cramped pies

Most of the non-rocket launch ideas floating around IMHO pay too much attention to making it human-friendly. As most of the cost of non-LEO missions are due to having to haul fuel up to LEO (due to the rocket equation) we should prioritise systems for launching fuel into LEO that don't use rockets. Here I formulate my master plan. Inspirations: http://www.zero2infinity.space/bloostar/ http://www.jpaerospace.com/dssoverview.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_gun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propellant_depot First of all what speed do you need to travel at to stay in LEO? 7800 meters per second (ms) So we want to accelerate a container of fuel to that speed, we will start small and to keep the maths easy we'll go with a 1kg container of fuel (container + fuel). First off the plan is to haul the launcher up to sufficient height that air friction wont cause the payload to either a) explode on contact with the air and b) not lose all its speed ...

I really like the idea and if you don't know what I'm talking about check out their webpage   and this cool video. Electric Sled This is a fantastic idea and I've been wondering since I was a child why we didn't have things like this on our motorways (freeways). I always thought of them more as as drive on-off train, but the sled idea makes this more flexible and eliminates some of the problems of vehicle carrying trains. (I also thought the trains should be in tunnels, yay for Hyperloop). However I think that if it can be made economical to run a metal power supply line down the middle of a tunnel that you dug for your sleds to run on, it would be more so economical to put them on a motorway first. The great thing about this is that you can just add 'lines' piecemeal to motorways as you get the capital, and drivers can start using them immediately. I imagine the routes would get longer and longer and eventually might leave the motorways and go onto ma...

This blog is just a space for me to think about Mars colonisation, however if anyone with better scientific knowledge happens to read it I would welcome as many outside thoughts as possible. SpaceX Current plan I've read as much as I can at the moment about the ITS  and whilst I think it will be great for the first few trips, I don't see it as a lasting sustainable way to colonise Mars or anywhere else in the solar system. Space and Time If I were going to spend over 3 months (or longer) in a space ship I would want it to be both fun and comfortable. Elon has said that it will be a pleasant trip, but when I think of a very long voyage of that kind of duration, I think of something like an ocean cruise.  Therefore if the voyage will be like that it means the ITS will essentially be like a cruise liner, or like a hotel but in space. In other words, the ITS will be filled with things like beds, rooms, furniture, entertainment of all sorts, gyms, cleaning products a...

There are a bunch of great articles on  WaitButWhy.com  about SpaceX  and  Elon Musk  explaining why they are trying to set up a permanent human colony on Mars. The TLDR is: additional human colonies on other planets will "back up" our "humanity hard-drive" to safeguard us (as a species) from extinction * . For the record I'm a huge Elon fan and am 100% in favour of the goal of expanding humans to other planets/habitats, however I wanted to point out that doing so will not in and of itself prevent the extinction of humanity. To understand why we need to think about the likely existential threats to our survival. Natural Disasters/Rapid Climate Change This might seem like two things but they are both the same, one is caused by humans and the other by natural forces. This is the one thing that extra-terrestrial colonies will be protected from, and making the colonies in the first place will help us learn how to help survive on the earth. The likelihood of...