Re: APR Extra: Moderately gigantic drawing of Sea Dragon

From: Scott Lowther (scottlowther_at_ix.netcom.SPAMBLOK.com)
Date: 03/29/05 

Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 04:59:23 GMT

Pat Flannery wrote:

>
> You'd still have to get the cargo to be used for the colonization
> effort from the surface of the Earth to the Orion in either LEO or the
> gap between the inner and outer Van Allen belts... I still think
> there's going to be a EMP problem when you rev up the Orion's motor
> (remember that those Project Argus devices weren't that powerful, and
> that's how we first found out about EMP effects, and the damage that
> nuclear detonations in space could wreak on satellites.) in Earth
> orbit, and the further away from the planet's magnetosphere it is, the
> better.

Keep in mind that this is an alternate historey discussion, not a "let's
do it now" discussion. That being the case, if Orion was a going concern
in the early sixties, satellite makers would know what was coming, and
would beef up satellite shielding accoridingly. Since this alternate
history woudl require vastly more space lift capability than the real
world, perhaps on the order of a Sea Dragon a day or more, space launch
woudl be dirt cheap... and thus so would satellites.

> The only real way to make full use of Orion's exceptional ISP is to
> surface launch it,

Incorrect. Launch from ground to orbit requires nothing fancy, and in
fact suffers when launch vehicles are desired to be at the bleeding
edge. A Sea Dragon, obviously, would do it. Orion provides *no* benefit
here. The point is not to get the best mass fraction from Earth to
orbit, but to get the lowest cost per pound from Earth to orbit. But
Orion can send a shitload of stuff from Earth orbit to Jupiter... Sea
Dragon can't.

>
> You can save trip times to Mars with higher velocity between the two
> planets (I don't know if the Moon is even worth it in regards to
> higher velocity; it would be a "hurry up and stop" situation at Lunar
> distances), but except for crew and passenger movement does it really
> matter if you get your colonization cargo from point "A" to point "B"
> in a week, or via a Hohman transfer orbit? That extra speed you used
> to get there has to be damped out at the arrival at the destination,
> and that's wasteful.
>
Remeber, we're talking about military. These are the guys who regualrly
bust Mach 1 getting from here to there. Civilians do not do that.

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