NASA launches Ares rocket

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

So NASA has launched their new rocket, called Aries (fond hope).  I think that NASA has had the buscuit as far as launching any vehicle intended to operate in space.  Sheesh.  After milking all they could from Von Braun and Willy Ley, you would think they could find a better way than a rocket launched from sea level.

Foo!  Arthur C. Clarke had a better method in A Prelude to Mars which was written before the last general nastieness.  His idea was to use a maglev tram running up the side of a mountain for initial acceleration.  Furthermore, the ship used Nerva engines (hotter than the middle tail-race of Hades, once used.) and still were able to recover the vechicle with some precautions.  Of course, the Australian desert could stand a little radioactive gas in those days, I am sure.

The private sector seems to be determined to lift their vehicles above most of the atmotphere using other technologies, and this should be looked at seriously.  Getting out of the atmosphere and lessening the gravity pull at sealevel must surely be an advantage.

Once you are in space, why not switch over to Bussard engines?  Haven't got one that works yet?  Rather and old idea, what?

C'mon you young engineers and dreamers!  What would you do?

[Boggy1 45]

NASA is launching the Ares unmanned test rocket tomorrow (Tuesday). It is the main booster stage of the Constellation Programme, the Space Shuttle replacement which will be operable, they hope, by about 2015.

One thing that really strikes me about this rocket is just how large it is. Nearly four times the height of the Space Shuttle; here is the image of the Ares I-X at the Space Shuttle launching pad. It towers over the support structure, which normally is taller than the Shuttle Boosters themselves. Shows how massive this thing is.

One thing that concerns me about the Ares programme is that it is nowhere near ready for space-flight yet. This booster stage is the first ever test; if it goes wrong then it will be the end of public US manned spaceflight for the foreseeable future. All of the remaining Space Shuttles (Atlantis, Endeavour, and Discovery) are scheduled to be decommissioned next year.

Already NASA will have to borrow the Russian Soyuz rockets to reach the International Space Station and for other manned flights during the interim period between the decommissioning of the Shuttle and the commissioning of the Ares sometime in the mid 2010s; but if this rocket fails to launch, then it puts back the US Space Flight programme a good five years to a decade at least; which will seriously put into doubt the future of the International Space Station, which may be artificially de-orbited and destroyed in the 2020s.

All my hopes are set upon this test tomorrow going smoothly.

As for other ways to get a manned capsule into space; right now the rocket booster is the only real foreseeable option. We have neither the time, money, nor technology to safely launch people via magnetic acceleration; though it may certainly be used for cargo transport in the future.

The private sector are flirting with the idea of horizontal takeoff much like aeroplanes do, but this needs a ridiculous amount of fuel and thrust, using engines which haven't really been developed yet. Right now the private sector has only managed to reach suborbital spaceflight using this method, which is not at all comparable to what NASA can accomplish using traditional rockets.

The idea of Bussard ramjet has been proven to be totally unworkable using current technology. The density of space is simply not high enough for this to be a feasible alternative. Plus, once you have achieved a stable orbit, there is simply no need for large rockets to produce thrust (except for deorbiting and trajectory correction), which is why the large rocket boosters detach from the Space Shuttle once it has reached a certain altitude. Everything else, from minor burns to rotation and translation can be accomplished very easily using the Reaction Control System. You would only need a Main Engine that has large delta-V if you were performing a flight to the Moon, or an interplanetary flight. The former of which has already been developed for the Orion Programme, the manned-moon-flight missions within the larger Constellation Programme. However, development of the ion engine would be great; that seems to be a good alternative to conventional rockets for long distance travel.

(also, moved to Current Events)

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Well, I assume you are in a position to know all this, but what ever happened to man's ingenuity.  We have been playing with rockets for more than 5,000 years and have now reached the reductio ad absurdum point. 

Isn't it time for newer technology?  What would happen if some powerful figure like the President of the United States were to make a public declaration that we had to get rid of rockets with the excuse of needing an immediate system to patrol near earth to avoid collisions with incoming large rocks?  Can't do it with rockets because of the planning loop needed, so we definitely need something better.

And don't give me the excuse that we could nuke such an object.  We probably couldn't get them there, even if we had some that could do it.  Some of the smaller asteroids are probably made of nickel-iron, which is pretty hard to break up, let alone vaporize.  Should you believe it unlikely, I only need to point out that Sudbury, Ontario is sitting on one.

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

And don't give me the excuse that we could nuke such an object.  We probably couldn't get them there, even if we had some that could do it.  Some of the smaller asteroids are probably made of nickel-iron, which is pretty hard to break up, let alone vaporize.quote>

The biggest problem with the idea of using any sort of explosive to blow up incoming meteors is the vacuous nature of space. No atmosphere means no pressure wave, which severely cripples the destructive capacity of any explosion. All you're left with is a lot of heat and a bit of shrapnel, neither of which is particularly strong against solid rock.

So, destroying them is out of the question. That leaves us with deflecting their path... which there's more than one plausible way of doing.

The private sector seems to be determined to lift their vehicles above most of the atmotphere using other technologies, and this should be looked at seriously.  Getting out of the atmosphere and lessening the gravity pull at sealevel must surely be an advantage.quote>

The difference in gravitational pull with a few miles of altitude is negligible.

On the other hand, it does give you a head start, requiring less energy to get from there into space. Specifically, every meter you have to travel vertically will require 9.8 Joules per kilogram of mass just to fight gravity. Even more when you consider drag and the imperfect efficiency of the engines. When you consider a rocket on the order of tens, hundreds, even thousands of tonnes, that can really start to make a big difference.

It is, however, more complicated to launch from midair rather than the ground. Simply launching from somewhere higher in elevation is not but it requires that you have a space center there. You could use the high prairie for this purpose, but then you'd be further from the equator, meaning that to put anything in orbit you'd have to expend more energy speeding it up horizontally - which is why they chose to stick the launch site in Florida in the first place. Really, in order to optimize both.... high in the Andes somehwere in Equador, Peru, or Colombia would seem to be the most ideal location. If you can practically build a space center in the mountains, that is. And if those countires are on board with the idea (politics - the real caveat...).

Although, I suppose no rule says the elevation had to be natural. You could build a 1,000+ foot tower in Cape Canaveral to launch spacecraft from the top of. Then you just need to solve the problem of getting them up there from the ground...

As for the maglev-up-the-mountain idea... it could certainly work, but the environmentalists would never in a million years let such a thing get built in the US. Somebody else, whose country isn't the capital of NIMBY would have to do it.

[Boggy1 45]

The whole idea of patrolling space for Near Earth Objects is silly anyway, as it would give no advantage over the traditional ground based Spaceguard system. Also it would require a ridiculous ammount of delta-V; on a scale maybe a hundred years ahead of us technology wise. It's true that the coverage by the early-warning system is rather pitiful, but that is due to the fact, to quote Douglas Adams, space is mind-numbingly big. We only detected the meteoroid 2008TC3 20 hours before it impacted, and was in fact the only NEO which has ever been detected prior to entering the atmosphere. The sad fact is is that it's rather a case of luck if we spot these things or not.

And to reiterate what duke said; destruction via missile is quite improbable, and would almost never be considered if a situation were to arise. The only really possible way to remove the risk of a dangerous NEO is deflection via gravitational attraction; and that would require us knowing about the object at least a decade in advance. A "space patrol" system wouldn't help there much at all.

Rockets are an old system, and they are rather inefficiant. But right now they are the best we have. In the far future magnetic acceleration might be possible for cargo, or a nanowire space elevation system could be developed; but this is conjecture at best. True Spaceplanes would be lovely, and might cut down on cost a heck of a lot; but "rockets" would still be required to attain the velocity.

[Easy Bakes 253]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

Once you are in space, why not switch over to Bussard engines?  Haven't got one that works yet?  Rather and old idea, what?

you do? quote>

only a 50 year old idea,  But  seting aside the technolgy gap that would eb needed for the creation of a kilometers wide magenetic field, we still have not been able to use magnetic fields to create a hygrogen fusion  reaction.

.

[hym 358]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

So NASA has launched their new rocket, called Aries (fond hope).  I think that NASA has had the buscuit as far as launching any vehicle intended to operate in space.  Sheesh.  After milking all they could from Von Braun and Willy Ley, you would think they could find a better way than a rocket launched from sea level.

The private sector seems to be determined to lift their vehicles above most of the atmotphere using other technologies, and this should be looked at seriously.  Getting out of the atmosphere and lessening the gravity pull at sealevel must surely be an advantage.quote>

Interestingly, such a launch system would likely cause NASA more problems that it would solve.  A lot is said about our lack of advanced propulsion and how it hinders us from going all over the solar system, but very little is said about NASA's biggest problem with visiting other planets.  That problem is momentum control, or more specifically, decelerating the object's mass.  Where you launch from is pretty much irrelevant; all it really changes is the amount of fuel you have to carry and how long it will take you to get there.

Once you are in space, why not switch over to Bussard engines?  Haven't got one that works yet?  Rather and old idea, what?quote>

While the Bussard ramjet is nice in theory, we are nowhere near possessing the technological prowess to actually make one.  We do not have the technology to make electromagnetic fields of the required size, nor do we have the means to control the heat production of nuclear fusion.  A few years ago, the US Department of Energy commissioned a simulated test of a theoretical nuclear fusion power reactor; the reactor worked in the simulation, but it was also shown to generate so much heat that the primary containment vessle vaporized and the outer containment shell boiled.  Needless to say, those kinds of temperatures wouldn't be tolerated by a spacecraft.

C'mon you young engineers and dreamers!  What would you do?quote>

I can't speak for the dreamers and optimists, but as an engineering student, I think I'd probably start by recognizing that despite how advanced we like to believe we are, we really don't know squat.  Most of our "technological breakthroughs" are the result of learning how to apply a physical law in a new manner, rather than learning how to manipulate the law itself.  People point to "genetic engineering" as an example of scientific prowess, yet about all we can "genetically engineer" are microbes (even then we aren't really designing new microbes, but rather just toying with existing designs).  Some might point to computers, but again, about all we're doing there is controlling the flow of electrons.  Powered flight and vacuum cleaners?  Nothing more than piggybacking on Bernoulli's principle.  Even something as simple as gravity (which is nothing believed to be nothing more than spatial distortion) is beyond our ability to really control.  What do we do when gravity is a problem?  We choose to run away from it, rather than learn to control it.

Unfortunately, the masses have been steeped in the promises of science fiction writings and don't realize the technical challenges encompassed in actually bringing those science fiction promises to fruition.  Furthermore, even when science delivers on the promises of the science fiction writers, that doesn't mean that the engineers can actually use what the scientists created.  God could walk up to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory tomorrow and say "Here, have the secrets to hyperspace technology.  You can now go faster than the speed of light."  The public would be absolutely ecstatic, with scifi enthusiasts and futurists all hailing humanity's future in space, but they'd be celebrating for nothing because they failed to realize that they're missing half the equation.  Yes, you have to have sufficiently advanced propulsion technology to get there, but you also need to be able to slow down when you get there, otherwise you'll die upon impact.  This is the thing that most people don't think about, and any engineer at NASA's JPL will tell you that it also dictates a lot of rules about what your propulsion system will look like.

Unfortnately, a lot of people base their ideas off science fiction and not reality, so they are pushing for the implementation of things that we simply can't do at this time or are possible but don't make much sense.

[Meg 368]

but . . . but . . . what about the Heisenberg Compensators?

[Easy Bakes 253]

Originally posted by: Meg

but . . . but . . . what about the Heisenberg Compensators?

quote>

I think iv gone into incredible detail  in other threads about  transporter technology, and if the process of transporters or replicators were achived the last thing they would be doing with it is transporting people around.

[sneakeypete 16]

The problem with magnetic launchers, or any other ground based acelleration (gas guns etc.) is not that we can't build a big enough machine to do it, the problem is that when you launch your payload off its going to be going in the excess of 10km/s at sea level (If i remember correctly. either way, its very fast). These speeds are extreme, and we have no way of building something that would be able to withstand the forces and temperatures involved. The beauty of rocket engines is that they only get fast when they get high, where the atmosphere is less dense and these sort of speeds are more easily atainable.

[Boggy1 45]

Well, the launch windows today were scrubbed, due to bad weather around Florida.

NASA now aims to launch the Ares test rocket tommorow, at 8a.m EDT - 12:00pm GMT.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Originally posted by: Duke87

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

And don't give me the excuse that we could nuke such an object.  We probably couldn't get them there, even if we had some that could do it.  Some of the smaller asteroids are probably made of nickel-iron, which is pretty hard to break up, let alone vaporize.quote>

As for the maglev-up-the-mountain idea... it could certainly work, but the environmentalists would never in a million years let such a thing get built in the US. Somebody else, whose country isn't the capital of NIMBY would have to do it.

quote>

Well if you want to be on the equator, you don't have to be in the United States, do you?  If the problem is with military security, it is clear the the private sector is a better deal.  Besides, I thought they used the Redstone(?) launching facilties for military stuff.

Boggy1:  I am afraid that I have somehow given the impression that blasting is the way to go.  Sorry, I don't believe that.  I just belive in Newton's third law and the Law of the Lever.  Why not just give a LEO a good push with some means, say, a real live ship that is not necessarily going to come back to earth, although the crew might well lbe picked up afterwards.

Of course LEO stations are not any good for this because of orbital decay (atmospheric drag), but how about a station at one of the LaGrange points, hmmm?  I know it would cost like the dickens to get it there, but it should be self=sustaining once it is there.  It would also make a great spot to launch exploration missiions.

Easy Bakes:  Why bother with a fusion engine?  If you can collect hydrogen and other atoms, why not heat them up to the plasma state with a good old fission reactor?  The vessel need never return to earth (see above).

Hym:  "A man's reach must exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for?"  There has been a lot of literary immagination, but the engineering crowd have been singularly failing in the imagination department.  Maybe it is the love of the wonderful stamp you get that goes along with being a certified engineer?  I left engineering after my first year.  I was feeling stifled.

Meg:  You have a point.  Most of the WAG types really do want inertial nullification though, not "transporters".  An old idea of Doc Smith's (but he was a chemist).  And Smith's technology came from an alien source.  Oh well ...

[Shadow Assassin 336]

I did read somewhere about ion engines being created - except they're absolutely useless for getting out of the Earth's atmosphere because they don't have the necessary amount of thrust and power to escape the pull of gravity... These engines in space, however, are a different matter entirely - they can travel massive distances on a minimal amount of fuel.

I mean, what is the issue here with using 5,000 year old technology - where's the innovation, huh? Where's the pushing of boundaries? Why can't we just disregard the fact that some laws of physics (which, I might add, are only laws based on what we know, not what the universe is capable of allowing) are unbreakable, and push the boundaries a little?

I get the feeling that many people who are mucking around with all this stuff are secretly hoping for aliens to just turn up and help us.

[sneakeypete 16]

Ion engines (or whatever their proper name is) have been used for about the last decade. Currently, there's a probe orbiting the moon that used ion engines to get there, and another heading off to do some asteroid flyby's that's powed by one.

[un1 41]

Well the launch was successful, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8330424.stm . However, it looks like the project might be canceled.

[Patricius Maximus 236]

I saw the launch, and it was quite a success. I do hope they go through with the program, and don't decelerate it. I would favor going to Mars as soon as possible, but since the implementation of Bush's vision for space exploration is underway, it makes no sense to change the entire project midway. Also, the budget crimping of NASA is rediculous.

An agency such as NASA, whose continued endeavours are so vital to the future of our species, should not get deficient funds. If I were writing a budget, I'd at least double the NASA budget. If NASA got the same percentage of the federal budget as it did in 1966 (when we were really making progress), the amount of money would be 180 billion USD. Now just think what they could do with that. It would certainly be a better investment than throwing 23 trillion USD at the banking system (in addition to being 100 times cheaper).

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

There has been a lot of literary immagination, but the engineering crowd have been singularly failing in the imagination department.  Maybe it is the love of the wonderful stamp you get that goes along with being a certified engineer?quote>

Engineers are wary to do something that isn't tried and true. Besides that most clients don't like it (nobody wants to be the guinea pig for the new, unproven technology), there's good practice reason as well: if it fails, it reflects poorly on your proefssional qualification. And beyond that, if, in failing, people get hurt or killed, you're liable, sometimes criminally, and your career is over.

We are thus a cautious and conservative bunch. Radical creativity and imagination are things for people who have no worries of their head being a platter when their ideas don't work.

Besides, literary imagination comes from people who generally are not experts on the matter, and very often the things imagined are impractical in reality or outright impossible.

[Boggy1 45]

They can't cancel the project; because it would be the end of the U.S. Manned Space Programme (what with the remaining Shuttles going out of use in a few months). They may cancel some of the Ares variants, i.e. the cargo-only rocket. It is still a blow to NASA unfortunately. If only there budget was comparable with that of the military.

N_O_Body: Deflection via gravitational attraction is the only feasible way to change the orbit of an asteroid, so removing it's threat to Earth. However the nudging would need to be carried out over a long period of time; we're talking years. Of course the vessel wouldn't be manned, everything can be done via Mission Control here on Earth

[astronelson 339]

Besides, literary imagination comes from people who generally are not experts on the matter, and very often the things imagined are impractical in reality or outright impossible. quote>

Case in point: Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon. Cannons are certainly not the way to get people there.

[hym 358]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

Hym:  "A man's reach must exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for?"  There has been a lot of literary immagination, but the engineering crowd have been singularly failing in the imagination department.  Maybe it is the love of the wonderful stamp you get that goes along with being a certified engineer?  I left engineering after my first year.  I was feeling stifled.quote>

I know that it is said that the science fiction of today is the science fact of tomorrow, but to be perfectly frank, it is a gross mistake to take what is written in science fiction and assume it to be possible in the real world (much less a wise idea to pursue).  The science fiction writers wrote of amazing technological advances and they were able to do this because they didn't have to actually work out the science behind the idea.  All they had to do was come up with a cool idea and write it down.  To me, it seems absurd to look at the "technology" of a science fiction story and assume that it can be implemented in the real world.  There is a massive disconnect between imagination and reality; just because it can be imagined does not mean it can be done in the world we live in.

Originally posted by: Patricius Maximus

Also, the budget crimping of NASA is rediculous.

An agency such as NASA, whose continued endeavours are so vital to the future of our species, should not get deficient funds.quote>

NASA's budget woes are partly its own fault.  NASA is good at accomplishing a lot with a small budget, so it has a hard time pushing for extra funding.  (I'm not advocating that NASA start wasting its funding, mind you.)

Originally posted by: Boggy1

If only there budget was comparable with that of the military.quote>

It might be a nice wish, but it won't happen.  The US can't afford to simply increase NASA's budget by that much, nor can the military operate at NASA funding levels.  NASA's budget for 2008 was roughly $17.3 billion.  It costs the Department of Defense nearly that much just to maintain the various US Special Forces divisions.  (That covers about 55,000 of the 1.4 million active duty troops in the military.)

[sneakeypete 16]

Originally posted by: hymI know that it is said that the science fiction of today is the science fact of tomorrow, but to be perfectly frank, it is a gross mistake to take what is written in science fiction and assume it to be possible in the real world (much less a wise idea to pursue).  The science fiction writers wrote of amazing technological advances and they were able to do this because they didn't have to actually work out the science behind the idea.  All they had to do was come up with a cool idea and write it down.  To me, it seems absurd to look at the "technology" of a science fiction story and assume that it can be implemented in the real world.  There is a massive disconnect between imagination and reality; just because it can be imagined does not mean it can be done in the world we live in.

quote>

And even then, very few, if any, science fiction writers from the 19th century picked computers (in their modern 20th century form "everyone can use them", that is), or the internet, before they happened.

[duack 14]

You can't really guess what technology would come next because the writers are more concerned with making up something crazy that would entertain audiences rather than something reasonable that would bore their audience to death.

However, I wouldn't call all the technological breakthroughs as simple discoveries of how 'stuff' works. This is because no matter what, all technology relies on the forces that already exist in the universe like gravity, electromagnetism, atom structure etc. Unless you actually create a universe of your own that's made up of a different composition, then everything is going to seem simple.

Also, a paradox exists because in order to build something, an engineer has to understand it and therefore it would seem simple to them. It would only be complicated if they didn't understand it. For this reason, every technology that ever gets built will be simple.

[Patricius Maximus 236]

Originally posted by: Boggy1

They can't cancel the project; because it would be the end of the U.S. Manned Space Programme (what with the remaining Shuttles going out of use in a few months). They may cancel some of the Ares variants, i.e. the cargo-only rocket. It is still a blow to NASA unfortunately. If only there budget was comparable with that of the military. quote>

Funding NASA on par with the military? Devoting half a trillion dollars a year on the space program? It'd be putting the money to constructive use for once, although such an amount using current tax revenues is impossible. I'd be happy with devoting 6 percent of the budget to NASA (i.e. 1966 levels), which would come out to 188 billion per year.

Originally posted by: hym

I know that it is said that the science fiction of today is the science fact of tomorrow, but to be perfectly frank, it is a gross mistake to take what is written in science fiction and assume it to be possible in the real world (much less a wise idea to pursue).  The science fiction writers wrote of amazing technological advances and they were able to do this because they didn't have to actually work out the science behind the idea.  All they had to do was come up with a cool idea and write it down.  To me, it seems absurd to look at the "technology" of a science fiction story and assume that it can be implemented in the real world.  There is a massive disconnect between imagination and reality; just because it can be imagined does not mean it can be done in the world we live in.quote>

I also think it absurd to assume that all technology in science fiction is in fact possible in reality. It is not. However, often the imaginations of man have provided ideas to persons to implement technological advances they may not have thought of before.

Originally posted by: Patricius Maximus

Also, the budget crimping of NASA is rediculous.

An agency such as NASA, whose continued endeavours are so vital to the future of our species, should not get deficient funds.quote>

NASA's budget woes are partly its own fault.  NASA is good at accomplishing a lot with a small budget, so it has a hard time pushing for extra funding.  (I'm not advocating that NASA start wasting its funding, mind you.)quote>

[Easy Bakes 253]

An awesome picture of the launch

I shrunk it up

the original photo

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0911/ares1_duncan_big.jpg