ballistic package delivery

A decade ago I proposed that sub-orbital rockets be used to deliver
pizza. This at a time when there was great furor over Pizza Hut's
delivery in 30 minutes or less or its free. Lots of pizza delivery
folks were getting in accidents and so forth, since Pizza Hut was
taking the free pizza's out of their limited salary! I showed where a
centrally located pizza kitchen in Kansas could deliver pizza and
drinks anywhere in North America in about 5 minutes. I even opined
that control of the thermal profile during re-entry could finish baking
a pizza so it arrives just out of the oven fresh. Drinks could be
stored in a way so that the venting of cryogenic propellants would keep
them bone chilling cold. Advanced GPS guidance - similar to JDAMs which
would come later - would deliver payloads precisely, and the re-entry
vehicle could even land on an outdoor table and the lid would pop off
revealing a hot pizza, and cold beers would roll down the landing gear
to stop at the footpad.

This fanciful idea has been studied more seriously recently by an MIT
graduate; Jared Martin, who now works at The Aerospace Corporation.
Good job!

I received my Masters of Engineering in Aeronautics and Astronautics
from MIT in 1999. My thesis was titled, "Exploring Fast Package
Delivery from a Systems Perspective," and was a collaborative effort
with the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Emery Worldwide, and UPS.
Fast Package Delivery refers to the delivery of precious cargo over
intercontinental distances in a matter of hours, and provides a
potential market to help offset the enormous costs associated with the
development and operation of Reusable Launch Vehicles.

While Jared focused on precious cargo, its a step in the right
direction. Sending things across town or around the world
ballistically is energetically favored over dragging it through the air
or across the land or sea. Compare tossing a baseball across the field
to rolling it across the field.

With low cost disposable propulsive skins powered by Earth bound and
space based lasers, which are part of a beamed power system for the
planet (powernet) it is a certainty that ballistic transport and
package delivery systems will be common place on this world at some
point in the future.

Williamknowsbest wrote:

A decade ago I proposed that sub-orbital rockets be used to deliver

Coffee! Damn you're out of coffee, and you're way out here in the middle
of the Atlantic ocean, who you gonna call? Mook's Delivery Service!

So you get out your satphone, and dial 1-800-WILMOOK, and punch in your
GPS coordinates, and within an hour you spot the now easily recognizable
bright orange MOOK delivery parachute drifting slowly into your life.

Mook Industries solves another extreme wilderness emergency.

--
The Tsiolkovsky Group : http://www.lifeform.org

My Planetary BLOB : http://cosmic.lifeform.org

Get A Free Orbiter Space Flight Simulator :

http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html

kT wrote:
Williamknowsbest wrote:

A decade ago I proposed that sub-orbital rockets be used to deliver

Coffee! Damn you're out of coffee, and you're way out here in the middle
of the Atlantic ocean, who you gonna call? Mook's Delivery Service!

So you get out your satphone, and dial 1-800-WILMOOK, and punch in your
GPS coordinates,

You Iridium satellite phone broadcasts GPS coordinates. The
application running in the handset has to have GPS tracking switched to
ON.

and within an hour

Within 15 minutes if you're in the middle of the Atlantic.

you spot the now easily recognizable
bright orange MOOK delivery parachute drifting slowly into your life.

Nope. The package comes at you at about 310 m/sec after re-entry. It
is guided toward the coordinates received minutes earlier. About 5 km
away a microengine array on the propulsive skin segment of the package
springs to life bringing the package in for a soft landing.

http://clifton.mech.northwestern.edu...crorockets.pdf
http://www.nsti.org/Nanotech2006/sho...html?absno=225
http://clifton.mech.northwestern.edu...pt#274,1,Solid
Propellant Micro-rockets: Application, Design and Fabrication

The same technology that delivers controlled amounts of color inks to a
paper sheet to form color photos can be adapted to deliver controlled
amounts of propellant to a 'thrust sheet' to create highly controllable
thrust vectors.

With the possibility of a 1000:1 thrust to weight ratio, millions of
engines might be one day fabricated into a surface and controlled as
easily as HDTV plasma screens.

Disposable propellant bags that carry cryogens

http://welchfluorocarbon.com/TeflonP...ayFlatBags.htm

And disposable MEMS based guidance systems

http://www.stormingmedia.us/24/2456/A245683.html

Have the potential to produce a disposable ballistic delivery package
with a 2% or 3% structural fraction. This allows a 12% payload
fraction. So, delivering a pound of coffee requires the dispatching of
a package consisting of 1/4 pound of propulsive packaging and 7 pounds
of hydrogen/oxygen propellant, prepared from 7 pounds of water using
133 kWh of energy. At $0.08 per kWh, the cost of the propellant costs
$10.69 - at $20 per pound for the packaging material that's another $5
- so, a considerable profit could be made at these prices charging $25
per pound for ballistic delivery. Which is less than what FedEx
charges for 24 hour delivery. This would be 24 minute delivery. The
cost of coffee in the field is around 5% of what you pay - since only
10% of the profits go to those who grow coffee.

http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whatwedo...ffee/starbucks

So, even at these prices, substantial shifts can occur in the way
business is done in high margin goods.

With substantial reductions in energy - say to $0.02 per kWh - and
reductions in the cost of propulsive packaging to $2 per pound -the
cost of propellant drops to $2.67 per pound delivered and the cost of
packaging to $0.50 - a little over $3 per pound - and there is a
radical transformation in the way business is done with trucks trains
airplanes warehouses and all the rest going the way of the buggy whip!



Mook Industries solves another extreme wilderness emergency.

Assuming zero cost for the rocket technology and energy cost equal to
that of coal costs ten to deliver a pound of coffee from South American
or African coffee fields directly to consumers anywhere (whether in the
middle of the Atlantic or not) actually uses less energy than
collecting the beans, dragging them out of the field, loading them into
a warehouse, loading them into a truck, dragging them down the road,
loading them into another warehouse, loading them into a plane, flying
them to market, loading them into another warehouse, loading them into
a train, dragging them across the country, loading them into another
warehouse, loading them onto a truck, dragging them down the road,
loading them into another warehouse, dragging them onto the shelf, then
you dragging your ass down to pick them up and dragging them home.



--
The Tsiolkovsky Group : http://www.lifeform.org

My Planetary BLOB : http://cosmic.lifeform.org

Get A Free Orbiter Space Flight Simulator :

http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html

On Sat, 6 Jan 2007, Williamknowsbest wrote:

A decade ago I proposed that sub-orbital rockets be used to deliver
pizza. This at a time when there was great furor over Pizza Hut's
delivery in 30 minutes or less or its free. Lots of pizza delivery
folks were getting in accidents and so forth, since Pizza Hut was
taking the free pizza's out of their limited salary! I showed where a
centrally located pizza kitchen in Kansas could deliver pizza and
drinks anywhere in North America in about 5 minutes. I even opined
that control of the thermal profile during re-entry could finish baking
a pizza so it arrives just out of the oven fresh. Drinks could be
stored in a way so that the venting of cryogenic propellants would keep
them bone chilling cold. Advanced GPS guidance - similar to JDAMs which
would come later - would deliver payloads precisely, and the re-entry
vehicle could even land on an outdoor table and the lid would pop off
revealing a hot pizza, and cold beers would roll down the landing gear
to stop at the footpad.

Yea, but how do I recycle the container?

This fanciful idea has been studied more seriously recently by an MIT
graduate; Jared Martin, who now works at The Aerospace Corporation.

I received my Masters of Engineering in Aeronautics and Astronautics
from MIT in 1999. My thesis was titled, "Exploring Fast Package
Delivery from a Systems Perspective," and was a collaborative effort
with the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Emery Worldwide, and UPS.
Fast Package Delivery refers to the delivery of precious cargo over
intercontinental distances in a matter of hours, and provides a
potential market to help offset the enormous costs associated with the
development and operation of Reusable Launch Vehicles.

While Jared focused on precious cargo, its a step in the right
direction. Sending things across town or around the world
ballistically is energetically favored over dragging it through the air
or across the land or sea. Compare tossing a baseball across the field
to rolling it across the field.

With low cost disposable propulsive skins powered by Earth bound and
space based lasers, which are part of a beamed power system for the
planet (powernet) it is a certainty that ballistic transport and
package delivery systems will be common place on this world at some
point in the future.

Any practical system would have the vehicle weigh about 1/4 that of the
payload. So, a 1 lb bag of coffee would have a 4 ounce package to
dispose of.

A propulsive skin would look a lot like a tinfoil sheet with lots of
tiny holes in it. The back of my Motorola cell phone has a metal sheet
with holes punched in it for the speakerphone. Something like that
only thinner and smaller. I imaging a ringlike structure., Behind that
a structure similar to an inkjet print cartridge delivering controlled
amounts of propellant. Teflon cryogenic bags, gas stabilized would
feed the propulsive skin. I imagine this behind and inside the ring.
This structured bag would have a foamed ceramic coating - a low-cost
derivative of an aerogel - to isolate it from the ring structure, form
a heat shield, and an expansion structure for an aerospike like
expansion of gases from the propulsive skin ring. Guidance is achieved
by varying mass flow hence thrust around the ring. Outwardly directed
thrust units would provide lateral thrust to the system.

The tail of this enclosing foam structure - about the density of
expanded styrene would be equipped with legs that would fold out and
hold the package upright when thrust was removed. The gas stabilized
teflon cryogenic propellant bag would act as a shock cushion to the
payload held at the nose of the vehicle.

A 6" diameter by 12" long cylinder would hold 1 pound payloads. (A
pound of coffee in this instance) and be shaped at its nose for reduced
drag and heat load, as well as improved stability. This cylinder has a
volume of 339.3 cubic inches.

With a 1 pound payload a 4 ounce structure and 7 pounds of propellant -
assuming 6 pounds of liquid oxygen at 1.14 oz per cubic inch - 84.2
cubic inches - and 1 pound of liquid hydrogen at 0.07 oz per cubic
inch, - 228.6 cubic inches - that's a total propellant volume of
312.8cubic inches. About the size of the payload volume.

Cones have volumes 1/3 as large as the cylinders that encompass them.
Taking the cube root of 3 I obtain the result that a cylinder 8.65
inches in diameter and 117.3 inches long would have a volume of 339.3
cubic inches.

So, as a first pass we have two cones joined base to base with an 8.65"
diameter base and 17.3 inch length - a total of 34.6 inch length. Where
they join is a 9" diameter propulsive ring with guidance and so forth.
The cone propellant bag at the bottom of the propulsive ring around the
payload cone base,would contain sufficient fuel at lift off. Shaping
the forward bulkhead of the payload container to an appropriate nose
cone shape to reduce drag and payload heating during ascent - and
re-entry, is assumed. The payload container consists of a gas
stabilized bag with anti-reflective properties in the IR similar to the
propellant bag and encased in a ceramic aerogel as is the propellant
bag..

With an exhaust speed of 15000 fps and an empty mass of 20 ounces and a
filled mass of 132 ounces this vehicle has a mass ratio of 6.6 and an
ideal terminal velocity of 28300 fps. Sufficient to give it global
range.

The tail cone would have four aerogel encased, aluminum coated plastic
reinforced actuated struts. These struts are spaced equally around the
radius of the propulsive skin, folded back along the tail cone and fold
out from the base of the tail cone, creating a stabilizing landing gear
as the propellant bag collapses at landing. The bag undergoes
controlled collapse and the propuslive ring sits at table level when
deflation is complete. The aerogel coating encasing the forward or
payload cone is attached to the propulsive skin at these points and
itself is folded back during landing - exposing the semi-transparent
teflon payload lining. The 4 ounce 9" diameter ring breaks easily at
these four spots when the teflon bag is broken and the aerogel casing
is split four ways. Thus, the entire system can be folded into 8
triangular wedges each . 6.8" at the base and 17.8" long weighing 1/2
ounce each.

A 15" diameter pizza 2" deep pizza weighs 65.51 ounces. Around the
edge of the pizza is the ring shaped propulsive skin fed by cryogenic
propellant bag, gas stabilized.

http://www.pizzamaking.com/dkm_chicago.php

Thus, a mass budget for packaging empty is 16.37 ounces - and
propellant is 458.57 ounces - which implies a propellant volume of
1280.8 cubic inches.

Now since the payload volume is panshaped, and the propulsive ring is
around the edge of the pan, both fore and aft cones can contain
propellant. Construction similar to that of the coffee delivery
package.

Knowing the base diameter and total volume required, we can compute the
height of the cone; which in this case is 11" - a rocket length of 22"
total. Add 2" depth for the deep dish pizza, and you have 24" total
length and a 15" diameter. Slight adjustments to length and cone
shaping following wind tunnel and structural analysis, would allow the
insertion of 2 soda,or beer cans each 2.75" diameter by 4.75" length in
the forward propellant pouch. (Collapse of the aft propellant pouch
during landing prevents its used in this capacity) The insertion of
drinks would reduce range, or the payload could be adjusted by removal
of one of the six slices of pizza for each beer/soda can carried.
Thus, four slices of deep dish pizza and 2 beers could be delivered to
maximal range, or six slices of deep dish pizza and 2 beers could be
delivered to more limited range.

Other sides can be designed in this package - a side salad for instance
could replace one of the beers/sodas - but would take up a
hemispherical volume above the pizza with a radius of 4.75" taking a
whopping 224 cubic inches but massing less than the 12 ounces of fluid
it replaces. Proper shaping of the forward propellant cone would
adjust for this volume change, by arcing the cone outward into a more
ogive shape.

The delivery package, empty of propellant masses slightly over a pound,
less than the mass of most pizza boxes. Proper control of the thermal
cross section with appropriately sized and coated aerogel would make
sure that the pizza arrived hot while the drinks and/or salad arrived
cold.

William Elliot wrote:
On Sat, 6 Jan 2007, Williamknowsbest wrote:

A decade ago I proposed that sub-orbital rockets be used to deliver
pizza. This at a time when there was great furor over Pizza Hut's
delivery in 30 minutes or less or its free. Lots of pizza delivery
folks were getting in accidents and so forth, since Pizza Hut was
taking the free pizza's out of their limited salary! I showed where a
centrally located pizza kitchen in Kansas could deliver pizza and
drinks anywhere in North America in about 5 minutes. I even opined
that control of the thermal profile during re-entry could finish baking
a pizza so it arrives just out of the oven fresh. Drinks could be
stored in a way so that the venting of cryogenic propellants would keep
them bone chilling cold. Advanced GPS guidance - similar to JDAMs which
would come later - would deliver payloads precisely, and the re-entry
vehicle could even land on an outdoor table and the lid would pop off
revealing a hot pizza, and cold beers would roll down the landing gear
to stop at the footpad.

Yea, but how do I recycle the container?

This fanciful idea has been studied more seriously recently by an MIT
graduate; Jared Martin, who now works at The Aerospace Corporation.

I received my Masters of Engineering in Aeronautics and Astronautics
from MIT in 1999. My thesis was titled, "Exploring Fast Package
Delivery from a Systems Perspective," and was a collaborative effort
with the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Emery Worldwide, and UPS.
Fast Package Delivery refers to the delivery of precious cargo over
intercontinental distances in a matter of hours, and provides a
potential market to help offset the enormous costs associated with the
development and operation of Reusable Launch Vehicles.

While Jared focused on precious cargo, its a step in the right
direction. Sending things across town or around the world
ballistically is energetically favored over dragging it through the air
or across the land or sea. Compare tossing a baseball across the field
to rolling it across the field.

With low cost disposable propulsive skins powered by Earth bound and
space based lasers, which are part of a beamed power system for the
planet (powernet) it is a certainty that ballistic transport and
package delivery systems will be common place on this world at some
point in the future.

As mentioned before a $5 delivery charge would more than cover all
costs if price points can be achieved. With a central kitchen in
kansas, North America can be served.

http://www.pizzatoday.com/features_a...ZW NyZXQ0OTQ=

Frozen pizza sales amount to $3 billion per year. Assuming an equal
sales volume is achieved for Mook's Rocket Pizza, and the selling price
per delivery is $15 - this is 200 million deliveries per year. Say, a
million a night, throughout North America. This would be a rate of
60,000 per hour if it occurred over a 16 hour period each day. That's
1,000 per minute - say 200 per second at peak.

At this sales rate you would have a statistically significant number of
sales per second. This greatly simplifies logistics. You don't wait
for an order to bake a pizza! No, you analyze sales and set up
mechanized kitchens (and missile production) to make the sorts of
orders you predict. Slight adjustments in the rate of production of
each dedicated line will adjust inventories in process to precisely
meet actual demand each night. This reduces labor and most
importantly, reduces delivery times! Most orders in North America will
arrive piping hot from the oven (and drinks cooled cryogenically) and
salads fresh - 2 to 5 minutes after the order is placed! Despite the
fact that it takes 20 to 25 minutes to complete preparation of the
order. Thus is the power of statistics! lol.

Don't know what NORAD would make of 200 IRBMs being fired per second
from Kansas, it would make a pretty pattern on their displays.

Automated kitchens, package production, payload loading, propellant
loading,and firing would occur about the same rate as soda bottling
operations. Completed packages would be put onto ceramic carriers and
carted automatically to launch fields, awaiting the last step in the
firing sequence. The telephone call that linked a GPS coordinate to an
order. A large line of small mortar like carriers - firing and then
returning to be reloaded.

I envision a large number of automated assembly lines and kitchens,
propellant processing - similar to that of a brewery - linked to a
bottling operation. In fact with 200 beers per second flowing out of
the system, Budweiser Coke and a few other brewers and bottlers could
be persuaded to set up a dedicated brewery for this operation - using
specially branded astro-weight containers.

http://www.zyicorp.com/downloads/240...ing_plant.mpeg

30 systems like this one would process each rocket system with
appropriate variations of payloads and launch them to their targets.

Someone asked me privately about system reliability. Since a million
rockets would have to be fired with utmost precision every day,
reliability is an issue.

I envision a system that is supremely reliable and safe! Each
propulsive ring consists of millions of tiny rocket engines being fed
by tiny inkjet like electrothermal pumps that blast droplets of
propellant into combustion/expansion chambers. The failure of any one
rocket would not materially affect the opeation of millions of others.
And even catastrophic failure of an engine with the diameter of a human
hair, would scarcely affect the operation of the flight article. The
reliability of this disposable system over its flight cycle is
virtually guaranteed to be 100%. Any variation can be sensed and
adjusted for, as is burn-in adjusted for in a plasma screen over time.
Multiple control systems with 3way voting, as used in the Saturn V
moonrocket, but reduced to micro-scale (and price) by MEMs technology,
and augmented by GPS which didn't exist in Apollo days, would eliminate
guidance errors and failures.