With worldwide cooperation and infinite money, what awesome spacecraft could we see using modern equipment?

[DeltaDizzy]

Title of OP is basiaclly a summary of KSP Sandbox Mode. So, like basically anything that you can do in RSS/RO sandbox.

Edited May 17, 2017 by DeltaDizzy

[Rath]

19 minutes ago, DeltaDizzy said:

Title of OP is basiaclly a summary of KSP Sandbox Mode. So, like basically anything that you can do in RSS/RO sandbox.

Venus return I don't think so.

[DeltaDizzy]

If you mean a manned landing and return:

Made by Maccollo

 

[Shadow Wolf56]

I think that all these carrier rockets could launch up, make a huge rocket in orbit, and...

well the possibilities are nearly endless... (go to Pluto!!!)

Edited May 18, 2017 by Shadow Wolf56

[kerbiloid]

Need disambiguation.

Does "with modern equipment" mean that the used technologies are limited with their current state, but you can build as many Soyuzes as you wish, or that modern tech is a starting point.

Though, as "infinite money" would devaluate in a second, and nobody could build anything, no difference.

Edited May 18, 2017 by kerbiloid

[Rath]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Need disambiguation.

Does "with modern equipment" mean that the used technologies are limited with their current state, but you can build as many Soyuzes as you wish, or that modern tech is a starting point.

Though, as "infinite money" would devaluate in a second, and nobody could build anything, no difference.

Modern equipment means that you start out with eleventy billion soyouzes but can keep building (but you gotta start now, no waiting for that Alcubierre).

 

Ok, how about all the worlds military budgets going to a single space program?

[peadar1987]

Well in theory we can just build arbitrarily large structures in space. If we have eleventy billion Soyuzes, we can take 5-10 years to develop a way of reliably coupling fuel tanks together like in KSP, and put anything on a transfer trajectory to anywhere. And if it blows up because it's too complicated or too untested, we just build another one, because we have eleventy billion Soyuzes.

With all of the world's military budgets combined, that's about $1.7 trillion a year. That would easily pay for a permanent Mars colony (This article estimates a Mars program with 9 trips, like Apollo, would cost $1.5 trillion over the project lifetime, which given launch windows would likely be 20-ish years). With current technology, we could land people on Mars, that's just a question of Delta-V. And we wouldn't need to perfect closed-loop life support either, as sending fresh supplies is also just Delta-V as well. For $1.7 trillion a year we could just keep sending stuff out whenever the colonists looked like they might need it. Not an elegant solution, but with that sort of budget it doesn't need to be.

Edited May 18, 2017 by peadar1987

[p1t1o]

A probably unpopular point: with infinite money, there would be significantly less need for space exploration.

Want to make the human race survivable? All we need is a moon city.

Resources? We can just dig deeper

Overpopulation? Theres a million ways you can solve that with infinite money.

So the only thing left would be exploration for fun and curiosity, though with infinite money there is no reason not to do both of those things to the MAX.

We dont need a colony on Mars. We need a Martian Las Vegas. Or ten.

[ModZero]

21 hours ago, ment18 said:

Antimatter costs an absurd amount of money, but it is no matter.

Blocked & reported.

On 5/17/2017 at 5:31 AM, Rath said:

What could we make if we worked together?

A really nasty case of global warming, if we were to go with the "omg progress" route.

In a more optimistic scenario, we could finally put robots everywhere. Except Venus, because Venus is terrible. Balloons, I guess. This is where money blocks us the most right now — we have the tech to send a robot pretty much anywhere in the solar system, but we can't really do them all the time, and often have to compromise against cost. Gib more monies, get more and fancier robots.

While putting meatbags in space is kinda silly, we could probably do crewed missions and long-term stays on the moon and high orbit, and move on to Titan (skip Mars,who cares about Mars anyway?) a bit later on.

[tater]

@p1t1o, I disagree. The Moon is likely not useful, as the gravity is probably too low. If the inhabitants need centrifuge time to remain healthy, I would think that the thing to do is build a colony in space, and spin it:

O'Neill Cylinder

 

Bernal Sphere

 

Stanford Torus

 

 

 

[p1t1o]

@tater

Sure, sure. Wouldn't need to be any further away then Earth orbit though.

Or if we are feeling particularly ambitious, even with infinite money:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globus_Cassus

 

[YNM]

Everything you ever wanted, so long as not breaking the laws of physics.

 

 

No, I'm serious. The only reason we, as a whole species entity, are not anywhere yet is because we're busy with ourselves, and when we got about to doing it, competition comes to play, for good or bad (lately it's been not that nice, it was fine in the 60s / 70s).

Aand because we live in a small sphere, after all. One important part in the physical laws is that you get to leave something behind to go further. Compared to the vast emptiness... what can I say ?

Fun question : if Earth is fully made of rocket fuel (let's assume kerosene - LOX), how many dV can the planet itself get ? (assume the surface crust is crusty and not flamable.)

Edited May 18, 2017 by YNM

[sevenperforce]

I've seen the flags-and-footprints-to-Venus video before -- it's awesome to watch.

With unlimited funds, how WOULD one do an actual flags-and-footprints on Venus? Kerbals can survive basically anywhere but humans...ehh, not so much.

22 minutes ago, YNM said:

Fun question : if Earth is fully made of rocket fuel (let's assume kerosene - LOX), how many dV can the planet itself get ? (assume the surface crust is crusty and not flamable.)

104 km/s. That's if you count humanity as your payload and dry mass.

[Norcalplanner]

Honestly, I think we would also see some radical changes on the earth itself - think cities floating on the ocean, a hyperloop ground transportation network, solar powered aircraft, growing food and harvesting resources in locations heretofore inaccessible. Because once you've figured out how to make a floating city work with minimal external inputs, you're halfway to making a viable colony.

[p1t1o]

46 minutes ago, YNM said:

No, I'm serious. The only reason we, as a whole species entity, are not anywhere yet is because we're busy with ourselves, and when we got about to doing it, competition comes to play, for good or bad (lately it's been not that nice, it was fine in the 60s / 70s).

I think that rings true. Its not so depressing though, as instinctive competition and self-interest is a powerful survival mechanism, it sucks to a human mind but we may not have made it this far without it. I think that it may be possible to become civilized enough to overcome it one day, but I do not see that being a small thing.

[Spaceception]

32 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

104 km/s. That's if you count humanity as your payload and dry mass.

 

How'd you figure that out?

[sevenperforce]

19 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

How'd you figure that out?

With the rocket equation. 348 seconds of specific impulse times one gee times natural log of 316 million short tons divided by the mass of the Earth equals 104.6 km/s.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(gravity+of+Earth)*(348+seconds)*ln((316+million+short+tons)%2F(mass+of+Earth))

EDIT: 348 seconds was a vacuum specific impulse for kerolox off the top of my head. That's the MVac D. I think the maximum theoretical specific impulse of kerolox is something closer to 358 seconds, which gives you 107.6 km/s. If you want to do something exciting, like going nuclear with a notional specific impulse of 900 seconds, you get a much more impressive 270.5 km/s. To get to galactic escape velocity from our current location and orbital velocity, you'd need to throw your "fuel" at around 1,060 seconds of specific impulse.

ANOTHER EDIT: Of course, if you have a perfectly-efficient mass-to-energy conversion engine, you can accelerate Earth to galactic escape velocity for the low, low price of just 0.11% of its mass. Which is 6.33e21 kg, or roughly half the mass of Pluto. Given the influence of relativistic effects at this scale, your mileage (literally) may vary.

Edited May 18, 2017 by sevenperforce

[YNM]

On 05/19/2017 at 2:00 AM, p1t1o said:

I think that rings true. Its not so depressing though, as instinctive competition and self-interest is a powerful survival mechanism, it sucks to a human mind but we may not have made it this far without it. I think that it may be possible to become civilized enough to overcome it one day, but I do not see that being a small thing.

Well... Tom Scott had put some sarcasm in it.

All true except the very end bit.

[DeltaDizzy]

On 5/18/2017 at 1:32 PM, sevenperforce said:

With unlimited funds, how WOULD one do an actual flags-and-footprints on Venus? Kerbals can survive basically anywhere but humans...ehh, not so much.

Get in and out quick

[StrandedonEarth]

On 5/18/2017 at 11:32 AM, sevenperforce said:

With unlimited funds, how WOULD one do an actual flags-and-footprints on Venus?

With a NewtSuit, of course! There is a commercially available version rated to 2500 ft. just need a few upgrades to manage Venus' 1km deep equivalent.

[55delta]

Infinite money? I have some ideas.

1. Equivalents of Dawn or New Horizons to every dwarf planet and trans-Neptunian object we can track.

2. SpaceX's ITS, where even Elon doesn't know where the money for that will come from.

3. Revive and revamp the VentureStar shuttle, or go even more crazy and re-design something like Star Raker to complement Vulcan/ACES.

4. Build a new version of the ISS, incorporating new technologies and maybe add some sort of cargo transfer terminal as well.

5. Build SpaceLab 2 at L2, using ACES to move sections, and whatever we have left that's still capable of manned flight and trans-lunar insertion.

6. Look into resolving any remaining issues involving beamed microwave power, so maybe there might be orbiting solar farms in the future.

That's all I can think of for now.

[Bill Phil]

4 hours ago, 55delta said:

3. Revive and revamp the VentureStar shuttle, or go even more crazy and re-design something like Star Raker to complement Vulcan/ACES.

If we're going to do that, I recommend building a Skyhook for the Venturestar to actually go to. It would reduce the required performance of the vehicle.

[NSEP]

I'd go to the Moon for like 2 weeks for vacation, and then return, for free! 

Lunar Olympics!

Not so serious stuff!

Fun!!

Space tourism always amazes me, if i never see someone buy a ticket to the Moon and back in my lifetime, than im going to smash my door at age 124.

On 18/05/2017 at 1:20 AM, DeltaDizzy said:

Title of OP is basiaclly a summary of KSP Sandbox Mode. So, like basically anything that you can do in RSS/RO sandbox.

I would not like to see my 750 ton to LEO monster explode in IRL lol.

[DeltaDizzy]

On 5/20/2017 at 5:44 PM, NSEP said:

I would not like to see my 750 ton to LEO monster explode in IRL lol.

See the 1950's

Edited May 31, 2017 by DeltaDizzy

[peadar1987]

On 2017-5-18 at 8:10 PM, sevenperforce said:

With the rocket equation. 348 seconds of specific impulse times one gee times natural log of 316 million short tons divided by the mass of the Earth equals 104.6 km/s.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(gravity+of+Earth)*(348+seconds)*ln((316+million+short+tons)%2F(mass+of+Earth))

EDIT: 348 seconds was a vacuum specific impulse for kerolox off the top of my head. That's the MVac D. I think the maximum theoretical specific impulse of kerolox is something closer to 358 seconds, which gives you 107.6 km/s. If you want to do something exciting, like going nuclear with a notional specific impulse of 900 seconds, you get a much more impressive 270.5 km/s. To get to galactic escape velocity from our current location and orbital velocity, you'd need to throw your "fuel" at around 1,060 seconds of specific impulse.

ANOTHER EDIT: Of course, if you have a perfectly-efficient mass-to-energy conversion engine, you can accelerate Earth to galactic escape velocity for the low, low price of just 0.11% of its mass. Which is 6.33e21 kg, or roughly half the mass of Pluto. Given the influence of relativistic effects at this scale, your mileage (literally) may vary.

When calculating the ISp though, you need to take into account the escape velocity of the earth. Any reaction mass you throw out is going to Newton's Third Law you back to rest unless it's expelled from the system. The escape velocity from the earth's surface is about 11,000 m/s, which means your exhaust velocity has to be at least this high to get any net thrust at all. Effectively, 1100s is going to be subtracted from your ISp straight off. This means that the only choice is really ion thrusters.

Of course, this penalty will decrease as the earth's gravity does, because we're decreasing the earth's mass significantly, so we're going to get a nice integral function to solve, and the final dV is going to be hugely dependent on what ISp we start with.

Edited May 22, 2017 by peadar1987