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Future of Aerospace

Nilgiri

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Not my area of expertise. But I feel that as far as commercial airplanes are concerned, not much will change. The increase in fuel costs at higher speeds prevent them from offering faster flights.

As far as space travel is concerned, the next step seems to be human travel to other planets. I'm not sure how I feel about that though.
 
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Not my area of expertise. But I feel that as far as commercial airplanes are concerned, not much will change. The increase in fuel costs at higher speeds prevent them from offering faster flights.

As far as space travel is concerned, the next step seems to be human travel to other planets. I'm not sure how I feel about that though.

We shall all be dead and six feet under long before that happens brother. :-)
 
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Better propulsion I guess. How about nuclear-powered aircraft?
 
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The point of space travel is to colonize the Moon and Mars - but not specifically in that order.

bsf16-20.gif


Mars is temperature and diurnal pattern-wise much similar to earth, except martian atmosphere mostly has CO2, which will need to be replaced with Oxygen for habitation. The Martian year is twice as long.

The way to colonize the Moon and Mars - looks increasingly to be lava tubes. The earliest moon lava tube was discovered around 2009 and they are habitable because they shield inhabitants from temperature extremes. Same in Mars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_the_Moon#Lunar_lava_tubes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_lava_tube

Here is a transverse cross section of a Martian Lava tube. On the moon and as well as Mars - such Lava Tubes could be as large as 300 or so feet across, so humans could form permanent colonies.

280px-Transverse_cross-section_of_a_martian_lava_tube.jpg


On a lighter note - of course we Bangladeshis would like to be the first to colonize the Moon but we'd have to pay someone to get us there, being unable yet to build rockets. I think we should ask Sk. Hasina to put in the rocket development budget in next years budget so we could expedite the development instead of asking others to ferry us there. :-)

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Having had plenty of experience traveling to other countries will pay off this way.
 
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Better propulsion I guess. How about nuclear-powered aircraft?

Main problem is the weight penalty with nuclear power right now (given shielding etc that is required).

For space its not so much of an issue, but the anti-nuclear crowd has found their way into that as well. Last time I proposed a standard RTG for a space probe concept, the amount of legal and environment code procedures astounded me....it would cost too much money basically to get things approved anymore. Long gone are the voyager days.
 
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Main problem is the weight penalty with nuclear power right now (given shielding etc that is required).

For space its not so much of an issue, but the anti-nuclear crowd has found their way into that as well. Last time I proposed a standard RTG for a space probe concept, the amount of legal and environment code procedures astounded me....it would cost too much money basically to get things approved anymore. Long gone are the voyager days.
Then you're in the wrong country, mate. If you indeed have a sound project proposal and care more about the realisation of the project than the money then Chinese are the ones you should be proposing it to.
 
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Then you're in the wrong country, mate. If you indeed have a sound project proposal and care more about the realisation of the project than the money then Chinese are the ones you should be proposing it to.

This is purely commercial venture stuff with existing proven technology lol. How Chinese decide to integrate into any programs they do is up to them hehe. I doubt India would have much issue either....but both have signed environmental agreements for LEO and mid orbits too iirc....not sure about GEO, but probably it has been regulated there too.

Even in NASA, they have used it when absolutely needed to and the location is far from Earth mission wise (Mars Science Lab comes to mind) in recent years. Just off limits to commercial "for-profit" products pretty much, especially for anything that orbits and can fall back on Earth.

That basically makes the market very stagnant and no development through competition can take place. There are pros and cons with each side of this issue. Chernobyl really had a huge impact on the industry in general basically....and its not all propaganda (though a lot of it is)....because these isotopes in question are pretty nasty stuff to biology in general.

When it comes to fusion however, it becomes an interesting story given no radioactive products or fuel are created/used. But the technology is in its infancy still and will need much development.

A derivative of this is plasma propulsion (a higher thrust version of ion propulsion) You can read up on VASIMR program if you would like.

For aircraft it becomes much more straightforward. Fission is out of the question given the weight involved with shielding. For fusion I remember having a long discussion with another professional in another forum long time back about the potential....we both agreed that it will probably be more likely that we will first see large scale electric propulsion (with batteries/wireless transmission) given the weight penalties involved even here (once we have even worked out how to make fusion work sustainably in the first place)....unless lockheed really has stumbled onto/developed something game changing regarding weight/size like they are claiming (but I feel is unlikely and is more for PR purposes etc.)
 
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Nasa will lead the way with VASIMIR while the rest of us or rather the Chinese, Indians, Russians play catch-up. kudos bhia
 
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Nasa will lead the way with VASIMIR while the rest of us or rather the Chinese, Indians, Russians play catch-up. kudos bhia

VASIMR is not the be all end all friend...though it is certainly looking promising and it will be awesome to see it succeed.

But it could also be somewhat of a dead end, we wont know till we commit more to it....but there are so many other methods that need funding....so it will be interesting to see where everyone hedges.
 
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