Nuclear rockets: triple-pack

 art, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft  3 Responses »
Oct 072016
 

A piece of NASA art illustrating a lunar-bound craft equipped with three relatively small nuclear thermal rockets. The payload is a lunar lander, similar in appearance to the “First Lunar Outpost” landers of the early 1990s, dating the art. To my eye this looks a bit dubious from the standpoint of nuking the crew… the reactors aren’t that far from them, what with the rather short hydrogen tank. *Perhaps* this was intended to be sent to lunar orbit unmanned, there to be met by a crew sent via chemical rockets. For lunar missions the utility of nuclear rockets would not be in getting payloads to the destination sooner; three days just isn’t that long, really. The advantage would be in sending *massive* payloads. So a small manned capsule sent chemically and a big heavily loaded lander sent via nukes might well make considerable sense.

ntr-triple

 Posted by at 4:15 pm

More on the coming KSC apocalypse

 AARRRGH, Gah., news, rockets, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  21 Responses »
Oct 062016
 

Hmmm.

Matthew Blows, Part 2

The writer believes that the VAB will be stripped to the skeleton. SpaceX has three landed Falcon 9 boosters in a horizontal integration hangar at launch complex 39A; if the building is damaged, it’s a safe bet that these boosters will be trashed. The United Launch Alliance towers at pads 37 and 40 are at risk. The Rocket Garden is exceedingly vulnerable. The Visitor Center could be damaged.

This could see the effective end of much of the US space program, at least for several years. Worst comes to pass, the only good access the US will have to the ISS will be the Orbital Sciences launch facility at Wallops.  Unless permission is granted for overland flights from Vandenberg – very unlikely, but with the Falcon 9’s ability to boost back, just maybe – getting to a low inclination orbit will be *real* challenging. If the VAB is trashed, especially if it’s truly destroyed, the SLS will look even sillier than it does now.

This all depends on the track and power of the storm. It could divert away from the Cape. But then, it’s thought it’ll turn into a Category 5 by the time it gets there.

Sure would be nice if, 24 hours from now, NASA is still a functional organization.

UPDATE:

A rare bit of good news. Instead of climbing from Cat 4 to Cat 5, it decreased to Cat 3, and the eyewall missed the Cape. Damage to KSC is reportedly quite minimal.

Now that KSC has dodged that bullet, it’s time to make sure that this sort of apocalyptic disaster *doesn’t* befall the US space program. Suggestions:

Beef up the KSC infrastructure. Rebuild and reinforce the structures that are already there; build up the barrier islands and seawalls to minimize the damage from storm surges.

Build all-new launch facilities elsewhere. Expand Wallops to make it capable of launching Delta IV/Atlas V/Falcon 9 Heavy. Build launch sites in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Guantanamo Bay (use that one for Orion launches).

 Posted by at 11:11 pm

The Cape and the ‘Cane

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Gah., Hmm..., news, rockets, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  5 Responses »
Oct 062016
 

Now this is interesting…

Hurricane Matthew Is a Nightmare Scenario for Kennedy Space Center

With such highlights as:

When Category 2 Hurricane Frances made landfall roughly 100 miles south of Kennedy in 2004, tropical storm-force winds lashed Space Coast, ripping more than a thousand panels off the Vehicle Assembly Building and resulting in 100 million worth of damage.

And…

The storm is projected to pass perilously close to Florida’s entire eastern seaboard beginning later today, with a Category 3 or 4 eye passing directly over Kennedy Space Center on Friday…

And…

Kennedy’s Orbiter Processing Facilities are rated to withstand sustained winds of 105 mph. The Vehicle Assembly Building and launchpads hold together up until about 115 mph, while newer buildings constructed after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 are designed to weather 130 mph winds.

And…

If the storm does hit at high tide, the NHC warns of surges as high as 9 feet from central Florida all the way up into southern Georgia. Most of Kennedy’s infrastructure sits between five and ten feet above sea level.

Ruh-roh…

So, let’s say Canaveral gets well and truly trashed. Winds rip the buildings apart, a storm surge sloshes over the facilities and washes ’em out to sea. What to do?

This would argue for some diversity in not only launch vehicles, but launch sites and launch *modes.* I’m not a terribly big fan of air-launched systems like Pegasus or Stratolaunch, but the availability of such systems would allow for the important bits to be locate much further inland. You could in principle base such a system in, say, Utah and fly down to the Gulf for an easterly launch. Systems that launch from the decks of ships would be less sensitive to this, as they could steam out ahead of the storms. Systems that launch from the surface of the ocean itself would also be insensitive to storms.

One of the potential problems with systems like these is that they tend to be smaller. An aircraft could maybe carry a Falcon 9, but good luck horsing a Falcon 9 Heavy into the sky. Or launching one from a ship smaller than a supertanker. Launching directly from the ocean made sense for vehicles as vast as the Sea Dragon, but it gets less sensible as the vehicle gets smaller. And I’m uncertain how well this would work out for a thin-walled eggshell design like the SpaceX Mars booster.

There is another solution: launch from inland. Works well for the Russians; having booster stages crash down into Kazakhstan apparently doesn’t cause trouble for anyone who matters. This would be trickier in he CONUS, though. However, there is already a solution to this problem, detailed on this very blog nearly 8 years ago: buy a strip of northern Mexico. The original idea was to turn that strip into a new nation, Neuvo Israel. But turning it into a Federal reserve would work too. Make it a wildlife refuge, off limits to settlements and urban developments; but a dandy place to locate the launch and impact sites, along with a few dozen terawatt-class breeder and thorium salt reactors.

 Posted by at 4:47 pm

And now, the other side of the story

 AARRRGH, art, blather, politics, spacecraft  12 Responses »
Oct 052016
 

After two posts in two days about horrible, horrible people who want to talk down space exploration, progress, the future and, essentially, hope itself, there’s this:

Hope, Courage and Unity: The story behind the young cancer patients who painted space suits

The four elephants march in a row down the right arm of the space suit, one behind the other. They are linked trunk to tail, except for the last elephant. It is a baby elephant, and it sits alone, with its trunk pointing towards the sky. Stars and planets surround them.
The first three elephants represent Kat’s father, mother and older brother. The baby elephant is Kat. …

Kat didn’t live to see the launch. She passed away on June 4.

“I think space is where I’m going to end up,” Kat told her mom when asked about the planets and stars surrounding her elephants.

Space exploration inspires hope, even in the worst situations. What does opposition to space exploration inspire? “Stop looking at the stars, kid. Get used to the gutter.”

Grrrr.

Is there a one-word descriptor specifically for the sort of evil person who wants to shut down manned space exploration for reasons of cowardice or “social justice?” The kind of person who actually celebrate and embody the line from Interstellar, “We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.”

If not, I believe such a word is in order. I’m open to suggestions. “Gutterists,” maybe. But with a bit more bite, I should think.

 Posted by at 11:56 am

SpaceX Interplanetary spaceship

 art, Hmm..., projects, rockets, spacecraft  32 Responses »
Sep 272016
 

Some images copied out of the presentations today. It clearly has some heritage back to the Delta Clipper, at least in inspiration. I’m unconvinced, though, that this is a completely serious engineering concept. At the very least it seems to be jazzed up for some wow-factor; that huge window, for example, is a structural nightmare and the passenger compartment seems to be one breachable pressurized volume. Blow out one window and the whole thing will depressurize.

Still, it’s good to see big-thinkin’. But I really wish they would have somehow vetted some of the questioners after Elon’s presentation… about a third of ’em were either idiots or just there to flack some product or other.

2016-09-27-203311 2016-09-27-202604 2016-09-27-203642 spacex-interplanetary-07 spacex-interplanetary-05

 Posted by at 8:13 pm

Making Humans a Multiplanet Species

 awesomeness, Hmm..., news, rockets, science, spacecraft  7 Responses »
Sep 272016
 

Elon Musk is scheduled to present his plan on getting humans to Mars and beyond at 2:30 Eastern (12:30 Mountain). The Youtube link below should carry it live, or be available afterwards.

 

SpaceX has also released a “teaser” video showing the system in action:

The booster is 12 meters in diameter, the spacecraft is 17 meters in diameter and the complete stack is 122 meters tall. This is bigger than the Saturn V. Liftoff thrust is 28,730,000 pounds.

The animation is pretty spiffy, but I can’t help but think that the mission depicted is… ummm… a little simplified.

 Posted by at 12:19 pm

The Chrysler Saucer

 aircraft, Crazy, history, Hmm..., nukes, projects, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft  4 Responses »
Sep 192016
 

There was a time when American auto manufacturers had important aerospace divisions. Chrysler, for example, was responsible for rockets such as the Redstone, Jupiter and the Saturn I and Ib first stage.

In late 1956, Lovell Lawrence Jr, an assistant chief engineer at the missiles division of Chrysler, publicized a concept for a nuclear-powered “flying saucer.” It seems to have been *partially* a reasonably rational concept for a long duration spacecraft for missions to Mars. It would spin like a frisbee to generate artificial gravity, though the relatively small radius would be likely to produce some harsh Coriolis effects. The saucer would be about 50 feet in diameter and only 6 feet thick.

Where the design goes a bit off the rails is that the performance expected of the craft was insanely impressive. It was a single-stage-to-solar-orbit craft, capable of taking off horizontally from a runway using nuclear-powered jet engines (note: “jet” in this case might mean “rocket.”) The craft would be capable of going from the Earth to Mars in 9 to 12 weeks.

Being that close to an atomic reactor (with a light enough shield to allow the thing to take off) would be a death sentence long before the craft would get to Mars.

After years of trying to research this concept, all I’ve managed to scrape up are three things from Ye Olde internet: two newspaper articles and one cover story from a UFO “fanzine.” I have tried over some years to obtain a copy of the “Saucer News” from August-September 1957 from sites like ebay, but without success. It seems like an original printing, or at least a decent scan, would provide a reasonably good version of the Chrysler saucer art. Anybody has more on this, I’m interested.

saucernews25-1957-aug-sep chrysler-saucer-2 chrysler-saucer-1

 Posted by at 11:29 pm
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