300 Million blogs are "stale"

Make that 299 999 999.....Oh Na 300 000 000 it is.

Space Elevators?

I have some well devloped options about space Elevators. But I won't share them today. Rather I would like to draw you attention to this. Also there is a slashdot thread on the comments/results here. I have not read the paper, but i suspected some of the claims on the strength of a macrascopic fibers vers microscopic fibers was optimistic at best. At any rate, there are other reasons why space elevators are perhaps not the best thing to look forward to for cheap access to space.

So in the next few weeks i will go through tethers, rotovators and related concepts finishing with the space elevator.

Back in the seat...in Vienna

Yep, I have shifted to Vienna. The other side of the world. It was a long trip.

I will start adding to this blog properly very soon. Not much has changed on what is can and cannot be done, so the dealy will not change the posts i wish to put up.

Back from Thesis land

Well I have handed in the thesis, so i will have some content to add soon. But then it does not look like anyone has noticed anyway. :(

Getting Ready

I have finished investigating many means of getting into Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Some are far off and some have near term potential. I will start with the Humble rocket and then move on to "larger" schemes such as space elevators and rotovators. Once I have developed the basic ideas i will start to move on to more detials about the more promising schemes. The Heavy tech stuff will be placed in PDF's for download.

Cheap Space

There are few things in science as aptly named as Space. Space is truly vast and really nothing but space. So why do we want cheap access to space? And why is space so hard?

For many space is the last frontier, the last place to find unexplored lands and planets, a place that has not really been conquered yet by Mankind. But there are some more practical reason to go to space. Few people would argue the utility of services like telecommunications, GPS and global "live" broadcasts. Also there is a lot of science that we can do in space that is difficult or plain impossible to do here on earth. I will not address the question of why but will look at why its so hard and expensive to get to space.

To get to space, or more specifically, Low Earth Orbit (LEO), we must accelerate our space vehicle to about 7 500 m/s at roughly 150-200km above the earth. Getting to LEO is the hard part, once there you are almost half way to anywhere in the solar system. Travailing over 7 kilometres every second is no easy task and this is where the "hard" part comes from. Nothing gets close except rocket engines, and this is where is gets expensive.

Rocket engines, which I will discus at a later date, run at extremely hot temperatures and pressures. In order to contain these forces expensive materials are usually used. But worst of all, rocket engines are operated with fine design margins, and then generally fail often, when compared to similar technology in other fields. But most of all the rocket engines we have today are relics of the Cold War.

Many seem to have forgotten that the whole World was terrified of a nuclear war for many decades. ICBMs were the precursor to the rockets that got mankind into space, and space was and still is very important for military strategy. We were afraid and budgets were very large for space programs since these programs were viewed from a strategic standpoint. With no Cold War we would not have gone to the moon when we did, and there would not be any NASA or space shuttle. Thats the history of space, and its the legacy we are now stuck with.

But it will not stay this way forever. Many believe that we can get cheap safe space access for the masses, and I am one of them. This blog is about my thoughts on the matter. What we need to do and what we are doing wrong. Most of the blogs will be technical, rather than political. However this field is filled with more politics than science and political issues will not be ignored. I will cover many of the ideas that have been suggested to reach this goal, but will attempt to really focus on what is achievable with todays technology.

I hope you will like it.

Stament of intent

This will be about my views on space access. In particular, cheap space access. There will not be heaps of post, but the posts will be reasonaly large, more eassy style. I will of course point out other good content.