NASA's Future: Don't be fooled by the design.

[Yar-El]

NASA's Future: Don't be fooled by the design.

NASA is cellebratinig 50 years of existance. I followed the links at MSNBC.com, and I ended up over at space.com. I wanted to know what our future looks like. We are retiring the space shuttles soon, so a question kept bothering me. What will our next shuttles look like?

 

Aries I

Aries V

 

Looking at Ares I and Ares V caused me to cringe. I felt sick at the idea of going back to the 1960's designs. After reading through NASA's mission overviews, I came to realize that this is the first massive step into the future.

 

The versatile, heavy-lifting Ares V is a two-stage, vertically stacked launch vehicle. It can carry nearly 414,000 pounds (188 metric tons) to low-Earth orbit. When working together with the Ares I crew launch vehicle to launch payloads into Earth orbit, Ares V can send nearly 157,000 pounds (71 metric tons) to the moon.

Our current shuttle designs are great for low orbit, but they wouldn't make it with massive weight to other locations. Moving massive amounts of cargo to the moon would require something big. People, this could be the first stage in creating a spaceshuttle in high orbit. Our next generation of shuttles doesn't stop with Aries I and V. Once you get the equipment and cargo in orbit, we can move heavy elements with a slight push. Anything we do on Earth will just weigh too much, and it would cost too much in fuel to get it off the ground. I hope you guys see where I'm going. Our future will be a two stage launch. Instead of launching a massive vehicle into orbit, we could take off verticlly, and then hook up with a shuttle in orbit.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not just one small step. Our children and grandchildren will live the beginning stages of a massive push towards exploration. This is intense and exciting.

 

The Ares V also represents an unmatched national asset for lifting heavy exploration, scientific, and commercial payloads to Earth orbit or trans-lunar injection, a trajectory designed to intersect with the moon. Such lift capabilities will enable NASA to, in time, undertake crewed missions to destinations beyond the moon.

 

What do you think?

[Arcesious]

Interesting idea, waste of resources.

 

When are they going to start launching space ships using magnetic rails?

 

I'l explain:

 

This is an idea that NASA has already thought of, and it saves tons of fuel, not to mention that the space ship wouldn't need stages to get out of the atmosphere.

 

Pretty much, you make a really long 'train-track' of magnetic rails, and have the space ship race down the track. Magnetic forces will propel the space ship at exceedingly high speeds as the track angles upwards towards the sky. Once the space ship clears the rails, it propelled by pure momentum (kinetic force built up from being pushed along by the rails)

 

The shi slowly goes into orbit, circling the planet perhaps several or many times. Eventually, when enough force is built up from racing around the planet, it will change course by using it's thrusters (or whatever kind of engine it uses) to change its angle of travel and essentially slingshot it towards the place it needs to go. Using mostly gravitational forces, the space ship would be able to move very fast to get where it needs to go with much less fuel than a space ship with stages.

 

Problem is, the technology for that is very expensive and the G-forces experienced by the pilots of the space ship could possibly be unsurvivable, so such an idea would probably ned to be automated and used only for transport of supplies and whatnot.

[Astrotoy7]

lolz, where are the warp nacelles??

 

Im personally tired of such a grand thing as space exploration turning into a pi$$ing contest between the nations of the worlds with the largest wads of $$$ to throw at it.

 

As much as we can be in admiration of the potential for great achievement and endeavour in such projects, the fact that the world revolves on capitalism, inequality and xenophobia is an automatic fail as to reaching our full potential. [/2c]

 

@Arcesious....interesting you mentioned the rails concept. Ive been catching up on the now defunct show Enterprise. In the season 2 ep "first flight" they use a similar concept to launch their warp3 vessels

 

mtfbwya

[Aash Li]

Nasa just likes giant phallus-looking rockets, thats why they havent used magnetic rails yet. >.>

[El Sitherino]

Nasa just likes giant phallus-looking rockets, thats why they havent used magnetic rails yet. >.>

 

Or because all money that would go to funding such an endeavor is put into funding meaningless and **** that goes nowhere.

 

Woo. \o/

[HerbieZ]

I quite like the design of Orion. Even if it is a little basic.