SPACE

[Istar]

"Small movements, Ellie. Small movements."

[Darkflame]

As opposed to NASA which seems to operate by.
"No movement, No movement is good.."

[zip accident]

Istar wrote:

"Small movements, Ellie. Small movements."

I don't know where your quote is from, but I know what you're saying.

I'm not entirely convinced I'll be around to see it, if the steps are so small.

[F-ZeroOne]

Virgin have just released pictures of SpaceShipTwo and it's hawt!

http://www.virgingalactic.com/

There's loads of massive high-resolution images in the PressFTP area.

Burt Rutan a fan of the Heinkel He-111Z, I see.

[Darkflame]

Love the spaceport design too.

[disciple]

The sound of Jupiter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3fqE01YYWs

[Istar]

Istar wrote:

"Small movements, Ellie. Small movements."

I don't know where your quote is from, but I know what you're saying.

I'm not entirely convinced I'll be around to see it, if the steps are so small.

The quote is from "Contact", by Carl Sagan. Ellie's father is teaching her to use a ham radio, and she's turning the dial looking for a signal.

I'm a few months away from turning 40 years old. For about 36 of those I've been desperate to go to space, and there's been nothing even close to a possibility. Now there is.

Yes, it's little steps, but every journey begins with that first step. I can't begin to describe how excited I am that I'm alive to see it. OK, I might not get to actually go, but it's a joy to see it happening. It means we might not be completely fucked as a civilisation*, and maybe my son, or grandson, will stand on another world.



*in the sense that there could be a way off this planet and we can spread out; also it could give us a way to escape Sol's inevitable end-sequence.

[PVB]

Istar wrote:
"Small movements, Ellie. Small movements."

I don't know where your quote is from, but I know what you're saying.

I'm not entirely convinced I'll be around to see it, if the steps are so small.

The quote is from "Contact", by Carl Sagan. Ellie's father is teaching her to use a ham radio, and she's turning the dial looking for a signal.

I'm a few months away from turning 40 years old. For about 36 of those I've been desperate to go to space, and there's been nothing even close to a possibility. Now there is.

Yes, it's little steps, but every journey begins with that first step. I can't begin to describe how excited I am that I'm alive to see it. OK, I might not get to actually go, but it's a joy to see it happening. It means we might not be completely fucked as a civilisation*, and maybe my son, or grandson, will stand on another world.



*in the sense that there could be a way off this planet and we can spread out; also it could give us a way to escape Sol's inevitable end-sequence.

If I win the Lottery I'll book a ticket.

[Darkflame]

I am also reminded of Clark's timeline of mankind.
At the end of the predicted timeline were simply the words
"History Begins";

http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.ht ... t0361.html

2011 Space flights become available for the public.

[zip accident]

Istar wrote:

I'm not entirely convinced I'll be around to see it, if the steps are so small.

I'm a few months away from turning 40 years old. For about 36 of those I've been desperate to go to space, and there's been nothing even close to a possibility. Now there is.

I'm older than that, and I'm not as healthy as I'd like to be. I haven't been given a prognosis, so I don't know how long I've got, my guess is ten years, but that's a sort of rolling ten years from the eternal now, I don't know at all.

Yes, it's little steps, but every journey begins with that first step. I can't begin to describe how excited I am that I'm alive to see it. OK, I might not get to actually go, but it's a joy to see it happening. It means we might not be completely fucked as a civilisation*, and maybe my son, or grandson, will stand on another world.



*in the sense that there could be a way off this planet and we can spread out; also it could give us a way to escape Sol's inevitable end-sequence.

Yeah, I'm very positive about space.

Gagarin's flight, though short, was (barely) orbital. You need to be orbital to stay up there longer than a few minutes.

As I read it these flights are not going anywhere, it's the equivalent of a seaside "boat trip around the bay", without even mackerel fishing.

IIRC, suborbital to Australia would take less than an hour, which would make sense as a journey.

We need a self sufficient community living in space, and sub-orbital isn't enough for that.

[benedictw]

Orbits significantly harder through - by lots of orders of magnitude. Something like this at least shows the way without costing an arm and a leg. But yes, orbital habitats are the way to go - but theres a lot of energy required for it.

[Darkflame]

Its stepping stones, each one must be profitable to get onto the next.

Same with most technology really.

You can see something is physicaly possible, but needs shitloads of R&D its very unlikely to happen without inbetween steps that are also profitable.

[Orava]

2007 TU24

http://space.newscientist.com/article/d ... years.html

[quote]The largest asteroid to come near the Earth in more than 20 years will make its closest approach on Tuesday [29th at 0833 GMT], venturing as close as 1.4 times the distance to the Moon. Already, the first radar observations of the space rock reveal it may have formed from two separate asteroids that fell together and stuck.[quote]

[zip accident]

Darkflame wrote:

Its stepping stones, each one must be profitable to get onto the next.

Well sort of.

The problem I have is that this step doesn't get from the bank of the river to the first stone, it just paddles in the first few inches.

The problem with getting to orbit isn't height, it's speed. If you don't achieve 18,000 mph, then you can't stay up.

Getting up into the atmosphere barely gives you any speed (500 mph out of 18,000 is less tha 3%), it just means there's slightly less atmospheric resistence to go through, and you still have to get all the fuel to get you up to speed up to whatever altitude you're going from.

For your space elevator, you need quite a lot of people living and working in orbit or above to build it. This isn't a beginning for that.

[Darkflame]

Theres nothing against this principle of flight being used to get into orbit.
At least, none that I have heard.
Just because these ships cant reach oribital height/speed, dosnt mean later generations can not.

The whole point of this its a commercial stepping stone. The price of the flights will fall steadly as the number of flights goes up. Most of the cost of that ticket isnt in the fuel, so the cost can fairly easily fall over the coming years.
Meanwhile, it proves a market, and people will be wanting longer and longer durations....which means higher or faster. After awhile, few minutes of weightlessness wont be enough.
This venture will get commercial R&D into developing cheap and inefficiant ship designs, and thats exactly what we need.
We have got a long way to go, but its a start.

I'd also argue about needing lots of people to build a space elivator. We need some, but I dought we need more then the ISS has.
Most of the work is in developing materials and cables that can take the forces required. Dropping it down should be significantly less assembly then we have done on the spacestation. Of course, you need a counter-balance, and some power management, but I dont think its beyond robots and automation.

I think a spaceelivator would be probably done by dropping a guidence cable, and then pulling the main cable up with that, assembleing it to take more loads later.

That said....

...could not both problems solve eachother?

Making a cable go from geo-stationary orbit to the ground is an insanely hard challange.
Making a scramjet ship reach oribit is also incredibly hard.

I have suggested it before, but could we not have a half-way system? A teather that hangs down merely to the height which SpaceShipTwo like ships can reach?
The teather would have a large delta shaped bit which the craft coud hock onto while at the peak of its flight...the forward momentum the craft still has will effectively swing it upwards more.
The craft can be then pulled up slowly, using power from the solar cell's on the counter balance.
Of course, raising up will be very slow, might take a day or a few.
But this would get people and light loads in and out of orbit using little fuel, energy and cost. Slowly larger platforms could be built from the counterbalance to generate more power to lift things faster and from lower heights.