From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Sun Feb 02 2003 - 15:11:03 MST
wingcat noted:
<<Which reminds me. I was talking to my dad about this earlier today, and
he mentioned that the white tiles used for the shuttle's upper body
would make great housing material except for the cost: excellent
insulators, totally fire and termite proof, strength to weight ratios
far more than adequate for a typical house, et cetera and so forth. The
only problem would be cost - which, of course, is often a killer for
this kind of thing. But he was wondering if, perhaps, getting some
contractors hooked on using these for housing materials would drive the
point down, such that making them for the occasional spaceship would be
a cheap custom job rather than the elaborate undertaking it presently
seems to be. (Then again, everything at NASA seems to be an elaborate
undertaking, so maybe it's not the material's fault.) Can anyone here
with any experience in this comment on this possibility?>>
I am not a materials scientist, or aerospace engineer. Have disallowed myself
as expect; let me chime in, nonetheless. I believe that snogging tiles to a
spacecraft was a clever idea 30 years ago, but has proves more dangerous then
useful. Similarly, a spacecraft relying on an external tank with boosters is
unreliable. Thirdly, an earth orbiting spaceplane, should have active fuel in
it to maneuver, and roam throw many orbits at many altitudes of orbit. This
fuel needs to be both volatile to be useful as fuel, and non-volatile to be
safe enough.
Concurrent to #3, we need also to consider low thrust ion engines for orbital
maneuver, for increasing and decreasing orbit altitude. This fuel of choice
might be argon or xenon as a fuel for an ion drive. Both of these elements
are reliable and stable for ion drives. The use of buckeye-tubes for a
storage media, needs to be examined for this. There is, at least 45 years of
lab experience with ion propulsion, which needs to be brought to bear.
There are less radical notions then I have just proposed. One is the
Armageddon space vehicle (secretly built by the USAF) which was made of
titanium-steel alloy. Because of cost (put a dent on the titanium golf club
market, it will!) engineers have backed-off this concept in the 1970's. We
are speaking of here, a huge amount of titanium alloy. Is it worth it? Well,
it would eliminate the tile debris issue and it is both heat and cold
resistant; as well as expensive. But then, so is a halted space program.
Other orbits considerations might be
1) electromagnetic tethers (still tricky to keep in one piece)
2) different mixes and compounds for chemical rockets
3) A horizontal launch spaceplane (scramjet to atmosphere-rocket to orbit)
4) Roton (??) how safe is Roton anyway? Prop-failure anyone?
5) DX-3 Lets land like they did in Abbot & Costello go to Mars.
6) Aerospace launch from the belly of a Spruce Goose sized carrier-lands reg.
This is not the limit of ideas, but people still have to pay for any of this,
somehow.
My suspicion is that, we need a spaceship fleet made out of much harder, much
more corrosive/heat/cold resistant materials. We need an aerospace fleet,
which can be said: "These things are built like brick shithouses (or Mayan
pyramids if you prefer), but they fly as smooth as Canada Geese!"
Mitch
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