Re: "Rockets not carrying fuel" and the space tower.
From: Henry Spencer (henry_at_spsystems.net)
Date: 03/29/05
- Next message: Henry Spencer: "Re: "Rockets not carrying fuel" and the space tower."
- Previous message: Sam Wormley: "Re: ELECTRONS TRAVELING THROUGH SPACE"
- In reply to: Uncle Al: "Re: "Rockets not carrying fuel" and the space tower."
- Next in thread: Mike: "Re: "Rockets not carrying fuel" and the space tower."
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:40:37 GMT
In article <42497E7C.DF259382@hate.spam.net>,
Uncle Al <UncleAl0@hate.spam.net> wrote:
>> If you wanted to send energy to a rocket, you would be better off with a
>> laser. In that case, the rocket would still need fuel, but it wouldn't need
>> anything that burns...
>
>Stupid idea. Energy interception scales as the square of dimension,
>rocket mass scales as the cube.
So? This just means that laser launchers work better with small vehicles.
But that's true anyway. The dominant cost is the cost of the laser, and
that is pretty much directly proportional to vehicle size -- you need very
roughly a megawatt of laser per kilogram of payload -- and almost totally
independent of launch rate. So laser launchers, like guns, catapults,
etc., want to launch lots of little payloads rather than a few big ones,
holding the capital investment down and keeping the expensive hardware
busy. They're conveyor belts rather than pickup trucks.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert | henry@spsystems.net
- Next message: Henry Spencer: "Re: "Rockets not carrying fuel" and the space tower."
- Previous message: Sam Wormley: "Re: ELECTRONS TRAVELING THROUGH SPACE"
- In reply to: Uncle Al: "Re: "Rockets not carrying fuel" and the space tower."
- Next in thread: Mike: "Re: "Rockets not carrying fuel" and the space tower."
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Relevant Pages
|
|
