How much solid fuel would you need to get to the moon

Combat squirrel

Combat squirrel

Combat squirrel

Soldato
Joined
7 Aug 2004
Posts
11,302
As title, I have been looking around and it seems once in orbit, the Apollo stack had about 30000kg of fuel to get to the moon, land and back again.

But I was thinking A)

1) How much fuel does Titan II use to get to the moon

2) How much LESS fuel would it need if it was a completely solid rocket motor perfectly built to fire the correct burn at various stages to lunar orbit.

ONLY orbit the moon and come back, not land on the moon.
 
What is a solid rocket motor? The way a jet engine works requires air gaps and therefore solid motors are not possible as you have to get the air speed to a certain velocity to make it work properly.
 
I wonder why they don't use nuclear fuel; it's the best way forward as far as energy generation is concerned. Thinking about it, I guess it's difficult to send a nuclear reactor into space on a rocket!
 
The efficiency of fuel is determined by the exhaust velocity. What you're basically asking is "how long is a piece of string".
 
dirtychinchilla said:
I wonder why they don't use nuclear fuel; it's the best way forward as far as energy generation is concerned. Thinking about it, I guess it's difficult to send a nuclear reactor into space on a rocket!
Click to expand...

Rockets also have a habit of blowing up, not a good idea to scatter nuclear waste over a large area. :p
 
The main problem with a solid fuel rocket for something like this is that they are very difficult to control. Once they are lit they tend to burn until all of the fuel has been burnt. With a liquid fueled rocked you can control the amount of fuel they burn and so the amount of thrust they give out, and more importantly when they give it out. The space shuttle used sold fueled rockets to help it into orbit, the SRBs, but once there when more precise control was needed liquid fueled rockets were used.

Edit. NASA proposed to use atomic bombs as a fuel source for a space craft during the 60s. They put quite a bit of work into the concept but the project was canceled. There is a documentary about it out there somewhere, it was shown on Discovery a while ago.
 
Last edited:
Fire_fly said:
Edit. NASA proposed to use atomic bombs as a fuel source for a space craft during the 60s. They put quite a bit of work into the concept but the project was canceled. There is a documentary about it out there somewhere, it was shown on Discovery a while ago.
Click to expand...

As someone else stated this was called project Orion (I took an esoteric rocket motors lecture series in my Masters) and was actually a British led plan! People weren't too happy with there being radioactive fallout everytime a rocket was launched! The principle is sound, and they have planned to use the same idea with nuclear fusion, although managing to concoct the required equipment to make this work is currently beyond us!
 
dirtychinchilla said:
I wonder why they don't use nuclear fuel; it's the best way forward as far as energy generation is concerned. Thinking about it, I guess it's difficult to send a nuclear reactor into space on a rocket!
Click to expand...

what happens when there is an accident and it explodes in the upper atmosphere?
 
Most rockets will fail either at lift off or on their assent into orbit.

If you think nuclear fuel is bad wait until antimatter starts to be used...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom