Space Forum / Space Flight / November 2005

Here's one I came across:
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Energy_amplifier
A thorium fission reactor would be classified as an 'energy amplifier'
because it cannot produce enough neutrons for a runaway reaction,

I'm looking for citable references to the concept of a "fountain" or
"dynamic compression member" concept for building towers to the edge
space.  The basic concept is that kinetic energy can be used to push
the top of the tower up, similar to pushing a ping-pong ball up on a

We've already had discussions about anti-matter being used as a fuel
one day, but typically there were criticisms about the stability of the
magnetic bottles used to contain the anti-matter.
Here is an article about positronium as a possible future power source:

Conventional wisdom is that fission can't produce fast
interstellar velocities, except by powering a propulsion beam.
Here, I show how bombtrack propulsion can be used to acheive
45%c.  In particular, this propulsion method may be used to

question: what orbit maxes sunlight w/ ship that faces same way, i.e.,
due to rotating axis pointing at sun - - - am trying to have large
glassed area always facing sun while in LEO, to avoid any even small
changes in sunlight due to not being sun-facing except for when in

Hello there everyone,
I joined this competition callled The International Space Settlement
Design Competition organized by Nasa. In the request for proposal of
the

With the source of thrust so far behind the centre of mass, large
rockets would seem to be unstable in flight. So how is this overcome?
I could imagine a sensitive gyro in the rockets nose, which enables a
microprocessor to calculate the deviation from the planned line of

I am sure this topic has been covered here at some time but I missed
it.
Would it be feasible to use air breathing jet engines as the 1st stage
(or as strap-ons) of a launch system?  Of course, that is exactly what

There's gobs of O2 on the Moon (~40% by mass of the Moon's surface is
oxygen), but hydrogen is still needed to make water (remember, the poles are
a long way from an economical-to-get-to equatorial Lunar base, so Lunar ice
may not be a viable option in the short term) and also ...