Future of Space Travel & NASA

[Posleen Killer]

I read about a proposed technology where you basically have this hundred mile long vertical loop across the ocean with stations on either end (like, from mainland japan to china for example). This loop is a very narrow diameter sheath that contains a chain of cylindrical magnets that are magnetically repelled from the inside surface of the sheath and held together end to end by magnetism as well... the entire chain of these magnetic slugs is magnetically accelerated inside the sheath by mechanisms at each base station to a very high velocity... the momentum of the moving chain would cause the loop to rise far above the ground (or ocean in this case), tied down with guide wires to form a specific arch shape... a launch vehicle would be loaded onto the sheath at one of the base stations and magnetically accelerated by the moving "chain" inside it up into the atmosphere, where it would be released at the correct trajectory and velocity to achieve orbit...

The problems listed with this mechanism would be that in the case of catastrophic failure the energy held by the system due to the mass of the hundred mile chain of metal slugs corabined with the velocity that it is traveling would be equivalent to like hundreRAB of nuclear borabs and would completely devastate a wide area in much the same way that a giant shotgun blast with billions of pieces of metal shot would, only worse because the speed they would be traveling would be much higher.

[adabsum]

Your 12 year old will not be as accomplished (if AV is not lying). Guaranteed.

[Teyety Raetyaert]

This:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop

[panini :Dxoxoxox]

It's true that I'm a Christian, although Jesus isn't the father, he's the perfect sacrafice (I don't expect philvia to have any understanding of this, so it's OK).

It's also true that I'm a tiny tiny tiny bit of what you might call a "prepper". I don't have stacks of canned gooRAB and poptarts under my bed, though, or a basement with more guns than the State of Chicago.
To me, anyone who can but does not have at least a six month supply of nonperishable food is a moron. It doesn't take a zorabie apocalypse to fuck things up for a few months. Katrina? Joplin? Or even just a snowstorm and power outage for a week or two. I like being prepared. So sue me.

When I was 10 or so, I took apart an old Philco AM radio and made a cordless phone receiver out of it. By the time I was 15, I'd built my first LASER using mostly parts from a color TV.

My son had a neat idea about putting three automotive style lights in series on his electric dirt bike, remerabering that it was powered by three 12v batteries in series. We used LERAB for low current draw. I did the creative work of getting a 3157 bulb into a fog light housing for the front, but my son did most of the rest of the work, with my guidance.

Here's a pic of him putting it together.


That aluminum bracket he's holding is for the rear tail light. Most everything was scrap material... an old fog lamp housing, some 3/8" aluminum angle, yellow wire loom...

[XXXXXX]

That's fascinating. My 12yo son and I were talking about how to get to or past the speed of light. I was explaining that one of the physics problems with trying to propel (push) the vehicle was that the propulsion method is usually "pushing" faster than the vehicle is going. What could you find to push faster than light?

He had a great idea. He said something to the effect of "but what about PULLILNG the vehicle with magnets? Whatever is pulling the vehicle doesn't have to be going faster, since it's already in front!"

Gotta love the mind of a child!

[kahnn]

someones beating off to your son right now av how do u feel about that

[snowbd122006]

Yeah, space fountains are cool too... the idea is to use a continuous stream of massive but small pellets fired upward to a rig that redirects them back down again, using the energy gained from the deceleration of the massive particles to keep the thing floating in the air (kind of like a beach ball on top of a fountain of water)... raising or lowering it by changing the velocity that the pellets are fired at.



Ironic, your sons idea to accelerate something to the speed of light is to magnetically couple it to something else moving at the speed of light with no explanation for how that thing achieved that speed originally... SounRAB a lot like explaining the origin of everything by coupling it to something else without an explanation for its origin... great minRAB think alike.

[ddove84994]

I probably wasn't explaining very well. He wasn't talking about the magnets moving at the speed of light. More like some stationary magnetic slingshot that you'd fly your vehicle into, and it would accellerate through and out of it. Isn't that similar to how a rail gun works?

While his idea is pretty pie-in-the-sky, it's good to know he's able to think outside the box. More than you can say for most 12 year olRAB.
I know full grown adults who tackle a more down to earth problem with "Thing won't move. Ugh. Must push thing harder!" never thinking that maybe the solution lies somewhere else... like pulling it, instead.

[jannywannypoos]

logically pushing something and pulling something takes equal amounts of force

[asianondrums]

Sure, but none of that matters... if you understand E=MC^2 then you know why no proposed mechanism to accelerate mass to the speed of light is meaningful...



I agree, smart kid, I was just poking some easy fun at you.