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Sufficiently Advanced Velocity (Space Quest)

Night_stalker said:
More like it gets off the ground, then crashes right back down, just as the Labor MP shows up to discuss our funding, and he gets to watch the biggest fireball around.
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Or it gets into the air fine, but then veers off wildly, crashes into our most expensive building, then explodes and kills most of our staff and equipment, resulting in major setbacks and a PR disaster?
 
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Superticus said:
Or it gets into the air fine, but then veers off wildly, crashes into our most expensive building, then explodes and kills most of our staff and equipment, resulting in major setbacks and a PR disaster?
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Perhaps it would decide to go wandering and will crash into auckland (despite being nowhere near there.)
 
Well, if the spacecraft has the fuel to get into orbit, it's at least physically possible to mess it up badly enough that it hits Auckland or any other place in NZ on a sub-orbital trajectory or otherwise.

I would think that would be much less than a 1% chance, though.

I'm just saying that the Vanguard TV3 could have gone much worse.While a PR disaster, it didn't even kill anyone.
 
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Nothing's safe when rolling dice, ever.

@Roarian by "the southern island" did you mean "The South Island" (that's it's actual proper name, though it was "The Middle Island" for a while in the early days) or Stuart Island (which is the decent sized one imediately south of it)?

I'm going to assume you did not mean one of the insignificant specs between NZ and Antarctica.
 
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I'm pretty sure we can get military to like us more if we tinker a little with our V2-s. They usually like their toys very much.
 
I think that that 1 could have been a lot worse if we had gone with a low-diplomacy build
 
Just thought of something.....

It's somewhat...potentially dangerous, but....let's for the sake of argument, say we actually went with researching and building a Thorium MSR.

Can we use it to build a re-usable SSTO craft? Or would it be too heavy for that sort of thing?

We might be able to research VASIMIR to get a nuclear fission based drive that doesn't rely on repeated detonations of nuclear devices, but the question is...

Can we use it to get something like a space elevator up and running before the public freaks out over something that flies over their heads being powered by nuclear fission?
 
we should research 3d printing and vitro meat as they are ostensibly useful for space stations and can revolutionise the economy.
 
Carrnage said:
we should research 3d printing and vitro meat as they are ostensibly useful for space stations and can revolutionise the economy.
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I got to admit, that would be hilarious to see....

Military guy: So...Doctor....how did you build this car in a factory that was geared for rockets?
Us: Simple! We built a machine that slowly, but surely builds...practically everything layer by layer.
Mil Guy: You're completely mad!
Us: That is what you pay me for isn't it?
 
Tabron89 said:
Just thought of something.....

It's somewhat...potentially dangerous, but....let's for the sake of argument, say we actually went with researching and building a Thorium MSR.

Can we use it to build a re-usable SSTO craft? Or would it be too heavy for that sort of thing?

We might be able to research VASIMIR to get a nuclear fission based drive that doesn't rely on repeated detonations of nuclear devices, but the question is...

Can we use it to get something like a space elevator up and running before the public freaks out over something that flies over their heads being powered by nuclear fission?
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Well the original intent for the research was to make an airplane that could fly for years without refueling. On the other hand a plane uses air for reaction mass while a rocket is blasting a carried supply out the back. While a rocket powered by a nuclear reactor would have very good ISP (in laymens terms how much propulsion you get for a quantity of fuel) I'm not sure it would have the thrust to lift itself, the fuel, and the payload into orbit. The concept is amazing for orbital manuvers where you dont care if you have long burns, its worth it for the fuel efficiency. However for liftoff you need a high enough thrust to weight ratio to get off the ground. I guess we could go for a SABRE design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SABRE_(rocket_engine) but that may be beyond our technical ability for the near term.

I'd also be concerned with the radioactivity of doing this. The reactor/engine would be relatively safe to send into orbit, the thing itself wouldn't be all that radioactive till the first time its turned on. Just whatever fuel the craft was carrying would be radioactive. After you fire it up though... not sure bringing it back down would be a good idea. One of the draws of SSTO designs is reuseability, without that you may as well use a staged rocket.
 
Van Ropen said:
Derped hard and responded in the wrong thread :oops:. Nothing to see here, :p


What would the biggest prerequisites for 3D modeling be then? First more research into material sciences/plastics? Quicken the development of lasers?
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And computers good enough to both controll the systems and do high detail scans and modeling.
 
Hey...just of another way we can rake in the cash....

Jet Engines.

The idea came from the V2/space program, right? I say: We beat everyone at building a 'proper' jet engine, get both the military and the public into buying jet engines so they can build jet fighters and planes.
 
The british had viable designs pre ww2, i think (designs only, for various reasons both sensible and not). It's not an area we're going to win any races in, nor could we really mass produce them. Helicopers, on the other hand, might be a direction we could get some milage out of. if only it actually had Anything to do with space or rocketry.
 
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