Current year: >launching rockets from earth's surface >combustion-based engine >high fuel consumption >can't carry personnel >low storage space >one-time use (inb4 space x)
What's stopping us from moving the entire process outside the atmosphere? >send parts to space station >assemble large spaceship in space >implement a nuclear reactor in it >guaranteed years of unlimited power supply >use nuclear power to accelerate >navigate at any speed you want >accelerate to reach near-c speeds >explore wherever you want
What are the pros and cons of this? submarines use nuclear power, why can't spaceships do the same? If it's an issue of heat management, can't the nuclear reactor be placed in an area of the ship with thinner cover, so that the heat could disperse outside where the temp is absolute zero?
Oh wait fug, I guess nuclear power alone can't generate propulsion? I totally forgot about that. Still, why not launch rockets directly from outside the atmosphere? wouldn't it be more efficient? I mean, you can attach a fuel storage of any size you want, I've just read on wiki about projects for nuclear propulsion in space and there're quite a bit of ideas: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_propulsion#Spacecraft
The common issue seems to be the fuel, why not make the spacecraft bigger so it can carry more of it?
Jason Ward
Firstly what's stopping us is an elite ruling class that are so greedy they simply do not care about the progress of the species but simply collecting as much money and power as possible although their families could easily live off their fortunes for the next couple thousand years with zero work whatsoever.
I wanted to do some googling and found this discussion very interesting, I don't want to just copy past other's ideas so I'll share this link thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=45631.0 Certainly a bunch of hurdles to overcome but hey, I want to see the future as soon as possible.
Watch this video and every other video this guy made. Great stuff, it was a real eye opener for me.
Caleb Young
>What's stopping us from moving the entire process outside the atmosphere? lack of motivation for powerful people to invest in space exploration
Hunter Garcia
Unfortunately true. Everything is motivated directly by currency instead of thinking of the future of mankind.
Jaxson Kelly
Money are the problem. We should vote for politicians who promise to print money and share it with everyone this way everyone will be rich and we'll have all the money to spent on things that actually matter.
Daniel Wilson
>politicians who promise to print money
Evan Miller
that's like asking to turn your country into a zimbwawe tier inflation
Chase Morris
What would be used to convert heat energy from the reactor to electricity tho? You don't have water to heat and turn turbines in space.
Christopher Rodriguez
Kek, are you an actual retard?
Blake King
We are all just waiting for the meme drive test results.
James Baker
But brainlet, if everybody has more money, then nobody needs more money, then nobody will accept the same low amount of money for goods and services, then everybody is poor.
You don't even know what inflation is, what the hell are you doing here? This isn't /scifi/
Gavin Barnes
>outside where the temp is absolute zero Stopped reading right here
Eli Brooks
>going slower than the speed of light
Dylan Martin
i love pion rockets
Owen Jones
It'd be better to simply make currency worthless and return to a trades and services culture.
Jeremiah Gomez
>Intostello space
Benjamin Miller
Nice bait.
The cost of doing so would be astronomical (no pun intended.) The most important thing now (so I believe) is to devise a system which lowers the cost of sending material into space because that is where a substantial amount of cost is.
In essence, we need a goddamn space elevator or something effectively the same.
Robert Roberts
Off the top of my head, two reasons: >Orbit of ISS ~ 400 km, radius of the earth ~ 4000km So you gain practically nothing. >You still have to get everything up there in the first place.
Dominic Green
>radius of the earth ~ 4000km You better look this shit up before posting man
Christopher Diaz
That means constructing an absurd space staiton capable of housing all the engineers and parts and fuel need to build an entire spacecraft, either way you're sending the same amount of stuff into space form the Earth's surface so it would only really be viable if you plan on building something too heavy to be launched direct from the surface
This thing would be absurdly large and would need a shitload of engines to get it accelerating at any feasible rate. Not to mention that building a nuclear reactor in orbit means launching nuclear fuel into space, any launch failure could have pretty terrible consequences although they could maybe be mitigated
