Cheaper way to space!? A supergun.

George William Herbert wrote:
garfangle wrote:
(George William Herbert) wrote:
The condition of the human body exposed to nearly 5,300 Gs for
a seventh of a second is "red goo on back wall of space capsule".

My bad...though couldn't we develop some anti-G shield?
snip
There are things that can be done to increase human G-tolerance.
Lying flat gets you to 20+ transient Gs without serious problems,
snip
As others have pointed out, anything mechanical that you can
harden a lot (artillery shells take tens of thousands or 100,000 Gs)
snip
People... should ride gentler things.

If cryogenics is finally gotten working, then that incidentally solves
that problem, at least a bit.
And it's at least not forbidden by the current laws of physics that
we know, just lots and lots of apparently insoluble chemistry and biology
problems.

I'd imagine a astronicle could cope with at least a thousand G.

--
http://inquisitor.i.am/ | | Ian Stirling.
---------------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------
If you've been pounding nails with your forehead for years, it may feel strange
the first time somebody hands you a hammer.
But that doesn't mean that you should strap the hammer to a headband just to
give your skull that old familiar jolt. -- Wayne Throop, during the `TCL Wars'

Andrew Higgins wrote:
[...]
The engineering of building a larger light gas gun (larger than SHARP)
is *extremely* challenging. The 40 ton breech block of SHARP was the
largest forging of high-cobalt, high-nickel steel ever attempted.

It seems likely, to me, that EDM would replace forging for
larger structures.

There are a few 13,000 fps (~4km/s)
powder guns around today, and I've heard of plans for a 5km/s one

Reference, please. You can prove on gasdynamics grounds that a powder
gun can *never* exceed 3 km/s muzzle velocity.

I think that's not true with a travelling charge;
but nobody has made reliable travelling charge guns.

I'm not familiar with 4 km/s conventional guns either,
though, and would like to see a reference.


-george william herbert

Ian Stirling wrote:
If cryogenics is finally gotten working, then that incidentally solves
that problem, at least a bit.
And it's at least not forbidden by the current laws of physics that
we know, just lots and lots of apparently insoluble chemistry and biology
problems.

I'd imagine a astronicle could cope with at least a thousand G.

Frozen stuff is *brittle*...


-george william herbert

George William Herbert wrote:

I think that's not true with a travelling charge;
but nobody has made reliable travelling charge guns.

Has anyone mentioned ram accelerators in this thread?

Paul

Ian Stirling wrote:

George William Herbert wrote:
garfangle wrote:
(George William Herbert) wrote:
The condition of the human body exposed to nearly 5,300 Gs for
a seventh of a second is "red goo on back wall of space capsule".

My bad...though couldn't we develop some anti-G shield?
snip
There are things that can be done to increase human G-tolerance.
Lying flat gets you to 20+ transient Gs without serious problems,
snip
As others have pointed out, anything mechanical that you can
harden a lot (artillery shells take tens of thousands or 100,000 Gs)
snip
People... should ride gentler things.

If cryogenics is finally gotten working, then that incidentally solves
that problem, at least a bit.

'Cryonics,' not 'cryogenics.'
http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20020718.html

And it's at least not forbidden by the current laws of physics that
we know, just lots and lots of apparently insoluble chemistry and biology
problems.

True, but....

I'd imagine a astronicle could cope with at least a thousand G.

Why?

There's already a signifigant problem with microcracking in the
bodies of suspended cryonics patients:

http://www.benbest.com/cryonics/cooling.html

http://keithlynch.net/cryonet/28/92.html

The hope is that nanothecnology or something similar can make the
repairs in the future, but one would prefer to minimize them to begin
with. Why also subject the body to accelerations that would encourage
this?

Paul F. Dietz wrote:
George William Herbert wrote:
I think that's not true with a travelling charge;
but nobody has made reliable travelling charge guns.

Has anyone mentioned ram accelerators in this thread?

Andrew Higgins posted in the thread, so I think it's
got to have been part of some included library function
or something.


-george william herbert

I tend to agree but, not to the point of entirely excluding a format
of flinging stuff into space, such as blasting nuclear fuel pellets
into orbit could become the lesser of evils, and not 1% the
alternative cost.

Actually, by far the cheapest and safest way into space, as well as
for being the utmost environmentally friendly by creating the least
CO2, is via compact robotic missions like TRACE or perhaps TRACE-II,
and of those going to/from the sorts of places that actually matter to
the greater humanity of Earth.

I've posted on the subject of doing far more robotics, such as
affording 100 of those per the cost of a single manned mission (that's
including anything using the shuttle for launch and/or servicing).

However, if you folks must insist upon doing things the hard and
expensive way, not to mention most risky, via manned missions, then I
do believe there's a reasonable back-door way out of this fiasco or
perhaps toilet. It's a little somewhat spendy, but not nearly as God
offal spendy as any future Earth Space Elevator (ESE) fiasco that's at
best decades down the road of carnage at a truly horrific price tag.
Although, a perfectly good means to many ends has been and is still
obtainable and, it could be as all American as apple pie.

I've gotten myself into this other ongoing means to an end, as for
assisting others like perhaps yourself intent upon getting folks
to/from Venus, or at least Venus L2 (VL2), as well as for the likes of
Mars and just about any planet that's within our travel speed/time
continuum. As for one testy thing, no matters what, you'll always be
in need of some rather serious mass quantities of radiation shielding
and, for that topic I've got just the ticket; the LSE Moon Dirt
Express.

Hard to imagine but, there's been some learning going on, this being
in spite of those wizards of pro-everything Apollo and of absolutely
anti-everything other under the sun.

This is almost getting downright ridiculous, as for doing a lunar
space elevator seems to technically win hands down time after time.
This following page/link is merely about our safely accommodating the
LSE lobby, or elevator sub-lobby, that's if we wanted to take some
limited advantage of what the lunar thermal signature has to offer.
This is where I've learned from others that our moon is far from being
a dead horse, in fact it's somewhat toasty hot in the center, such as
830°C, as well as (wizard Jay will not want to hear this) internally
more radioactive than Earth. Is this good news or what?

LSE Lobby: http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-lse-lobby.htm


Regards, Brad Guth / IEIS~GASA / the discovery of other LIFE on Venus
Besides way too many other topics, here's other ongoing LSE UPDATES:

LSE-CM/ISS Flywheels: http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-se-flywheels.htm
PRO/CON of ESE/LSE: http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-ese-lse.htm
Basalt tether GPa update: http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-lse-gpa.htm
What stinking insurance?
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-ese-invincible.htm
Your basic lunar space elevator:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-cm-ccm-01.htm
This is for the ESE huggers cult:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-edwards-se.htm
Another LSE delivery effort:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-cm-ccm-elevator.htm

Joann Evans wrote in message ...
"E.R." wrote:
May I submit that it will be cheaper, easier and more profitable to
drop the stuff (from the moon, for example) than to launch the same
material up?

~er

Depends on what the stuff is. It might be possible to, say, fire some
carefully cushioned (insulated and suspended neutrally bouyant in
water?) circut boards that a space station needs *now,* or medicines
nedded in orbit *now* or other things easily produced on Earth into
LEO...but there are no semiconductor or pharmaceutical plants on the
Moon.

No, there aren't any phram plants or semicondutor plants on the moon.
Yet.

And, as I (and it's not original with me) suggested earlier, this may
be the preferred way to get certain moderately bulky materials like
radioactive waste *off* Earth. The Moon doesn't help here either, except
possibly as the final repository of same.

I wonder if the amount of stuff that could be fired out of a gun would
pay back the money spent to build and maintain it?

~er

Joann Evans wrote in message ...
"E.R." wrote:
May I submit that it will be cheaper, easier and more profitable to
drop the stuff (from the moon, for example) than to launch the same
material up?

~er

Depends on what the stuff is. It might be possible to, say, fire some
carefully cushioned (insulated and suspended neutrally bouyant in
water?) circut boards that a space station needs *now,* or medicines
nedded in orbit *now* or other things easily produced on Earth into
LEO...but there are no semiconductor or pharmaceutical plants on the
Moon.

No, there aren't any phram plants or semicondutor plants on the moon.
Yet.

And, as I (and it's not original with me) suggested earlier, this may
be the preferred way to get certain moderately bulky materials like
radioactive waste *off* Earth. The Moon doesn't help here either, except
possibly as the final repository of same.

I wonder if the amount of stuff that could be fired out of a gun would
pay back the money spent to build and maintain it?

~er

Joann Evans wrote:
There's already a signifigant problem with microcracking in the
bodies of suspended cryonics patients:
http://www.benbest.com/cryonics/cooling.html
http://keithlynch.net/cryonet/28/92.html
The hope is that nanothecnology or something similar can make the
repairs in the future, but one would prefer to minimize them to
begin with. Why also subject the body to accelerations that would
encourage this?

Right. People can't take high accelerations because different parts
of one's body are of different density, and because some of the parts
aren't particularly strong (i.e. crush resistant). Freezing doesn't
change that.
--
Keith F. Lynch - - http://keithlynch.net/
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