Space program questions

Ok, I am trying to get a shaky foundation together for positing a space program with the ability to deliver heavy payloads to LEO, in order to get the folks that actually know something along these lines to have a place to tell us all the things that could be possible right now and in the very near future.

To this end, I wanted to make an (un) SWAG, and propose that at some time in the near future, someone, somewhere, makes a discovery that allows payloads starting at 1,000 tons to be delivered to LEO by a completely resuable lift platform.

To make the lift platform expensive, I went and looked up the cost of a Los Angeles class submarine ($900 million in 1990) with a submerged displacement of <7,000 tons, and then compared that the to Typhon class, with a sumerged displacement of up to 48,000 tons. So 900 million x about 7, = 6.3 billion in 1990 dollars.

So, what would $6.3 billion 1990 be in todays dollars?

I went with nuclear subs because they are airtight and cost a fortune, not because they would serve as spacecraft, but just to give me a talking point in $.

So, lets say that we have a lift vehicle that costs billions, but can lift 1,000 tons to LEO once a week, sustainably (so NOT a rocket). What kind of space program would the US, ESA, Russia, China, Japan, India, and anyone I may have missed, have with the capability to reliably deliver 1,000 ton payolads to LEO each week. Say the lift vehicle has a lifespan of 20+ years.
 
you mean, those behemoths ?
No, because he specifically said, "Not a rocket." Those all use rockets, whereas this is some sort of magic...I don't know. Warp drive, hyperdrive, pixie dust, something like that. At that point, estimating cost and capacity is sort of useless. Beyond, "Do more big stuff in space," the magic technology you're speculating the existence of makes it hard to imagine how it might fit into the world.
 
No, because he specifically said, "Not a rocket." Those all use rockets, whereas this is some sort of magic...I don't know. Warp drive, hyperdrive, pixie dust, something like that. At that point, estimating cost and capacity is sort of useless. Beyond, "Do more big stuff in space," the magic technology you're speculating the existence of makes it hard to imagine how it might fit into the world.
Well, not magic, at least. Let us just assume that we get some form of surface to LEO lift vehicle, it doesn't really matter what, but it only fills that function, and then go from there with actual existent technologies.

So, the premise is that a lift vehicle, that costs billions each, but is capable of reliably putting into LEO a 1,000 ton payload weekly, for 20+ years, comes into existence in the near future. What could our current space technologies do from that point?
 
No, because he specifically said, "Not a rocket." Those all use rockets, whereas this is some sort of magic...I don't know. Warp drive, hyperdrive, pixie dust, something like that. At that point, estimating cost and capacity is sort of useless. Beyond, "Do more big stuff in space," the magic technology you're speculating the existence of makes it hard to imagine how it might fit into the world.

Or perhaps lasers, projecting onto a reflective cavity at the base of the booster. Basically, exploding air works to accelerate the craft and you get to leave the mass on the ground.
 
So, the premise is that a lift vehicle, that costs billions each, but is capable of reliably putting into LEO a 1,000 ton payload weekly, for 20+ years, comes into existence in the near future. What could our current space technologies do from that point?
That'd mean the flight cost of the vehicle's acquisition would be about $6/kg--other costs from fuel to ground crew salaries (how many guys does it take to turn that vehicle around every week?) to spares inventory (how do you replace a widget if the one on the vehicle breaks, and how much does that cost?) to overhaul schedule (how often does it require somebody to stick his head in the engine with a flashlight? How often do you tear it down? How often does it get the equivalent of a "D Check"?). It's unlikely you'll see a fully-propulsive (not magic) vehicle with a cost of less than about $100/kg once the other factors are accounted for.

Anyway, if the question is "what can you do with routine, massive payload to LEo at $100/kg?" then the answer is "a heck of a lot, but not everything." A kilogram of payload to the moon would be about $500--a tenth as much as launching a payload to LEO today (so a passenger could--presuming a transport infrastructure) fly there for about $100-$200,000. 1,000 tons (this thing's single-flight payload) is larger than ISS. Payload construction costs would tend to dominate and guide development--after all, 1,000 metric tons of space station module doesn't come for free, that module would be easily hundreds of millions in cost itself.

Or perhaps lasers, projecting onto a reflective cavity at the base of the booster. Basically, exploding air works to accelerate the craft and you get to leave the mass on the ground.
Only gets you to about half of orbital velocity before you run out of air, then you still need a rocket and propellant. Still even with that, the above is probably the case--payload construction costs dominate and limit, and destinations within cislunar space are open for whatever development can pay those costs--platinum group/rare-earth harvesting from asteroids or what have you.
 
Ok, I am trying to get a shaky foundation together for positing a space program with the ability to deliver heavy payloads to LEO, in order to get the folks that actually know something along these lines to have a place to tell us all the things that could be possible right now and in the very near future.

To this end, I wanted to make an (un) SWAG, and propose that at some time in the near future, someone, somewhere, makes a discovery that allows payloads starting at 1,000 tons to be delivered to LEO by a completely resuable lift platform.

To make the lift platform expensive, I went and looked up the cost of a Los Angeles class submarine ($900 million in 1990) with a submerged displacement of <7,000 tons, and then compared that the to Typhon class, with a sumerged displacement of up to 48,000 tons. So 900 million x about 7, = 6.3 billion in 1990 dollars.

So, what would $6.3 billion 1990 be in todays dollars?

I went with nuclear subs because they are airtight and cost a fortune, not because they would serve as spacecraft, but just to give me a talking point in $.

So, lets say that we have a lift vehicle that costs billions, but can lift 1,000 tons to LEO once a week, sustainably (so NOT a rocket). What kind of space program would the US, ESA, Russia, China, Japan, India, and anyone I may have missed, have with the capability to reliably deliver 1,000 ton payolads to LEO each week. Say the lift vehicle has a lifespan of 20+ years.

Without getting into magic etc. If you just use normal mass fraction calculations that a re-usable launch vehicle will put about 1% of it's mass into Earth Orbit you would have a vehicle with a total mass of 100,000 metric tons. To achieve a ratio of 1.2G at lift off you would need 264 Million pounds of thrust so about 147 F1A engines (Assuming 1.8 Million lbs of thrust at sea level). :confused:
 
What your looking for, Shadow Master
sound like Convair NEXUS reusable SSTO rocket
designed in 1962-63 for the Post-Saturn program
the bigger version could bring 2 million Lbs. into low orbit

nexus1.jpg


Although 2 million Lbs. per week is allot, what you want to build, Shadow Master.

Orbital City ?
O'Niel Colony with 10000 inhabitants ?
Solar Power satellite of 176,369,810 Lbs. in geostationary orbit ?
Lunar base or a Mars village ?
 
Who needs feeble magic, when we have the power of the Atom!

http://nextbigfuture.com/2007/07/gaseous-core-nuclear-design-liberty.html

And that is the sensible version. An open cycle gas core NTR would be more powerful yet, but the only sensible time to use one would be when you are fleeing a doomed, dying world. In which case doing things like designing and testing GC-NTR engines almost certainly contributed to that state.

There are other options, but not wanting to be one note here, let them pass.

Albeit http://www.kschroeder.com/weblog/archive/2009/03/04/the-verne-gun is severely cool.
 
Unfortunately, two issues:
1) You need a second impulse at apogee to circularize your orbit, so you still need some rocket.
2) The passage up through the atmosphere at 8+ km/s would tend to char the payload and expose it to massive, crushing drag forces, and require yet higher initial speeds. Rockets are only doing maybe Mach 1-2 in sea level air--by the time they start really booking, they're much higher. A Verne Gun needs to be doing orbital velocity and more all the way from the ground, right through the soupiest part of the atmosphere.
 
Real problems; but what a wonderful problem, to have too much thrust...

In practise a verne gun like setup may be the best way of launching the really dodgy engine types, like open cycle NTR and Zubrin engines (NSWR); solve two problems at once, circularise the orbit and get them a long way away before starting the burn.

If said highly dubious engine can survive the impulse of course, which I wouldn't want to try with an NSWR; that could be a really, ah, interesting explosion. What was that bit earlier about doomed and dying?

Ablative heatshields perhaps? Looking at an extremely large ballistic cap here, erosion from which may be a significant source of pollution in itself, hm.

So yes, could be done, depending on the amount you're willing to pay to minimise the hazards involved, and the heatshield issue.
 
That'd mean the flight cost of the vehicle's acquisition would be about $6/kg--other costs from fuel to ground crew salaries (how many guys does it take to turn that vehicle around every week?) to spares inventory (how do you replace a widget if the one on the vehicle breaks, and how much does that cost?) to overhaul schedule (how often does it require somebody to stick his head in the engine with a flashlight? How often do you tear it down? How often does it get the equivalent of a "
D Check"?). It's unlikely you'll see a fully-propulsive (not magic) vehicle with a cost of less than about $100/kg once the other factors are accounted for.

Anyway, if the question is "what can you do with routine, massive payload to LEo at $100/kg?" then the answer is "a heck of a lot, but not everything." A kilogram of payload to the moon would be about $500--a tenth as much as launching a payload to LEO today (so a passenger could--presuming a transport infrastructure) fly there for about $100-$200,000. 1,000 tons (this thing's single-flight payload) is larger than ISS. Payload construction costs would tend to dominate and guide development--after all, 1,000 metric tons of space station module doesn't come for free, that module would be easily hundreds of millions in cost itself.
Sounds good to me. I knew this would be a big jump forward, but not really how big a jump. Just for the sake of asking, what does 6.3 billion in 1990 dollars come out to in 2015 dollars?

Without getting into magic etc. If you just use normal mass fraction calculations that a re-usable launch vehicle will put about 1% of its mass into Earth Orbit you would have a vehicle with a total mass of 100,000 metric tons.
That’s actually interesting, because my uneducated guess was a 50,000 ton lift vehicle, putting a 1,000 ton payload into LEO, or 2%.

What you’re looking for, Shadow Master sounds like Convair NEXUS reusable SSTO rocket designed in 1962-63 for the Post-Saturn program the bigger version could bring 2 million Lbs. into low orbit

Although 2 million Lbs. per week is allot, what you want to build, Shadow Master.

Orbital City ?
O'Niel Colony with 10000 inhabitants ?
Solar Power satellite of 176,369,810 Lbs. in geostationary orbit ?
Lunar base or a Mars village ?

All of the above?
I was thinking in terms of putting large satellites (factories, laboratories, and assembly plants) in orbit, and then trying out the various "lift vehicle" techs as propulsion units for manned missions to the moon and points beyond. A Saturn V, for instance, as I understand it, was about 3,250 tons? What could one of those, brought up and assembled in and launching from LEO, propel outward?

Say something like 1 SV to accelerate, 1 SV to decelerate at the objective, and likewise 2 more for the return trip, plus spares (just in case). Could we send (manned) missions to and from the asteroids with something like that? And how much could be sent, tonnage wise? For that matter, what would a SV be capable of "lifting" starting in LEO?
130 tons from earth’s surface to LEO, so what from LEO outward?

As I understand it, with my very limited knowledge, we currently have two types of rockets, SRB and LRB, and solid is best for total power, but cannot be used more than once (and cannot be turned off once ignited?), while the liquid isn't as powerful, it can be turned on and off. So let’s say for mass, we start off with 12 SV for triple redundancy, plus whatever we actually want to deliver to, or bring back from, the asteroids.

I am assuming that the more mass sent, the slower it would travel, and because I don't know how we use gravity to slingshot our unmanned probes around, I just ask for a straight powered flight to and fro question. So we would have 39,000 tons in SBS, and then we would need the mass of the factory or laboratory, and what else? Let’s say we had designs for 50,000 ton payloads, and that we end up with a total mass of 100,000 tons. How long would such a flight take, assuming a middle distance point in the asteroid belt?

What other types of craft are we developing, and what could they do now if we could get them to LEO as posited?
 
All of the above?
I was thinking in terms of putting large satellites (factories, laboratories, and assembly plants) in orbit, and then trying out the various "lift vehicle" techs as propulsion units for manned missions to the moon and points beyond. A Saturn V, for instance, as I understand it, was about 3,250 tons? What could one of those, brought up and assembled in and launching from LEO, propel outward?

Say something like 1 SV to accelerate, 1 SV to decelerate at the objective, and likewise 2 more for the return trip, plus spares (just in case). Could we send (manned) missions to and from the asteroids with something like that? And how much could be sent, tonnage wise? For that matter, what would a SV be capable of "lifting" starting in LEO?
130 tons from earth’s surface to LEO, so what from LEO outward?

As I understand it, with my very limited knowledge, we currently have two types of rockets, SRB and LRB, and solid is best for total power, but cannot be used more than once (and cannot be turned off once ignited?), while the liquid isn't as powerful, it can be turned on and off. So let’s say for mass, we start off with 12 SV for triple redundancy, plus whatever we actually want to deliver to, or bring back from, the asteroids.

I am assuming that the more mass sent, the slower it would travel, and because I don't know how we use gravity to slingshot our unmanned probes around, I just ask for a straight powered flight to and fro question. So we would have 39,000 tons in SBS, and then we would need the mass of the factory or laboratory, and what else? Let’s say we had designs for 50,000 ton payloads, and that we end up with a total mass of 100,000 tons. How long would such a flight take, assuming a middle distance point in the asteroid belt?

What other types of craft are we developing, and what could they do now if we could get them to LEO as posited?

You wouldn't want to put a fully fueled Saturn-V in orbit. What you would is maybe some type of Re-usable Two-Stage-To-Orbit vehicle that can lift XX amount of tonnage say 50-100 tons to LEO. You then build a space-ship in orbit but that vessel never enters a planet's atmosphere. You then have some type of nuclear propulsion to power the spacecraft and then after each journey say to Mars or the Asteroid belt you then refurbish the spacecraft and re-use.

My wiki page for my timeline has some fairly large version of the Saturn-V http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php/timelines/the_journeys_of_the_saturn/launch_vehicle_data

The Saturn-VB from my ATL with 4x260" SRB and stretched stages using F1A engines, and HG-3 engines on the upper stage could put 331 metric tons into a 430x430km 51.6 degree orbit, it could send 151 metric tons to the Moon and 123 metric tons to Mars.

If you get Netflix you might want to check out this film - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Odyssey_(TV_series)
 
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I was thinking in terms of putting large satellites (factories, laboratories, and assembly plants) in orbit, and then trying out the various "lift vehicle" techs as propulsion units for manned missions to the moon and points beyond. A Saturn V, for instance, as I understand it, was about 3,250 tons? What could one of those, brought up and assembled in and launching from LEO, propel outward?

you really don't need that
a Single stage to Orbit like NEXUS bring 1 million Lb (453 metric ton) in Earth orbit, were the payload is assembled into a interplanetary Space Ship and launch to it destination

the designer of NEXUS, the german Krafft Ehricke explains in this You tube Video the concept in detail
it from 1962 study for manned exploration of Solarsystem by General Dynamics
 
Chickens and eggs. So much of a space elevator is likely going to have to be built from above, from orbit reaching down, that you're not going to get one without a very healthy space infrastructure to begin with.

If we're talking about giant chemical rockets, I've always been partial to Sea Dragon, for which there is at least a plausible explanation of how it is supposed to reduce launch costs.

I'm not convinced by Nova- it seems so like the existing rockets in its' operation there seem to be only fractional gains. Bigger single loads yes, but same operating paradigm.
 
Ok, I am trying to get a shaky foundation together for positing a space program with the ability to deliver heavy payloads to LEO, in order to get the folks that actually know something along these lines to have a place to tell us all the things that could be possible right now and in the very near future.

To this end, I wanted to make an (un) SWAG, and propose that at some time in the near future, someone, somewhere, makes a discovery that allows payloads starting at 1,000 tons to be delivered to LEO by a completely resuable lift platform.

To make the lift platform expensive, I went and looked up the cost of a Los Angeles class submarine ($900 million in 1990) with a submerged displacement of <7,000 tons, and then compared that the to Typhon class, with a sumerged displacement of up to 48,000 tons. So 900 million x about 7, = 6.3 billion in 1990 dollars.

So, what would $6.3 billion 1990 be in todays dollars?

I went with nuclear subs because they are airtight and cost a fortune, not because they would serve as spacecraft, but just to give me a talking point in $.

So, lets say that we have a lift vehicle that costs billions, but can lift 1,000 tons to LEO once a week, sustainably (so NOT a rocket). What kind of space program would the US, ESA, Russia, China, Japan, India, and anyone I may have missed, have with the capability to reliably deliver 1,000 ton payolads to LEO each week. Say the lift vehicle has a lifespan of 20+ years.

The spinner that I talk again and again. Quite clear, you don't listen.
 
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