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

[KAL 9000]

On 5/18/2017 at 9:25 AM, tater said:

The Moon is likely not useful

*cough* Helium-3 *cough* 

Also: 

[kerbiloid]

17 hours ago, KAL 9000 said:

Helium-3

Li.

In seawater.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Terrestrial
(or from ru.wiki Li/seawater = 17 mg/l = 17 g/t)

Li→T
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Nuclear

T→3He
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Decay

Get 17 g per tonne of Li of seawater, expose in a reactor and wait 10-20 years until it decays?

Or fry out less than 1g per 100 t of lunar ground?

Lunar helium is only for lunar balloons.

Spoiler

17 hours ago, KAL 9000 said:

for (auto & object: objects)
  object.colonize();
cout << "Colonization complete.";

 

[TheEpicSquared]

There would be EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE

[magnemoe]

On 18.5.2017 at 2:09 PM, Rath said:

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?

However you would need an newly developed craft to even land on the Moon.
At the same time you could also build ITS or sea dragon. 
I agree on no Alcubierre or even constant fusion, pulsed fusion who require external power would be ok. 
Orion nuclear pulse engine would probably be the top here. 

[Nothalogh]

On 5/28/2017 at 2:55 PM, magnemoe said:

Orion nuclear pulse engine would probably be the top here. 

Saints Teller and Ulam will one day be vindicated

[kerbiloid]

With infinite money we could build metal bridges from planet to planet.

[ARS]

Doing SCIENCE!!!

Not sure if this works, but imagine if we can build a device for brain down/uploading, but here's the deal: if we pick all of our most brilliant scientists, upload and copy their knowledge into this device, and then distribute that knowledge into everyone on planet and work together FOR SCIENCE!!! (But hey, worldwide cooperation and no need to make monetary profit anyway), imagine how far our technology progressed because of that (though this might put our civilization in near hive-mind level)

Other than that... GN Drive

Edited May 30, 2017 by ARS

[kerbiloid]

48 minutes ago, ARS said:

if we pick all of our most brilliant scientists, upload and copy their knowledge into this device

, their virtual clones will kill each other after 5 minutes of cohabitation. 

(Unseen University from Discworld is pretty close to IRL, just with spells)

[sevenperforce]

8 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

With infinite money we could build metal bridges from planet to planet.

.....probably not.

[kerbiloid]

29 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

probably not.

If make them solid. But we could place numerous ships so close to each other that could then jump from one to another like from escalator to escalator.

[peadar1987]

46 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

If make them solid. But we could place numerous ships so close to each other that could then jump from one to another like from escalator to escalator.

With infinite fuel for station-keeping?

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, peadar1987 said:

With infinite fuel for station-keeping?

With infinite money — why not?

[sevenperforce]

20 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

With infinite money — why not?

Because, rocket equation.

[peadar1987]

12 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Because, rocket equation.

And because there aren't infinite numbers of people on earth to produce the infinite amounts of energy required to launch infinite refuelling missions. Not to mention we don't have infinite reserves of the materials needed to make spacecraft and fuel for them. 

[PrathamK]

Rockets heighted 10KM (1KM at least). Take N1core with 3-stages only and put a Saturn-V above it And but A Vulcan ( 2nd gen Energia, only Launcher on 3rd stage. With a Shuttle with features of Airavat, Buran, Hermes, CNSA and JAXA shuttle and US Shuttle (whatsoever its name is) boosted by 16 SLS core, radially. 1st stage, Boosters (16 SLS Core) will excced speed 10× Sun's Escape Velocity and will allow us achieve Near Light Speed and we will reach Best Habitable Planets.

[sevenperforce]

14 minutes ago, PrathamK said:

Rockets heighted 10KM (1KM at least). Take N1core with 3-stages only and put a Saturn-V above it And but A Vulcan ( 2nd gen Energia, only Launcher on 3rd stage. With a Shuttle with features of Airavat, Buran, Hermes, CNSA and JAXA shuttle and US Shuttle (whatsoever its name is) boosted by 16 SLS core, radially. 1st stage, Boosters (16 SLS Core) will excced speed 10× Sun's Escape Velocity and will allow us achieve Near Light Speed and we will reach Best Habitable Planets.

Even if such a stack could exceed 10x solar escape velocity, this would be nowhere near lightspeed. Like, not even remotely close.

Even 1,000x solar escape velocity is closer to the speed of a major league baseball pitch than it is to lightspeed.

[PrathamK]

24 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Even if such a stack could exceed 10x solar escape velocity, this would be nowhere near lightspeed. Like, not even remotely close.

Even 1,000x solar escape velocity is closer to the speed of a major league baseball pitch than it is to lightspeed.

Hey, I'm saying possibilities, you do maths and other things, but if possible we can launch crewed missions to Habitable Exo-Solar System. Much easier, Faster, conditions if we aren't faced Money, Fuel, Competition, Work Force and Health Effects.

I'm talking about 1st stage which is 16 radial SLS cores, and other stages like N-1 and Saturn, will exceed Velocity, and its first design, larger and complex designs will led to near Light Speed.

Edited June 2, 2017 by PrathamK

[sevenperforce]

Just now, PrathamK said:

Hey, I'm saying possibilities, you do maths and other things, but if possible we can launch crewed missions to Habitable Exo-Solar System. Much easier, Faster, conditions if we aren't faced Money, Fuel, Competition, Work Force and Health Effects.

I did the maths. Achieving relativistic velocities with chemical propellant is not a possibility.

Even if we have infinite money, that doesn't mean we have infinite fuel. Nor does it make the rocket equation any less punishing.

If all of the oceans were drained, cracked into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, placed into orbit with a space elevator, and used to launch a one-gram payload, that one-gram payload would achieve a whopping 247 km/s.

This is eight hundredths of one percent of the speed of light.

[PrathamK]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

I did the maths. Achieving relativistic velocities with chemical propellant is not a possibility.

Even if we have infinite money, that doesn't mean we have infinite fuel. Nor does it make the rocket equation any less punishing.

If all of the oceans were drained, cracked into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, placed into orbit with a space elevator, and used to launch a one-gram payload, that one-gram payload would achieve a whopping 247 km/s.

This is eight hundredths of one percent of the speed of light.

Sry I Surrender, I Said Possibilities, with Future Tech not just Current, because Infinite Money also means faster and better research.

If this would had happened, now, today, we might be texting on Planet, Orbiting A Red Dwarf, that too revolves 2 stars. And 80,000×78900 M orbit is still a NEAR Circular Orbit.

No Budget constraints means much faster, better, larger research, and even the result.

[kerbiloid]

On 30.05.2017 at 7:11 PM, sevenperforce said:

Because, rocket equation.

Which still allows a chained refuel.

On 30.05.2017 at 7:25 PM, peadar1987 said:

And because there aren't infinite numbers of people on earth to produce the infinite amounts of energy required to launch infinite refuelling missions

With infinite money we can build automatic facilities and reusable tanker shuttles for this.

[55delta]

You know, I completely forgot about the world-wide co-operation part. Let's see...

ULA could keep using RD-180s for the Delta V. Not exactly advancing anything, but it makes a bit of a difference.

Anything else that could use an RD-170 or RD-180 engine, if they could get one?

[wumpus]

On 6/3/2017 at 1:24 AM, kerbiloid said:

Which still allows a chained refuel.

With infinite money we can build automatic facilities and reusable tanker shuttles for this.

Chained refuel doesn't effect the rocket equation.  And if you plan ahead and use ions to move chemical rockets into position [a great idea for less expensive trips inside the solar system], that really only works for values less than the Sun's escape velocity (which could presumably be done now with chemical rockets, especially if Jupiter is in the right position).

There are various 4-figure Isp rockets in various labs.  Getting Isp much higher doesn't make much sense in the solar system (things like low TWR and power requirements are overwhelming once Isp>>1000) but they are out there and exactly what you need for interstellar travel.  The general claim is that Orion was expected to get to roughly .1C if used for interstellar travel.

[DeltaDizzy]

On 5/18/2017 at 7:42 AM, ModZero said:

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.

2

Who cares about Mars?WHO CARES ABOUT MARS?!?!?! What do you think you're saying?

[ModZero]

14 hours ago, DeltaDizzy said:

Who cares about Mars?WHO CARES ABOUT MARS?!?!?! What do you think you're saying?

I'm saying "who cares about Mars?" It's a silly planet.

HTH, HaND.

[tater]

On 6/5/2017 at 3:38 PM, DeltaDizzy said:

Who cares about Mars?WHO CARES ABOUT MARS?!?!?! What do you think you're saying?

The only places to go in space for people are places we build. 100% built environments should be built where they are most efficient to build. Mars is honestly a poor choice. Resources are available minus the gravity well.

I'm not a default fan of Mars "colonization" because I think it lacks much of what is needed---like a magnetic field, or a meaningful atmosphere. Until we do long-term studies on human factors in 0.38g (spin up a couple tethered Bigelows, perhaps), we don't even know if it's safe. An orbital colony can be at any arbitrary effective gravity we determine works (1g being certain).

Edited June 7, 2017 by tater