Author Topic: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?  (Read 112353 times)

Offline john smith 19

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #280 on: 09/17/2015 08:03 pm »
YOu can't get rid of all the noise because that'd mean the fans would be off which'd mean there was no air circulation which'd mean everyone suffocates in their sleep.

Speaking as an MBA, that would greatly reduce the mass needed for life support and reduce the frequency & cost of re-supply missions.
Ho ho ho.

Spoken like a true MBA. 

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Offline Stormbringer

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #281 on: 09/18/2015 06:19 am »
has anyone seen this thing yet. self deploying habitats for Mars and similar rocky bodies:

http://www.space.com/30553-self-deploying-mars-habitats-shee.html

apparently they are not just aspirational  paper designs but in lab testing.
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Offline Stormbringer

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #282 on: 09/20/2015 10:32 am »
I posted a different article on this thing before but these guys are talking seriously about 500 to 7000 meter truss structures in space using spiderfab tech only it's darpa. There are lots of slides :)

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/09/darpa-looks-to-revolutionize-orbiting.html

7000 and 500 meter structures on last slide in article.


« Last Edit: 09/20/2015 11:05 am by Stormbringer »
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Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #283 on: 09/20/2015 04:37 pm »
A repair station at GEO makes sense, there are big satellites there. Moving them somewhere else will take too long and use too much fuel.

I am not convinced about the usefulness of a construction site at GEO. Far easier and I suspect cheaper to construct in LEO and move just the finished item to GEO etc. When constructing in GEO there is the extra cost and propellant needed to move all the packaging up to GEO.

Offline Stormbringer

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #284 on: 09/21/2015 03:18 am »
Come on! It's Starbase 1 for Pete's sake! :D
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Offline Stormbringer

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #285 on: 09/23/2015 09:33 am »
I don't want "better" atomic bombs:  but this article is less appalling because it reveals antimatter production in mass quantities is just around the corner. and the amounts mentioned is more than enough to run Antimatter initiated micro fusion and fission drives like the AIMSTAR and ICAN II.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/09/details-on-antimatter-triggered-fusion.html

Now we can have star ships to go with that star base.
« Last Edit: 09/23/2015 11:28 am by Stormbringer »
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Offline guckyfan

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #286 on: 09/23/2015 11:20 am »
I don't want "better" atomic bombs:  but this article is less appalling because it reveals antimatter production inmass quantities is just around the corner. and the amounts mentioned is more than enough to rum Antimatter initiated micro fusion and fission drives like the AIMSTAR and ICAN II.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/09/details-on-antimatter-triggered-fusion.html

Now we can have star ships to go with that star base.

The article says 3-4 orders of magnitude away from present day technology. I think we can safely assume some serious development time.

Offline Stormbringer

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #287 on: 09/23/2015 05:33 pm »
say! look at this thing -not the lasers- the power system is flywheels!

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/09/uk-looks-to-put-combat-lasers-on-navy.html

not for rockets probably but what about space stations or lunar or mars facilities?
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Offline Stormbringer

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #288 on: 09/25/2015 02:20 pm »
we will if people keep thinking about doing stuff like that:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/09/spiderfab-could-enable-100-meter-space.html
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Offline Stormbringer

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #289 on: 11/05/2015 03:36 am »
When antigravity is outlawed only outlaws will have antigravity.

Offline nec207

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #290 on: 11/06/2015 08:34 am »
One possible way I was thinking that may revolutionized space travel is Ion dives, plasma drives or electrically powered spacecraft where most of these kinds of spacecraft propulsion systems work by electrically expelling propellant at very high speeds.

Electric thrusters use much less propellant than chemical rockets.

However, electric propulsion is not a method suitable for launches from the Earth's surface with today technology, as the thrust for such systems is too weak.

But if we had small nuclear reactor or small fusion reactor it could produce gigawatts of power and thus solve low thrust for such systems is too weak to take off from earth.


If you had gigawatts of power requiring a power station,small nuclear reactor or small fusion reactor or nano battery that produce gigawatts of power would have very very high thrust using very little if at all propellant.

The problem with today's reactor is it too big and costly. When we learn how to make smaller and better reactor it be more of option.

Today's batteries are joke it can hardly keep laptop power for more than 6 hours using low power. But nano battery are too revolutionized batteries so much it be like comparing horse and buggy to a SR-71 Blackbird going Mach 10!! Problem is nano batteries are still in the very early research and development at this time.

When we have nano battery in future airplanes and space rockets can get run on nano battery.It would revolutionized batteries. A space craft could have gigawatts of power!!!

There is much hope into nanotechnology of nano battery.




Offline nec207

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #291 on: 11/06/2015 08:43 am »
Some people talked about the space elevator here!! Some new information out there say that nanotubes may not be strong enough.

nanotubes are 100 times stronger than steel and many scientist into nanotechnology say nanotubes you could have office towers and high-rise going miles and miles into the ski and long elevator going into space. Well new information out there say that nanotubes may not be strong enough.

Also at preset we have no idea how to make nanotubes grow. Just to make one foot nanotube takes a very very very long time and may people.

Offline Spaniard

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #292 on: 11/06/2015 12:24 pm »
If you had gigawatts of power requiring a power station,small nuclear reactor or small fusion reactor or nano battery that produce gigawatts of power would have very very high thrust using very little if at all propellant.
The power is not only limited by the energy source. It requires heat evacuation too. It will require huge radiators, in proportion to the energy requirements. Radiators implies mass, which needs more power to lift.
So, no... you cannot use ion engine at high thrust levels required to go outside gravity well. You could, instead, develop some kind of air breathing, and only hydrogen propeled hybrid, that it would use some nuclear energy as source with a ultrafast and efficient intercooled. The propellent works as a refrigeration system too. The result would be something similar to Skylon but nuclear based.
The problem is that it is too complicated, enviromental risky with fission (some probability of nuclear active core to air on catastrophic failure) and probably don't work in the main objetive that it is lower the costs.

Remember that fuel is not the expensive part of this. Any spaceship that do reentries will have a limited age. So, the only potential reduction is if you make the spaceship smaller for the same payload. But you couldn't achieve this without refrigeration, which require some heat interexchage with air or propellant expelled. Radiators would be always too bulky and heavy to allow high thrust.

Ultrareusable spaceships will need something new technologies to make a very easy and relative cheap expendable shielding and remove some of this problems, like the enviromental concerts. Something like a Skylon powered by a compact fusion aneutronic reactor that convert the energy very efficient (little heat waste), air and water propelled (water has good density, minimal emissions, and light elemets that allow better ISPs).
A Skylon type of spaceship, but nuclear fueled, more compact (no bulky liquid hydrogen but water) and with a expendable shielding to allow high reusing at reasonable costs.

But... there is no fusion by now, so it's only a dream.

But if Skylon works at all, it will get us a lot of experience with SSTO and ultrafast heat interexchange needed for a spaceship like that. A spaceship we all dream, capable of high ISP on Earth (like 800) with enough thrust to reach LEO, ion engine capabilities in space with ISP of 1500-500 for medium-low-minimal thrust to orbit changes, to work as shuttle to reach interplanetary reusable vehicles and big cyclers colonies with artificial gravity between planets.

A space fiction like future.

By now, we have to resign to rockets like SpaceX or, in the best case, a reusable spaceship like Skylon.

Offline JasonAW3

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #293 on: 11/06/2015 04:36 pm »

      Until such time as Fuel is less than 50 percent of the total mass needed for a craft, until long term life support systems, including production of food, is developed and in use, until fully reusable craft are in place and until politicians are willing to spend the amounts needed, hundreds of billions instead of tens of billions of dollars, then, no, the Human race will never be a space-faring civilization.
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Offline nec207

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #294 on: 11/07/2015 01:41 am »

      Until such time as Fuel is less than 50 percent of the total mass needed for a craft, until long term life support systems, including production of food, is developed and in use, until fully reusable craft are in place and until politicians are willing to spend the amounts needed, hundreds of billions instead of tens of billions of dollars, then, no, the Human race will never be a space-faring civilization.

JasonAW3 other thing to think about even if going into space was cheap and easy Mercury and Venus is way too hot ( If you think living in desert in Phoenix is hot in summer in 100 degree + fahrenheit or 35+ celsius waether that is nothing like Mercury and Venus) and Mars is way too cold. Even if Mars was terraform it would still be too cold.

Hack most places on earth are too cold to live like Russia, Iceland,  Antarctica, Greenland, Canada, Finland, Siberian ,Mongolia and Kazakhstan in -15 celsius to -30 celsius or -5 fahrenheit to -22 fahrenheit with out many layers of clothing in winter in the winter.

The gravity and atmospheric pressure is much less on Mars than earth and that may lead to health problems or birth defects.

So Human race may never be a space-faring civilization.

Offline Hanelyp

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #295 on: 11/07/2015 04:02 pm »
Any place we go out there we will need to bring along or build a full environment to live in.  But that's not insurmountable if we can get the transportation cost down or wealth up enough.  And counting on government to do it will push neither cost nor wealth in the right direction.

Offline Katana

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #296 on: 11/08/2015 03:04 pm »
The relative technical and economical cost and risk of colonizing Mars / Asteroids now are comparable to colonizing America in the Middle Ages.

Real limit lies in politics.

Globalization is taking the planet into "China-lization": competition on low cost products, by means of tight social control, low hunan rights, and in turn increasing of power.

Competition on social control instead of human development is actually what happened to Asia 2000 years ago, finally resulting the birth of China, a uniformed and controlled supernation covering the entire Asia "planet".

Until ancient China crushed by Europeans from sea, as if Aliens from space.

The Fermi's dilemma.

Any place we go out there we will need to bring along or build a full environment to live in.  But that's not insurmountable if we can get the transportation cost down or wealth up enough.  And counting on government to do it will push neither cost nor wealth in the right direction.
« Last Edit: 11/08/2015 03:07 pm by Katana »

Offline Paul451

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #297 on: 11/08/2015 07:08 pm »
The relative technical and economical cost and risk of colonizing Mars / Asteroids now are comparable to colonizing America in the Middle Ages.

A) By that stage, humans had been living in the Americas for around 15 thousand years.

B) We need to get away from the European colonisation model, a la Columbus and Plymouth Rock. We are stone age almost-humans climbing out of our first valley. We need to learn how to find food and water from unfamiliar local sources, how to make fire and canoes, how to nap flint, how to make clothing/protection out of skins of local animals. We haven't even started yet.

Offline Katana

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #298 on: 11/09/2015 04:56 am »
So stone age almost-humans 15 thousand years ago first colonized America, when they are learning how to survive from unfamiliar local sources.

This means further easier solution compared to European colonization model.

Indeed, modern industrial civilization have enough technology available to survive on Mars resources.

Pressurized habitats used as commercial airliners.
Energy harvesting of solar power.
Agriculture in sealed greenhouses.
Chemical synthesis of food additives and drugs from basic elements and energy.
Mining in desert or deep holes, utilizing very low concentration of material.

The relative technical and economical cost and risk of colonizing Mars / Asteroids now are comparable to colonizing America in the Middle Ages.

A) By that stage, humans had been living in the Americas for around 15 thousand years.

B) We need to get away from the European colonisation model, a la Columbus and Plymouth Rock. We are stone age almost-humans climbing out of our first valley. We need to learn how to find food and water from unfamiliar local sources, how to make fire and canoes, how to nap flint, how to make clothing/protection out of skins of local animals. We haven't even started yet.

Offline lamontagne

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Re: Will humans ever be a space-faring civilization?
« Reply #299 on: 02/11/2021 01:49 pm »
Fuel is only a battery.  Hydrogen or methane are batteries, the actual power source is the sun, so effectively pretty much all rocketry is solar in origin (old methane, on Earth :-)).
So two stage rockets can easily be seen as electric rockets, that use methane as a battery.  They get their propulsion using a handy reaction with oxygen, that is a useful reaction mass on its own.

Nuclear reactors and ion engines are really complex propellant reduction devices. I think the best trick is to find cheap ways of producing hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis and using these as close to the source as possible.  And of course not destroying the rocket each time.

The major budgetary problem with Skylon on Earth is that it requires hydrogen, that is much more expensive than methane because it is manufactured, while methane is a natural resource of the planet.

Off Earth, moving about is much easier, however the times required grow very fast to get anywhere interesting.  We are lucky to have two interesting targets, the Moon and Mars.

Just a few thousand years ago we were living without metals.  About 150 years ago there were no airplanes, and certainly no significant rockets.  Although I don't really expect to be part of a space faring civilization, it seems obvious to me that my grandchildren, or at worst their children, will be in a space faring civilization.  The real problem is how do we manage to survive till then, and that is not a rocketry problem at all.

 

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