This is a very good (if unintentional) argument against manned space flight.
There is no way that firing an elaborate terrarium full of large primates into space is ever going to be cheap
One should only say something like that with some physical principle as its basis, otherwise, it's just pointy-haired boss flying by the seat of one's pants.
Some prominent physicist once published a "proof" of the impossibility of heavier-than-air flight in the New York Times. (One which treated atoms as billiard balls and ignored fluid dynamics.) I think it was Kant who once gave "the chemical composition of the stars" as an example of something we'd never know. Two very smart gentlemen who had good sounding arguments, but a mistaken physical basis. From this thread, I haven't any idea about your acumen nor the basis of your argument.
I think if someone told a subject of Queen Elizabeth, that someday teenagers could idly write a screed, to be read by ten-thousands or millions of others, and effectively pay only a pittance to do so, they'd be dismissed as a lunatic.
EDIT: energy to get a spacecraft to orbit? It's comparable to sending a 747 over the Atlantic.
According to somebody google found, the energy to get the shuttle into orbit is 1.17E11J, but that is just the potential and kinetic energy, neglecting the losses due to air resistance, etc.
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=229835
I agree that 8.6e12J is comparable to 1.17e11J, but the energy required to flying a 747 in real life is not comparable to the potential + kinetic energy of a shuttle, neglecting all losses required to achieve that potential + kinetic energy.
In particular, two million pounds of SRB propellant
plus more than 500,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen is not comparable to 64,225 U.S. gallons of jet fuel.
The point is that marshaling energies of that magnitude is actually pretty routine for our culture.
In particular, two million pounds of SRB propellant plus more than 500,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen is not comparable to 64,225 U.S. gallons of jet fuel.
In particular, you are acting as if the fundamental problem is represented by the Shuttle. That's just one particular configuration of one possible solution. What you're doing would be like someone from the early 1900's showing the in-feasibility of the performance envelope of a 747 by quoting the stats of a Curtiss biplane.
Abandon the idea that you have to use chemical propulsion, or that you have to carry your own power, or even your own reaction mass, and you get fantastic improvement.
Here's what you get when you only keep doing the 3rd thing:
The physical principle is basic inertia. You need to accelerate a container large enough to hold a human being plus the systems needed to keep that person alive to 17,000 mph, and then decelerate them again without cooking them alive or smushing them into a paste against the inside of the vessel.
Your 747 argument is specious. The energy in a stick of firewood is comparable to that in an equivalent mass of dynamite. I invite you to set both on fire and report back on the difference.
So, your argument is that oh noes, there's Too Much Energy! (gasp). That clueless scientist's "proof" of the impossibility of heavier-than-air flight rested on a speed of 600 mph being "unobtainable."
Color me impressed!
Really the hurdle for rocketry to LEO has to do with the horrendous increase of reaction mass in the rocket equation. With the enthalpies available from chemical reactions, the required delta-V for earth is just on the cusp of impractical, requiring mass-fractions just at the edge of our practical fabrication technologies.
But we are not inherently limited by the energies of chemical bonds or by the rocket equation.
One should only say something like that with some physical principle as its basis, otherwise, it's just pointy-haired boss flying by the seat of one's pants.
Some prominent physicist once published a "proof" of the impossibility of heavier-than-air flight in the New York Times. (One which treated atoms as billiard balls and ignored fluid dynamics.) I think it was Kant who once gave "the chemical composition of the stars" as an example of something we'd never know. Two very smart gentlemen who had good sounding arguments, but a mistaken physical basis. From this thread, I haven't any idea about your acumen nor the basis of your argument.
I think if someone told a subject of Queen Elizabeth, that someday teenagers could idly write a screed, to be read by ten-thousands or millions of others, and effectively pay only a pittance to do so, they'd be dismissed as a lunatic.
EDIT: energy to get a spacecraft to orbit? It's comparable to sending a 747 over the Atlantic.