The one space mission you'd most like to see in your lifetime

[Klapaucius]

42 minutes ago, έķ νίĻĻάίή said:

I know right! We do!

Also, strange to think that more people have been to space then tha Mariana trench. And before you go at me, yes, I know why...

Not everyone is cut out for underwater exploration. It is a very high-pressure endeavor...

[έķ νίĻĻάίή]

1 minute ago, Klapaucius said:

It is a very high-pressure endeavor...

P u n   i n t e n d e d ?

[Klapaucius]

4 minutes ago, έķ νίĻĻάίή said:

P u n   i n t e n d e d ?

Most certainly.  I hope I was not out of my depth on that one.

Edited January 24, 2020 by Klapaucius

[έķ νίĻĻάίή]

Just now, Klapaucius said:

Most certainly.

Oh you've got to be kidding me...

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, έķ νίĻĻάίή said:

Also, strange to think that more people have been to space then tha Mariana trench.

Even less of them were at 2 km under ground, at the five times less depth.

N.B.
The Kola Superdeep Borehole is just a kilometer deeper than the Mariana trench.
What if make a horizontal tunnel?

Edited January 24, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Spaceception]

I'm thinking of something a lot closer to home:

Starlink. No, it's not exactly a mission, but it's the thing I want to see succeed the most anyway. Because while Ss/Sh is something I definitely want to see happen, it won't last for long if they can't fund it; so if we want Starship to be flying a lot, Starlink has to rake in the cash. That's going to make or break any grand ambitions they have for the vehicle. And subsequently any long-term missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond in the near/mid-future.

Edited January 24, 2020 by Spaceception

[KerballingSmasher]

I'd probably like to see the James Webb Space Telescope launch.

 

KIDDING!

 

I'm ready for Artemis to launch and anything involving SpaceX.

[SargeRho]

Manned mission to the outer planets.

I'd settle for a submarine on Europa or Enceladus, though.

[wumpus]

On 1/22/2020 at 4:46 AM, Klapaucius said:

 The only restriction is that they have to be achievable right now and in your lifetime. If you are 60, your answer may likely differ from a 16 year old.  No future tech stuff.

You do realize that Orion (old boom-boom, not the current pretender) is possible with current technology.  I even think it can launch relatively safely from Antarctica.

It looks like we can *slowly* do most of what Orion could do in my lifetime with Falcon Heavy/Starship/New Armstrong especially with propellant transported by ion propulsion, but once an Orion is in space everything suddenly becomes trivial.  The big difference is that an Orion drive is supposed to be configurable for interstellar travel*.  Nothing else comes close to that.

* I've seen the .1c number since Carl Sagan made Cosmos, but have never really seen the exhaust velocity of the nukes nor just how much fuel you need to deal with the rocket equation for such a number.  I suspect this is a "using unobtanium or all the He3 on the moon" value.

[Bill Phil]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

* I've seen the .1c number since Carl Sagan made Cosmos, but have never really seen the exhaust velocity of the nukes nor just how much fuel you need to deal with the rocket equation for such a number.  I suspect this is a "using unobtanium or all the He3 on the moon" value.

0.1c assumes fusion bombs.

That said it is possible using catapulted bombs that the vehicle doesn't carry within itself...

Of course that would imply being able to sling atom bombs at near 0.1c. Yikes.

[StrandedonEarth]

Could Orion’s pusher plate also be used for laser-riding? Granted, the huge mass of Orion (the bigger the better) works against using light (the lighter the better), but ablatives would increase the thrust. 

Are there any current technological limits on just how big a laser (gigs/tera/petawatt-class?) can get, given a sufficient power supply?

[kerbiloid]

23 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

but ablatives would increase the thrust. 

Orion pusher plate is not ablative.

[Hannu2]

4 hours ago, wumpus said:

You do realize that Orion (old boom-boom, not the current pretender) is possible with current technology.  I even think it can launch relatively safely from Antarctica.

Technology is not adequate for development of space exploration. Many very nice things would be possible in two decades, if we did not have stupid political and economical restrictions. If states and/or billionaires would invest much money (kings and wealthy people have built monuments during whole history of mankind except about last century and science and technology could be monuments of modern industrial civilisation), all possible technologies (for example nuclear propulsion and dangerous experiments of hibernation) would be used and safety regulations would be lowered to level it was in golden era explorations (men was cheap and nobody cared deaths). But it is not true and political and cultural attitudes are much slower and harder to overcome than technical problems. For example I do not believe that nuclear technology is not allowed to use in next couple of generations (i.e. in foreseeable future). It is just too scary for average taxpayer.

[mikegarrison]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Orion pusher plate is not ablative.

The idea was to squirt some oil onto the plate just before the explosion. From experiments performed during nuclear bomb tests, it seems that even a thin coating of oil protects metal from ablating away in a nuclear blast.

[Bill Phil]

1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Could Orion’s pusher plate also be used for laser-riding? Granted, the huge mass of Orion (the bigger the better) works against using light (the lighter the better), but ablatives would increase the thrust. 

Are there any current technological limits on just how big a laser (gigs/tera/petawatt-class?) can get, given a sufficient power supply?

That’s kinda sorta what Lightcraft is.

Edited January 25, 2020 by Bill Phil

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

The idea was to squirt some oil onto the plate just before the explosion. From experiments performed during nuclear bomb tests, it seems that even a thin coating of oil protects metal from ablating away in a nuclear blast.

Protects from the Orion's gas flow from the directed charge, but not from the photonic beam.

(Upd. Kinda two similar threads. ramjets are from another space opera)

Edited January 25, 2020 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

On 1/25/2020 at 6:18 PM, Bill Phil said:

0.1c assumes fusion bombs.

That said it is possible using catapulted bombs that the vehicle doesn't carry within itself...

Of course that would imply being able to sling atom bombs at near 0.1c. Yikes.

0.1 c required using 10 km pusher plates and gigaton 3 or 4 stage fusion bombs.
An medusa setup would be much more practical here I think and this is much more an back of the envelope project than something like the battleship orion. 

If you can push stuff up to 0.1c you don't need orion who is an brute force solution. 
Your launcher is more dangerous than high yield nuclear bombs. 


 

[Bill Phil]

52 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

0.1 c required using 10 km pusher plates and gigaton 3 or 4 stage fusion bombs.
An medusa setup would be much more practical here I think and this is much more an back of the envelope project than something like the battleship orion. 

If you can push stuff up to 0.1c you don't need orion who is an brute force solution. 
Your launcher is more dangerous than high yield nuclear bombs. 


 

Well the idea would be to propel a huge ship.

One could adapt mini-mag Orion to the concept - that way at least the propulsion units aren’t full blown nuclear weapons.

Though eventually you get more propulsion from the direct momentum exchange between the propulsion unit and the vehicle.

[tater]

Orion (or any nuclear spacecraft with decent dv) would be a helluva thing to see.

I still think seeing SS/SH succeed would be my ultimate realistic hope for my lifetime—precisely because if they get it to actually work, it resets what is possible. Artemis? LOL. 150 tonnes cheaply to LEO is a game changer---and there is no reason that 9m is any sort of limit, bump it to 12m (after 9m works), and we're back to a 400t+ cargo ITS.

[Bill Phil]

24 minutes ago, tater said:

Orion (or any nuclear spacecraft with decent dv) would be a helluva thing to see.

I still think seeing SS/SH succeed would be my ultimate realistic hope for my lifetime—precisely because if they get it to actually work, it resets what is possible. Artemis? LOL. 150 tonnes cheaply to LEO is a game changer---and there is no reason that 9m is any sort of limit, bump it to 12m (after 9m works), and we're back to a 400t+ cargo ITS.

Certainly. It would really change the game if it works out.

Though I'm a bit skeptical that rockets will be how civilization breaks the chains of gravity - barring some major advances in the technology rocketry hit diminishing returns some time ago in terms of performance. Non-rocket systems seem to be much more capable, though they require more investment and technological development. At least rockets are a demonstrated technology - the question is lowering the costs. But I wonder if that's truly possible.

That said there was some interesting mass driver research in the 30s that seems to have been buried. 

[RizzoTheRat]

Manned landings.  First the Mun Moon then on to Mars.  It's probably not the most efficient way to explore, but they're more versatile than robotic missions and will hopefully lead the way to some kind of resource extraction and use.  Plus of course a return to the moon will probably be the biggest news story of a generation and hopefully spark a lot more interest in both space exploration and in science in general.

[tater]

Mass drivers work for sturdy cargo, but not humans, as they need to get the things to a decent % of orbital velocity at very low alt (which means huge accelerations).

I'm certainly intrigued by other concepts to space, but if Starship works (huge if), we're talking 10s of dollars per kg to LEO. That's 3 orders of magnitude of improvement in cost.

Starship (and larger cousins, should it work) means that testing things like tethers becomes more possible, too.

 

[kerbiloid]

OPC = Orbital Programmers' Coworking.

[Bill Phil]

14 hours ago, tater said:

Mass drivers work for sturdy cargo, but not humans, as they need to get the things to a decent % of orbital velocity at very low alt (which means huge accelerations).

I'm certainly intrigued by other concepts to space, but if Starship works (huge if), we're talking 10s of dollars per kg to LEO. That's 3 orders of magnitude of improvement in cost.

Starship (and larger cousins, should it work) means that testing things like tethers becomes more possible, too.

 

The issue isn't acceleration (just build bigger, though of course that isn't easy at all). Acceleration requirements are decreased with distance. It's not the real issue. 

The real issue is getting out of the atmosphere.

Dynamic pressure and hypersonic affects at sea level would be monstrous, so you have to build it high up. But that presents an even larger challenge.

That said solutions do exist - though getting them to work would require a lot of engineering and R&D. Launch Loop is one example, and at least has the benefit of being able to use known materials (unlike a space elevator). 

I hope Starship works, but there's a good chance it won't. And even if it does rockets are a fairly inefficient use of energy. From an energy economics perspective they'll never be quite as good as non-rocket systems can be. Not to mention the pollution aspects, which are minor for now. But if the launch industry expands massively that'd be a lot of pollution we'd have to deal with, unless we stop using chemical rockets altogether.

[tater]

Well, the launch loop concept is certainly interesting, but the chances of it being built seem... slim.