I actually consideredt that possibility at one time. An inflatable torus, continious, with docking hubs at each spoke point, a curved rigid structure would be rigged to the outside of the torus, with cable rigging back to the central hub supporting them, much like on a suspension bridge. One issue that had occured to me; A rotating torus would tend to wobble as mass is moved from one side of the torus to another. I had considered the use of water tanks under the walking surface using computer controlled pumps to transfer water between tanks on the opposite side of the torus from the offcenter mass, to compensate for and counteract the wobble. Jason
One question - if the Sea Dragon model reduces cost by an order of magnitude, and it seems to scale down well, then why isn't it being seriously pursued by *somebody*?I can see an issue with going after the full-scale Sea Dragon - no one needs that much launch capacity, or even 10% of it. But why not a smaller scale Sea Snake or Sea Crocodile or Sea <insert your creature here>?Seriously, what's the fly in the ointment? The showstopping problem? Is it technological, political, or something else?
Quote from: JasonAW3 on 07/23/2010 06:54 pm I actually consideredt that possibility at one time. An inflatable torus, continious, with docking hubs at each spoke point, a curved rigid structure would be rigged to the outside of the torus, with cable rigging back to the central hub supporting them, much like on a suspension bridge. One issue that had occured to me; A rotating torus would tend to wobble as mass is moved from one side of the torus to another. I had considered the use of water tanks under the walking surface using computer controlled pumps to transfer water between tanks on the opposite side of the torus from the offcenter mass, to compensate for and counteract the wobble. Jason Bit like this you mean?There was a paper in the December 1991 issue of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society by Michael A Minovitch of Phaser Telepropulsion Inc proposing the building of rotating 2001 type stations 100 metres diameter for at least 150 crew by using automatic wrapping machines rotating round inflated Kevlar torus’ to wind thin layers of aluminium until the required thickness had been made. The rotating toroidal living section would have a major and minor radii of 100m and 2m while the two central column cylinders with labs etc and constructed in the same way would each be 100m long x 10m diameter. The two column cylinders would connect into a pre-fabricated central hub into which three spokes 100m long x 4m diameter also constructed in the same way would be fitted to join the hub to the toroidal living section. The station also served as the basis for a 'cycling' ship and would take about 10 HLLV (assuming 100 tons/launch) or 14 Shuttle-C launches and 1 STS flight with minimal EVA. Costs were about $400 billion for an Earth orbit station, a Mars orbit station and a cycling ship
Could you get me a link to this? I am kind of curious about this.
The estimated cost in 1983 dollars was $20 per pound which, in 2010 dollars, translates to roughly $440 per kilogram (assuming a 400% inflation between 1983 and 2010)
Quote from: Obsidian on 11/14/2010 08:59 pmThe estimated cost in 1983 dollars was $20 per pound which, in 2010 dollars, translates to roughly $440 per kilogram (assuming a 400% inflation between 1983 and 2010)Think you might want to rerun those numbers. 400% inflation would turn $20 into $100, not $440.
So you put 30 F-1 class engines on it and launch from the Dead Sea. Problem solved.
Is one of the reasons for building a new Texas pad a range rule against boosting your stages back in the direction of a Florida pad?