The Space Thread - Launches, Events, Live Streams, Governments, Corporations, drama in Spaaaaaaaaaaaace

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Dead Lion said:
To be fair using nuclear warheads to essentially rocket jump is a bit more extreme than using RTG's in reactors.
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True, but once the first few bombs (which are small in yield compared to tactical or strategic nuclear weapons) propel the Orion craft out of the atmosphere it's as was said before, like pissing in a sea of piss for the radiation generated, and propulsive force against the pusher plate is gigantic, way WAY higher then chemical propulsion could ever achieve. As effecient as current technology can get, and won't be beaten until we can reliably use fusion.

Plus, the Orion craft can be assembled in orbit and kick-start launched from there, it dosen't even have to be ground-launched.

I am a big fan of Orion, and beyond sad it was given up on.
 
what countries could reasonably put a man on the moon in 20 years

  • the united states (duh)
  • chyna could probably
  • russia probably could do it in 20 years if they really wanted too
  • and if europe wanted to i think they could but they have other faggy things they'd rather waste there money on
is there anyone else maybe like japan if they really wanted too?
 
Fishnumm said:
is there anyone else maybe like japan if they really wanted too?
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Japan is basically okay with being capped out at the Delta II class payload line. Their thing is 'have an independent capability and a space industry' and knows more is just silly and impractical.

Europe... It's interesting. Capability-wise yes, more or less. In effect... no. It would be really hard to get everyone pointed in the right direction together.
 
Fishnumm said:
what countries could reasonably put a man on the moon in 20 years

  • the united states (duh)
  • chyna could probably
  • russia probably could do it in 20 years if they really wanted too
  • and if europe wanted to i think they could but they have other faggy things they'd rather waste there money on
is there anyone else maybe like japan if they really wanted too?
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India but they’re definitely more on the die trying side of the equation.

Europe is not happening in a milion years. That would require France to play ball and they always pull out of these kinds of projects mid way through. Closest we’ll get is a ’European’ going on an Artemis mission if the program survives until the next democrat administration.
The Un-Clit said:
True, but once the first few bombs (which are small in yield compared to tactical or strategic nuclear weapons) propel the Orion craft out of the atmosphere it's as was said before, like pissing in a sea of piss for the radiation generated, and propulsive force against the pusher plate is gigantic, way WAY higher then chemical propulsion could ever achieve. As effecient as current technology can get, and won't be beaten until we can reliably use fusion.

Plus, the Orion craft can be assembled in orbit and kick-start launched from there, it dosen't even have to be ground-launched.

I am a big fan of Orion, and beyond sad it was given up on.
Click to expand...
The kiwi farms Orion fanclub has two members now o algo.
 
Dead Lion said:
India but they’re definitely more on the die trying side of the equation.

Europe is not happening in a milion years. That would require France to play ball and they always pull out of these kinds of projects mid way through. Closest we’ll get is a ’European’ going on an Artemis mission if the program survives until the next democrat administration.

The kiwi farms Orion fanclub has two members now o algo.
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india and some european countries could do it alone (germany, france and uk) in 50 years i think but not in 20
 
Fishnumm said:
india and some european countries could do it alone (germany, france and uk) in 50 years i think but not in 20
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The ESA program is very specifically designed so that nobody can do anything alone. No France? No launching site. France does a lot of other things, but they spread contracts and work around the EU in ways that would make the US government blush.

India is way far from all this. They're talking about maybe sometime soonish doing some manned orbital stuff. Their launch systems are - in general - jokes. 50 years is about right.
 
Dead Lion said:
I want project orion to be resurrected.
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To me, the coolest thing about the plans involving Orion in the '60s were that they made gigantic spaceships possible - Orion gives such high thrust that it really only works when you have a huge mass to smooth things out. People were talking about space ships the size of aircraft carriers back then ...and they were gonna launch them from the surface of the Earth. It all sounds crazy to us today.

A less radical use of nuclear power is the NERVA engine. It uses the heat of a nuclear reactor to make propellant gas expand more energetically than burning it - thus, no need for an oxidizer. NERVA gives an ISP of 2x or 3x normal chemical rockets, though still far less than orion.
 
It was so ridiculously long from that last mission of the Apollo program to Artemis 2 that there was some scifi horror movie made to make up why there was such a long delay.
 
>Project Orion and NERVA posting
fuck yeah I am amongst true friends here. Too bad we live in the cursed timeline where they were killed by gay treaties and budget cuts (and trump killed the sequel to NERVA with a budget cut last year which is super gay). If those two programs were actually completed we'd undoubtedly be far further in space development than now, probably with a permanent Mars base.
I love the miniature test they did to prove the concept, and imagining that scaled up 100x using directed nuclear blasts makes me want to move out to some desert shithole and work on it alongside far smarter folk than I. Alas, too based for reality.
 
I like to think that political will and budget not withstanding, Canada could crash out a manned spaceflight and possibly lunar landing program in 20 years. What alot of Americans don't realize is how many ex-Avro engineers brain-drained down to NASA when the Diefenbaker government cancelled the Avro Arrow to help build Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. It was far from just captured ex-Nazi scientists helping out.

We didn't lose our entire aerospace industry though, Canada still has the metalworking industrial capacity and metallurgical quality to build up to Apollo-sized rocket bodies and the robotics as well as cutting edge fabrication plants to design and build highly effecient rocket engines. The actual mathematics of orbital mechanics and what's needed to get and stay up there are well understood by now, it would be a matter of national will. It would have to have an equivalent commitment of the Manhattan Project at that time was to America, total government approval and unlimited budget to the point of steep debt to do it, but they could do it.

Australia very likely could too, though maybe 30 years as they don't have as strong an aerospace history, tending to buy American or European for their needs but they have a big raw industrial capacity that could be tapped too. Or maybe not.

I don't think any other First World nations or overly-ambitious second world nations like India would be able to in 20 years. 40-50 maybe for France, Japan or the UK or 30 for a united Europe. At best. For now it's America, Russia (not lunar landing though) and soon China.
 
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The Un-Clit said:
I like to think that political will and budget not withstanding, Canada could crash out a manned spaceflight and possibly lunar landing program in 20 years. What alot of Americans don't realize is how many ex-Avro engineers brain-drained down to NASA when the Diefenbaker government cancelled the Avro Arrow to help build Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. It was far from just captured ex-Nazi scientists helping out.

We didn't lose our entire aerospace industry though, Canada still has the metalworking industrial capacity and metallurgical quality to build up to Apollo-sized rocket bodies and the robotics as well as cutting edge fabrication plants to design and build highly effecient rocket engines. The actual mathematics of orbital mechanics and what's needed to get and stay up there are well understood by now, it would be a matter of national will. It would have to have an equivalent commitment of the Manhattan Project at that time was to America, total government approval and unlimited budget to the point of steep debt to do it, but they could do it.

Australia very likely could too, though maybe 30 years as they don't have as strong an aerospace history, tending to buy American or European for their needs but they have a big raw industrial capacity that could be tapped too.

I don't think any other First World nations or overly-ambitious second world nations like India would be able to in 20 years. 40-50 maybe for France, Japan or the UK or 30 for a united Europe. At best.
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With gravity, radiation and vacuum not withstanding I could land on the moon in 10 years.
Political will and budget are 95% of the problem of running a space program. Also Australia has no "big raw industrial capacity", they don't even refine their own fuel anymore (and as such are getting raped by the current crisis) and have an incredibly low economic complexity. Just because they are big means nothing, with such a small population and no real manufacturing it'd take an immense amount of time just to set up the facilities to copy the SLS, let alone design, build, test and launch an entire program with no outside inputs.
 
Hatewerfer said:
Also Australia has no "big raw industrial capacity", they don't even refine their own fuel anymore (and as such are getting raped by the current crisis) and have an incredibly low economic complexity. J
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Fair enough, I was going off assumption not fact about Australia, I've seen some videos of fairly impressive large scale manufacturing going on there and thought they might be on the upper end of the industrial scale, unlike Canada's case where I know a bit more about what I am talking about.

Okay, take Australia off the 20-30 year scale and put them at 50+.
 
The Un-Clit said:
Fair enough, I was going off assumption not fact about Australia, I've seen some videos of fairly impressive large scale manufacturing going on there and thought they might be on the upper end of the industrial scale, unlike Canada's case where I know a bit more about what I am talking about.

Okay, take Australia off the 20-30 year scale and put them at 50+.
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Yeah most people assume Australia is a functional place thanks to having an entire continent and all the possible resources needed to run a successful country. Unfortunately reality is different and those boomerang chuckers cannot into space. Doing some research there appears to be some sounding rocket launches mostly by foreign countries, but otherwise nothing. At least back in the Cold War the brits came around and launched their now dead space program at Woomera.
Crazy that the Iranians with all the sanctions and all the bombings and all the religious retardation are more space capable than many western nations. I hope that program survives this war, would suck to see the number of space capable countries go down again.
 
PlugsPugs said:
You're right. That makes it even more silly that we don't experiment with Project Orion. We use RTGs in multiple earth applications, from pacemakers to scientific sensors in the remote wilds. They're everywhere, and people are worried about "muh environment".

Let's stop being collective faggots and embrace atomic energy for all it can give us.
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Reading about all of NASA's cancelled ventures over this past half a century, like Project Orion, really does make one think about where we could already be if the political impetus for general space exploration and astronautics development were wholly focused on interplanetary travel. The Apollo missions already proved what mankind was capable of when we all decided to commit ourselves to such grand projects. And even then, we were still holding one arm tied behind our backs since it was half goaded on by the geopolitics of the Cold War. We could only imagine if the gloves came off within some alternate reality where we decided that the ultimate show of power from then on was planting flags or colonies on other planets, in some "Age of Exploration" type of competition between the great powers to see who could make the most voyages into outer space.

Just imagine if projects like Orion (Top Image) or Sea Dragon (Bottom Image) were actually finalized or completed?

WOW_Orion.png

Sea-Dragon.jpg


I'll never forgive Obama for outright canceling the Constellation Program, and I hope to god whoever is in the Presidential chair at the Oval Office in 2029 and beyond leaves the boys at NASA alone to do their own thing. Since I swear to all that is good and holy on this Earth, if they decided to tone things down after a successful Mars Mission instead of doubling down on such expeditions, then I might just build my own rocket to launch myself in some blaze of glory if they want to waste even more time dawdling instead of furthering mankind's future.

The Un-Clit said:
I like to think that political will and budget not withstanding, Canada could crash out a manned spaceflight and possibly lunar landing program in 20 years. What alot of Americans don't realize is how many ex-Avro engineers brain-drained down to NASA when the Diefenbaker government cancelled the Avro Arrow to help build Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. It was far from just captured ex-Nazi scientists helping out.

We didn't lose our entire aerospace industry though, Canada still has the metalworking industrial capacity and metallurgical quality to build up to Apollo-sized rocket bodies and the robotics as well as cutting edge fabrication plants to design and build highly effecient rocket engines. The actual mathematics of orbital mechanics and what's needed to get and stay up there are well understood by now, it would be a matter of national will. It would have to have an equivalent commitment of the Manhattan Project at that time was to America, total government approval and unlimited budget to the point of steep debt to do it, but they could do it.

Australia very likely could too, though maybe 30 years as they don't have as strong an aerospace history, tending to buy American or European for their needs but they have a big raw industrial capacity that could be tapped too. Or maybe not.

I don't think any other First World nations or overly-ambitious second world nations like India would be able to in 20 years. 40-50 maybe for France, Japan or the UK or 30 for a united Europe. At best. For now it's America, Russia (not lunar landing though) and soon China.
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[Volume Warning]



"Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes."

"Sic vos non vobis fertis aratra boves."

"Sic vos non vobis laborastis Canadenses."
 
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