Space Forum / Space Flight / December 2003

I'm trying to figure out time-of flight for hyperbolic fast transits
from Earth to Jupiter, and it's not going well. Can anybody point me
towards either a table of such (with, say, varius departure V's at
earth, and the time of flight to Jupiter orbit), or perhaps a

My father (Henry Cate) and I have come up with an initial tether project
that might be fun, affordable, and profitable.  The idea is to use a
rotating tether to pickup some Lunar samples, bring them back to Earth,
and sell them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/09/science/space/09RADI.html
The thing I don't understand is that people have been spending much more
time in orbit than the round-trip to Mars. Although the upper atmosphere
does shield them somewhat, the majority of the radiation is still getting

I am holding out hope the mission will still succeed, but meanwhile, I'm trying
to think of the possible reasons for failure, and what if anything could have
been done to prevent or recover from them. Interested in your rankings of these
possibilities or alternate most likely ...

Does anyone know how much this engine would cut down the time to a
Mission to Mars. If such a mission could take 2 to 3 weeks then
gentleman I'm convinced that we will have settlements on Mars in 10 to
15 years providing there is water up there.

Thinking about the problem some more it seems a big problem would be landing
a high speed glider onto a sled that is on tracks.  This would mean that the
sled could only control it's movements in one dimension.  A bad cross wind or
gust leaves the glider to do all the working of ...

Looking only at the vacuum specific impulse of plain hydrogen-oxygen
rockets, is it possible to advance their specific impulse to 500, or
even 520?
For example, I recall Mr. Spencer recently mentioning that an ideal

I had thought I remembered that the first posts in the
then-brand-new sci.space reorg groups went out in
early January 1994, but reviewing Google records
found some from mid December 1993, one as early as

In several experiments conducted by NASA and by the Russians plants
were grown indoors using an artificial light.  What type of light was
used that produces light on the same wave lengths as the suns does?
Christopher

I am really amazed by all these optimistic people trying to do rlvs
and i belive in these peoples cause! however it strikes me that these
people all seem a bit to optimistic for ex almoast all the groups i
have investigated are into liquid propellant engines, and they seem to

Some methods I've seen mentioned for peroxide biprop ignition are:
 Decompose the peroxide with catalyst pack.
 Pyrotechnic igniter in the chamber.
 Dissolve catalyst in fuel.

Would a supersonic jet the size of the spaceship-one gain much performance
by being launched from underneath the white-knight from 48,000ft?
Toby

Two questions this time:
1) Is it possible to get kerosene-LOX or propane-LOX to 395Isp? I've
seen numbers around 360 on www.astronautix.com .
2) How effectively do large, altitude compensating nozzles

The technology described in this post has not been tested, but
it looks trivial when compared to rocket launchers, and it
may reduce the cost of space access to a few dollars per kilogram!
The technology is based on GPS, a reusable sounding rocket,

I understand that the large and expensive Gaia astrometry satellite will
achieve very accurate stellar parallaxes from (I believe) the L2 point -
which still only gives a 2AU baseline. Why not put a cheaper, lighter, less
precise astrometry package on (say) Kuyper Express (or ...