Orbital elevator and skyhook: 4 of the craziest plans to conquer space
Miscellaneous / / April 05, 2023
How to throw cargo into orbit with a giant polyethylene slingshot and survive in the atmosphere of Jupiter.
1. orbital elevator
Rockets are, of course, very cool and beautiful. It's no wonder that SpaceX fans follow each of their launches live. But chemical engines have a problem - they are expensive and inefficient.
Send to a low reference orbit - the minimum height where an object can cut circles around the planet - a kilogram of cargo even on one of the cheapest rockets of our time Falcon 9 costs $2,719 It's too much, don't you think?
Therefore, the best minds of mankind have been struggling for many decades over the question of how to get rid of these smoking monsters rising on kerosene traction, and switch to something more economical and futuristic. One of these options is space elevator.
Building a geostationary station orbit, which will hang over the same point on the planet. We lower a heavy-duty cable from it, stretching under the influence of centrifugal force. And we carry goods up and down on it on an electric lift.
True, it is not known whether materials in nature are strong enough to make a hoisting rope 35,785 km long out of them.
In theory, a cable for a space elevator could be woven from graphene nanotubes. But so far no one failed make a carbon rope longer than 1 meter. Nevertheless, the orbital elevator is perhaps one of the most realistic space megaprojects listed here.
2. Space electromagnetic catapult
An even more impressive idea, designed to make it easier to launch objects into orbit. We build a long pipe at the equator with a vacuum inside to reduce friction to a minimum. We accelerate the spacecraft in it with the help of electromagnetic force - according to the principle railgun.
And it rushes along the pipe until it picks up cosmic speed, and then it jumps out and flies into space by inertia. And there it stabilizes the orbit with the help of a small built-in correction engine.
True, even here reality puts spokes in the wheels of engineers. Really efficient there will only be a very long tube: to achieve a low reference orbit, you need a track with a length of at least 500 km, and preferably more. How, where and from what to build this, the problem is still the same.
In addition, to power such an electric accelerator, you will need a wild amount of energy - you will have to build a nuclear power plant next to it, or even several.
And finally, such a construction is more adapted for the delivery of goods, not of people. Because if you shoot a projectile with passengers inside from a 500-kilometer railgun, the contents of the ship will reach space in the form of a liquid slurry.
Such a sharp change in the state of aggregation will adversely affect the health of the astronauts.
To send people into space, you need an electromagnetic catapult to be longer - at least 1,000 km. In general, the construction is non-trivial.
But despite the difficulties, such a catapult has a lot of advantages. Firstly, with its help, you can get rid of nuclear waste - just throw them into space so that they fly somewhere far away and do not return. So back in the 80s NASA planned do.
Secondly, the gun can be used not on Earth, but on the Moon - there is no atmosphere, there is no friction. You can mine valuable minerals on a satellite and bombard our planet with them in sparsely populated areas, and then just take them out by trucks.
Finally, the cannon can be used as weapon! Throwing unguided steel blanks at the enemy at a speed of about 8 km / s is very futuristic and harsh.
3. Aeronauts colony
Would you like to colonize, say, Venus or Jupiter? Mars is already boring for everyone, and in general this planet is boring: only sand and some ice. Venus is much more interesting: there on the surface temperature under +465 °C and rains of sulfuric acid. There is something to see until you melt.
And Jupiter has no surface at all - under the clouds of the gas giant's atmosphere hiding an ocean of metallic hydrogen with a temperature of 6,000 to 20,700 °C.
But don't worry, NASA has taken care of everything. For colonization on the surface of Venus and in the lower layers of Jupiter, you don’t need to throw anyone - you can just settle somewhere in the atmosphere and live in peace.
Project HAVOC implies the construction on Venus of a huge airship flying in ordinary air. Yes, the oxygen and nitrogen that we breathe in there, due to the greater density of the atmosphere, will act like hydrogen or helium here on Earth, lifting the balloon up. A receive The device can be powered by solar panels.
In this way, you can accommodate at an altitude of about 55 km - there is 27 ° C and a pleasant breeze. True, without an oxygen mask you cannot look out of the cockpit of an airship, because people cannot breathe carbon dioxide.
A similar design can be send and to Jupiter. Only now it will not work to pump helium or hydrogen into the balloon, because the giant consists of them.
But there is another way: to take gas from Jupiter's atmosphere and heat it, say, with a nuclear reactor. The hot hydrogen in the balloon will be lighter than the cold hydrogen in the upper atmosphere, and it will be possible to fly safely and admire the clouds and the bluish sky. Yes, it's high up will the same as on Earth. Yes, and with beautiful cirrus clouds of ammonia.
True, it is not clear what to do with the radiation from the gas giant - it is unlikely that it will be possible to sheathe an airship with lead. And it’s better not to take people with a fear of heights to this colony: can you imagine what it’s like to rush over a huge planet and subconsciously expect a fall all the time?
4. satellite sling
A satellite with a tether, revolving around the Earth, will describe approximately such movements. Video: Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell / YouTube
The project of Boeing and the NASA Institute for Advanced Studies called Orbital Skyhook, or "Sky Hook", involves a rather curious method of throwing cargo into orbit. True, a little risky.
Output satellite that revolves around planets and around its axis. We attach two sufficiently long ropes to it - say, 600 kilometers each, so that they spin, balancing each other. And we get something like a huge Ferris wheel, only with two spokes.
When we need to take something into space, we wait for the satellite to fly over us and hang the rope into the atmosphere. At an altitude of about 100 kilometers, we bring a cargo to the tip of the cable on a hypersonic aircraft, and it is pulled into orbit.
High rope strength, like a space elevator, is not required, so Boeing consider it is possible to do without graphene - existing heavy-duty polyethylenes and heat-resistant zylon will do.
The idea is not bad, but there are a couple of nuances. First, the counterweight satellite, in order to stay in orbit, must be at least 90 times larger than the payload. That is, to remove 14 tons of mass, it will first be necessary to assemble a colossus in orbit with a mass of 1,300 tons. The weight of the same ISS is about 440.
Secondly, in order for the station to rotate evenly, not fall to the Earth or fly away somewhere in the wrong place, it is necessary to de-orbit the same mass as to raise it. That is, you threw a load of 14 tons - if you please, dig up the same 14 tons of minerals from asteroids and lower them to compensate excessive rotation.
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