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Thread: Will We Ever Stop Using Rockets to Get to Space?

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    Will We Ever Stop Using Rockets to Get to Space?

    Will We Ever Stop Using Rockets to Get to Space?

    A very interesting article about how we get to space. We must get past our rocket technology in order to spread throughout the solar system.


    On March 16, 1926 in Auburn, Massachusetts, American engineer Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket. The flight lasted a mere 2.5 seconds and ended anticlimactically 181 feet away in a snow-covered cabbage field, but it would prove to be one of the most significant flights in history.

    Ninety-two years later, liquid-fueled rockets are the norm for spaceflight. Towering, explosive behemoths standing sixty times taller than Goddard's original rocket blast humans beyond the boundaries of Earth's atmosphere. Each launch is a true spectacle, offering testament again and again to humankind's collective potential to transcend barriers and reach new heights through brains and cooperation.


    But will rockets remain our primary transportation to space into the far flung future? Or will they eventually be replaced by new methods and technologies?


    Rockets, after all, are far from perfect. Fourteen astronauts have died during launches. By chemical engineer Don Pettit's calculation, "sitting on top of a rocket is more dangerous than sitting on a bottle of gasoline!" He ought to know, he's done it a few times. Pettit has flown five missions to the International Space Station and has tallied 369 days, 16 hours, and 41 minutes in space. At age 62, he's NASA's oldest active astronaut.


    High costs are also an unfortunate drawback of rocket launches. Since roughly 85 percent of a rocket's mass must be taken up by propellant, there's little room left for cargo. That makes booking a ticket to space exceedingly expensive – around $10,000 per kilogram to reach low-Earth orbit.


    For a long time, rockets have also been inherently wasteful, their parts simply falling back to Earth, burning up on re-entry through the atmosphere, or joining the space junkyard currently orbiting our planet.
    Read the rest at the link above.
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    Large slingshots would do the trick. Jules Verne suggested a large cannon. The initial acceleration would squash everyone flat but it could work other than that.

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    The airships seem more appealing, but time-consuming. It is rumored that NASA/DARPA is working on developing warp drive...
    In quoting my post, you affirm and agree that you have not been goaded, provoked, emotionally manipulated or otherwise coerced into responding.



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    Warp III Scottie
    I am tired of everyone fighting with each other. This is all by design.

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    Anti gravity technology.


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    Quote Originally Posted by Don View Post
    Anti gravity technology.
    Power always thinks it has a great soul, and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak. And that it is doing God service when it is violating all His laws.
    --John Adams

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    Quote Originally Posted by Don View Post
    Anti gravity technology.
    Elementary. Just a simple matter of creating gravity stronger than the gravity outside. Sort of like air conditioning.

    Get on that, thanks.

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    Anti-gravity would be useful to escape earth's gravitational field, but if we want to be able to get anywhere outside of our own planetary system, let alone our galaxy without travelling for generations, we would need Faster Than Light (FTL) technology.

    The Alcubierre Warp Drive involves stretching the fabric of space-time in a wave which would (in theory) cause the space ahead of an object to contract while the space behind it would expand. An object inside this wave (i.e. a spaceship) would then be able to ride this region, known as a "warp bubble" of flat space. While the object within the bubble would not actually travel faster than the speed of light, space-time is folded to effectively shorten the distance to your destination. Unfortunately, it involves a small matter of cracking the mysteries of dark energy which means we will need some serious breakthroughs in M-theory, since the amount of energy required to create a warp bubble would be astronomical and furthermore it is posited that this must be negative energy. Negative energy at this point only exists in wormhole theory.
    In quoting my post, you affirm and agree that you have not been goaded, provoked, emotionally manipulated or otherwise coerced into responding.



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    We could also build a space station and build craft there. So you don't have to escape earth's gravity field.
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    Will we ever stop using rockets to get to space?





    If we can develop the technology we may not need to build spacecraft in space. The technology is no more impossible than "warp drive." Both are theoretically possible.


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