Shockless Orion Spaceship

Hello,
Reading a thread in RSFW I had to wonder how lot-tech an Orion
spaceship could be made. It seems that the biggest problem are the
huge shock absorbers needed on smaller designs.

Assuming you are building a design that does not do more than .1g how
large would it need to be so there is not need for shocks.

wrote in message
...
Hello,
Reading a thread in RSFW I had to wonder how lot-tech an Orion
spaceship could be made. It seems that the biggest problem are the
huge shock absorbers needed on smaller designs.

Assuming you are building a design that does not do more than .1g how
large would it need to be so there is not need for shocks.

I haven't been following the topic, but I've an
impression the Orion technology has evolved greatly
over the past several years. I *really like* the
idea of 10,000 tons of space ship out there with
people aboard looking at Jupiter (from outside
Jupiter's intense radiation belts) or better yet
going out toward Pluto and sending back pictures of
what's it like out there. (Well, big and dark but
in sight of the Oort belt.)

I thought the space elevator was the nicest idea
for getting out there, but they had some problems
and I haven't heard anything from them for a few
months. Can they restructure their program, find
more money, and restart? I sure hope so. The idea
that you stand on a big floating ocean platform, a
big diesel starts up and you see a bus rising from
the deck and going up into the sky, isn't nearly
as impressive as a Saturn 5 lifting off but it's a
lot more practical.

And I'm thinking about alternatives to the Orion,
because I don't think we'll see one lifting off
from here. There'd be the problem of making all
those little nukes, with a large eye to quality
control and to cranks of all varieties including
terrorists. So I'm not really interested in a
shockless Orion: my interest is how do we build
economically viable settlements off-Terra?

Cheers -- Martha Adams [sci.space.policy
2008 Feb 5]

On Feb 5, 2:12 pm, "Martha Adams" wrote:

So I'm not really interested in a
shockless Orion: my interest is how do we build
economically viable settlements off-Terra?

Orion should not be considered for getting up there unless you have an
emergency like say "Deep Impact" (and they still got it wrong.

Orion is useful for moving large numbers of people and heavy equipment
around once you are out there. I don't see really space settlement
taking place with just a few people at a time going somewhere.
Settlements that are going to be capable of meeting 90%+ of their long
term needs (trade hopefully to cover the rest) are going to need lots
of people with different skills and the equipment those skills need.

Starting a successful space settlement with 10 people coming in at a
time will take forever. Delivering the first 1,000-10,000 with all
the needed equipment stands a far better chance.

PS. I am not talking Earth orbit settlements, different rules come
into play there.

On Feb 4, 8:30 pm, wrote:
Hello,
Reading a thread in RSFW I had to wonder how lot-tech anOrion
spaceship could be made. It seems that the biggest problem are the
hugeshockabsorbers needed on smaller designs.

Assuming you are building a design that does not do more than .1g how
large would it need to be so there is not need for shocks.



Ulam's original design was shockless and unmanned , here's a copy of
the patent...

http://spacebombardment.blogspot.com...-inventor.html

The later designs used a multi-stage pneumatic shock system with a 30x
time-buffering factor followed by a 10x factor from the large piston
system.

The pulse duty cycle is about 3 ms per second, of 1 in 333. So if you
had a mission that required low acceleration or tough astronauts you
might be able to get by with a small shock system. For instance at .1
g you could use just the first, pneumatic shock section.

The other idea raised in the orginal design group was to build a small
shock absorber system inside to protect each vulnerable section.

wrote in message
...
On Feb 5, 2:12 pm, "Martha Adams" wrote:

So I'm not really interested in a
shockless Orion: my interest is how do we build
economically viable settlements off-Terra?

Orion should not be considered for getting up there unless you have an
emergency like say "Deep Impact" (and they still got it wrong.

Orion is useful for moving large numbers of people and heavy equipment
around once you are out there. I don't see really space settlement
taking place with just a few people at a time going somewhere.
Settlements that are going to be capable of meeting 90%+ of their long
term needs (trade hopefully to cover the rest) are going to need lots
of people with different skills and the equipment those skills need.

Starting a successful space settlement with 10 people coming in at a
time will take forever. Delivering the first 1,000-10,000 with all
the needed equipment stands a far better chance.

PS. I am not talking Earth orbit settlements, different rules come
into play there.

I can certainly see Orion as a heavy-mover from one orbital location
to another in space. There's an idea around -- the VASIMR electric
rocket -- that I see as an early developmental stage of a thermo
nuclear rocket. But the thing would be quite large, and technically,
we're much farther from developing the experimental setups in labs
today into a thing that can actually push a ship. The Orion, by
contrast, is a fairly simple idea, except for details around making
and firing a lot of little nukes.

There is something about living in space I think isn't getting the
attention here that it needs. It is, if you live in space, you
cannot carry up all your supplies over the long run: you have to
build an industrial base to generate your air, your food, your new
habs, and etc, *all that stuff*. This fact creates a problem:
*how big is the best size*? How many people? At what life quality
level? ??

Related to this is the problem of social psychology. I don't see
much, i.e., hardly at all, about social psychology. But space is
going to be special: you can't just go take a walk to cool off if
you're upset; the serious risk is the sealed hab with people
inside becomes a pressure cooker with people inside: a bad end to
this is almost certain. So how do you deal with these social
psychology issues -- before they arise?

I think the best person with answers has to be Robert Zubrin and
his analog base projects. The more I see of this, the more I see
that this isn't a Boy Scout camporee kind of thing. It is rather
a critical-path, must-do thing except we must do a whole lot more
of it. We can solve the oxygen problem, the water problem, the
sealed-hab problem, the power problem, the overall space economy
problem, but if we don't solve the *social psychology* problem,
then we see the end of space settlement before it even starts.
Which would leave the best-engineered Orion tug or ship with no
reason to exist.

Cheers, sort of -- Martha Adams [sci.space.policy 2008 Feb 6]