Super Condutors

--- In spacesettlers@egroups.com, atchisonjames@h... wrote:
>
> My names James. Im new to this group. I've been reading about
> Tuckers plan in the Himilayers. Sounds very costly, time consuming
> and the amount of power needed would be incredible. Taking in to
> account the mass you have to move and the velocity needed. I very
> much doubt that this would be a viable project to do. I think anti-
> gravity engines of some sort would be of far greater value. Not
only
> in the atmosphere but in space travel also. Does anyone have an
> opinion on this.

The amount of energy needed to accelerate any mass into orbit is the
same, regardless of the method used. The problem with conventional
rockets is that most of their mass is fuel, engines, and tanks. Only
a small fraction of the mass that must be launched is payload.
If a sattelite must go from the US Space Shuttle to geosyncronous
orbit, then it must also pack along fuel and a motor. Only one third
of the mass of a geosynchronous sattelite launched from the STS is
payload, the rest is fuel, tanks, and engines.

As the STS accelerates, its mass decreases due to the use of the
fuel; it also lightens itself by dumping the solid boosters when they
are expended and re-using them in other launches.

The STS program also has a policy of dumping the external fuel tank
in a remote part of the Indian Ocean. To do this, it must make an
orbital correction, drop the tank, and then accelerate again. This
is highly inefficient, it would take LESS fuel to bring the external
tank into LEO. The external tank is actually two tanks, one sphere
containing about 1000 kg of leftover Hydrogen, and one cylinder 18m
long containing about 10000 kg of unused oxygen. The walls are made
of Aluminum, and are thicker than the walls of the space shuttle.
Such a waste!

In the end, using the STS you are not just paying $20kUSD/kg for your
payload, you are also paying to accelerate the solid rocket boosters,
the (wasted) external fuel tank, and the engines.

With a mass driver, all of your fuel and propulsion systems stay on
the ground. All that you launch is payload. You would use the same
amount of energy to launch the shuttle once as you would to launch
the same mass of pure payload from a mass driver.

The more I look at the map, the more I think the Canadian Rockies are
the place to build it...
http://www.geopedia.com/online/maps/physical/Canada.htm

As for antigravity, I think that if you ever tried to use large
quantities of it anywhere near the Earth, people would be screaming
for your head on a silver platter! It will likely be used in
missions which are outside the earth-moon system.

:) ed