Author Topic: Technologies that will shape the future of aviation and space exploration  (Read 61672 times)

Offline Robotbeat

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Yeah, I'm not yet sold on the high performance organic superconductors. But the hydrogen based ones look very real and reproducible. Only a matter of time until someone demonstrates a room temperature (or 0 degrees C... Close enough in this field) superconductor. But it'll be at extremely high pressures (at least initially), like hundreds of GPa.
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Offline john smith 19

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Not according to the (badly worded) article you linked to above.. instead, they've discovered a promising line of research.  Most research folks need to do that to keep their funding.
Yes, it's suggestive something is going on but nowhere near an actual product.

A perennial problem with superconductors is the materials tend to be brittle and this one looks to be no different. The REBCO tape materials that MIT is planning to use for their compact fusion reactor seem to avoid this problem, although they are looking to operate around LH2 temperatures (27K?)

TBH I'm not sure how much benefit space exploration will see from fusion.  :(

The standard tokomak design has even more severe scale down problems than LH2 turbopumps. I'd say you'd need SLS to put a fusion reactor into space assuming the MIT team can get funding to demonstrate the ARC reactor plan.

That said if they could get it to work ARC can deliver a large amount of low radiation energy from a very abundant source indefinitely provided you can live with the (by space standards) very large minimum mass requirement and radiator size.
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline Elmar Moelzer

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Not according to the (badly worded) article you linked to above.. instead, they've discovered a promising line of research.  Most research folks need to do that to keep their funding.
Yes, it's suggestive something is going on but nowhere near an actual product.

A perennial problem with superconductors is the materials tend to be brittle and this one looks to be no different. The REBCO tape materials that MIT is planning to use for their compact fusion reactor seem to avoid this problem, although they are looking to operate around LH2 temperatures (27K?)

TBH I'm not sure how much benefit space exploration will see from fusion.  :(

The standard tokomak design has even more severe scale down problems than LH2 turbopumps. I'd say you'd need SLS to put a fusion reactor into space assuming the MIT team can get funding to demonstrate the ARC reactor plan.

That said if they could get it to work ARC can deliver a large amount of low radiation energy from a very abundant source indefinitely provided you can live with the (by space standards) very large minimum mass requirement and radiator size.
There are other promising fusion reactor designs that would be even more compact than ARC. Spherical tokamaks (instead of the regular tokamak shape) could further reduce the size of a reactor based on the overall ARC design. This is what the UK company Tokamak Energy is planning to do. They are collaborating with Dennis Whyte from the MIT/ARC on that.
And then there are several other designs that are currently getting attention, in example designs based on field reversed configuration or a Z-Pinch that are potentially quite compact making them applicable for aerospace use.

Offline john smith 19

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There are other promising fusion reactor designs that would be even more compact than ARC.
True. However ARC is attractive because it leverages the architecture most fusion physicists have worked on for the last half century but applies some clever materials and some reverse thinking (essentially making the inside the vacuum chamber inside everything else and making it replaceable).

The attraction is there is no new  or unexplored physics involved in the design. That radically lowers the risk of the design having some X factor that stops it working and that's very attractive to investors. OTOH they are still talking about $300m

In principle any design that needs a strong magnetic field can benefit from the REBCO technology, if they can operate at the temperatures it needs.
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline lamontagne

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But convective cooling only works at room temperature, obviously. 
Convective cooling only operates in an atmosphere.

This coating (assuming it can be scaled up)  stops heat being absorbed by the tank above that temperature, allowing the tank itself to continue emitting until it gets closer to the ambient temperature, in this case 3K.

One joker in this pack for SX is that the question "At what temperature does a composite tanks start to develop brittleness issues " AIUI SX want to run LO2 close to its melting point, which is well below that of Methane. 47K should be OK but I don't think anyone really knows.

I see, I got it completely wrong  :-)  As a very reflective coating, it does a lot of work with a single layer. I wonder if you can combine this with multilayer insulation to reduce heat gain further?

Can't be much gain left at these temperatures?





Offline john smith 19

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I see, I got it completely wrong  :-)  As a very reflective coating, it does a lot of work with a single layer. I wonder if you can combine this with multilayer insulation to reduce heat gain further?
Yes that's the idea. Making it the outermost layer of an MLI blanket.  I think ULA were talking about 30+layer blankets to give 1 week on orbit storage. Lowering the energy input (using this coating as the outermost layer) means either you could have a blanket with fewer layers or longer storage. I think this becomes more important as the temperature you're trying to maintain falls. LH2 needs around 20k. This coating won't give you that but will reduce the heat leaking in.
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline Robotbeat

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How did this relatively mundane technology of a reflective coating come to dominate this thread? It deserves its own thread.
Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers. US law http://goo.gl/YZYNt0

Offline john smith 19

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How did this relatively mundane technology of a reflective coating come to dominate this thread? It deserves its own thread.
Perhaps when it was noted by Robert Braun that better on orbit propellant management could cut the inital payload to LEO needed for a Mars mission by about 63%, suggesting this is a technology which offers massive leverage for missions BEO.
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline Robotbeat

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Okay, sure, but at this point this is the tail wagging the dog for this thread. Lots of ways to do the same thing without this invention. Believe it or not, propellant storage is not intractable even without this.
Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers. US law http://goo.gl/YZYNt0

Offline Ibn Firnas

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Lots of fusion news lately.

Magnetic reconnection behavior looks very promising and potentially relevant to space flight considering that it could improve plasma containment and therefore address:
•   Fusion reactors performance.
•   Plasma acceleration based thrusters (with no fusion involved).
•   Fusion based thrusters.

related article:

>> http://www.pppl.gov/news/2017/01/pppl-physicist-uncovers-clues-mechanism-behind-magnetic-reconnection

Offline Stormbringer

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When antigravity is outlawed only outlaws will have antigravity.

Offline john smith 19

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https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-03-scientists-unveil-giant-anti-aging.html

well that's that then. :)
It's certainly intriguing, and the possibility of near term human trials is encouraging.

"radio protectant" drugs are one of those logical ideas that NASA never seems to have funded at all.

Which is odd because if you're not going to seriously reduce travel times between Earth and anywhere else, or do so inside something with the shielding level of an asteroid, it's your only real way to avoid a massively increased radiation dose, given that the usual NASA Aluminum can offers < 5% of the Earths atmosphere.
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline Stormbringer

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https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-03-scientists-unveil-giant-anti-aging.html

well that's that then. :)
It's certainly intriguing, and the possibility of near term human trials is encouraging.

"radio protectant" drugs are one of those logical ideas that NASA never seems to have funded at all.

Which is odd because if you're not going to seriously reduce travel times between Earth and anywhere else, or do so inside something with the shielding level of an asteroid, it's your only real way to avoid a massively increased radiation dose, given that the usual NASA Aluminum can offers < 5% of the Earths atmosphere.
oh yes; thats the best thing of all. Human trials as early as 6 months from now with possible clinical/commercial implementation in three to five years.
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Offline Stormbringer

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i am no fan of suspended animation ( ahem "vegging out") at all for solving transit problems for solar system missions but here is something that may help that particular line of exploration:

https://phys.org/news/2017-04-naked-mole-rats-oxygen.html

a mole rat turns into a potato when oxygen deprived. how cool is that?

I guess the only type of suspended animation i would like to see is a temporal stasis cloak and only for food, beer, wine, alien specimens, and medical emergencies where the patient cannot be stabilized on site. Other than that i think the lazy dullard bastiges that design and build space ships should design something other than cramped sardine tins powered by flaming cow flatulence to get from one place to the other.

When antigravity is outlawed only outlaws will have antigravity.

Offline Stormbringer

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Oh Hey! look at the section on Naval CICs for warships from Project Rho!

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewartactic.php

Doc E.E. Smith's Fictional warship Directrix CIC ideas was used by Chester Nimitz for managing battle information at Midway we had a CIC and the Japanese didn't and the rest is history.

Also Matt Jeffries of Star trek fame was influential on similar things for NAS San Diego.

Quote
The entire set-up was taken specifically, directly, and consciously from the Directrix. In your story, you reached the situation the Navy was in—more communication channels than integration techniques to handle it. You proposed such an integrating technique and proved how advantageous it could be. You, sir, were 100% right. As the Japanese Navy—not the hypothetical Boskonian fleet—learned at an appalling cost.

And

Quote
The bridge of the classic Star Trek Enterprise was designed by Matt Jeffries. In a second stunning example of science fiction innovation it influenced the design of the U.S. Navy master communications center at NAS San Diego. On US naval vessels, their bridge design does not look anything like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, but the Combat Information Center in a navy vessel does have some resemblances (mostly the Captain's chair in the center of the room). Again, refer to The Great Heinlein Mystery: Science Fiction, Innovation and Naval Technology by Edward M. Wysocki Jr.

Mind blown. rebooting....





« Last Edit: 04/25/2017 09:43 pm by Stormbringer »
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Offline Elmar Moelzer

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i am no fan of suspended animation ( ahem "vegging out") at all for solving transit problems for solar system missions but here is something that may help that particular line of exploration:
I have been in a medically induced torpor before. Waking up from it was neither pleasant nor quick. Though I have to admit that I do not know how much was the torpor and how much of it was the underlying condition.
It is a good idea but I am not sure it is the right solution.

Offline Elmar Moelzer

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True. However ARC is attractive because it leverages the architecture most fusion physicists have worked on for the last half century but applies some clever materials and some reverse thinking (essentially making the inside the vacuum chamber inside everything else and making it replaceable).
Spherical tokamaks have the potential to be more compact than regular tokamaks and they are essentially established by now in terms of physics. Their biggest problem has been engineering because there is no little space at the "core of that apple". REBCOs seem to help with that problem which is why they are on the map again now.
That said, I am more interested in alternative reactor designs. Some have come quite a long way.

Offline Stormbringer

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i am no fan of suspended animation ( ahem "vegging out") at all for solving transit problems for solar system missions but here is something that may help that particular line of exploration:
I have been in a medically induced torpor before. Waking up from it was neither pleasant nor quick. Though I have to admit that I do not know how much was the torpor and how much of it was the underlying condition.
It is a good idea but I am not sure it is the right solution.
The correct solution involves not flying in a light weight flimsy minimalist sardine tin and in going much much *FASTER!* :)
When antigravity is outlawed only outlaws will have antigravity.

Offline Stormbringer

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OK here is another one i am not fond of but some people propose to grow humans and other things at the end of a centuries or milenia long journey across space. To do that you'd need a full artificial womb. So here is a fair start towards that:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-04-unique-womb-like-device-mortality-disability.html

i have read about unrelated but similar experiments through the last decade as well.
When antigravity is outlawed only outlaws will have antigravity.

Offline Stormbringer

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When antigravity is outlawed only outlaws will have antigravity.

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