So, if you research the history of space exploration, you’ll find one result keeps happening over and over and over and over.
They keep exploding.
It’s not surprising. Their basic foundation is that they are rockets. Even from their original designs, rockets have always been built with the purpose of exploding. They’re weapons. But, before they were weapons, the ORIGINAL idea, was to use the propulsion to exit Earths atmosphere and into space. The only problem is that when this was being designed, I forget the guys name, but he was a scientist that the nazis had captured. He designed the rockets for space craft. Hitler then took the designs and thought “Let’s blow up London!”
So, once the war was over, the United States came over, and recruited him into NASA. His designs were how NASA got started. Modified versions of his original designs are what Apollo 11 used to get to the moon. So, the design CAN work. However, there were 10 Apollo missions before that didn’t reach the moon. The first one ended disastrously.
The Challenger shuttle ended in disaster.
Even though they aren’t NASA, recently in the past month Elon Musk’s SpaceX had an explosion. Jeff Bezos also had a rocket explode. So this is still an issue.
And I always wondered, what would happen if you just took a commercial jet, and flew above the clouds? Well, they DO fly above the clouds. So what would happen if you just kept going “up”?
And I’m sure you can’t just grab a stock Delta Airlines 747 and fly into orbit, but why not design a space craft, which more resembles the take-off of an airplane? Drives forward really fast, and then lifts? Except it’s not flying NYC to LA. It just keeps lifting and lifting, until it’s in orbit.
You could put thrusters on it to go forward in space. And then for landings, you wouldn’t drop off into the ocean. You’d just land at an airport. The crazy thing is, the people of NASA are so talented, that they could route the whole thing, in a way that they land at whichever airport they want. So they’d know ahead of time NOT to schedule any landings or takeoffs for this 3 hour period of time when the space craft lands.
And I bet with enough time, they could get the experience to reduce that 3 hours, into 15 minutes. Knowing exactly when they’ll arrive. Also no more of this breakaway pods that fall back to earth after detatching, or the other ones which just float out in space forever.
But I’m sure I can’t be the only one with this idea, so I figure the most likely is that it’s a scientific restriction. Where they can’t do it, because…and this is where the explanation would be.
Anyone know the explanation?
There’s a number of assumptions we’ll have to correct first:
The earth has an atmosphere. The further away from the surface you get, the less atmosphere, the faster the airplane has to fly to stay afloat.
Now we get to the next bit: how do planes propel themselves?
They do it by reacting fuel with heat and oxygen, via a propeller or jet turbine (which compresses the air providing a more dense oxygen source).
Again, what happens as you get further from the earth’s surface? You get less oxygen, meaning less propulsion so the plane goes slower for the same amount of fuel, until you hit the point where there’s either not enough air to provide lift, or there’s not enough oxygen to react with the fuel.
So the solution is to carry all your reactants with you. This usually involves liquid oxygen. That’s heavy and under pressure, so there’s a push to strip as much unnecessary weight as you can from the vessel so there’s room for something other than the fuel.
The easiest solution is to get rid of heavy wings, and stick to small fins that can assist in steering while there’s enough atmosphere around to push against.
Now we get to the next bit:
What’s the FASTEST way to get to space? The fastest way uses the least energy, and you’re having to carry your energy source with you.
The fastest way is to go almost straight away from the earth.
However, this isn’t the only solution, just the easiest.
Back when the X prize challenge was presented, a bunch of solutions to reusable spacecraft were tried. Balloons and blimps to raise the rocket as far into the atmosphere as possible before launch; airplanes that get to cruising altitude and then “drop” the rocket to go the rest of the way under their own power. This took more energy, but the first bit didn’t have to be self-contained.
But it turned out the winning solution that could escape earth’s gravity well was the Falcon 9. A multi-stage rocket with different fuels for different stages that used a rocket as a launch platform, and that rocket could return to base to be used again.
Pretty good summary. I’ll add a couple corrections:
The critical point of oxygen is below room temperature, meaning it is not possible to keep oxygen liquid using pressure alone. For rockets, liquid oxygen is typically loaded within hours or minutes prior to launch, before it has a chance to warm up and boil off.
Falcon 9 is a two-stage rocket, but it uses the same propellants (kerosene and liquid oxygen) on both stages.
Also, I’m not sure if I would call the Falcon 9 the winning solution, just the “winningest” solution so far. SpaceX’s Starship, Stoke Space’s Nova, and any of the upcoming Falcon 9 clones have the potential to improve on the Falcon 9 design or solve the challenge of reusability in slightly different ways.
As a point of fact, the winner of the X Prize wasn’t actually SpaceX… it was Scaled Composites with their jet-launched rocket-powered space plane.
The problem is that nobody really needs to go to space… there isn’t much money in it… On the other hand, people will pay millions to get the ORBIT. Going to space is just a matter of getting high enough, but orbit is all about getting fast as hell. In most cases, as far as we have learned, that means getting out of the atmosphere by the shortest means possible. The savings from launching higher from a jet don’t tend to offset the dramatically reduced payload and increased complexity.