> Spike Jones wrote: Starting with a 50 pound rocket, I have some *serious*
>
> > doubts we could make it to orbit with 7 pounds. I might believe
> > 7 ounces however.
>
> Adrian Tymes wrote: Ok, ok, true. Point is that it's < 100% of the
> craft's mass - and that
> we need *far* better (faster exhaust velocity) fuels than have been
> used to date, no? (Lasers - highest exhaust velocity, barring FTL
> discoveries - fuelled by matter/antimatter - highest known energy
> density - would be nice, but we can settle for more immediately
> achievable ones as an intermediate step.)
Ja. There are no great breakthrus in our future for standard
chemical rockets. No one tomorrow is gonna discover a
previously unknown chemical that will get us to orbit way
cheaper than now. In the area of chemical rockets, the
only development we can look forward to is economies
of scale by making a lot of them.
I am convinced we need to develop some means of keeping
all the energy on the ground, transmitting it to the rising rocket
by means of laser. The infrastructure for doing this is being
developed in the form of weaponry: ground based lasers and
airborne lasers. In some form those weapons will be used to heat
propellant to lift rockets. I just dont know how yet. spike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:21 MDT