Ok. Perhaps its not temperature, but carbon dioxide. Say you put a rocket suspended in the air so that its not touching the ground in any way. You would probably do this using clamps or something. Then attached to the rocket is a convex shape. It would be made out of super strong material all around, except for the bottom. The bottom would be mad out of relatively weak material. Then the convex shape would be stuffed full of dry ice. Wait a little bit, and the dry ice would have created so much gas that it explodes right out of the bottom, sending the rocket sky high. Kind of like dry ice in a mail box, except with a controlled explosion. It might work.
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Propulsion by Extreme Temperature
- Thread starter UnaverageJoe
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I commend you on your imaginative musings on propulsion systems. In this day and age, young people often let other do their thinking for them so it is refreshing to see someone at least thinking about technological problems. However, I would recommend some basic physics texts that may provide some insight into the problems of newtonian mechanics, thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism, and modern physics:
Conceptual Physical Science Explorations, Hewitt, Suchocki, 2003, Prentice Hall
Physics: A Laboratory Manual, 1st edition, Puri, and Zober, 2001, Prentice Hall
Conceptual Physical Science Explorations, Hewitt, Suchocki, 2003, Prentice Hall
Physics: A Laboratory Manual, 1st edition, Puri, and Zober, 2001, Prentice Hall
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one love
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Macro or Micro scale?
You should scan Los Alamos's web page. I heard a few months back about nuclear propulsion research. Similar to your idea of extreme temperature propulsion. http://www.lanl.gov/news/pdf/LANL_in_SpaceFact.pdf
How high do the tempuratures need to be? Not sure how high you are thinking of or how high you are when you think...no I'm just kidding. Also, a single explsion will not give the rocket a sustainable boost and will more than likely cause negligible thrust.
There is a private space company (featured in the latest issue of Discovery magazine) that is attempting to build small rockets capable of reaching the moon that only exert 70,000 pounds of thrust. The Saturn V's which got the US to the moon had a quarter million tons of thrust and were multi stage (five I believe). Your idea seems to hinge on a single explosion which may work well with minature rockets (try that idea). Your rocket would probably fly up a few feet in the air blow out the bottom. A rocket on greater proportions would be a dud, fall back immediatly towards earth and be a million dollar disaster. Then again, I am no rocket scientist myself.
Currently rockets do not touch the ground and are suspended from it by a series of high industrial strength clamps. The ground below the shuttle is also dugout in a formation that allows the flames and fumes to escape so the shuttle will not be engulfed by the immense heat.
Notice the clamps on the tower.
Notice the way the ground is dugout to the sides.
You can clearly see the effect as the fumes shoot out to the sides and not directly back at the rocket.
You should scan Los Alamos's web page. I heard a few months back about nuclear propulsion research. Similar to your idea of extreme temperature propulsion. http://www.lanl.gov/news/pdf/LANL_in_SpaceFact.pdf
How high do the tempuratures need to be? Not sure how high you are thinking of or how high you are when you think...no I'm just kidding. Also, a single explsion will not give the rocket a sustainable boost and will more than likely cause negligible thrust.
There is a private space company (featured in the latest issue of Discovery magazine) that is attempting to build small rockets capable of reaching the moon that only exert 70,000 pounds of thrust. The Saturn V's which got the US to the moon had a quarter million tons of thrust and were multi stage (five I believe). Your idea seems to hinge on a single explosion which may work well with minature rockets (try that idea). Your rocket would probably fly up a few feet in the air blow out the bottom. A rocket on greater proportions would be a dud, fall back immediatly towards earth and be a million dollar disaster. Then again, I am no rocket scientist myself.
Currently rockets do not touch the ground and are suspended from it by a series of high industrial strength clamps. The ground below the shuttle is also dugout in a formation that allows the flames and fumes to escape so the shuttle will not be engulfed by the immense heat.
Notice the clamps on the tower.
Notice the way the ground is dugout to the sides.
You can clearly see the effect as the fumes shoot out to the sides and not directly back at the rocket.
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Well...There might be some benefits to having a vacuum here on earth. Not saying that we should make one, but if there was one, then we could use extreme temperature and not worry about too much about force because in space there is no friction (at least I think) so that any small amount could get us going for quite a while.
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WhirlwindMonk
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UnaverageJoe said:
Air resistance is not exactly a minor part of trying to get into space, but it is mainly overcoming the force of gravity. In order to do so, you need to accelerate continuously at more than 9.8 m/s^2 until you are far enough out that you can enter into orbit. It is sustaining that acceleration that is the really difficult part. The heavier the object, the more fuel needed to accelerate it, and the more the fuel, the heavier the object. It's an interesting thought, though.
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So then what we should do is just build all our rockets in space that way we don't have to worry so much about over coming gravity. And landing would be a whole lot easier to. To land in space, that is.WhirlwindMonk said:
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WhirlwindMonk
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UnaverageJoe said:
A bit too much star trek. No offense, it's just I've gone through some of the calculations and stuff about spaceships in orbit, plus, my room mate is a physics major. Maybe someday we can pull it off, but a full space dock would be far more difficult than a capsule landing in water. Not only would it be a difficult to maneuver, there would be very little room for error. Each launch costs us, say, $100,000,000,000. Most of that is gone by landing. It would probably cost 100x times that to build a space dock, and one mistake and the whole thing, plus one of those $100B ships would go down in a blaze of glory.
However, by no means stop imagining. I personally feel that there are too many people out there with no imagination who think that the way things are is the way they always will be. If you are interested in this stuff, pick up some books, study it when you can, and maybe someday we'll be launching a new craft named after you.
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I had no idea that ships cost that much to launch. Thats a lot of moola, to put it lightly. Of course, after I had proposed that idea, my dad came up and asked how in the world I would get fuel up to the space station. So you would still need fuel for a ship from earth to the space station to carry all that fuel up there. It would be way to difficult and time consuming. But don't worry, I'll think of something else.WhirlwindMonk said:
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chilehed
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Your original idea could work if you modified it a bit, but sublimating dry ice in a confined chamber is very dangerous. The pressure would top out at well over 3500 psi, about what they fill scuba tanks to. A while back there was a report about someone dropping a full scuba tank onto the the valve, the tank came down a half a mile away after smashing though the wall of a school. You don't want to mess with stuff like that.
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