• Multi-Megawatt Microwave-Driven Rockets to Fly by 2018
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[QUOTE] [IMG]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VyTCyizqrHs/TMEYh1_8D7I/AAAAAAAAJak/DgZWl703rlg/s1600/Microwave.png[/IMG] [URL=http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20020131-52.html]More information on the renewed microwave launch into space project.[/URL] According to Escape Dynamics, "the key operational components of the microwave beam power launch system are a ground-based microwave array and an engine based on the heat exchange between the hydrogen propellant and the incoming microwave radiation. Hydrogen heating is achieved with the heat exchanger, which heats the propellant to a temperature above 2,000 [degrees Kelvin], which is necessary for efficient operation of the engine." [URL=http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/10/hundred-year-starship-program-has.html]The new microwave launch effort was announced along with the hundred year starship program.[/URL] One of the major advantages of a beamed microwave external propulsion system, said Kevin Parkin, the deputy director of the Mission Design Center at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., is that it can bypass some of the typical constraints of a traditional propulsion engine. According to Parkin, who is an Escape Dynamics adviser and who wrote his own Ph.D. thesis on microwave thermal propulsion, a beamed energy propulsion system is capable of producing 2.5 times as much thrust as a traditional chemical-based system. He said that the standard system tops out at an energetic reaction of 16 megajoules per kilogram, while the beamed energy approach can reach 40 megajoules per kilogram. "So you get a higher performance out of the rocket by sending the same amount of mass out the back," Parkin said. "So that translates to a rocket with a bigger payload." And what that means, Parkin added, is that a rocket launched under this paradigm could have more of its mass devoted to structural integrity, a key component in getting to a reusable launch vehicle that requires being inspected only once over 100 flights or so. "It's more akin to an airliner than a rocket," he explained. "Until five years ago," said Tseliakhovich, "we could not produce enough output of the microwave power. We did not have efficient enough gyrotrons." Today, however, it's possible to produce more than a megawatt of energy per gyrotron, Tseliakhovich said, speaking of devices that, according to Wikipedia, are "high-powered vacuum tubes which emit millimeter-wave beams by bunching electrons with cyclotron motion in a strong magnetic field." Tseliakhovich said he believes it will be technologically possible to build a prototype beamed microwave infrastructure and launch vehicle in as little as seven year [/QUOTE] Source: [url]http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/11/prototype-multi-megawatt-microwave.html[/url] I called it. I wrote bits of my novel about it. Now it's happening.
Hell yes, it's the small but important stuff like this that leads onto greater things in space.
Cool.
To summarize: Instead of carrying fuel on the rocket which is terribly inefficient, you fire microwave beams to ionize the air (Air turns to plasma) behind the spacecraft or to induce thermal ablation on a small plaque behind the spacecraft, and it rides the plasma into space. Like the Bifrost Bridge, which launches the spacecraft through railguns and pushes them through lasers after the raligun stage: [IMG]http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/9056/bifrostdiagram.jpg[/IMG] This shit makes me want to drop everything and study aerospace engineering. Some day, American education system. Some day :shobon:
don't launch from Iowa
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx2dgDmL_aQ[/media] I dont care if its been posted before, these things sound cool
This will undoubtedly be used for some sort of weaponry eventually.
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;25893388]I wrote bits of my novel about it.[/QUOTE] what novel can I read it
[QUOTE=Jakobi;25894447]This will undoubtedly be used for some sort of weaponry eventually.[/QUOTE] Most stuff evolves from weapons, sooo...
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;25894551]what novel can I read it[/QUOTE] Once I publish it. Mind you, it has furries :ssh:
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;25894656]Once I publish it. Mind you, it has furries :ssh:[/QUOTE] wait, are you the guy who made that thread ages ago about ideas for a novel it was something about the earth tipping on its side so one half was a desert and other was a frozen wasteland and the struggles of the people living there
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;25893560] Like the Bifrost Bridge, which launches the spacecraft through railguns and pushes them through lasers after the raligun stage:[/QUOTE] Awesome fucking name for it.
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;25893560]To summarize: Instead of carrying fuel on the rocket which is terribly inefficient, you fire microwave beams to ionize the air (Air turns to plasma) behind the spacecraft or to induce thermal ablation on a small plaque behind the spacecraft, [b]and it rides the plasma into space.[/b] [/QUOTE] Eureka Seven anyone?
[img]http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/6502/docsg3.jpg[/img]
I prefer the railgun method.
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;25894656]Once I publish it. Mind you, it has furries :ssh:[/QUOTE] Interesting. I never thought that you'd write a novel...
this wont be ready by 2018, sorry [editline]6th November 2010[/editline] technologically possible? maybe Will they actually do it? no
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;25893560]To summarize: Instead of carrying fuel on the rocket which is terribly inefficient, you fire microwave beams to ionize the air (Air turns to plasma) behind the spacecraft or to induce thermal ablation on a small plaque behind the spacecraft, and it rides the plasma into space. Like the Bifrost Bridge, which launches the spacecraft through railguns and pushes them through lasers after the raligun stage: [img_thumb]http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/9056/bifrostdiagram.jpg[/img_thumb] This shit makes me want to drop everything and study aerospace engineering. Some day, American education system. Some day :shobon:[/QUOTE] Railgun spaceships are win.
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