Lunar Space Elevator simply isn't for everyone

wrote:
An elecromagnetic gun is the best solution for the Moon and indeed for
anywhere without an atmosphere. It is virtually 100% energy efficient
and could take you anywhere within the Solar System.

Ion drives will do the fine navigation.

Fast enough.

In Australia some few years ago, electromagnetic launch was used to
accelerate a booster rocket quite a ways and then it was ignited after
that, whence it proceeded to orbit. I just have heard that, no source.

The idea, I guess for an ETOMD or ETSMD instead of a LTOMD, LTSMD, Luna
to Space Mass Driver, the idea of an ETSMD is that the energy that it
take to send, say, a 100 tonne pod into space is applied and does.

Let's see, if 100 tonnes is 10^8 grams, and V_e, escape velocity, is
roughly 10^5 m/s, (11km/s), then around 10^13 gm/s is the pod going to
space, mv = 10^13, with a = around 300 m/s, ma = 3* 10^10 newtons,
billions of newtons, over 1.5 * 10^ 5 m around 5 * 10^15 J or 5
petajoules. The two tonne pod is looking at around 100 terajoules, but
is too small unless there is a solution to the shock problem.

http://www.google.com/search?q=megajoule+coilgun

Ion engines, solar sals for long course corrections or laser targets,
gravity slingshot, chemical (combustion) kick motors, yes the ion
drive is probably the most suitable for its basically solid-state
construction.

The problem again is the atmospheric problem, in terms of shockwave of
an 11 km/s projectile entering Earth surface air, basically
instantaneously, but not quite, decelerating, then flying through said
air, presumably ablating and losing mass and forming a shockwave in the
air. That's the problem if there is a billion newton force source, and
solution to the hysteresis problem, where the back electromotive force
(EMF) maintains fields in the coils.

There are myriad technical problems with a coilgun to orbit system,
compared to a space elevator it's quite simple.

That atmospheric problem might have some solution. Consider, say,
shooting a precursor sounding-type rocket that leaves a trail of
particles in the exact path the pod will take. Then, they combust,
say, or are energized, partially vacating the path of the pod.
Consider a laser tuned to opacity of air to blast a path through the
air molecules. Launching from high altitude is a given. Every little
bit helps at 5 petajoules.

I'm a space enthusiast, I'd like to see serious and viable colonization
of space in my time. I don't talk very much about politics because I
would start listing problems and blaming people and groups. Then
again, I have some ideas about how some things could be done better,
take back America and so forth.

Research and development, including education and big, small, and
primary science, is the predictor of economic growth, in the economy.
Growth is good.

Ross

Ross A. Finlayson,
You do realize that a magnetic-drive or "electromanetic gun" as
utilized for a launch of unlimited tonnage away from LL-1 is about as
good as life in the fast lane gets. Short of going for the backside of
using LL-2 where the linear exit distance can be unlimited, LL-1 is
actually pretty damn good if either the gravity acceleration boost of
Earth or of the moon were to be taken into account, and thus utilized
on behalf of picking up whatever extra velocity that can be safely
taken advantage of without hardly requiring an extra kj worth of
energy. Adding energy of the magnetic driver along with the gravity
boost factor and you're good to go, especially since your environment
at LL-1 is about as empty and as zero gravity as nearby space gets,
that plus you're already making 30 km/s to start with.

There are myriad technical problems with a coilgun to orbit system,
compared to a space elevator it's quite simple.
Except that you have no such space elevator or any viable prospects
that'll survive the test of time, not even as based upon conjectures,
much less of any prototype that should have been doable if it weren't
for the matter of physics and a touch of reality.

The likes of a coilgun launch away from LL-1 is essentially a done
deal, with few if any complications other than whatever a naysay wizard
might care to think of.

For being supposedly such a "space enthusiast", please explain to us
village idiots, as to why exactly are you being so naysay to what's
entirely doable and otherwise remaining as so gosh darn prosay to the
ESE fiasco that may never become a viable alternative?

It's as though I need to ask; are you actually whom you say you are?

BTW; I hope that your "space enthusiast" self should best appreciate
in the matter of fact that there has been and may still be the likes of
big-time other intelligent life upon Venus. In which case a mission
to/from Venus isn't nearly all that far away from what we currently
have a capability of doing, at least robotically. A VL2-TRACE or
TRACE-VL2 platform has also been doable for a good couple of decades.
Perhaps we should discuss where we have not been and of what has not
been happening, before we invest deeply into where we should be going
next.
-
Brad Guth

Brad Guth wrote:
Ross A. Finlayson,
You do realize that a magnetic-drive or "electromanetic gun" as
utilized for a launch of unlimited tonnage away from LL-1 is about as
good as life in the fast lane gets. Short of going for the backside of
using LL-2 where the linear exit distance can be unlimited, LL-1 is
actually pretty damn good if either the gravity acceleration boost of
Earth or of the moon were to be taken into account, and thus utilized
on behalf of picking up whatever extra velocity that can be safely
taken advantage of without hardly requiring an extra kj worth of
energy. Adding energy of the magnetic driver along with the gravity
boost factor and you're good to go, especially since your environment
at LL-1 is about as empty and as zero gravity as nearby space gets,
that plus you're already making 30 km/s to start with.

There are myriad technical problems with a coilgun to orbit system,
compared to a space elevator it's quite simple.
Except that you have no such space elevator or any viable prospects
that'll survive the test of time, not even as based upon conjectures,
much less of any prototype that should have been doable if it weren't
for the matter of physics and a touch of reality.

The likes of a coilgun launch away from LL-1 is essentially a done
deal, with few if any complications other than whatever a naysay wizard
might care to think of.

For being supposedly such a "space enthusiast", please explain to us
village idiots, as to why exactly are you being so naysay to what's
entirely doable and otherwise remaining as so gosh darn prosay to the
ESE fiasco that may never become a viable alternative?

It's as though I need to ask; are you actually whom you say you are?

BTW; I hope that your "space enthusiast" self should best appreciate
in the matter of fact that there has been and may still be the likes of
big-time other intelligent life upon Venus. In which case a mission
to/from Venus isn't nearly all that far away from what we currently
have a capability of doing, at least robotically. A VL2-TRACE or
TRACE-VL2 platform has also been doable for a good couple of decades.
Perhaps we should discuss where we have not been and of what has not
been happening, before we invest deeply into where we should be going
next.
-
Brad Guth

Hi,

I'm uncomfortable to answer that because I don't feel that way. Sure,
I have an ego, but am loathe to appear insensitive, as a defense
mechanism. As I've said, I think this group has lots of rocket
scientists, and egg, gear, and propellor heads, things that glow in the
dark, and sliderules.

The use of (electromagnetic) mass drivers is definitely a design staple
of speculative science fiction, design. That's due to their high
efficiency and light/heat/electrical/radio/mechanical energy conversion
simplicity, with presumably at some point general mass/energy
converstion, which occurs in the small in most reactions, that and the
factor that due to Newton's laws of physics the linear reaction against
mass is the only way to impart velocity, as is well-known according to
the widely understood fundamental laws of classical (non-relativistic)
mechanics in physics.

That energy to get that pod to space is basically invariant. Then, the
question arises as to the best ways to a) generate (liberate) the
energy and b) apply it to sending the pod to space, because all
manufacturing capability is currently on the Earth.

As a quite non-sequitur aside, I had an idea about the interstellar
(interplanetary) seed notion, what if the only energy sent is just
light and when this light beam hits suitable materials for Earth-style
life polymer generation it influences the random stochastic process
that might result in those things? The notion of sending a tight beam
to a pond of proto-organic muck on some unknown other-stellar
life-range planet is basically ridiculous.

The notion of basically a nanoassembler that operates on a lunar
regolith substrate to make basically fields of solar cells on the moon,
and other industrial components on the moon, pressurizable greenhouses
and so forth with supplemental solid state lighting for the cultivation
of familiar plant foodstuffs, has decreased on the laughability index
since Drexler's late 80's repopularization of the von Neuman machine.

If there's some kind of biased gluon splitter then basically that is
mass-energy conversion.

Energy and its availability and impact in generation is a very
important question in current events as are other points of resource
contention and so on and so forth. Energy as available from currently
known techniques include that which precurses from basically either a)
the Sun's reactions as beamed to Earth, or b) transuranic elements left
over on Earth from the creation of the solar system, and, c)
geothermal/geomagnetic activity. Slightly less "natural" techniques of
energy liberation and conversion (eg mass-energy conversion,
facilitated nuclear reactions, "zero point energy") offer the hope or
fantasy that energy will not always be a limited resource, but that
notion easily interferes with the Malthusian reality on this
anthropocentric Earth in our culture that it is not, and the necessity
to confront that problem where readily available energy is a necessity
of this crowded-house quite industrial era.

One asteroid with some many tons of say uranium could provide enough
fuel for say, pebble bed reactors that are basically, clean, safe, and
reliable, and, that Uranium can be dug right out of the surface of the
Earth.

Space: the final frontier (barring ascension, which is moot to human
existence). The universe is infinite.

The universe is infinite, and the more closely scientists measure the
masses of subatomic particles, the smaller they appear to be. Now: why
gauge invariance, I don't know. Perhaps, just because, or it's
intrinsic and it doesn't matter, and it's simply another "running"
"constant". Why are there three space dimensions? Not there are, why
are there. The universe is infinite and infinite sets are equivalent.

The (electromagnetic) mass driver is a staple of extra-atmospheric
low-gravity logistics, in theory, where basically speculation is theory
of operations largely untestable except in terms of well-known and
understood broadly applicable physical theories, not experiment. While
that is so, it's easy to construct a small-scale item of that sort, and
many millions of research dollars are and have gone into slightly
larger versions, on the boat.

Regards,

Ross F.

Why do you think it's not important that there has been other
significant intelligent life on Venus?
-
Brad Guth

Why are you afraid of our moon, and apparently terrified of what the
LSE-CM/ISS has to offer?
-
Brad Guth

Brad Guth wrote:
Why are you afraid of our moon, and apparently terrified of what the
LSE-CM/ISS has to offer?
-
Brad Guth

"That's not a moon!" -- Obi Wan Kenobi

Brad, there is insufficient information with regards to those notions.
It is not patently disprovable that "aliens" of basically a
sufficiently high tech level can do whatever they want, except to
undisprovable aliens of some yet higher level, leading obviously to
discussions about infinity.

That could be not just a moon. While basically a lifeless rock, as far
as is generally accepted, it's the nearest non-terrestrial body with
enough volume to allow many troglodytes to infest it in burrows (ref.
Barsoom). It also exposes a huge amount of surface area to sunlight,
and if the entire side of the moon opposite the Earth was covered with
solar power collecting panels then no one on Earth would be able to see
that, presuming undetectable kinetic effects of converting those
wave/particle photons to electricity or knietc energy in the form of
flywheels or using electricity to enrich radioactive materials directly
as a form of energy storage, which I do not understand or do not
explain.

So, the moon is there to convert it into the "space station".

There was a good thread that "Moon Base Baby Steps" last year or so
ago, obviously many have hypothesized seemingly workable plans of
basically moon colonization.

That starts with enough of an infrastructure to allow the transfer of
men and materials to the moon where enough time is spent on
non-survival activities that there is time for expansion and
cultivation of habitable areas for growth and expansion of
non-specialist human presence off of the Earth, towards tapping the
tremendous resources out there to help in diversification of
environment for the species.

There's suffering down the street, this pipe-dream talk is not
necessarily helping to solve quite more mundane problems as exist in
society today, in terms of people, in the environment, on Earth. The
escapist fantasy that this kind of talk helps sway opinion towards
proponence of the massive investment required for extraterrestrial
exploration, exploitation, and colonization, and that the growth
towards those tremendous resources will help solve those problems of
utility of all kinds, is only marginally undeniable.

Ha ha ha! Now that's some hot air.

Ross

Best ever joke of the day: "Moon Base baby steps"
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.s...ea8af36d182a49
They can't even establish LL-1, yet talking clean through their status
quo butts as though there's not hardly an insurmountable problem in the
world, nor with regards to getting onto and into the moon.

They haven't even so much as a prototype worth of any viable
fly-by-rocket demo lander.

Come to think of it, of what you admire and of your actions is what
clearly indicates that you're actually 100+% GW Bush, are you not?
-
Brad Guth

Brad Guth wrote:
So, the moon is there to convert it into the "space station".
I'll have to assume that you're suggesting robotics?

There was a good thread that "Moon Base Baby Steps" last year or so
ago, obviously many have hypothesized seemingly workable plans of
basically moon colonization.
That's a pathetic joke. Of what I'm suggesting isn't. What is your
problem?

You've got to be kidding, as there's no such hard or soft science that
has our salty moon as being all that usable from within.

What's wrong with our using LL-1?
-
Brad Guth

Liquid crystal diopter. Get it?

Now I must learn much about optics. Who do you think knows about
things like that? Who applies that knowledge?

Despeckling on the _front_ end, analog despeckling.

Everything's useful, in some way. For example, perhaps it's edible,
with a variety of active supplements, it may well be. The human can
actually reasonably survive on a very low calorie diet.

The cow: largely edible. Gee, I hope that doesn't start Hindu riots.
Also I know it won't.

Now, maybe if I drew some cartoons.... how about Godzilla, a
hurricane, tidal wave, meteor, sick ducks, nuclear bombs, confront a
kid wih a hammer.

Bugs Bunny and the Duck in a nursing home. Ha ha ha!

The scientists at NASA squeeze huge amounts of data and information and
useful knowledge from these space satellites. Many of the satellites
point _at_ Earth which means there's even _more_ information about
matters closer at hand.

Eyeball: liquid crystal diopter. Spherical droplet, pyramidimometric.

Ross

Wow! Ross A. Finlayson knows how to way-thy-dog while going Usenet
postal. I'm seriously impressed as all get out.

The scientists at NASA squeeze huge amounts of data and information and
useful knowledge from these space satellites. Many of the satellites
point _at_ Earth which means there's even _more_ information about
matters closer at hand.
And exactly how is this prosay-NASA infomercial contribution of your's
relating to LL-1 or to anything about our moon?

Is evidence exclusion and/or topic/subtopic avoidance really all that
essential?

Is LL-1 and/or that little matter related to life on Venus off-limits?

Are those MIB standing directly behind you?
-
Brad Guth