Perhaps "slow" ascent would be a option, i.e. not reaching escape velocity but just steadily ascending until you are far enough away that gravity is lower. I know here on earth it is far more inefficient, which is why you always go for "ballistic" trajectories where you gain enough velocity that inertia carries you on. Maybe there is something you could "ratchet" against? Thrust a bit upward and have something preven…
I once had a fun week playing Kerbal Space Program building solar-powered quadcopter launch platforms... Basically a quadcopter which is mostly a big platform with a rocket payload in the middle. The quadcopter slowly ascends to the highest feasible altitude, bypassing all of the worst of the air resistance, and greatly reducing the delta v needed to get into orbit as a result. This was mainly helping with the atmosp…
Super-Earths in Need for Extremly Big Rockets (2018)
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Re: Super-Earths in Need for Extremly Big Rockets (2018)
#42Perhaps "slow" ascent would be a option, i.e. not reaching escape velocity but just steadily ascending until you are far enough away that gravity is lower. I know here on earth it is far more inefficient, which is why you always go for "ballistic" trajectories where you gain enough velocity that inertia carries you on. Maybe there is something you could "ratchet" against? Thrust a bit upward and have something preven…
As gravity increases, buoyancy also increases. A high-g civilization with access to hydrogen would be able to float to the top of their atmosphere, and then proceed to launch into space.
A much more realistic and useful option is to just go air-breathing nuclear, and use the atmosphere for reaction mass.
Re: Super-Earths in Need for Extremly Big Rockets (2018)
#43This might be used in a secondary process (e.g., ion or plasma generators) or directly (heating atmosphere and/or fuel) to generate thrust.
The advantage is that the power source is on the ground, and need not be lofted, which removes part of the rocket-equation limit. It's still required to source or carry reaction mass, and I'd suggest that at least a fair portion of that be obtained within the atmosphere.
I don't know what a launch trajectory would look like, though I suspect something which went relatively slowly vertical (to minimise low-elevation drag), then began a hybrid lifting-ballistic flight at the highest possible levels of the atmosphere, powered by a planet-ringing set of laser stations, and acquiring reaction mass from the atmosphere itself, might be within the realm of reason?
It also strikes me that a world with sufficient mass would tend to retain hydrogen gas itself (though that would still likely react with oxygen to form water vapour), but at higher elevations there might be a significant differential fraction of H2 to other atmospheric components. Root mean squared velocity of H2 at 27 C (300 K) is about 7,000 kph (~4,300 mph).[1]
That's already less than Earth's escape velocity, so the problem is the molecules which have higher velocity that "boil off" into space.[2] I don't have the chops to compute this.
But a laser-pumped mesospheric hydrogen ramjet rocket might be able to take advantage of highly-energised (heated or ionised) hydrogen to gain escape velocity on even a significantly larger Super-Earth.
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Notes:
1. https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/General_Chemistry/Ch...>
2. Earth has lost roughly 25% of its primordial hydrogen (and water) by this mechanism. https://sciencenordic.com/chemistry-climate-denmark/the-eart...>
Re: Super-Earths in Need for Extremly Big Rockets (2018)
#44Perhaps "slow" ascent would be a option, i.e. not reaching escape velocity but just steadily ascending until you are far enough away that gravity is lower. I know here on earth it is far more inefficient, which is why you always go for "ballistic" trajectories where you gain enough velocity that inertia carries you on. Maybe there is something you could "ratchet" against? Thrust a bit upward and have something preven…
Re: Super-Earths in Need for Extremly Big Rockets (2018)
#45A super earth 2x the diameter of Earth but with the density of Mars would have the same surface gravity as Earth (according to my back of the envelope calculations).
Re: Super-Earths in Need for Extremly Big Rockets (2018)
#46just think of the countless civilizations of blind space whales living in subsurface oceans for whom merely getting to the surface of their planet is as difficult as it is for us to get to space
Re: Super-Earths in Need for Extremly Big Rockets (2018)
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s clearly more difficult, but authors are a few individuals briefly thinking about a problem not entire civilization attacking the problem across generations. My first thought is balloons work based on relative densities so they can still reach very low density air on a high gravity world. That doesn’t help much with rockets, but firing a gun or using something like spin launch is much easier if you can start from…
Mostly it's moar stages. Each stage of a kerolox engine can get you about 5 km/s, and LEO is about 8 km/s, so two stages works pretty well. Velocity for LSEO (low super-earth orbit) might be 11 km/s, so you'd need a third stage, and each stage would be 3-5 times the size of whatever it's launching.
It’s a double hit as your lower stages are also losing ~5g’s of acceleration due to gravity. So if you want to add 3g the entire rocket needs to be able to withstand an effective 8g, and you need a rocket engine + fuel to provide 8g’s worth of force. On top of this the time between each stage becomes extremely costly.
Re: Super-Earths in Need for Extremly Big Rockets (2018)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I once had a fun week playing Kerbal Space Program building solar-powered quadcopter launch platforms... Basically a quadcopter which is mostly a big platform with a rocket payload in the middle. The quadcopter slowly ascends to the highest feasible altitude, bypassing all of the worst of the air resistance, and greatly reducing the delta v needed to get into orbit as a result. This was mainly helping with the atmosp…
Were you able to land the quadcopter part and recover the cost?
Re: Super-Earths in Need for Extremly Big Rockets (2018)
#49Re: Super-Earths in Need for Extremly Big Rockets (2018)
#50A super earth 2x the diameter of Earth but with the density of Mars would have the same surface gravity as Earth (according to my back of the envelope calculations).
The density of an object at hydrostatic equilibrium is a function of its gravity, which is a function of it's mass, assuming rocky and similar composition in aggregate. The likelihood that a planet would be 2x the diameter of earth and less dense is extremely low.