Beam Powered Spaceships
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 มิ.ย. 2019
- In order to get into space, we require either huge amounts of rocket fuel or dangerously powerful energy sources, making personal spacecraft a technology limited to science fiction. But by harnessing beamed power sources to run engines, we may be able to create a spaceplane cheap enough and safe enough that anyone could have one in the future.
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Credits:
Upward Bound: Beam Powered Spaceships
Episode 192, Season 5 E27
Written by:
Isaac Arthur
Editors:
Evan Schultheis
Darius Said
Keith Blockus
Matthew Acker
S Graham beyondnerva.wordpress.com
S. Kopperud
Cover Art:
Jakub Grygier www.artstation.com/jakub_grygier
Graphics by:
Jeremy Jozwik www.artstation.com/zeuxis_of_...
Katie Byrne
Ken York / ydvisual
Kris Holland (Mafic Studios) www.maficstudios.com
Sam McNamara
Sergio Botero www.artstation.com/sboterod?f...
Produced & Narrated by:
Isaac Arthur
Music Manager:
Luca DeRosa - lucaderosa2@live.com
Music:
Sergey Cheremisinov, "Sirius" www.s-cheremisinov.com
Stellardrone, "In Time" stellardrone.bandcamp.com
Scott Buckley, "Titan" www.scottbuckley.com.au
Kevin MacLeod, "Morning Snowflake" / @incompetech_kmac
Dan MacLeod, "Alpha Protocol" / neptuneuk
AJ Prasad, "Staring Through (Part II)" • Dark Future - Staring ... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 68 | คู่เอก "พระจันทร์ฉาย vs โจนาธาน"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/F3IM3w-XchI/mqdefault.jpg)
I really love this idea as a science fiction writer, because it seems so believable. Imagine you were to go back to 1832 with a car, a cellphone, and an aircraft. All three would be relatively useless compared to what they can do in 2019. The car will be able to slowly traverse gravel roads at 30 kph and quickly run out of gas. The phone will be a camera, calculator, flashlight, gaming device, and party trick for about a day before it runs out of battery and also becomes useless. The aircraft would be unable to safely take off unless you can persuade the locals to make a long very smooth road, and you won't be able to land anywhere safely besides where you started. And of course the aircraft would quickly run out of fuel.
The point is, I imagine the future of space travel will be the same way. In popular science fiction spaceships are often portrayed as something that could easy life off from Earth and bring you all the way to the surface of an extrasolar planet even if they were brought to 2019. In all practicality though, refueling depots along the way massively reduce the impact of the rocket equation and beamed power can give massive thrust and efficiency boosts to any type of electric engine. No matter how efficient engines get, no sane space fairing civilization would pass up those gains in speed and efficiency. A future colonized solar system will almost certainly be packed with orbital fuel depots and power beaming stations in the same way that Earth is covered in a massive network of highways and gas stations. It just makes intuitive sense, it's very believable, and it gives space travel that mediocrity that most science fiction stories need. Maybe not all, but all the ones I'm interested in writing at least.
Infrastructure, thats what it is, in earth we have build masive infrastructure projects like highways, rail tracks, underwater cables, etc and all that infrastructure is what we use to simplify our lives, it's only logical that we would do the same in space
Quick correction at 9:28 - for an absorbed beam pushing a mass at 1-gee, it's 3 MW for a gram, 3 GW a kilogram, and 3 TW at a ton. 1.5 for reflected rather than absorbed. Bad math day. In this case the error only increases why we don't want to use a pure light beam for in an atmosphere, in favor of heating matter instead, as the latter is better by an even larger factor.
Isn't it 3 for absorbed and 1.5 for reflected ?
Reflection transfers twice the momentum of absorption.
Why does _absorption_ have a *p* in it ?
Argh, yes, thanks, fixed that in the correction, thankfully unlike the video that requires only a quick edit :) Problem with hasty corrections, they often get typos or mistakes in them in the rush to address it.
🎶🎵@@massimookissed1023 O Massimo O'Kissed A O M G well well well well well🎶🎵
What have u got against the p? Did a p do something bad to u?
K cuz I feel that the p looks rather nice there in fact. Nothing wrong with a well placed p dude. p is a p though.. we all know how they are.. but still. Let the p b p and I will let u c a b with a p pulling a huge M doing max G bends whilst K I S S I N G
K
☝️🐱😜🐶👍
"Math.. don't talk to me about math" - Gig the slow'n-math human.
(Don't listen to him he's just artistic like that.. show the math.. it's awesome).
Thanks science and people for I could not have done it with out you (everything more or less more complicated than throwing rocks at fish and sloths and such probably and eating it Smeagle style if I did not get a bad infection at any moment before). Hahaha. True and
p 4 t w o k..I b K.. u b K..v b o K. Now that is just beautiful and simple life math.
Weird flex but ok 😁
That sounds promising to have the "engines" on earth rather than on the ship. But if I was a passenger on such a starship, I'd be terrified that some disaster or political event back on Earth would cause that "engine" to be shut down and we'd be helpless.
Isaac, I've scoured a multitude of comments on your videos over the last couple of years. With that being said, and as cliche as it sounds, you continue to deliver some of the most amazing content on TH-cam. Discovering your channel is one of the turnaround points in my life, and I am thankful for you everyday. Fermi Paradox Solutions piqued my interest, Megastructures got me hooked, and Transhumanism videos such as Life Extension and Mind Uploading force me to lie in bed at night pondering the future of our world and all that we are capable of. Keep up the good work, and I will continue to tune in. I am so thankful for you and your dedication. Truly, thank you.
Isaac delivers the goods regularly, unlike a certain AsteronX.
Transhumanism is hardly the answer though as phenotypic revolution will eventually destroy us if we try tampering with our genes.
Add to your pondering a few more points: the fact that we've significantly exhausted our resources and will be forced to return to more traditional ways of life, many calamities plaguing the said future-trad way of life (plant diseases like en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_rustt, cattle diseases like en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy), the challenges we'll face if we (and we should) decide to restructure our highly inefficient, soul-crushing oil-dependant cities into more hybridised societies which will be capable of sustaining space industry (I, just like you, am fascinated by the thought of us ever reaching megastructure stage and actually think it is our civilization's fate) and many more.
Sukhole
Very well put, same here. (Started watching in junior high, I’m a senior now)
Isaac I've been with you from the beginning so I can say. . . Your graphics for these videos is SO much better than the start. While it's not the focal point, it does make a difference. Excellent lesson. ;-)
"lithobraking"
I will definitly wait for an opportunity to say that.
XD i laughed so hard at that one.
tfw you realise you're a huge nerd but just love it
Here's a funny idea when you talk to your insurance rep after an accident: tell them that you didnt crash, the other person lithobraked into you.
@@nil981 Well, if you crashed, wouldn't you be the one lithobraking?
yeah, laughed hard too :D
I love the idea of having my own private small spaceship !!
Damn straight, get away from the "normals" like...
Tossers, en it!!
Mine would need to have a faster than light drive for me to even consider it. Then again the space police would likely have them too. Speaking of which, what would policing an interstellar civilization be like? If it could be done at all.
@@nil981
Bounty hunters, and lots of them.
Live is a dream... then you die unfullfilled
I'll take a small one about the size of the Millennium Falcon. ;)
High power beam reflectors require impossibly perfect beam reflectors. I built a space based particle beam accellerator, now in the smithsonian after having flown in space (Beam Experiment aboard rocket).
The bulk of the video seemed to focus on (no pun intended) rectennas transforming microwaves to heat. Does the perfect nature of beam reflectors apply there, or is there just a limit on how much energy can be received and converted to heat?
By the way, I don't know if you saw it, but there's an article on the Centauri Dreams site that references BEAR extensively:
www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/01/07/ultrahigh-acceleration-neutral-particle-beamer-concept-costs-and-realities/
More about BEAR, for other viewers:
airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/neutral-particle-beam-accelerator-beam-experiment-aboard-rocket
accelconf.web.cern.ch/accelconf/l90/papers/th454.pdf
My favorite beam-powered idea is a variant on Starshot. Instead of lasers, you use electron beams and give your spaceprobe an electric sail. The probe still has to be small, but would be more like a lunch box or a refrigerator than a postage stamp.
You generate the beam with a Wakefield accelerator on the moon, which makes an excellent platform. It's airless, stable, and has plenty of lithium and sunlight.
When I've floated this idea before, most people did not see the main obstacle. They thought the main problems were magnetic fields and the charged beam spreading. They are not; those are almost self-solving. Due to time dilation at the relativistic speeds involved, the various magnetic fields of the solar system have essentially zero time to act on the particles and the charged beam has essentially zero time to repel itself.
The main obstacle is collimating the electron beam. Wakefield accelerators produce a fairly focused beam, but nothing like what this would require. Left to its own, it would spread out, not from charged particle repulsion, but from being imperfectly focused. I have some ideas for collimating it, but none that persuade me that it can certainly be done.
The second obstacle is getting it to exchange momentum with the probe. It passes by so fast that it ends to exchange very little momentum. This is partly helped by the electric sail, which is a few km across, so it has a near field of a few km where it resembles an infinite plane so it's not obeying the inverse square law there. That helps. Timing the electric sail's charge to work against pulses of the electron beam helps too. But I'm still not in love with the efficiency here, though it's much better than Breakthrough Starshot.
This brightened up my day. Looking forward to this tech, until then these ideas will be great for writing and sci-fi RP.
Going to be honest here, i read that as Bean Powered Spaceships at first.
I'll get started on the schematics.
Farticle drive.
Ill see myself out.
Nice
A lot of soybean farmers would get rich fast
I'm having a hard time prototyping this with stock KSP. Do Kerbals eat beans?
I'm simply beaming to see this video uploaded!
It really brightens the day, doesn’t it ?
It's really uplifting to be enlightened by Arthur's videos once a week.
Oh noes, some alien from Trek is kidnapping you.
@Harley Gray Bright pun! Oooh, and I just made a pun complimenting your pun!
The Upward Bound series is beautifully done man. May the emperors light guide your path!
To the terrorist weapon question:
The giant beam would be a very potent weapon with billions of watts of highly focused laser.
It would be quite hazardous to the orbital ring, moon base, and sequestered asteroid mining industry.
@@UpcycleElectronics That as well.
But you could slice right through the biggest building over your horizon with that kind of laser.
High intensity lasers shooting of to random directions would allert every nearby civilization like a giant disco bowl!
I think we would've certainly found extra terrestrial life if it lives on a giant disco bowl.
That's what guards and security are for. Check any place where nuclear weapons might be stored or stationed.
I'm rather more concerned about that, as many of them are small enough to transport anywhere, if you got your hands on one.
If someone manages to take over such a beam station, and if all else fails, attack/disable it yourself from the outside. It's not going anywhere. And if on the surface of a world, it can't shoot at anything below its horizon (which makes the Lunar farside a good location, it could never be pointed at Earth or anything anywhere near it).
@@lukasdimmler2622 The very narrowness of lasers makes that unlikely. 'Random' shots might not hit or come near any star, anywhere.
And the beam itself doesn't scatter in vacuum (and very little in clear air...get a laser pointer, and see for yourself). You'd know it only if you were directly in front of it.
@@stardolphin2 You are probably right.
But for short focal lengths near lift of the laser would have a rather big divergence.
For a second there I thought you had the 8 pointed star of chaos on your notebook. The inquisition is watching, Issac. Great video, BTW, really enjoyed that one.
I really like this idea for space travel and I am glad you made a episode of it. While orbital rings might be more ideal this is likely far more easily achieve simply due to the massive amount of infrastructure needed for a orbital ring.
That moment when you get a notification of a video that came out a full hour ago and you already watched.. Thanks TH-cam.
Usually the videos show up first in the recommended section
I really appreciate your explanations of these processes.
Hi. Only 10 min of the episode was actually dedicated to beam propulsion. The rest was the rocket equation, unit conversion and skillshare commercials. It is very likely that the first interstellar probe will use beamed propulsion so the topic deserves far more attention.
See the interstellar highways episode
I love your show! I found out your video is much easier to listen to when it's 1.25speed. You said you have the speech impediment, but when it's sped up it is far easier to understand (at least for me)
I'd much rather see bean powered spaceships.
I released gas to signal my approval
I believe this is the subject of this video ?
*B E A N S*
Lets use Fusion!
@@xl000
Bean as in the vegetable :)
"Electric heaters are 100% efficient" - Damn my Physics Teacher will hear this soon
Awesome Videos as always!
Great video. Thank you sir.
Hey Isaac, I'm a big fan of your channel. For your next video, I suggest that it could be about what Earth would be like if it was hollow, with an inner surface containing trees, forests, rivers, lakes, mountains, oceans and an atmosphere. Or your next video could be about hollow worlds in general and what it would take for us humans to make a naturally-formed planet hollow. Or what it would take for us humans to make an artificial planet which is hollow. Just a suggestion, brah! 😎
You are using a primitive civilisations description of an O'Neill cylinder, a subject already well discussed on the chanel.
@@jensbrandt7207 shell worlds might be more accurate to what OP is asking, since a planet isn't a cylinder.
laser propulsion: give it enough power to push the ship efficiently, but not so much that you blow the ship up...
All of your intro tracks are so futuristically iconic (bad pun intended)!
One of the Best Channels in TH-cam.👐🏻
I believe that, aside from long range probes, we will proceed with the massive thrust from huge amounts of fuel route. Small robotic craft can land on comets and mine their ice then use this ice to direct them to useful places, like orbiting the moon. Huge amounts of fuel and water in lunar orbit would put the solar system at our disposal.
Beam powered sandwiches. Don't forget to bring a drink and a snack.
Awesome as always guys and Isaac mate!...You look super fit...well done.
Thanks Isaac, this was one of my favorite episodes on the matter of getting into space. That was one of the best explanations I've heard on the rocket equation as it relates to exhaust velocity and why rocket fuel is heated up. This discussion on superheating hydrogen as propellant is in some ways reminiscent of nuclear thermal propulsion, which in many regards is similar to how you discussed the possibility of heating via beamed power. Nuclear thermal propulsion does carry over many of the benefits of beamed power in that it offers a great way to accelerate good fuels (Hydrogen) up to high speeds without some of the drawbacks such as the difficulties of beam orienting and reliance on an external beam station (not to mention beams being blocked by celestial bodies). Despite these advantages, there remain some drawbacks, such as the lack of availability of fissionable materials in space, and the complexity such an engine. Nuclear Thermal Propulsion might make a great topic for a future episode beyond what you've discussed before on a previous episode on 'the Nuclear Option' which only scraped the surface. Thanks a lot.
Yeah, back to upward bound, my favourite series of SFIA.
This is so cool. I never thought you could have an electric jet. And it makes space planes WAY simpler.
I found the lithobraking comment quite amusing.
Then I got to wondering how to make it work for real, that is without liquefying the occupants of the spaceship. Any ideas?
Comically big springs might do the trick.
a gigantic spring that can be deployed from the top of the troposohere, so that the rest of the trip down is slowed down :P
Actually if magnetism could be used instead of physical elasticity it would be more practical. Perhaps electromagnets, arranged into a huge solenoid through which the spaceship lands. Just make sure the spaceship is electrically charged so the Lorentz force is directed upwards to slow it down. With a spring or trampoline at the bottom for fun.
You don't use lithobraking to slow down stuff that's transporting people. Use it instead to slow down stuff you don't actually care too much about arriving in one piece. Maybe use it to "land" high-grade asteroid-ore on bodies with shallow gravity wells. As long as the impact velocity is less than a couple or so kilometres per second, and collecting it from a designated impact site, it'll work just fine.
The closet thing to lithobraking I know of was the Mars lander that used inflated balloons as bounce on the surface. However that also used other forms of breaking before getting to that. So I am not sure if that counts.
@@hamstsorkxxor Should be able to use a long rod on any gravity well. I think the main issue is vapor loses. With something like carbon the vapor should condense very quickly. On Mercury or Luna you can use a tunnel in the side of a large crater. Vapor blow out will deposit on the far side of the crater. You can use a dome too. The rod will punch a hole in the dome but that would lose only a very small fraction of carbon. Soot would settle out quickly. On Kuiper belt objects or Pluto/Charon you can impact into ice.
Nice leather journal. And thanks for all the videos.
Damn this got me excited
I would very much like to travel on a beam powered transport cart to the moon. It is just an awesome prospect. Thanks SFIA and friends for another work of actually functinal in theory awesomeness.
Beaming with Brilliance as usual!
What do you think about aerospike engines?
So if you need to use a "rocket". Best to just rip the LHC out of the ground, bend it into a straight line, strap it to your ship and fire it up. Assuming you are in space already.
Change the word "Collider" to "Launcher" and you've got a product marketable to more than just Nascar fans too!
Why carry the fuel and energy with you when you can beam that energy to the spaceship? Less fuel mass required, cheaper space launch. Love this technology.
Possibly, but as he said there are drawbacks.
The beaming station is bound to be completely static, meaning one and only one launch site per installation.
@@DrewLSsix actual rocket launch site aren't that much better anyway. As far as I know they're also 1 launch per installation.
I might consider hiring this man as a propulsion operator or beam oporator for a SpaceX or NASA colonization rocket but definitely not a photon or quantum developer , congratulations , we need propulsion operators to be aknowledged as operators and not technicians.
You are three orders of magnitude off: You don't need 3x10^6 Watts to push 1 kg at one g, but 3x10^9 Watts.
Epic!
Another good episode
I know you love it when the star-beams start to fall!
The rocket equation is just one step away from the conservation of momentum equation.
Just integrate the thing...
Yes, xl, that's because rockets follow the laws of physics.
You could argue *every* equation is a derivation of one or a few conservation laws (conservation of momentum, mass-energy, electrical charge, spin, Schroeder's equation, etc.)
Hooray! My day just grew 10x better
When the famous 15th Century Chinese explorer Zheng He (however that's spelled) set off he didn't need a supply line behind him. When he got back the political map was different. Imagine if he needed one & it was stopped. This sort of happened when Teddy Roosevelt sent the Great White Fleet without sufficient funds. Congress had to act or strand them far from home.
A more recent example is Sergei Krikalev, who was aboard the Mir space station when the Soviet Union dissolved. It took months longer than planned for him to be brought back to Earth, with his landing being in a newly sovereign country (Kazakhstan) and the space program he was a part of being part of a re-formed Russia.
Jesus, your channel is simple one of the best TH-cam channels ever. Please keep doing what you're doing ❤
I have been totally hooked since discovering your videos a week or so back, these are great! I got particularly excited when during the last one I viewed when I saw a Sci-Fi book recommendation for Mother Moon (Hard Sci-Fi is another new addiction, Larry Niven Jerry Pournelle, and Alistair Reynolds have claimed much of my summer). As you are someone clearly very knowledgeable about futuristic possibilities, what are some of your favorite hard sci-fi books or series?(selfishly asking but I'm sure others would be interested too!)
@isaac you're series is good, you try to cover a lot of material without losing sight of the physical restrictions... Have you ever thought about captured asteroid converted into "space plane carriers". Fast method of developing routine inter-planetary missions.
I want a personal-space ship, for those days I don't feel like peopling x
"Lithobraking" is pure gold XD
There's loads of these!
Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly
Sub-Surface Perigee
Non-Optimal Trajectory
Negative Periapsis Altitude Orbit
Uncontrolled Thermal Event
Deconstructive Deceleration
... and so many more!
Building a deck listening to SFIA that’s what I call a vacation.
Love to see these applications in a scyfy shows because the upward bound would be awesome to see on scyfy channel
Heck yes! I was so ready for this!! You rock, Isaac! Thanks for all your hard work. It’s very appreciated!
You're very welcome!
Good morning Arthur! Have a nice weekend. Thanks for the knowledge. Salute from Brazil.
Back in the 80s they studied a laser powered launch vehicle that used a laser to heat to the air at the bottom of a vehicle to a plasma. It would pulse blow heated air out, then let the air return, then repeat.
Somebody did a small scale test.
8:40 I can't stop laughing whenever I hear the term lithobraking
Hey Zeus. That eq was so high. Ill keep that in mind, im a huge fan but im not trying to inform the whole house at 2 am. Lol
*We really need acat video from you .*
*What about doing the same thing but with a Electron Flow Engine?* All its power would be from the ground base laser as you suggested and the aerospace-craft would be like a round space elevator platform rising and descending in the air without no cables attach.
If white holes were discovered, coupling it with a black hole may produce some crazy speeds. Maybe even FTL if I may be so bold as to postulate.
Leave the black holes on a City dump to get cheap remass and the white hole on the back of your ship...
wonderful just got home to find this just posted lol
Adding energy through the wall of the scram jet seems less advantageous than putting that energy in the rocket cone exhaust area where the wall of the mechanism would not have to process that heat. Heat energy could be added to exhaust without heating the cones.
Ur not using the beam to directly heat the scramjet anyways. Even if you were, you want the air inside to be hot so that it compresses itself, and shoots out the back faster.
For a second there, I thought your title was Bean Powered Spaceships. I thought, this should be interesting.
Always a pleasure Isaac! Thanks for another great video!
perfect video. I just started building those in kerbal space program ;3
Hey Isaac, you should make a video on the Psyche 16 aka the "Giant Golden Asteroid that could make everyone on Earth a billionaire". I've been seeing float around the news lately and I think it'd make a great video. You could discuss the realities of actually capturing and mining the asteroid, as well as discuss how it would effect the global economy.
Thank you.
I have been looking forward to this episode!
Your stovepipe beam powered scramjet sounds an awful lot like lightcraft.
Only lightcraft do something unique to being powered by beam to be powered they use highly reflective parabolic beam catchers and focus the media to be heated into the focal point of the parabola.
That way the metal itself can be cooled by the incoming air and stay cool to the touch. Something lightcraft actually do, you can catch them when they fall back to earth.
I think SpaceX and NASA need to spend more time and money on lightcraft personally. At very least lightcraft would make a cheaper, lighter, more environmentally friendly reusable booster as tech is currently.
21:28 Take note. The word 'Cats', when pronounced properly should always be plural.
Could you please make a video about a spacecraft which use the design of the lightcraft. Especially when the ship re-entry.
Would the form of the lightcraft let air through an intake "pipe" and jet on the side to slow it down?
Scotty beamed me up twice last week. It was wonderful.
I love how this guy talks D:
I saw the title and first thought it said BEAN Powered Spaceships.
These are the voyages of the Starship Flatulence.......
4:15 I love this rocket design and is such design practical?
Bean-powered spaceships… wwhhaaatt!?
Beans.
I suspect you'd wind up with on-board power storage that gets charged by the remote beams, even if the system proposed in this were set up.
Space whales!!!! Yes yes yes!
Been excited about that episode since it was announced, SFIA is definitely my favorite channel on youtube
Yay. Isaac Arthur time.
ist this stellaris backround music?
Imaginé a spaceplane that reaches space using a láser catapult and sky hook, that would really be game changing
Isaac for breakfast? Yes please
Can you do interstellar communications
You look like you lost weight Isaac! Great job.
How does the rocket equation relate to human cellular regeneration safety during the distance to Mars
8:42 Litho-braking. LOL
Happy arthurssay.
Hehe... "lithobreaking"... reminds me of KSP.
In space, could we have a "funnel" close to the Sun which would suck in solar wind, concentrate it, and beam it out on the other side, creating a "particle highway" inside the Solar system? If you have a sail ship specially built, you "hop in" the stream which pushes you out, and you hop out of the stream when you have reached the right speed. Of course, throwing a beam of "particle soup" means that the beam would spread out and concentration would fade as you move away from the Sun. This is especially true for charged particles. What would happen if the funnel trapped the charged particles and throw them back at the Sun? This would allow the funnel to stay in a stable orbit, while spewing out a pratically neutral beam of particles such as neutrons, hydrogen atoms (non ionized) and helium.
I have been curious about beamed power as I watched you talk about it in one of your older videos. Wouldn't a society that has such powerful power beaming technology also be able to use that as a weapon possibly powerful enough to strike a craft in orbit? Also what would the affects be on our atmosphere from constantly beaming power? Would that cause degradation in the ozone? In orbit, beamed power makes sense. The cost per kilogram is expensive for broad casting though, I could see it useful for small satellites and light craft near orbital infrastructure for making plane changes and correction burns. I also doubt we could get a fusion reactor to fit into an airplane. However, a thorium salt fission reactor could easily do it.
How effective would a Ram Jet be in space at relativistic speeds?
I see that way as "The Only Way" to colonize whole solar system. Yes it is soo complicated and expensive but don't forget one thing - we have our big fusion reactor absolutely free for all of us no matter who you are and where you from. Plus it's seems like the only one way for the second level transition of civilization.
Too many things in our world depends from cost, simplicity and safety.
P.S. Excuse me for my imperfect English. This is my second language and I’m still improving.
If you direct lasers from satellites at low Earth orbit collecting sun energy to spaceships at 11km altitude with conventional turbofans to reach that altitude and scramjets for escape velocity acceleration you can avoid problems with rocket equation.
The same trick could be used for deceleration.
We need a large network of lasers and highly accurate beams.
Motohiko Inai's Patent on of muon catalyzed and "Star Liners" by Cowley
There was an amazing demonstration of a prototype concept based on the Orion project, rather than using nuclear explosions as your pulses, you direct a high powered laser to blast a plasma in a special reflecting torroidal "Plasmospike", there's a video of it on youtube for anyone interested, the specific impulses could reach several thousand seconds and the best part is that you can basically use atmosphere as your propellant, and then you can use the best specific propellant after the air gets very thin, basically this means you can make your ship at any size if you are still able to make a laser powerful enough.
EDIT: Link
th-cam.com/video/XhUasBcoj-Q/w-d-xo.html
Just in time
Damn, rocket science is pretty complicated stuff. Who knew?
One of the things that interest me is if it would be possible to have a nuclear fusion propelled rocket launching from the ground. Fusion drives have been discussed for deep-space propulsion several times in this series, but how effective would it be in atmosphere ?
You can, there have been designs for it. You essentially use the power of the fusion reaction to heat reaction mass in a rocket or jet.
@@KellyStarks Thanks. I already knew the basic principle, but I didn't knew someone had actually designed one. Do you have a link to an article I could read (and one that hasn't been made by a bunch of over-enthusiastic journalists who have no idea what they are talking about) ? I'm really interested in the subject.