.[20][21] This proposal drew on a number of concepts developed by the former "Case for Mars" conference series. Over the next decade, this proposal was developed by Zubrin into a mission concept, Mars Direct, which he developed in a book, The Case for Mars (1996). The mission is advocated by the Mars Society as a practical and affordable plan for a manned Mars mission.

 

[Old Rocks]

Bullshit.

Space travel will always require reaction mass, and that is not going to go away simply because fusion power exists.

You're not thinking this through. Given enough energy, less fuel would have to be onboard, since you'd be able to synthesize fuel along the way from available resources in space, like the moon, asteroids, comets, the planet you're visiting and possibly even the sparse matter collected from space itself.

What?

Newton's Three Laws of Motion

It does not matter what your power source is, you still have to push with something. Synthesize all you want, you still have to throw something out the end to speed up, and then throw more out to slow down. Fusion power is not going to allow you to create mass from nothing.

That is correct. You need reaction mass. However, you can harvest the energy to use that mass to the highest efficiency by using photovoltaic 'wings' to harvest energy from the sunlight to accelerate atoms in a ion drive. Then you have to use less than a tenth of the mass that you would have to have for a chemical rocket.

 

[Big Black Dog]

I'm probably going to get yelled at but here goes... I'll agree that there have been some pretty spiffy stuff invented that would not have gotten invented if it wasn't for the space program but dollar for dollar I think it has been the worst investment into anything the US has ever done. We can't even control and manage our own planet and we want to go to other planets? Let's get our own backyard in order and then maybe think about going other places. I can't think of anything that is a bigger waste of money than the space program except for all the crap that Obama is wanting to do.