When will we see a lot of spaceships?

[kojikun]

Dont forget the need to prevent rogue miners or china from dropping an asteroid into an earth crossing orbit. That'll be very important.

[Pu-239]

You've read Titan by Steven Baxter?

[Durandal]

I'm moving this to SLAM.

[kojikun]

Wots titan?

Durandal: Cool, thanks, man.

[kojikun]

^^bump^^

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

And I would note that I said that I believe we'll have them within 50 years, not 1-5 like Highlift says. :)

I'd tend to think it'd be at least a century before you have a space elevator. The problem is, you'd have to convince people to fund a boondoggle that big. You'd also have to convince them that it isn't going to fall on them and squash them like the bugs they are. You'd also have to convince them that it has some benefit for John Q. Idiot.

Not many on Earth would see the benefit to a space elevator until after there was enough space infrastructure in place to make paying for it worthwhile (and the typical citizen, who votes for the guys who approve the money, isn't going to give a flying fuck about launch costs. If they did, there would've been widespread public clamor for a cheaper spaceplane even in the '80s or early '90s. As it is, it had to be very graphically demonstrated that the shuttle is an rickety old death-trap before anybody started seriously complaining about it.) And since that much infrastructure probably wouldn't be sufficiently developed until at least seventy to a hundred years down the line, you likely won't see a space elevator until that time.

[kojikun]

howwie: bah. people are stupid.

info: Just going to announce something. Me and a friend are being suicidal and are going to attempt to construct a small liquid fueled rocket engine. When it blows up in our faces we'll tell you. I'll also try and get photographs of the thing.

[Tom_Aurum]

Fuel is easy enough to compress (hydrogen and oxygen.)

EASY? Firstly, you don't compress hydrogen and oxygen, you freeze them until they liquify. Secondly, crygenics is one of the most difficult parts of a rocket system, which is why alot of early rockets, and smaller modern rockets use different chemicals for fuel, namely isopropyl and hydrogen peroxide, or the like.

LH and LOX are real bitches to work with, and are not meant for the space industry unless we're already in space where theyre not likely to destroy your ship just because the sun was shining at the wrong angle and your radiators aren't radiating heat. Cryogenics is a fragile system, and frankly, it's a stupid idea for something so vital as people moving.

Following the construction of the first space elevator we should.. Should.. see a space boom. Given such a system is already being prepared, it's not as much of a pie-in-the-sky situation as it was. The existance of such things is incredibly important: It massively decreases the costs of movement of materials.

Damn right.

Modern estimates for mining an Near Earth Object runs into the ten of billions. Once the first few elevators are in place(And they become far easier to build once you have one in place), this should drop off, but the need for materials we can bring down will not collapse as easily. It might, once the few cubic klick of iron, nickel, and cobalt is delivered and revitalizes the economy of whichever country brought it in(Or possibly collapses it, given the intense inflation).

Actually modern estimates for the VALUE of near earth asteroids is about USD $40,000,000,000,000 per asteroid, mostly from iron and nickle, but a sizable amount (6,000,000,000,000) from platinum and iridium. Mining it would cost nothing near the profit that could be made.

And then we must consider that once we get fusion rockets, their best fuel will be Helium-3 which can be mined from the gas giants for the rest of eternity without problem. Infact, it's so valuable that 10 tonnes of the stuff would be worth about $160,000,000,000, and if used to power the planet earth would have a value of $64,000,000,000,000 per year.

Sad, isn't it? We must fall back on companies to do this.

Not really. I trust boeing and lockheed, just not microsoft but once we get space elevators, its more that we'll rely on the ship manufacturers for our jet black space hotrods, not our ticket to space.

Anyways, uhm... first, yeah. I feel kinda stupid now for mentioning that oxygen and hydrogen are _easy_ to make. But the formula that I mentioned before, very first time you opened up a torch and attempted to barbeque me. With nanotech fusion. Actually involved helium3... well, I forget details still, but the formula involved no extraneous particles produced to screw up the delicate machinery of a nanoscale fusion reactor.

[kojikun]

Fusion will not work. Fusion is not a launch system, and nanotechnology won't make fusion happen. Fusion is NOT nanoscale, its a big large scale problem and cant be solve with nanotechnology.

But thats irrelevant because you cant LAUNCH with fusion rockets. And the LAUNCH is the most costly thing in a space program. You can use fusion it space, if it works its cheap, but you cant do it in the atmosphere. Once youre IN space, its always cheap, but in the atmosphere you have a serious problem because you can only use certain propulsion mechanisms, and escaping a gravity well is VERY hard.

[Howedar]

Scramjets would be a big help. The NASP, for example, would have made space far more accessable had it been buildable.

[kojikun]

Scramjets would be a big help. The NASP, for example, would have made space far more accessable had it been buildable.

Funny how old cruise missiles actually used scramjets

I think the most major issue with SCRAM jets is that to make them workable on the scale they want and in the designs they want its very difficult. But if they can eventually get them working, it'll be great because jet boosted launch costs will be severly reduced thanks to weight being reduced. They could make detachable non-reusable SCRAM boosters that are extremely cheap (being simple metal shapes instead of complex turbines and other shit).