** The Official Space Flight Thread - The Space Station and Beyond **

I don't want to solve poverty, I want to go into space..
As already said above, solving poverty and space exploration are two different things, one requires science, the other requires a change in human thinking and attitude, science can fix a lot of things, human nature isnt one of them...
 
robfosters said:
Silly question but would the car switch on in space?
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Unlikely, and almost certainly didn't launch with batteries anyway.
Anything pressurised would expand and possibly break.
And electronics get hit by radiation which can cause issues.
And of course massive swings of temperature from several hundred degrees to minus several hundred degrees doesn't do them any good.
 
robfosters said:
Silly question but would the car switch on in space?
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Do you mean like theoretically would the engine turn over? without oxygen no even assuming everything else worked.

Glaucus said:
And electronics get hit by radiation which can cause issues
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"Shouldn't" cause issues in this case assuming everything else worked - though more complex engine management units, etc. might be more susceptible - the long term breakdown due to the radiation exposure would take more time given the method used to transit the Van Allen belt to reduce radiation exposure.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNiscigIgBc
 
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Someone said it only had enough power for 12 hours though? I'm sure I read that somewhere.

So it wouldn't turn over by now. Plus i'm sure the coldness of space isn't great for batteries.
 
Rroff said:
Do you mean like theoretically would the engine turn over? without oxygen no even assuming everything else worked.



"Shouldn't" cause issues in this case assuming everything else worked - though more complex engine management units, etc. might be more susceptible - the long term breakdown due to the radiation exposure would take more time given the method used to transit the Van Allen belt to reduce radiation exposure.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNiscigIgBc
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Apollo mission used old chips, which are more radiation harden as well as radation sheilding. The smaller the transistors on the chip the more the radation affects them. And of course Tesla had zero radation shielding. You are right that radation takes a while to kill electronics completely. But before that point they are still susceptable to radation where they can flip both data and transistors, spending 5hrs in Van Allen belts with what the Tesla is packing away would cause a lot of errors and would require many reboot imo.

Many small sats in leo have used normal mobile phones, iirc they expect an event that causes a reboot every few days.

As for elevator. Let's get a moon base and use an elevator to lift up fuel and oxygen. Much easier with lower gravity, and thus don't need as strong materials.
 
Rroff said:
Something like StarTram would probably be better than the kind of space elevators most people talk of.
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To much weight.

Technically with the advent of graphene we have the capability at least to build the main cable. Downside is we cant make enough graphene, never mind the length :)

Frustrating this space travel malarkey.

Aslo an elevator/tram is cheaper than a rocket. (in the long run) or we might find some new power source, that allows to do take off land like and Xwing :)
 
SPG said:
Aslo an elevator/tram is cheaper than a rocket. (in the long run) or we might find some new power source, that allows to do take off land like and Xwing :)
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The beamed microwave concepts are very interesting. Most of the energy being beamed by a series of large microwave dishes. Captured by the spacecraft and used to heat up a gas(hellium iirc). Bit like an ion engine, but rather than just a few kilowatts of solar energy, you could easily pump in megawatts.

But the company researching it, closed down due to lack of funding.
But I do like the ones which used earth based power. Rather than onboard power.
Also why I like the idea of rail gun. Useless for humans but for general resources.
 
Nice, someone's done orbit simulation using the new orbit.
And the orbit will grow over the next 10000 years with a chance of Jupiter ejecting it from the solar system entirely.

Also it's seems the over burn was intentional. Apparently they always planned to run second stage dry.rtaher than aim for a specific orbit.
 
Glaucus said:
Apollo mission used old chips, which are more radiation harden as well as radation sheilding. The smaller the transistors on the chip the more the radation affects them. And of course Tesla had zero radation shielding. You are right that radation takes a while to kill electronics completely. But before that point they are still susceptable to radation where they can flip both data and transistors, spending 5hrs in Van Allen belts with what the Tesla is packing away would cause a lot of errors and would require many reboot imo.

Many small sats in leo have used normal mobile phones, iirc they expect an event that causes a reboot every few days.

As for elevator. Let's get a moon base and use an elevator to lift up fuel and oxygen. Much easier with lower gravity, and thus don't need as strong materials.
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From a quick google on AEC Q grade used in space - unsurprisingly they are noted as having no radiation assurances - NASA rates them twice as likely to fail (that is both operationally and from degrading in context of radiation exposure) when used in space application as milspec or aerospace/COTS - generally low amounts of shielding are sufficient for semi-reliable operation.
 
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Glaucus said:
Nice, someone's done orbit simulation using the new orbit.
And the orbit will grow over the next 10000 years with a chance of Jupiter ejecting it from the solar system entirely.

Also it's seems the over burn was intentional. Apparently they always planned to run second stage dry.rtaher than aim for a specific orbit.
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Which presumably means the 2nd stage motor was either more powerful or more efficient than they planned. Both very good things.


Found this on Imgur. Thought it was particularly good.
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sityeuropa said:
Just reading about NASA's SLS, seems outdated already and expensive. None reusable in 2018?.
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Yep and 10s of billions in devlopment. Stupid Congress(they dictate what NASA has to build) and presidents who have changed the program and rocket numoruse times.
And with an expected launch cost of 500m-1bn and maybe 2 or 3 a year. Not that they have any funding passed the first launch. Collapse waste of money.
Keep the jobs program, but at least let NASA design it themselves and just dictate where it has to be built.
 
Glaucus said:
Yep and 10s of billions in devlopment. Stupid Congress(they dictate what NASA has to build) and presidents who have changed the program and rocket numoruse times.
And with an expected launch cost of 500m-1bn and maybe 2 or 3 a year. Not that they have any funding passed the first launch. Collapse waste of money.
Keep the jobs program, but at least let NASA design it themselves and just dictate where it has to be built.
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Red tape vs private. The BFR could embarrass them if SLS encounters delays and BFR moves fast.
 
sityeuropa said:
Red tape vs private. The BFR could embarrass them if SLS encounters delays and BFR moves fast.
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It's allready an embarrassment. Even at the cheapest estimate you can launch more for the same cost on the heavy, which is allready flying. It's not like we are n00bs at docking these days.
Best thing Congress could do is cancel it, put the money into 100s of missions and retrain the staff at these big factories to build these new things.
 
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