posted
Transportable containers? Pull the other one. You'd need a huge power source for the magnetic field plus its backup (since no one wants an antimatter explosion anywhere). They don't have that kind of heavy-duty portable power generation yet.
Besides, people are already up in arms about transporting radioactive nuclear waste across the national interstate highway system. That's generally a passive threat with only low-level danger. Can you imagine what people would say about transporting something equivalent to an armed fusion bomb through densely populated areas?
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@Irishman: You talk about "we". "We can do...". Do you work at CERN or a similar laboratory - or are you just citing info from science maganzines?
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-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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quote:Transportable containers? Pull the other one. You'd need a huge power source for the magnetic field plus its backup (since no one wants an antimatter explosion anywhere). They don't have that kind of heavy-duty portable power generation yet.
I had a lecture today about antimatter propulsion given by a postdoc who had recently spent several months at CERN. He said it would be absolutely no problem to transport up to 1012 antihydrogen atoms in a penning trap. He also said he had planned to transport a trap from Geneva to Stuttgart to prove tranportability, which only failed since CERN stopped producing antihydrogen. Concerning "huge power source", he said a 9V-battery would suffice to sustain the magnetic field needed to confine antihydrogen at 4K!!
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There's technical summaries on plasma core, beam core, ICAN, Orion, Mini MagOrion, Ion drives, etc.
Also, I read today that the X-33 is going to be the planform for the President's CEV to the moon and Mars. And it is going to be nuclear-powered, very much like our nuclear submarines.
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quote:Also, I read today that the X-33 is going to be the planform for the President's CEV to the moon and Mars. And it is going to be nuclear-powered, very much like our nuclear submarines.
Can you say "pipe dream"? At this stage in the game, there are many, many problems with that assertion. First, for the CEV the folks at NASA are looking for a small, simple vehicle using existing technology for practical purposes. With the meager funding that Dubya's proposing, they're not going to be inventing new branches of theoretical physics to propel this ship. And there's no way in hell people would accept a nuclear reactor on one of those things. Think of the uproar from the Greenpeace people when Cassini was launched towards Saturn? After the loss of Columbia, nobody's going to want to have a nuke reentering the atmosphere.
Davok: Just 9 volts? I'd love to see a link to corrobrate that -- if so, it'd be amazing! (BTW, I'm not being negative here, just very skeptical and disillusioned with the current pace of scientific advancement.)
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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A nuclear power generator might be feasible for the vehicle that would transport a crew from Lunar orbit to Mars orbit [along with a Martian Landing & Low Orbital Vehicle--- perhaps something like the CEV which could carry the crew to the ship that would then carry them to Mars].
I believe, that the real advancement for space travel is going to be the rail-gun launch system. However, the real benefit of this system is going to come from a Lunar base that can transmit power back to an energy hungry Earth. Once that is in place, this rail-gun would be a much better option than using chemical propellant. Of course, reentry is still a mess, but it's always going to be like that.
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Cartman
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Well, as long as we're all fantasizing...
Just build an orbital tether and launching stuff becomes trivial, then slap a few docking ports on it and the reentry of said stuff becomes moot altogether.
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posted
Actually, the only reason the X-33 was cancelled was because it couldn't function as initially conceived - a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle. In its new incarnation, I suspect they'll simply change out the aerospike engines for something with a higher Isp (specific impulse) like a VASIMR, and strap on some Energia booster rockets to get it into LEO. There are no revolutionary technologies that would be required to make it work, folks.
An orbital tether that someone could plant charges on, or ram a plane into? That's safe. What happens when the broken tether whips to the ground at many thousands of miles per hour??
The X-33 IS small. The plans I've seen call for a 40 meter long and wide vehicle. The shuttle is longer than that when it launches.
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Cartman
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Right. And what happens when a nuclear-powered X-33 goes boom? What happens when a Penning Trap full of shall we say slightly explosive antimatter collapses while aboard one? You think THAT would be a pretty sight?
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quote:Originally posted by Irishman: [QB] Actually, the only reason the X-33 was cancelled was because it couldn't function as initially conceived - a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle. In its new incarnation, I suspect they'll simply change out the aerospike engines for something with a higher Isp (specific impulse) like a VASIMR, and strap on some Energia booster rockets to get it into LEO. There are no revolutionary technologies that would be required to make it work, folks.
And the kind of spacecraft you're describing is drastically different from the X-33. The X-33 was designed to be a full Space Shuttle replacement, including some cargo capacity (albeit less volume). The proposed CEV is nothing more than a manned pod -- the Volkswagen Beetle to the X-33's school bus or the Space Shuttle's 18-wheeler. Once you change a craft design enough, it becomes something completely different. It may look like the X-33, but it won't be the same design by a long shot.
Hell, according to CNN reports, the CEV may not even be a reusable craft anymore -- NASA is considering the possibility of returning to the older launch strategies, at least for the short term.
Not to mention that those Energia booster rockets you mentioned were seriously flawed designs in and of themselves. I certainly have no interest in launching our next-generation manned spacecraft with 1980s-era Soviet rockets!
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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Russian technology isn't as bad as you would want to believe.
The Buran orbiter for example had quite a few advantages in comparison to the Space Shuttle. It was even able to complete fully automated missions as proven on its one and only testflight. The main reason why no one heard anything about it ever after was lack of funding after the USSR crumbled.
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Unfortunately, many of Russia's larger rockets had a tendancy to go bang on the launch pad, although much of the stuff they're actually using now is pretty good, I wouldn't trust Energia!
Most of the speculation about the CEV that I've seen suggests that it will be non-resuable. Can you imagine the protests if there was a nuclear reactor being launched every few months from Florida?
Also, I *really* don't think it'd be a good idea to stick an antimatter reactor on a manned spacecraft without giving it some serious testing first. Preferably somewhere around Neptune.In any case, for manned missions, it really doesn't matter how powerful your engine is or how long it can burn; you can only accelerate at low Gs for significant amounts of time. Also, what is the maximum G-force the human body can take, and for how long?
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Cartman
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9 to 12... for a minute or so. More if submerged in liquid.
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