4 ms·

I been trying to think about this from a different angle and have been trying to work out how long you could make a self-supporting fuel and oxygen line by putt

I been trying to think about this from a different angle and have been trying to work out how long you could make a self-supporting fuel and oxygen line by putting a lightweight triangular gantry with three small adjustable rocket engines and a fuel pump every hundred meters or so. This wouldn't need stupid materials as it would not be under the same tensile loads, but it will have a maximum length that depends on overall fuel consumption of the structure vs the flow rate of pipe you can haul. Also, it would be constantly burning fuel, so it has pretty high running costs. edit - you could also make an electric version of the same thing that pumps a reaction mass like water, but then you need to be able to fire it very fast out of the nozzles otherwise the water line becomes unwieldy very quickly, so I figured using chemical fuel might make things simpler.

civilian 12y ago
Yeahhhhhh that is not an effective strategy at all. Rockets upon rockets. It sounds like an idea hatched in Kerbal Space Program. The best "ground powered" structure would be the space fountain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  Back of an envelope calculations seem to indicate that a 200km one is possibly feasible using normal petrol, tho I wouldn't like to bet on geostationary. The space fountain has it's own issues, such as engineering the deflector and making the giant electromagnetic tube. What I am suggesting is far simpler. edit - and the I had the idea before Kerbal came out, so if it is total madness, I promise you they are not to blame.
stcredzero 12y ago
There was an informal JPL study that was posted to rec.arts.sf.science a very long time ago, that found that a 100km high exponentially tapering tower could be practically built by using highly pressurized balloon tanks of boron. (Practical meaning, conceivably affordable by a superpower, with a chance in hell of actually happening.) People have also studied using dynamically supported structures. We could probably build the Lofstrom Loop and it would bring the cost of going into LEO to space elevator levels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop Still, not a chance in hell of it happening in the US. China might be crazy enough to build it.

civilian 12y ago

Yeahhhhhh that is not an effective strategy at all. Rockets upon rockets. It sounds like an idea hatched in Kerbal Space Program. The best "ground powered" structure would be the space fountain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain

lotsofmangos 12y ago
Back of an envelope calculations seem to indicate that a 200km one is possibly feasible using normal petrol, tho I wouldn't like to bet on geostationary. The space fountain has it's own issues, such as engineering the deflector and making the giant electromagnetic tube. What I am suggesting is far simpler. edit - and the I had the idea before Kerbal came out, so if it is total madness, I promise you they are not to blame.

stcredzero 12y ago

There was an informal JPL study that was posted to rec.arts.sf.science a very long time ago, that found that a 100km high exponentially tapering tower could be practically built by using highly pressurized balloon tanks of boron. (Practical meaning, conceivably affordable by a superpower, with a chance in hell of actually happening.) People have also studied using dynamically supported structures. We could probably build the Lofstrom Loop and it would bring the cost of going into LEO to space elevator levels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop Still, not a chance in hell of it happening in the US. China might be crazy enough to build it.