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SSTO's would have made possible Arthur C. Clarke's vision of 2001.
Just saw this article on The Space Review discussing a recently
discovered copy of a 1963 TV interview with Arthur C. Clarke: The perils of spaceflight prediction. by Jeff Foust Monday, December 5, 2011 http://thespacereview.com/article/1981/1 In the interview Clarke gives some predictions of the future of space exploration. From the standpoint of the beginnings of human spaceflight, he suggests a manned Mars mission within 25 years, which would have been by 1988, and Moon bases by the end of the 20th century. This turned out to be too optimistic. But as I argued below, this could indeed have been technically and even financially feasible: if it had been recognized that reusable SSTO's are possible and in fact aren't even really hard, we would have had routine, private spaceflight by the 1970s. Such wide spread, frequent launches using reusable spacecraft would have cut the costs to space by two orders of magnitude, at least. This would then have made the costs of lunar bases and manned Mars missions well within the affordability range. The important point is that the required high efficiency engines and lightweight stages for SSTO's already exist and have for decades. All that is required is to marry the two together. An expendable test SSTO could be produced, like, tomorrow. Just this one simple, cheap test would finally make clear the fact that routine spaceflight is already doable. Bob Clark ================================================== ========== Newsgroups: sci.space.policy, sci.astro, sci.physics, sci.space.history, rec.arts.sf.science From: Robert Clark Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 09:28:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: SSTO's would have made possible Arthur C. Clarke's vision of 2001. Space Travel: The Path to Human Immortality? Space exploration might just be the key to human beings surviving mass genocide, ecocide or omnicide. July 24, 2009 "On December 31st, 1999, National Public Radio interviewed the futurist and science fiction genius Arthur C. Clarke. Since the author had forecast so many of the 20th Century's most fundamental developments, the NPR correspondent asked Clarke if anything had happened in the preceding 100 years that he never could have anticipated. 'Yes, absolutely,' Clarke replied, without a moment's hesitation. 'The one thing I never would have expected is that, after centuries of wonder and imagination and aspiration, we would have gone to the moon ... and then stopped.'" http://www.alternet.org/news/141518/...n_immortality/ I remember thinking when I first saw 2001 as a teenager and could appreciate it more, I thought it was way too optimistic. We could never have huge rotating space stations and passenger flights to orbit and Moon bases and nuclear-powered interplanetary ships by then. That's what I thought and probably most people familiar with the space program thought that. And I think I recall Clarke saying once that the year 2001 was selected as more a rhetorical, artistic flourish rather than being a prediction, 2001 being the year of the turn of the millennium (no, it was NOT in the year 2000.) However, I've now come to the conclusion those could indeed have been possible by 2001. I don't mean the alien monolith or the intelligent computer, but the spaceflights shown in the film. It all comes down to SSTO's. As I argued previously [1] these could have led and WILL lead to the price to orbit coming down to the $100 per kilo range. The required lightweight stages existed since the 60's and 70's for kerosene with the Atlas and Delta stages, and for hydrogen with the Saturn V upper stages. And the high efficiency engines from sea level to vacuum have existed since the 70's with the NK-33 for kerosene, and with the SSME for hydrogen. The kerosene SSTO's could be smaller and cheaper and would make possible small orbital craft in the price range of business jets, at a few tens of millions of dollars. These would be able to carry a few number of passengers/crew, say of the size of the Dragon capsule. But in analogy with history of aircraft these would soon be followed by large passenger craft. However, the NK-33 was of Russian design, while the required lightweight stages were of American design. But the 70's was the time of detente, with the Apollo-Soyuz mission. With both sides realizing that collaboration would lead to routine passenger spaceflight, it is conceivable that they could have come together to make possible commercial spaceflight. There is also the fact that for the hydrogen fueled SSTO's, the Americans had both the required lightweight stages and high efficiency engines, though these SSTO's would have been larger and more expensive. So it would have been advantageous for the Russians to share their engine if the American's shared their lightweight stages. For the space station, many have soured on the idea because of the ISS with the huge cost overruns. But Bigelow is planning on "space hotels" derived from NASA's Transhab[2] concept. These provide large living space at lightweight. At $100 per kilo launch costs we could form large space stations from the Transhabs linked together in modular fashion, financed purely from the tourism interests. Remember the low price to orbit allows many average citizens to pay for the cost to LEO. The Transhab was developed in the late 90's so it might be questionable that the space station could be built from them by 2001. But remember in the film the space station was in the process of being built. Also, with large numbers of passengers traveling to space it seems likely that inflatable modules would have been thought of earlier to house the large number of tourists who might want a longer stay. For the extensive Moon base, judging from the Apollo missions it might be thought any flight to the Moon would be hugely expensive. However, Robert Heinlein once said: once you get to LEO you're half way to anywhere in the Solar System. This is due to the delta-V requirements for getting out of the Earth's gravitational compared to reaching escape velocity. It is important to note then SSTO's have the capability once refueled in orbit to travel to the Moon, land, and return to Earth on that one fuel load. Because of this there would be a large market for passenger service to the Moon as well. So there would be a commercial justification for Bigelow's Transhab motels to also be transported to the Moon [3]. Initially the propellant for the fuel depots would have to be lofted from Earth. But we recently found there was water in the permanently shadowed craters on the Moon [4]. Use of this for propellant would reduce the cost to make the flights from LEO to the Moon since the delta-V needed to bring the propellant to LEO from the lunar surface is so much less than that needed to bring it from the Earth's surface to LEO. This lunar derived propellant could also be placed in depots in lunar orbit and at the Lagrange points. This would make easier flights to the asteroids and the planets. The flights to the asteroids would be especially important for commercial purposes because it is estimated even a small sized asteroid could have trillions of dollars worth of valuable minerals [5]. The availability of such resources would make it financially profitable to develop large bases on the Moon for the sake of the propellant. Another possible resource was recently discovered on the Moon: uranium [6]. Though further analysis showed the surface abundance to be much less than in Earth mines, it may be that there are localized concentrations just as there are on Earth. Indeed this appears to be the case with some heavy metals such as silver and possibly gold that appear to be concentrated in some polar craters on the Moon [7]. So even if the uranium is not as abundant as in Earth mines, it may be sufficient to be used for nuclear-powered spacecraft. Then we wouldn't have the problem of large amounts of nuclear material being lofted on rockets on Earth. The physics and engineering of nuclear powered rockets have been understood since the 60's [8]. The main impediment has been the opposition to launching large amounts of radioactive material from Earth into orbit above Earth. Then we very well could have had nuclear-powered spacecraft launching from the Moon for interplanetary missions, especially when you consider the financial incentive provided by minerals in the asteroids of the asteroid belt. Bob Clark 1.)Newsgroups: sci.space.policy, sci.astro, sci.physics, sci.space.history From: Robert Clark Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2011 21:36:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: A kerosene-fueled X-33 as a single stage to orbit vehicle. http://groups.google.com/group/sci.s...5ca2dc05?hl=en 2.)TransHab. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransHab 3.)Private Moon Bases a Hot Idea for Space Pioneer. by Leonard David, SPACE.com's Space Insider Columnist Date: 14 April 2010 Time: 02:23 PM ET http://www.space.com/8217-private-mo...e-pioneer.html 4.)Mining the Moon's Water: Q & A with Shackleton Energy's Bill Stone. by Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior WriterDate: 13 January 2011 Time: 03:57 PM ET http://www.space.com/10619-mining-mo...ne-110114.html 5.)Riches in the Sky: The Promise of Asteroid Mining. Mark Whittington, Nov 15, 2005 http://voices.yahoo.com/riches-sky-p...ning-8776.html 6.)Uranium could be mined on the Moon. Uranium could one day be mined on the Moon after a Japanese spacecraft discovered the element on its surface. By Julian Ryall in Tokyo 4:58PM BST 01 Jul 2009 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/s...-the-Moon.html 7.)Silver, Gold, Mercury and Water Found in Moon Crater Soil by LCROSS Project. Catherine Dagger, Oct 22, 2010 http://voices.yahoo.com/silver-gold-...36.html?cat=15 8.)NERVA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA ================================================== =================== http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...594d36b?hl=en# |
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SSTO's would have made possible Arthur C. Clarke's vision of 2001.
Robert Clark wrote:
...that reusable SSTO's are possible... In the future very probably, but certainly not in 2011. ...and in fact aren't even really hard... That's just utter cluelessness. Jim Davis |
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SSTO's would have made possible Arthur C. Clarke's vision of 2001.
On Dec 8, 9:39*am, Jim Davis wrote:
Robert Clark wrote: ...that reusable SSTO's are possible... In the future very probably, but certainly not in 2011. ...and in fact aren't even really hard... That's just utter cluelessness. Jim Davis Take a Falcon 9 first stage, which has a mass ratio better than 20 to 1, equivalently a propellant fraction better than 95%, and swap out the low efficiency Merlins for high efficiency engine[s] such as the RD-180, which has a vacuum Isp 338 s. Run the rocket equation. You'll see it can reach orbit with significant payload as an expendable vehicle. The payload is so high in fact that with reasonable estimates for reentry/landing systems you can still carry useful payload with a reusable version. Bob Clark |
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SSTO's would have made possible Arthur C. Clarke's vision of 2001.
On Dec 8, 5:19*am, Robert Clark wrote:
* Just saw this article on The Space Review discussing a recently discovered copy of a 1963 TV interview with Arthur C. Clarke: The perils of spaceflight prediction. by Jeff Foust Monday, December 5, 2011http://thespacereview.com/article/1981/1 *In the interview Clarke gives some predictions of the future of space exploration. From the standpoint of the beginnings of human spaceflight, he suggests a manned Mars mission within 25 years, which would have been by 1988, and Moon bases by the end of the 20th century. *This turned out to be too optimistic. But as I argued below, this could indeed have been technically and even financially feasible: if it had been recognized that reusable SSTO's are possible and in fact aren't even really hard, we would have had routine, private spaceflight by the 1970s. *Such wide spread, frequent launches using reusable spacecraft would have cut the costs to space by two orders of magnitude, at least. This would then have made the costs of lunar bases and manned Mars missions well within the affordability range. *The important point is that the required high efficiency engines and lightweight stages for SSTO's already exist and have for decades. All that is required is to marry the two together. An expendable test SSTO could be produced, like, tomorrow. Just this one simple, cheap test would finally make clear the fact that routine spaceflight is already doable. Nice article here about Elon Musk and his dedication on getting the Falcon 9 to be a fully reusable, if not single stage, system: 1 visionary + 3 launchers + 1,500 employees = ? Is SpaceX changing the rocket equation? By Andrew Chaikin http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exp...tml?c=y&page=1 Bob Clark |
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SSTO's would have made possible Arthur C. Clarke's vision of 2001.
Robert Clark wrote:
Take a Falcon 9 first stage, which has a mass ratio better than 20 to 1, equivalently a propellant fraction better than 95%, and swap out the low efficiency Merlins for high efficiency engine[s] such as the RD-180, which has a vacuum Isp 338 s. If you swap out the Merlins for RD-180s the mass ratio of the stage will drop. The payload is so high in fact that with reasonable estimates for reentry/landing systems you can still carry useful payload with a reusable version. Nonsense. The payload will be barely over 1% of GLOW and just over 18% of dry weight. The recovery systems will eat up all the payload and more. Your "reasonable estimates" are based on wishful thinking. Jim Davis |
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SSTO's would have made possible Arthur C. Clarke's vision of 2001.
On Dec 10, 12:59*pm, Jim Davis wrote:
Robert Clark wrote: Take a Falcon 9 first stage, which has a mass ratio better than 20 to 1, equivalently a propellant fraction better than 95%, and swap out the low efficiency Merlins for high efficiency engine[s] such as the RD-180, which has a vacuum Isp 338 s. If you swap out the Merlins for RD-180s the mass ratio of the stage will drop. To what? And what will then be the delta-V of the expendable version? Bob Clark |
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SSTO's would have made possible Arthur C. Clarke's vision of 2001.
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SSTO's would have made possible Arthur C. Clarke's vision of 2001.
wrote:
In article cf5bafb7-ad45-496f-9c91-8a4d109944a5 @d17g2000yql.googlegroups.com, says... On Dec 8, 9:39*am, Jim Davis wrote: Robert Clark wrote: ...that reusable SSTO's are possible... In the future very probably, but certainly not in 2011. ...and in fact aren't even really hard... That's just utter cluelessness. *Take a Falcon 9 first stage, which has a mass ratio better than 20 to 1, equivalently a propellant fraction better than 95%, and swap out the low efficiency Merlins for high efficiency engine[s] such as the RD-180, which has a vacuum Isp 338 s. *Run the rocket equation. You'll see it can reach orbit with significant payload as an expendable vehicle. The payload is so high in fact that with reasonable estimates for reentry/landing systems you can still carry useful payload with a reusable version. Sane reusable launch vehicles have never been developed because no one has seriously tried. And before anyone mentions it, the X-33 debacle wasn't a serious attempt. *NASA picked *the* most technically challenging proposal and proceeded to run it into the ground. *It was their chance to play with new tech. *Actually flying X-33 appeared to be a secondary or tertiary goal to NASA. It also didn't help that the contractor had a vested interest in the "business as usual" approach to launch vehicles. *They sold themselves as "new space" with a long history of successful innovation, and some "black tech" they couldn't openly talk about, but they failed miserably in the execution of the program. It's my opinion that sane reusable launch vehicles won't come from NASA or the traditional US aerospace contractors. Jeff Good points. Here's a nice article that expresses the idea that routine space flight is only going to be achieved when the development of such vehicles is privately financed: OCTOBER 20, 2011 AT 6:48 PM Elon Musk and the forgotten word. http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the...forgotten-word The most important achievement of SpaceX may turn out to be they showed in stark terms that privately financed spacecraft, both the launchers and the crew capsules, can be developed for 1/10th the cost of government financed ones. Bob Clark |
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