Spacescifi

So if cork weighs less we could use that. I guess my argument is that launching heavy loads into space via spin launch is seemingly quite possible so long you use a sacrificial ablative nose. Ironically, returning back from space a spaceship could coat the hull with asteroid rock or ice as well to ablate instead of the hull. Use glue to adhere the stuff to the hull lol.

Ice is a very useful non-toxic resource. Questions: In theory there is a size limit to how big we could build a spin launch system to launch to orbit. For the sake of discussion let us assume we build a massive spin launch facility that can literally launch both the first and second stages of starship worth of mass through the lower atmosphere so that by the time they need to use engines the air is really thin anyway. Ice comes into play by capping a long solid ice rocket nose on so that when it launches the ice ablates rather than hull in the lower atmospherr. Furthermore there are various ways to slow the melting of ice by adding additives to it. but obviously we want the ice to have melted or vaped off by the time the rockets reach orbit in space. Thoughts? Worth it or not? If it is not someone may say it will require so much ice that you won't have a meaningful payload.. I am skeptical of that though because as I said, ice can be slowed in the melting process by using additves to make it.

Wow... you could write a book and get paidd for this type of thing you explain it so simply. Just saying. You have a knack for this. Do you work in aerospace or is it merely your leisure interest?

Goodbye kitch-I mean house when you wash them on hot in the dishwasher.

You know metallic hydrogen are fighting words. That said... I won't knock scientists for trying.

Given the amount of propellant saved reaching space, that should not be a problem for onboard rocket engines.

Thanks... that is very informative. So ideally a large vessel would generate an even larger spherical aerokinetic field and drag a large volume of air down rapidly to lift the vessel. Good job! So if one those famous scifi alien flying saucers was hovering overhead it would cause quite the air wave gusts over the ground. Surely no one could be below it without getting pinned against the ground, or if to the side blown away.

Alright then... let's go the slightly more realistic route then Ion air craft with a SUPER battery with sufficient power and discharge rate for flight of a 1000 ton air vehicle. That is just a scenario. Possible? I dunno. We always say and wish we had more power (fusion is slways 20 yeaes away). But if say... scifi aliens gave us super batteries with sufficient power to actually make an ionocraft out of a 1000 ton vessel... how would that even look? Lots of glowing halo all over the hull? Maybe a large plasma plume trailing the entire rear end of the ship lol? Note: I am just making up a scenario since I already know we cannot make super batteries like that. The rest of the ship we make using modern tech, while an array of super batteries powers the ionic flight. Something tells me that having power and being able to utilizs are two different things. For example we could utilze nukes as a fusion power plant by detonating them in a water pool and using the water blast to power turbines for electricity. Other than that though we are batting a thousand outs so far for fusion power. I do know there is only so much energy you wznt to discharge at once, since too much melts things.

Like superman but needs enough airflow to provide lift. In real life we have to move blades, or propellers and move with wings to provide lift. The OP aircraft would manipulate airflow directly over it's surface for lift and flight. In other words, unlike superman, you won't reach outer space with this, since by the time your speed was high enough the hull would like heat up from air friction and you woild lose the magnetism and therefore flight.

I was curious, when you take a common superpower and instead shift the same ability to an aircraft, how effective would it really be? Let's suppose the hull, when magnetized, becomes capable of directly moving air over it. My guess is you could make large and heavy aircraft like the floating spaceships of scifi... yet as always there would be a limit based on physics I believe. The heavier the vessel I presume the more air would need to be moved over the hull to provide lift... which would mean higher air speed over the hull. What I am getting at is that if a vessel is too heavy, airspeed moving over the hull will move so fast it would heat up the hull and make it lose it's magnetism, causing it to fall out the air. Question: What us the heaviest vessel you think can be lifted based on this OP via aerokinesis. I suppose one could chill the hull via an inner liquid hydrogen tank but even that will only get you so far.

Kind of like spaceship rendezvous... meeting in space up close generally must be agreed upon by both parties otherwise it won't happen.

The safest option would be for manned spaceflight to rely on propellant depots already in existence. It seems illogical for manned spaceflight to ever bother with wilderness refueling themselves rather than relying on a pre-made propellant depot. Why do I say this? Because processing propellant by the ton takes time... could be weeks or days depending on how much you need. During that whole time ideally the manned vessel is spinning 100 meters away from a rotating axis point... likely another vessel, while a third vessel is unmanned and gathering and processing chemicals/gases for propellant. Otherwise crew would suffer from having no gravity. The safer alternative to this is to simply send unmanned propellant depot fleets ahead of manned missions, set up and fill the depots, and THEN send manned flights. Kind of like paving a road for cars to drive upon. What I am particularly at odds with is the Star Trek way... boldly going where no man has gone before without even bothering to send an unmanned propellant depot ahead of them first. I know with Trek refueling at sublight is really never an issue... only warp requires refueling. But a somewhat more realistic scifi setting would indeed send propellant depots ahead of any manned missions always. Because imagine if you drove your car, was low on fuel, but no gas station was around and you already knew that? So you do what any unusual person would do... you grab your tools and machines out your car trunk and begin digging for oil... since you were at least wise enough to drive around where natural oil deposits exist. It takes you a whole month, but eventually you process your fuel and drive back home. Quite the ordeal... and space wilderness refueling is so much worse from a difficulty and dangerous enviroment POV. I know in video game space sims like Elite Dangerous and others you can refuel easily but realistically such is a process of steps and a lot of waiting.

I do not plan on mimicking Star Trek totally. You can indeed design SSTO's like starship that can land on their own and SSTO off low gravity worlds. To mimic star trek IRL, you need large SSTO's period, since as I already stated.. landing in lava because of an overpowered pulse fusion rocket is bad... which is why I recommend less efficient chemical rocket engines for landing/lift off... and of course flipping upward to use the more powerful and efficient fusion pulse engines to reach space. Can we do it now? Doubt it. Yet pulsed fusion is something we KNOW how to do... containing it is what's hard. Naturally enough in a scifi setting with hyperspace/warp FTL, fusion tech should be old and established as the automobile. To be sure you do not even need the magnetic surfaces or hover tech... that is just a cool technology that has manifold applications. As for engines... yes I see the folly in one big nozzle. I am thinking a wiser design is a cluster ring of chemical rocket nozzles surrounding a somewhat larger one in the middle that is the fusion pulse nozzle. That way the ship can throttle easier and only use the overpowered engine when it desires to. Which is very important for any orbital rendezvous.

I am willing to make lighter weight SSTOs that are 100 tons. I am not married to the idea of SSTOs being the end-all... I recognize the value of two stage orbital cruisers. But without SSTOs orbital cruisers are just that... forever stuck in orbit. Ultimately I see orbital cruisers carrying one or two large SSTOs sitting outside the hull. Even SSTOs could be optimized... wingless for non-air moons, winged for anywhere with atmosphere. Having a pair helps.

The rocket nozzle won't be magnetized. The reaction chamber uses magnetic fields for compression and redirection of fusion blasts out the vacuum chamber into and out of the throat of the rocket nozzle. It seems this is less a no go and more a matter of finding a mass sweet spot for an SSTO. 100 ton SSTO is a lot more doable. Perhaps 1000 tons is pushing it but may be possible. And yes... even I agree 8000 tons is extreme for an SSTO. But it is relevant to know what is the heaviest an SSTO should practically be in this setting. I think lifting on par with Starship (SpaceX) but with my SSTO design would be totalky possible... at the very least. With the difference that unlike Starship it would carry less liquid propellant since it would use it's super thrusty and efficient fusion pulse main engines to slow it's descent before flipping belly first to use it's belly chemical engines for a powered descent. Starship stats are only a rough estimate. How many tons can a Starship carry? The Starship has a dry mass of 85 tons and has a propellant capacity of 1200 tons. The ascent payload capacity is 150 t to low earth orbit and it has a return capacity of 50 t. The Starship is to reenter belly-first with two aft fins and two canards provide skydiver-like I do not care so much that it is difficult... only that it CAN be done. At any rate the lightest weight one can go with still a reasonable payload ought to be interesting. And the magnetic hover tech is just too cool anyway not to use!

The magnetic hoverboard uses liquid nitrogen and superconducting magnets to allow it to hover over magnetic surfaces. In theory, an SSTO could launch this way using a ramp. To return it could just land by using a powered thrust landing via ship chemical rockets. My whole point was to rationalize the classic scifi belly lander spaceship with the engines in rear...but IRL you would need belly engines as well to survive a powered thrust landing. Rear overpowered pulse engines would mean that keeping them in the rear rather than landing with them (in lava) is the safe choice... thus the need for landing rocket engines and the more efficient and powerful rear pulsed fusion rockets for reaching space. Wings would allow you to glide to land but are otherwise useless for reentry and space travel in general. In practice for a spacecraft I think what Lexus did would have to be inverted. In other words, make a superconducting chilled runway and ramp, then use a spacecraft with a magnetized belly to boost it's rear engines and half-loop launch into the sky. I suppose one could land using wings to glide over a superconducting surface as well. So if you want to land an 8000 ton space freighter in one go without rocketry, you need a lot of wing and a lot of superconducting runway and a magnetic underbelly on the spaceship. Otherwise it would have to trade cargo space for propellant for a powered thrust landing. As for shape, I think a blunt edged disc would be best, either winged or without. If winged the wings must be able to sweep all the way backward to avoid reentry damage. If un-winged it will be a clumsly flyer but will be able to land or launch so long it has propellant. Pulsed fusion being more efficient would not take nearly as much fuel, since it would rely on meter wide snowballs enriched with fusion fuel per pulse.

Because scifi drives based on the power it would actually take to pull of such feats likely leave craters behind. My idea is that at a planetary spaceport you don't want craters. The ship still has chemical rockets though for VTOL because again... who wants to labd inside a smoking crater?

Is there any practical reason to go with a thicker nozzle IRL? I was thinking of several: 1. Armor it so it is not riddled with holes from space lasers easily. 2. Or stuff it with regenerative coolant lining to keep it cool from waste heat. Those are the only reasons right? Besides me just liking the look of a giant rocket plume coming out of a single big and thick nozzle from a spaceship?

In my opinion it will be something something involving pulsed fusion and magnetic fields. Nothing about either is forbidden by known physics, the current barriers are often a lack of the power needed to pull off scifi feats.... or prohibitive mass required to generate it (you are not launching it it's too big). Having excess power on tap always helps.

And I goofed up. I meant to say specific impulse NOT delta v for the seconds.

I like ramps though so.... nah I'm kidding. I do like ramps though lol. Engineers don't care about likes and dislikes so much as a design works for efficiency though. Thick nozzles I also like. I was thinking throttling was easy as using less or more fusion fuel and magnetic compression. Since my idea of a fusion torch would likely be pulsed and ignited via magnetic compression of fuel pellets. Nonetheless if the ship pulls a Star Wars and lands and takes off again from some random planet I think it's going to leave a mark on the spot it launches from.

Using fusion fueled pulsed high thrust rockets as in the OP should require considerably less fuel mass than if one used the equivalent in chemical propellant to drive off up/on the ramp.

Imagine if your SSTO has both VTOL and runway takeoff ability via a ramp. If you use the ramp to launch upward then you can save your VTOL engine propellant for later when you really need it... namely landing on another world or for landing someplace other than a runway when you return to the homeworld. As you know.... outer space is drier than the driest desert for liquids... and you have cross vast 'oceans' of outer space before you even reach a place to refuel.

In other words once we get into the 1000 ton or 5000 ton SSTO range.... F1 size nozzles start to become kind of necessary.... right?

I see..... so to even warrant a large and thick nozzle I would need an SSTO both massive and heavy.... in other words like project Orion only a fusion rocket is propelling it. Thanks... so apparently I can go large... but yeah... the plume is likely going to blow up anything it hits nearby. Leaving craters at the launch site unless you drive it off a ramp over the ocean and boost from there. Finally SSTOs can upsurp the supremacy of TSTO.... at the cost of leaving craters in the ground everytime the lift off unless they do it over the ocean.