On Hydrogen Fuel

"H2-PV NOW" wrote in message
oups.com...

John Doe wrote:
H2-PV NOW wrote:
If you know you need fuel for return, taking H2O is the most compact
form, and considerably safer than than carrying around excess flamable
gases before you actually need the gases.

This is an interesting argument. Consider a voyage to Mars for instance.
Solar arrays could continually electrolyse water to provide not only O2
for cabin, but also O2 and H2 for propulsion. And the water would also
serve as shielding.

I guess I should have been more clear and said that my interests are
Spaceplanes SSTO to LEO. Going to Mars without a Lunar base is, well,
Lunacy. A lot of what you might want for a trip to Mars is
prepositioned on the moon, where the launch penalties are far lower.

My interests are not intellectual but actual. I want to enable the SSTO
and LEO habitat efforts and then GEO and L-5. A step by step effort
means that travelling to Mars is on a luxury liner, not in a cramped
tin can with your fellow's unwashed smelly feet drifting into your face
all night packed like sardines, slowly going insane.

Of course tastes differ, and some people actually prefer spending five
or more years of their life in conditions similar to a blend of
third-world prison cell and a homeless shelter with guys who don't
bathe too often.

Yes, water is a luxury item in space, and as of right now, Earth is the
only certain place to get any. A single gallon of it weighs 8 pounds,
and according to NASA, that makes a gallon of water worth $80,000 at
the International Space Station, wholesale, before tax and dealer prep.

Did you know that at the ISS they dump their **** overboard, at $80,000
a gallon for that too? You'd think with vacuum close at hand and
nightime temperatures below freezing, they could freeze-dry purify it.
Or daytime temperatures steam distill it. Maybe if they had to pay for
supplies lofted to orbit they might think better, but they have a rich
uncle sugar who pays all their bills, so they don't have to think.

However, you would still need storage for H2 and O2 for the major
propulsion events. For instance, for orbit insertion at Mars, you'd need
to have enough fuel stored to do the burns to do a quick orbit
insertion.

I guess you have a rich uncle sugar too...

So you'd need to be building up some O2 and H2 tanks slowly
over time so that they are full at the time you need to do a large burn
in a short amount of time (entering orbit, leaving orbit). The advantage
is that you'd re-use the tanks for multiple events isntead of carrying
tanks for each of the 4 big events (leave earth, arrive mars, leave
mars, arrive earth).

NOBODY is going to Mars like that. It's not just an Apollo mission writ
larger..


But if it takes you months to fill thsoe tanks by using solar power to
electrolyze water, then you need to have tanks capable of storing h2 and
O2 for months.

I could have sworn I answered that objection in the message above in
the thread. Let me look...
http://snipurl.com/mqu0
Yup, there it is...

The Homopolar Generator is portable, works everywhere in the universe
as far as I know, as far as anybody knows right now. You make a disk
out of a conductor and add a magnet layer to it and spin it. While
there is no gravity drag on it in zero-G it still hass mass which
requires power to spin it. However it need have no friction, which is
more serious than gravity drag, but then it has electrical reactance
which adds up over time. While you won't get a free lunch out of such a
thing you can get astronomical amounts of power (literally,
astronomical).

The reason you don'y know more about homopolar generators is because
they are used on hush-hush classified stuff like driving nuclear sub
propellers, or experimental railguns for tanks. Some applications are
proprietary because companies don't want to tell the competition how
they are doing what they do, like welder power supplies and
electrolyser units.

A quick Google search doesn't give me much hope that they even work, let
alone that they are being used in real world applications. Do you have
unbiased analyses or examples from somewhere?

H2-PV NOW wrote:
Look at that big external tank that the shuttle and two solid rocket
boosters are strapped on. Now WHERE INSIDE do you fit that?

In the 1960s, the British developped technology to allow large amounts
of usable volume inside relatively small external volumes. They built a
phone booth with that technology as a prototype to showcase that
technology. It was often seen on the BBC.

If NASA were willing/able to licence this technology from the BBC, it
would be able to fit a lot more stuff inside the cargo bay. (but I think
that MASS would still be a limiting factor.)

"John Doe" wrote in message ...
H2-PV NOW wrote:
Look at that big external tank that the shuttle and two solid rocket
boosters are strapped on. Now WHERE INSIDE do you fit that?

In the 1960s, the British developped technology to allow large amounts
of usable volume inside relatively small external volumes. They built a
phone booth with that technology as a prototype to showcase that
technology. It was often seen on the BBC.

If NASA were willing/able to licence this technology from the BBC, it
would be able to fit a lot more stuff inside the cargo bay. (but I think
that MASS would still be a limiting factor.)

There's no way they would be able to do it as obviously cheaply as the BBC
did :-)

H2-PV NOW wrote:
Look at that big external tank that the shuttle and two solid rocket
boosters are strapped on. Now WHERE INSIDE do you fit that?

Just kind of 'squish' it a little like a tube of toothpaste, shape it
into a nice triangle and use this tank, properly reinforced with
composite and titanium, as the vehicle itself. Put the cockpit and
crew quarters somewhere near the middle so that the fuel will stop
interstellar radiation.


You are misunderstanding what is meant by efficiency. H2 can only burn
when it finds O2. In the tiurbulent gas streams and combustion
environment it gets a very short amount of time to do that.

Theoretical efficiency is 100% if every molecule of H2 finds an O or O2
the mate up with. Because of the short latency time in the combustion
chamber that 100% fuel efficiency is not possible. "Rich" mixutes of
fuel and oxidizer means that there is extra fuel in the mix looking for
O2 partners and the chances of finding them are increased. LH2/LOX
rockets typically have double the H2 component, 4O per 1H, wasting 50%
of the fuel as unburned expelled molecules in the rexhaust stream.
Slush/LH2 only wastes half of that, for a ratio of 6O per 1H ratio.

The goal is not to conserve fuel, but to get sufficient power, in the
short time that it will do you any good. Efficiency, then is getting
all the power you possibly can in the short latency time that fuel and
oxidizer are lingering in the combustion chamber. If they burn
downstream you get no lift from that.

A completely redesigned engine is indicated here. The extra power of
virtually complete 'burn' should more than make up for increased
weight. And, it should be capable of dealing with 'atomic hydrogen'
pressures and difficulties.


I think you are over-estimating the virues of "atomic" hydrogen. Fuel
cells reduce hydrogen to atomic form through catalysis, and they do it
quietly, efficiently, and non-spectaularly. Fuel cells are not rocket
engines because of some magic property of atomic (non-molecularly
bonded) hydrogen.

Instead of trying to squeeze more power out of hydrogen as a fuel, stop
making it work so hard and accomplish more. The problem is NOT that
hydrogen is not giving lots of power already -- the problem is it is
being asked to lift 8 to 16 times its own weight in oxidizer from a
dead stop under the thickest part of the atmosphere.

That's the problem to solve: how do you avoid the weight and volume
penalty of carrying 8 to 16 times the fuel mass (of oxidizer) until you
are clear of 90% of the atmosphere? SKYLON and SABRE claim they are
solving that problem by air-breathing up until they are at Mach 5.5,
and filling their LOX tanks at high altitude from the thin air at high
speeds.

It's a very intelligent approach. Unfortunately the math is not that
clearly on their side. In order to chill air to LOX temperatures they
need additional LH2, which is colder, but not that much colder than
LOX. Air is 90% N2, which will drain heat from LH2 without contributing
any lift, so the N2 has to be jettisoned with it's chill subtracted
from the LH2. The process of seperating O2 and N2 has to occur very
fast or else too much LH2 is being lost, and the take-off LH2 load
begins to get too big and too heavy for the mission objective, which is
to reach LEO as a Single-Stage-To-Orbit vehicle.

The margins are slim. The allowable time window is narrow. The
technology must work perfectly and it must work extremely well.

For these reasons, plus the small cargo payload, SKYLON does not look
like a useful answer even if it does work as advertised.

The atmosphere seems such a long way up. At 300,000 feet the
atmosphere has all but disappeared. A rocket engine waverider will
reach 300,000 feet in about 2 1/2 minutes. Putting a lot of air
compression and molecular separation equipment on board for that 2 1/2
minutes is, I believe, contraindicated. Ditto for using an
airbreathing rocket engine -- which does not yet exist -- and suffering
a tradeoff decrease in power for just the first 2 1/2 minutes of
flight.

Nicer, easier to just put a good rocket on a triangle waverider. Time
to high orbit should not exceed 5 1/2 to 6 minutes. Attach a couple of
SRBs to the bottom of the waverider and additional speed should turn
'high orbit' into 'escape velocity'.


There's no such thing as "Leprechan Hydrogen", some magical hydrogen
that is different from the ordinary kind. Hydrogen as H2 is more
compact than hydrogen as H+H atomic non-molecular form. I don't care if
you freeze it into bricks, the molecular form has reduced in size from
atomic solitaires . . .


I believe that H2 'ice' is denser than LH2 and sinks in the H2
'liquid'.


Atomic H is very unstable and seeks the first form
of stability as H2. This is an exothermic chemical reaction that
liberates heat energy which causes a chain reaction that causes all the
H to form H2, but now highly excited by the thermal energy released.
Heat turns to kinetic energy which becomes expansion and pressure
energy and the end of that is ruptured tanks, death and destruction.


The same is said of LH2. But those problems were solved. I really
don't believe that 'atomic hydrogen' is all that much different.


For WHAT? So you can avoid looking at the real problem of trying to
lift too much oxidiser from a dead stop under the thickest atmosphere?

SKYLON is not the best answer, but it is far better than trying to lift
too much oxidizer in the first place.

The first place SKYLON can be improved is with much bigger wings. NASA
Helios prototype flew to 100,000 feet in 2001, the same altitude that
SKYLON picks up its oxygen supply, but the Helios got there on big
wings with 28 horsepower of electric motors. Those electric motors were
powered by solar cells,

There are several proposals to launch from 100,000 feet from platforms,
including an unmanned kite, and one proposal to launch from balloon.


Instead of launching from a balloon use helium and vacuum to greatly
reduce vehicle weight within the atmosphere. This means that gravity
will not only be reversing itself by helping with the airfoil but will
also be 'pushing' the vehicle up. This will show up in the
calculations as a greatly reduced dry weight yielding an extremely high
Mass Ratio.


Stop asking Hydrogen to lift backbreaking loads all on it's own. It
can't do more than physics allows and Leprechan Hydrogen found in a
box of Trix is not any kind of answer.

Shed the weight. Use the air for lift. [ Thumbs up! ] Take on the oxidiser at the last
altitude there still is plenty. Be already going fast when you load the
oxidizer. Begin going fast after 90% of the air is below you. Hydrogen
can do this much and no more. Settle for what the laws of physics says
is the limits.

The Shuttle costs $10,000 per pound of payload delivered. Accept it
that is too high a price to pay. "Atomic" hydrogen is not cheaper, but
it's more deadly, for no important gain in trading dihyfrogen for
monohydrogen.


According to NASA's Glenn Research Center there is a good deal of
difference. ISPs of 750+ are being touted about. In short, the
expected ISP is roughly double that of LH2.



So what? You pay $15,000 per pound to orbit instead of $10,000 and get
lots more crashes on TV to talk about.

The problem is not that Hydrogen is not powerful enough already. The
problem is we are loading it down with too many burdens to carry. If
you want $10 per pound payload to orbit you have to shed the weight,
you have to let the Earth's low altitude air carry some of the weight,
and you need to load the heaviest part of the fuel supply after the air
is very thin, and do this when you are already moving faster than
non-astronauts move through the air.

You are redesigned a fine fuel instead of redesigning a fat pig of a
ship. Even NASA has given up on the Shuttle. It never did what it was
created to do: frequent, regular, low-cost, routine flights to LEO with
a cargo equivilent to a highway truck load. Even if the external tank
was half as big, filled with twice as powerful Leprechan monohydrogen,
there would still be two solid rocket boosters strapped on. The LH2/LOX
external tank is not recovered, and it's cost is not the main barrier
from meeting the objectives: frequent, regular, low-cost, routine
flights to LEO with a cargo equivilent to a highway truck load.

The thing that is strapped to the tank is the problem, and nothing you
can do to that tank and its contents will change the thing strapped on
it.


The Shuttle was fine for it's time, but that was then and this is now.
The waverider triangle with enormous fuel capacity, vacuum panels,
composite wrapped tanks, should be capable of putting 250,000 pounds in
orbit or, with the use of SRBs, take the same weight to the Moon or
beyond.

New fuels, hydrogen based, may greatly increase 'thrust to weight'
and/or 'burn time'. These new fuels, therefore, may make inexpensive
interplanetary missions doable with 8 years. And, I believe it to be
possible new fuels or not. It is possible to achieve 7 1/2 minutes of
burn time with conventional hydrogen tanks and rockets. Use a couple
of SRBs as RATO units and Outer Space is possible.


tomcat

John Doe wrote:
H2-PV NOW wrote:
Look at that big external tank that the shuttle and two solid rocket
boosters are strapped on. Now WHERE INSIDE do you fit that?

In the 1960s, the British developped technology to allow large amounts
of usable volume inside relatively small external volumes. They built a
phone booth with that technology as a prototype to showcase that
technology. It was often seen on the BBC.

If NASA were willing/able to licence this technology from the BBC, it
would be able to fit a lot more stuff inside the cargo bay. (but I think
that MASS would still be a limiting factor.)


There is, I suspect, a good deal of 'classified' technology available.
The black programs people, however, do not want to release it. So, we
must do with what we have and we have some mighty good technology
available.

Rocketdyne's SSME (Space Shuttle Main Engine) can give you 450,000
pounds of thrust with a 10,000 pound engine. The mechanics of using
LH2 and LOX has been developed and 'proven' workable.

Neither vacuum nor helium are classified. Both are very light, with
vacuum weighing nothing at all! But, for some unexplained reason
engineers don't use them much. Perhaps it is because they weren't told
that they are 'materials' just like aluminum and reinforced carbon
carbon. And, the idea of using 'air pressure' as a stiffining,
strengthening agent, well 'air' is a bit too light for them to think of
too. Why our engineers think heavy, heavy, heavy, I don't know. Air
is a material isn't it? Well, I think so.

It is relatively easy to laminate a composite onto a metal surface thus
gaining the elastic strength of the metal along with the extreme
strength and heat resistance of the laminated composite. This
technology didn't exist in the early 70's. The best they could think
of was aluminum and niconol x. Pure composite, by the way, involves
using molds which in themselves require painstaking design. Fiberglass
boats are made this way. It results in considerable strength but is
time consuming and expensive.

In the early 70's titanium was in short supply, and therefore very
expensive, and could not be easily worked. Turning titanium, back
then, into hull plates was next to impossible. So, NASA went with
aluminum hull plates. Aluminum softens at 750 deg. F. Titanium
softens at 2500 deg. F. Quite a difference! Niconol x is good to
about 1000 deg. F and officially 'melts' at 1200 deg. F.

So, today, titanium is the metal of choice, not aluminum. Also,
tungsten carbide can be used -- sparingly -- in certain heat critical
areas to back up RCC (Reinforced Carbon Carbon).

In short, we have the materials and know how available today to build a
waverider triangle replacement for the Shuttle. In fact, we can build
a interplanetary spaceplane using a couple of SRBs (Solid Rocket
Boosters) as RATO units. Today, ceramic can be bonded at the molecular
level to metal. So, tile problems can easily be solved.

It just comes down to to having the will to rocket into Outer Space.
The technology is just sitting there waiting.


tomcat

John Doe wrote:
H2-PV NOW wrote:
Look at that big external tank that the shuttle and two solid rocket
boosters are strapped on. Now WHERE INSIDE do you fit that?

In the 1960s, the British developped technology to allow large amounts
of usable volume inside relatively small external volumes. They built a
phone booth with that technology as a prototype to showcase that
technology. It was often seen on the BBC.

If NASA were willing/able to licence this technology from the BBC, it
would be able to fit a lot more stuff inside the cargo bay. (but I think
that MASS would still be a limiting factor.)

Liquid Hydrogen has a VOLUME of 14.12 liters per kilogram. The mass
stays one kilogram regardless of gas, liquid, slush or solid. The big
external tank is the smallest they can make to hold that volume of
LH2-Slush/LOX. It doesn't matter to the volume if you make it a sphere,
make it a cylinder, or rectangular like a phone booth. That only makes
a difference to the surface-to-volume ratio and the strength of
materials containing the pressures inside.

The SPHERE is the smallest surface to enclosed possible in nature.
NOTHING the Brits do can change that fact. If you don't understand the
simplist principles of geometry you are drummed out of the astronaut
corps. You've been spending too much time out the airlock without a
helmet, bubba.

tomcat wrote:
John Doe wrote:
H2-PV NOW wrote:
Look at that big external tank that the shuttle and two solid rocket
boosters are strapped on. Now WHERE INSIDE do you fit that?

In the 1960s, the British developped technology to allow large amounts
of usable volume inside relatively small external volumes. They built a
phone booth with that technology as a prototype to showcase that
technology. It was often seen on the BBC.

If NASA were willing/able to licence this technology from the BBC, it
would be able to fit a lot more stuff inside the cargo bay. (but I think
that MASS would still be a limiting factor.)


There is, I suspect, a good deal of 'classified' technology available.
The black programs people, however, do not want to release it. So, we
must do with what we have and we have some mighty good technology
available.

Rocketdyne's SSME (Space Shuttle Main Engine) can give you 450,000
pounds of thrust with a 10,000 pound engine. The mechanics of using
LH2 and LOX has been developed and 'proven' workable.

Without fuel it has zero thrust for 10,000 pounds paperweight. How much
fuel do you need, and how big is that much? How much does the fuel tank
weigh, and how much fuel does it cost to raise the tank, than how much
bigger must the tank be to add the fuel just to lift the fuel that
lifts the tank?


Neither vacuum nor helium are classified. Both are very light, with
vacuum weighing nothing at all! But, for some unexplained reason
engineers don't use them much.

The reasons are explained. They are "classified" as code-name "basic
physics", and only people with fundamental math skills are allowed in
the classes where these things are taught. There are "Black
installations" code-named "universities" where only specially tested
applicants are admitted to learn these secrets of the universe. The
rest of the people get hints and glimpses but facts are so jumbled that
they can never figure it out on their own.

Using Helium for rocket fuels is so classified that it is not even
taught at top secret installations like area 51 or Harvard or MIT. The
secrets have been sent into the future so that only future people have
access to this knowledge


The rest of the stuff is so hush-hush that Black SUVs will come take
you to Gitmo for waterboarding lessons if you discuss them in public.
Don't mention "air-stiffened" helium-powered rockets too often, or
"they" will give you the full alien abductee anal-probe treatment.

"H2-PV NOW" writes:

John Doe wrote:
H2-PV NOW wrote:
Look at that big external tank that the shuttle and two solid rocket
boosters are strapped on. Now WHERE INSIDE do you fit that?

In the 1960s, the British developped technology to allow large amounts
of usable volume inside relatively small external volumes. They built a
phone booth with that technology as a prototype to showcase that
technology. It was often seen on the BBC.

If NASA were willing/able to licence this technology from the BBC, it
would be able to fit a lot more stuff inside the cargo bay. (but I think
that MASS would still be a limiting factor.)

Liquid Hydrogen has a VOLUME of 14.12 liters per kilogram. The mass
stays one kilogram regardless of gas, liquid, slush or solid. The big
external tank is the smallest they can make to hold that volume of
LH2-Slush/LOX. It doesn't matter to the volume if you make it a sphere,
make it a cylinder, or rectangular like a phone booth. That only makes
a difference to the surface-to-volume ratio and the strength of
materials containing the pressures inside.

The SPHERE is the smallest surface to enclosed possible in nature.
NOTHING the Brits do can change that fact. If you don't understand the
simplist principles of geometry you are drummed out of the astronaut
corps. You've been spending too much time out the airlock without a
helmet, bubba.

H2-PV, John's not speaking of normal science, but of radical
discoveries (TM Spaward Ho!) where you use the fifth dimension to
store much more material than would fit in 3D. More over, since all
the material stored in the fifth dimension doesn't move, you spare a
lot of energy.

--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Small brave carnivores
Kill pine cones and mosquitoes
Fear vacuum cleaner

c-bee1 wrote:
"H2-PV NOW" wrote in message
oups.com...

But if it takes you months to fill thsoe tanks by using solar power to
electrolyze water, then you need to have tanks capable of storing h2 and
O2 for months.

I could have sworn I answered that objection in the message above in
the thread. Let me look...
http://snipurl.com/mqu0
Yup, there it is...

The Homopolar Generator is portable, works everywhere in the universe
as far as I know, as far as anybody knows right now. You make a disk
out of a conductor and add a magnet layer to it and spin it. While
there is no gravity drag on it in zero-G it still hass mass which
requires power to spin it. However it need have no friction, which is
more serious than gravity drag, but then it has electrical reactance
which adds up over time. While you won't get a free lunch out of such a
thing you can get astronomical amounts of power (literally,
astronomical).

The reason you don'y know more about homopolar generators is because
they are used on hush-hush classified stuff like driving nuclear sub
propellers, or experimental railguns for tanks. Some applications are
proprietary because companies don't want to tell the competition how
they are doing what they do, like welder power supplies and
electrolyser units.

A quick Google search doesn't give me much hope that they even work, let
alone that they are being used in real world applications. Do you have
unbiased analyses or examples from somewhere?

Of course Homopolar Generators work. Wikipedia has a photo of a lawn
sculpture made out of one which worked famously:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homopolar_generator

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:H...ar_anu-MJC.jpg
The remains of the ANU 500MJ generator

The worlds largest (500MJ) homopolar generator, was built by Sir Mark
Oliphant at the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering,
Australian National University. It was used as an extremely high
current source for experimentation from 1962 until its disassembly in
1986. It was capable of supplying currents of up to 2 megaamperes.

Called a "Faraday Disc" in honor of the man who invented them, there
are assorted other names sometimes used, commonly "Unipolar Generator".

Amazon.com has five books offered on the subject:
http://snipurl.com/munn
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/se...r%20generators

One of the five Amazon.com listings, http://snipurl.com/munu ,
references the ANU500 at Canberra illustrated on Wikipedia. You have to
be a "conspiracy theory" nut to think that all of these are faking the
existence of a non-existent thing.

The Canberra Homopole was used in railgun experiments, which helps
explain why there isn't so much actually on the web. People who can
afford to work with one larger than Radio Shack parts are signed to
non-disclosure contracts with their employers. Considering the
reputation for torque produced by a HOMOPOLAR MOTOR (the reverse of a
Homopolar Generator) used in propulsion of nuclear submarines, you get
another idea why the information is not public.

Looking up Homopolar AND Electrolysis in the US Patent and Trademarks
Office produced these patents:
6,864,596 Hydrogen production from hydro power
6,841,893 Hydrogen production from hydro power
6,753,635 Management of contact spots between an electrical brush and
substrate
4,485,152 Superconducting type II palladium alloy hydride-palladium
hydride composites
4,465,964 Energy conversion system
4,184,084 Wind driven gas generator
3,998,205 Solar reactor steam generator method and apparatus
3,942,975 Method and apparatus for reducing matter to constituent
elements and separating one of the elements from the other elements

Here's some of the most recent of 335 patents containing keywords
Homopolar AND Motor...
1 6,995,646 Transformer with voltage regulating means
2 6,984,947 Apparatus and method for adjusting components of an
optical or mechanical system
3 6,984,946 Method for monitoring and controlling traction motors in
locomotives
4 6,981,378 Method of and apparatus for producing uninterruptible
power
5 6,972,505 Rotating electrical machine having high-voltage stator
winding and elongated support devices supporting the winding and method
for manufacturing the same
6 6,970,063 Power transformer/inductor
7 6,949,855 Transverse flux electrical machine with toothed rotor
8 6,949,490 High-TC superconducting ceramic oxide products and
macroscopic and microscopic methods of making the same
9 6,948,578 Motor in wheel electric drive system
10 6,946,768 Pole winding pattern having parallel wound paths
11 6,940,380 Transformer/reactor
12 6,936,947 Turbo generator plant with a high voltage electric
generator
13 6,919,664 High voltage plants with electric motors
14 6,906,447 Rotating asynchronous converter and a generator device
15 6,897,587 Energy storage flywheel with minimum power magnetic
bearings and motor/generator

There are 38 patents for Homopolar AND Railgun:
1 6,000,479 Slimhole drill system
2 5,856,630 High velocity electromagnetic mass launcher having an
ablation resistant insulator
3 5,844,161 High velocity electromagnetic mass launcher having an
ablation resistant insulator
4 5,540,134 Alternator driven electromagnetic launching system
5 5,530,309 Homopolar machine
6 5,483,863 Electromagnetic launcher with advanced rail and barrel
design
7 5,435,225 Omni-directional railguns
8 5,375,504 Augmented hypervelocity railgun with single energy
source and rail segmentation
9 5,360,999 Explosively actuated thermal opening switch
10 5,297,468 Railgun with advanced rail and barrel design
11 5,285,763 Symmetrical railgun
12 5,285,699 Reinforced composite flywheels and shafts
13 5,210,452 Symmetric armature for high current, air-core pulsed
alternators
14 5,189,244 Method and apparatus for spinning projectiles fired
from a rail gun
15 5,183,957 Method and construction for control of current
distribution in railgun armatures
16 5,090,292 Short-circuiting switch and electromagnetic projectile
launcher incorporating the switch
17 5,081,901 Electromagnetic launcher with muzzle velocity
adjustment
18 5,076,136 Electromagnetic launcher system
19 4,953,441 Method and construction for control of current
distribution in railgun armatures
20 4,935,708 High energy pulse forming generator
21 4,934,243 Electromagentic projectile launcher
22 4,924,750 Electromagnetic launcher with improved current
commutating switch performance
23 4,884,489 High performance electromagnetic railgun launcher
24 4,870,888 Traveling wave accelerators
25 4,858,511 Superconductive levitated armatures for
electromagnetic launchers
26 4,816,709 Energy density homopolar generator
27 4,795,113 Electromagnetic transportation system for manned space
travel
28 4,760,769 High-power, rapid fire railgun
29 4,718,322 Multiple resonant railgun power supply
30 4,718,321 Repetitive resonant railgun power supply
31 4,706,542 Low voltage arc formation in railguns
32 4,621,577 Miniature plasma accelerating detonator and method of
detonating insensitive materials
33 4,621,561 Switch for inductive energy store transfer circuit
34 H123 Self-switching electromagnetic launcher for repetitive
operation
35 4,571,468 Inductive store opening switch
36 4,437,383 Muzzle arc suppressor for electromagnetic projectile
launcher
37 4,423,662 Muzzle arc suppressor for electromagnetic projectile
launcher
38 4,343,223 Multiple stage railgun


And even a starship patent using Homopolar Generation:
http://snipurl.com/muoo
http://v3.espacenet.com/origdoc?CY=e...05c58d45ecbc63

H2-PV NOW wrote:
Of course Homopolar Generators work. Wikipedia has a photo of a lawn
sculpture made out of one which worked famously:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homopolar_generator

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:H...ar_anu-MJC.jpg
The remains of the ANU 500MJ generator

The worlds largest (500MJ) homopolar generator, was built by Sir Mark
Oliphant at the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering,
Australian National University. It was used as an extremely high
current source for experimentation from 1962 until its disassembly in
1986. It was capable of supplying currents of up to 2 megaamperes.

Called a "Faraday Disc" in honor of the man who invented them, there
are assorted other names sometimes used, commonly "Unipolar Generator".


You don't need Faraday Discs or Homopolar Generators, just hydrogen,
lox, titanium, composite, SSMEs, and a SRB or two.

New things that make SpaceShips possible:

Atomic Hydrogen
Carbon Nanotube Fabric
Carbon Fiber/Graphite Epoxy Composite
Slush Tanks
Vacuum to improve Mass Ratio
Molecular bonding of ceramic to metal
Air Spikes
Magnetic Field Generators
Titanium in all shapes and sizes
Polyethelene for radiation shielding
Waveriders as a proven concept
Pyrex Glass
Lexan Polycarbonate
Compressed Air
Liquid Helium
Lightweight Electronics
Space Shuttle Main Engines
SRBs
Lightweight Nuclear Reactors
Corelle Ceramic
Silica Tiles
High Res LCD Screens
Reinforced Carbon Carbon


These are all things that were either unknown or incapable of being
mass manufactured back in the 70's when SSTOs were first considered.
Technology of that era resulted in the Space Shuttle which has, in my
opinion, done well despite some tile problems. Today, however, we are
capable of SSTP (Single Stage To the Planets).

Actually, however, there are a couple of exceptions: Corelle Ceramic
(used in Ballistic Nose Cones), Silica Tiles (used on the Space
Shuttle), and RCC (Reinforced Carbon Carbon) also used on the Shuttle.
I included these older things because they are still of use for future
space vehicles. A few other things such as Compressed Air and Helium
were around but not used in the ways they could be used for future
vehicles. Vacuum was around too, but almost totally ignored by
engineers.

Making SpaceShips today is a 'slam dunk' and a few brilliant engineers
are onto it. But with somewhat limited funds they are forced to move
carefully with their money into the parabolic and sub-orbital realm.
Congress should authorize free 'no interest, easy payback' loans for
these daring entrepreneurs. That way when NASA finally launches it's
Moon Rocket the Astronauts will have a nice warm Hex Dome on the Moon
waiting for them, compliments of American Free Enterprise.


tomcat