Advanced Concepts for Space Travel

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish ... ml?1942006

Just reading this, does anyone actually believe we will have anything other than chemical rockets and perhaps solar sailed crafts in the next 100 years or so, personally i don't! no harm in trying though hey!
Rob

Sounds too good to be true doesn't it?

Using anti-matter (AM) to power a Nuclear Thermal Reactor (NTR) sounds like a good idea if you can make the AM cheaply enough. And the reactor core should be a lot smaller and lighter than a fission NTR too. Some of those had thrust to weight ratios greater than 1. Maybe you could use an AM NTR to launch from the surface of the Earth? $250 million is still way cheaper than a Shuttle launch.

Some more info here:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-05zj.html

Links at bottom here:
http://www.starshipmodeler.net/cgi-bin/ ... hp?t=37708

100 years is a very long time. A lot can happen. Think about what we had 100 years ago?

So i think anitmater catalized/fuel type rockets could happen in 100 years *if* we put a lot of effort into it and into space in general. We arn't really doing that at this time.

Delt0r

I used to think 100 years was just about forever. After all, it is now only 103 years since the first airplane flew. Our progress was highlighted to me the other night when I was reading E-mail while my children were playing games on other computers, 3 of us on 3 different computers at home. Then dinner was ready and I said, "Shut down your computers, it is time for dinner", and immediately thought how that sounded like something from a science fiction story. Of course my kids didn't know what I was talking about; they have always had home computers.

But how sadly lacking in progress has space travel been! 40 years after the first airplane flight we had thousands of ordinary people flying as passengers. In comparison, today's rockets are hardly more capable than those of 40 years ago! It would be like 1943 with nothing better than the Wright Brothers' second airplane. It is just pathetic and extremely disheartening!

Another way to think about it is, what if the Union had pumped millions of dollars into developing a flying machine for the Civil War in the 1860's? It's now 1903 and technology has developed to the point where private companies can afford to build simple, cheap machines.

Early spaceflight may have been premature, forced by the pressures of the Cold War, at incredible cost.

I'm looking for interesting development in ion/electric propulsion to supplement the initial boost from chemical rockets on longer flights.

My first post and a safe bet, ya think?


Steve M.

Perhaps anti-matter chemistry will give us an answer..
http://www.aip.org/pnu/2006/split/796-1.html

or not.

It seems to me that Ad Astra rockets haven't been considered in this thread.

Their technology is advanced compared to chemical rockets and ion drives.

Ad Astra are thinking of using the Technology of their plasma drives to get to Mars also.

What about sending a probe with such a drive close to the sun to turn the propellant into plasme this way? It might save hardware weight and enable much higher acceleration. ...



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)