Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 04 Oct 2004 18:46:00 GMT
From Boing Boing:
The US Air Force is looking into making bombs out of anti-matter. I want a key ring with a speck of it!
One millionth of a gram of positrons contain as much energy as 37.8 kilograms (83 pounds) of TNT, according to Edwards’ March speech. A simple calculation, then, shows that about 50-millionths of a gram could generate a blast equal to the explosion (roughly 4,000 pounds of TNT, according to the FBI) at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
Sort of interesting, but I suspect that the main point of the Air Force’s research leans more towards antimatter-catalyzed fission then pure “Star Trek”-grade antimatter weapons. An impressively small number of anti-protons can be used to drastically lower the critical mass needed to get a nuclear explosion. This may or may not be useful as a weapon (does anyone actually want grenade-sized nukes?), but it’s fantastically useful as a spacecraft propulsion mechanism. The “orion drive” as it tends to be called in science fiction basically consists of a heavy spacecraft, a thick blast plate, and a bunch of small nukes. Each nuke is thrown out behind the ship and explodes. The blast plate absorbs the blast, and the ship goes flying forward. Repeat a few thousand times, and you’re moving along at a really impressive speed.
Obviously, this works better in science fiction then reality. Niven and Pournelle used it to great effect in Footfall, where they nuked my hometown.
There are tons of engineering and political problems with any sort of nuclear-weapon driven spaceship, but one of the more fascinating ones is that the “classical” version scales up, but doesn’t scale down. You can build immensely huge spaceships with it, but you can’t efficiently build anything much smaller then a flying aircraft carrier, because you can’t build efficient nukes with a small enough yield. That’s where the antimatter comes in–if you can build efficient nukes with really small yields, then this might become practical. It doesn’t solve the political problems, which are probably insolvable, but it brings us closer to being able to efficiently launch large masses into space.
Posted in Space | Tags antimatter, bomb, boom
Posted by Scott Laird
Wed, 21 Jul 2004 17:35:45 GMT
Spacetoday.net is reporting that the X Prize Foundation is holding a press conference on Tuesday, July 27th, and will probably announce at least one team’s scheduled launch attempts. Currently, Scaled Composites and da Vinci are rumored to be ready to launch.
Since the prize expires at the end of 2004, and the rules require 60 days notice before launch, there are only a couple months left for teams to announce launch attempts.
Posted in Space | Tags spaceshipone, xprize | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 21 Jun 2004 15:03:26 GMT
CNN says they’re coming back down, and suggests that the rocket didn’t fire exactly right, and they may not have made the altitude. No real details yet. Dick Rutan thinks they made it, but he’s just guessing.
Update: CNN’s reporting that they made it to 100km.
Update: Newsweek says that they made it to 328,491 feet, which is 408 feet higher then they needed to go. They also have some hints about Rutan’s new “346” project. Hurry up, guys–we’re all waiting for SpaceShip Two. My big question is if they’ll go straight for orbit, or if they’ll take smaller steps. Today’s flight only took them half as high as Freedom 7.
Posted in Space | Tags spaceshipone, xprize | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Thu, 17 Jun 2004 19:15:10 GMT
SpaceShip One is scheduled for their first real launch at 6:30 AM on Monday, and the spectators are starting to line up already. There’s a surprising amount of interest in the launch; apparently people are expecting Mojave to be overrun by spectators.
BoingBoing is blogging the whole thing.
Posted in Space | Tags space, spaceshipone | 3 comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Wed, 17 Dec 2003 20:40:51 GMT
Looks like they finally lit off the engines on SpaceShipOne. It was only a 15-second burn, but it took them over 68,000 feet up at a peak speed of 930 MPH. They’re claiming that they’re far and away the smallest company to have produced a supersonic passenger vehicle.
It looks like they damaged SS1 slightly on landing, when they had a gear failure, but they’re downplaying it, saying that it’s a minor repair.
It looks like they’re in a good place for their X-Prize attempt.
Posted in Space | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Fri, 05 Dec 2003 18:42:55 GMT
Another .com millionaire is getting into the rocket business:
PayPal founder Elon Musk unveils his Falcon orbital space vessel, a reusable rocket powered by oxygen and kerosene that promises to make satellite launches much cheaper. Erik Baard reports from Washington. [Wired News]
From a business standpoint, it’s probably just a waste of money (to a very close approximation, there’s 0 market for satellite launches), but one can always hope. On the other hand, If we’re ever going to do anything with space, we need to get NASA out of the way, and startups like this, even if they fail, still excite the public’s interest and demonstrate that the big, expensive defense-contractor version of spaceflight isn’t the only way to do things.
Posted in Space | no comments
