Tag Archives: space travel

Physics Can Be Such A Drag.

Lu-Tze can’t think of a funny name asks

I want to go to the west coast of America. But like, really really fast. Of all the stupid inventions of science fiction over the years (Gravity Elevators, Teleporters etc.) what’s actually possibly feasible?

None of them. I can’t deal with science fiction on this blog, which is what gravity elevators, teleporters etc. fall within the realm of. They might be possible using crazy future science, but I can’t reasonably predict that. I have to stick to the world of mundane physics, and in this world there are some nasty limiting factors on exactly how quickly you can get about the planet, the major one being atmospheric drag.

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A Brief History Of Spaceflight, Part Two.

On Monday there were words about the various types of manned spacecraft we’ve flung into orbit (and beyond). Particularly discerning readers will have noticed that the vast majority of them — Vostok, Voskhod, Soyuz, Mercury, Gemini and Apollo – were designed and launched within a single decade between 1960-1970. Since then we’ve had exactly one new manned space vehicle: the Space Shuttle. Manned spaceflight has been more or less left to stagnate by national governments, but there are promising signs that the next decade may be as groundbreaking as 1960-1970. Are governments becoming interested in spaceflight again? Hardly. The US government is still dragging its feet over the design and development of the MPCV, while I’ve heard very, very little about the proposed replacement for Soyuz (on the other hand that doesn’t really need replacing since it does what it’s supposed to extremely well). No, what’s going to be exciting about the next ten years is the opening up of human spaceflight to a variety of commercial efforts.

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A Brief History Of Spaceflight, Part One.

Following on from why the Space Shuttle sucked, I’m going to do a little summary of manned spaceflight – both where it’s been, and where it’s going.

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You Have Discovered Rocketry.

Warning: post contains moderately difficult algebra along with hints of calculus. But don’t worry, it’s not that bad.

Rockets are kind of sucky for getting into space. Right now, though, they’re all we’ve got.

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