General Overviews of Future Launchers, Advanced
Concepts, etc.
Advance
Propulsion Study (pdf) - by Eric Davis for
the Air Force. He reviewed a long list of potential
"breakthrough" earth-to-orbit transport technologies
ranging in feasibility from the near term to the far-out
term.
An alternative to reusability for lowering launch
costs is to make expendables extremely cheap. Such
attempts typically use some variation of the following
approaches:
Trade off performance for simplicity
and robustness. The resulting lower costs more
than make up for not using the highest performance
systems.
Extremely simple engines and motors.
For example, a Microcosm
prototype engine had only 18
parts compared to thousands for most engines.
Such approaches typically would use pressure fed
engines rather than complex pumping systems.
Clustering - use clusters of a single
basic building block booster in numbers required
to launch a given payload.
eAc
Falcon
SLV Program - this DARPA project aimed to develop
a rapid response launch vehicle by 2010 that could
put 450lb into orbit for $5M or less. Long term it
wanted a hypersonic
delivery vehicle. The program was later
discontinued.
Partially funded with NASA's COTS contract.
Will be used with the Dragon capsule to deliver
cargo (and perhaps eventually crews) to the
ISS. SpaceX won Cargo Resupply Contract in
2007 for ISS resupply.
Feasibility and Performance of the Microwave
Thermal Rocket Launcher - by Kevin Parkin,
F. Culik - 2005 (Caltech thesis)
Jordin Kare
Kare, J.T., and Parkin, K.L.G, A Comparison
of Laser and Microwave Approaches to CW Beamed
Energy Launch, Proc. Fourth International
Symposium on Beamed Energy Propulsion-2005,
New York: American Institute of Physics.
NanoSail-D
- the first version was lost in the failure of
the third SpaceX Falcon 1 launch. The second version
was successfully launched inside the NASA FASTSAT
spacecraft in December 2010. After failing to
be ejected initially as planned, it came out unexpectedly
on Jan 17, 2011. The sail successfully deployed
as planned 3 days later as set by an on-board
timer.
Team
Encounter - This firm went out of business
in 2004 but some of their material is available
at the WaybackMachine.org archive site. They intended
to send a solar sail with personal mementos from
the public into deep space. The company also offered
the sail for scientific uses and both NASA and
NOAA gave them funding to carry experiments.
Greg
Meholic - Aug.24.09 - Tri-Space Model of the
Universe, Faster-than-Light Travel, advanced propulsion
theories.
Gravity Shielding/Anti-Gravity
- There is quite a bit of theoretical work in
these areas by respected physicists such as Raymond
Chiao. The experimental work, however, has been quite
controversial with occasional claims of shielding
effects detected but no independent confirmations
have been published in refereed journals.
Hypothetical Gravity Control and Implications
for Spacecraft Propulsion - ESA Study - July.02
Conceptual tensions between quantum mechanics
and general relativity: Are there experimental
consequences, e.g., superconducting transducers
between electromagnetic and gravitational radiation?
by Raymond Chiao - Aug.9.02 - presented at the
Wheeler Symposium
Former manager of Nuclear Space Transport
projects at DOE. His website offers extensive
resources dealing with nuclear transport,
space development and settlement concepts,
etc.
To
Inhabit the Solar System (pdf, 421pages)
- Story of his involvement in various nuclear
propulsion projects starting in the late 1960s.
Ties them to his ideas about how to move humanity
into the solar system:
Mini-Mag
Orion
Use high currents to create a pinch process whereby
subcritical fissile material is compressed to
a density where it becomes critical and explodes.
(Similar to Z-Pinch fusion technique.) Studied
with experiments at Sandia by Andrews Space &
Tech under a NASA SBIR grant.
Nuke
Your Way to the Stars by John G. Cramer
- nuclear salt water rocket fission space
drive high specific impulse - Mid-December-1992
issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine.
Dr.
Jason Cassibry (Univ. Alabama, Huntsville)
- research into using Z-Pinch
technique (huge currents go through a coil that
creates enormous compression forces) to squeeze
pellets of lithium deuteride (LH 2) fuel to initiate
fusion reactions.
