Space Forum / Space Flight / October 2003

Two questions about kerosene rockets:
1) Can kerosene rocket engines using hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizer
[1] match the specific impulse of high-performance kerosene/LOX
rockets? [2]

henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer) wrote in message news:<HLsH2G.3In@spsystems.net>...

...Proof positive that some college students have way too much time on
their hands: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/lp/lasdiag/enterp.shtml
                OM

I have been following space related stuff since the 60's.
It seems to me to look like russian spacelaunch vehicles accelerate faster
than the big american launch rockets.
I wonder if there is any significant scientific or technical difference in

I'd like input from all you orbital mechanics out there as to this
concept's feasibility:
What if sometime in prehistory, the Earth had captured a Near Earth
Orbit asteroid, say 10 km in diameter, into a nice circular 20310.8

There are precisely two nations on Earth right now that can put a man
into space, at least on "Short Notice".
And the United States of America is NOT one of them.
    (8-|

Over the weekend I was reading some sites associated with our British
Interplanetary Societys Project Dedalus.  It seems to be for the
moment the only practical proposition to get a payload to another
system in a realistic time frame.

Does anyone have formulae or rules of thumb for the mass of a fuel tank to
hold a certain weight or volume of fuel such as LH2, LOX, or Kerosene - eg
if I said 75 tonnes of LH2 at 3g what would the tank weigh?
thanks...

I just read the pdf version which has the real interesting stuff taken out
(Why for goodness sake?) and one gets the impression that once again, the
main problem was assumptions that results from using parts, namely the
solid, was deemed OK for this use also, and that nobody thought ...

What are the requirements for a Chinese module, using APAS as a
docking adaptor, to be connected to ISS? Presumably, this module would
be allowed if the Shenzhou serves as a transfer vehicle for ISS crews.
Where could the module be located?

I saw a report on space.com recently describing what appear to be real
consideration of a space elevator, using carbon nanotube technology to get
enough strenth for the cable.  Obviously it's still an "out there" notion,
but this article seemed to have a lot more seriousness than ...

Hi Group
quite a lot of effort has been made to gel liquid rocket fuels. On the
oxidizer side I only know about gelling nitric acids. What has been used
for that? Fumed silicas?

Today the news is that the rediscovered Hermes asteroid may be a
binary of roughly equal masses.
Makes me wonder if there is some way to exploit the energy of this
rotating system, tether perhaps, to fling the two masses

This problem has been annoying me for ages and I still haven't been
able to work it out. I am using the formula for universal garvitaional
force and I know it is a simultaneous equation but I can't get it to
work. Can anyone help.

Once upon a time, a scientist came to our school and talked about a
lot of things, one of them being the space program. He said that all
the American space centers were in the south, because the closer to
the equator you are, the easier it is to get into orbit. The earth