Re: LA-4541-MS

On Apr 8, 10:01 pm, Willie.Moo...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
I said elsewhere that a tether gets you about 42% advantage when using
chemical oxygen systems. Tethers don't make a lot of sense when you
have really high specific impulses at high thrusts, as in nuclear
pulse rockets like the one I;ve described here.

Does that mean tethers are useless? Not really, because there are
scenarios where tethers make a big difference.

For example,

Say using nuclear pulse rockets you bring an asteroid to Earth orbit,
put up a tele-robotic factory and build the tether and all the fixins
on the asteroid, fragment left after processing and use it as a
counterway. You then use nuclear pulse rockets to take the whole
shebang to the moon, and lower it to the surface.

Now what?

The moon seems nearly devoid of water. So, we go to the asteroid belt
again, and get an icy asteroid of an appropriate size,and send it to
L1. We then dismantle the ice,and send it to the surface, th provide
water for the lunar inhabitants and industry. Its a way to get
MASSIVE quantities brought in at LOW gee down to the moon,that you
don't want crashing into the moon, or find impracticably large to land
on the moon.

Earth has more water than we know what to do with, so why bother with
investing hundreds of billions and taking decades in order to bring an
icy asteroid to the moon, or even into orbiting at any one of the L1,
L2, L3 or L4 options?

Using any one of your energy efficient forms of a nuclear pulse rocket
could deliver as many thousand tonnes of terrestrial salty water to
our moon as needed, and according to your superior rant about using
such nuclear pulse technology, as such it's all rather dirt cheap and
100% failsafe to boot.
.. - Brad Guth
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: LA-4541-MS
    ... Tethers don't make a lot of sense when you ... Say using nuclear pulse rockets you bring an asteroid to Earth orbit, ... The moon seems nearly devoid of water. ...
    (sci.space.policy)
  • Re: Irish Electricity
    ... >>> Aw bless you are talking about ickle space tethers. ... The other tethers are carried up by elevator to form a set so if one ... > get to them easier from the moon or the lagrangian points which is another ... > mechanical engineers make weapons and civil engineers make targets. ...
    (soc.culture.irish)
  • Re: Irish Electricity
    ... Clarke's was a space elevator. ... Yes the elevators run up and down the tethers. ... >> A more interesting option maybe to build a big energy farm on the moon. ... mechanical engineers make weapons and civil engineers make targets. ...
    (soc.culture.irish)
  • Re: LA-4541-MS
    ... you take statements of facts personally. ... I'm writing about nuclear pulse rockets here. ... we'll use tethers as a mean to support increased volumes at ... energy at roughly 33%~50% of the available IR spectrum. ...
    (sci.space.policy)
  • Re: Nuclear rockets.
    ... You yourself said they'd require 256 million tons of materials - ... tooling on the moon. ... tethers begin to make sense. ... spare loot after your WWIII deals with the fossil and yellowcake ...
    (sci.space.policy)