Supertankers from Titan

forget the methene, why don't we design a type of high speed ram scoop and suck the hydrogen out of the gas giants.. Or even better mine for water asteroids. get your aquafina ready , one for you, and one for your ship

yea yea i know Electrolysis energy requirments, conservation of energy, blah blah blah

Originally posted by kaiheitain
I think you are confusing ratio of propulsion / mass density as object approaches C with simple boost and glide phase. By your logic it would be innefficients to run supertanker from Dubai to Newark.

How much energy does it take to lift one pound pay load from the Earth to orbit? Traveling through space doesn't require much once you get there but leaving a planet or even a moon (depending on the size) requires a HUGE amount. A supertanker doesn't have to reach escape velocity. If we had a practical way of doing this we wouldn't need the methane.

Now as for setting up plants on Titan itself......now thats different



[edit on 31-1-2005 by Amuk]

Would make a great pit stop for interplanetary spacecraft, though.

That's the major use of this.

The idea of ferrying hydrocarbon fuel from titan to earth - just not a good one. It's thinking, but not 'outside the box' enough. There's a clever-er solution here, and we've just got to find it.

The earthshot, which is the Elevator-Sling Shot, it would work, but would not work often, or as reliably as we'd like to think it would. With some luck and some engineering, we could make it happen, but it could still suck up massive amounts of energy.

Unless Earth and Titan are moving the EXACT same speed relative to arbitrary point Q at all times, and unless they are both spinning at EXACTLY the same speed, we could have serious problems.

The cargo load would fly up towards the elevator that spins away, moving too fast. The cargo load would fly up towards the elevator that BOOM smashes into it. The cargo load would fly into Jupiter because of the immense gravitational fields present and our lack of accurate physics depicting more than 10-11 objects at once.

You'd need accuracy down to the centimetre for it to work, and that means you'd need a lot of thruster power on the cargo ships, or to be extremely lucky with timing, which wouldn't be likely. The amount of simply the fuel used in accuracy-thrusting would be terrible, it would make the project unfeasible.

For launching things off into space, the elevator works. For playing a complex and delicate game of catch, they won't.

As a side note mainly to Believer, the elevator won't be difficult to build once the materials exist in a more useable state.

This isn't going to be thousands of peasants slowly making a brick wall the size of the moon, it would be a satellite launched into a geosynchronous orbit dropping a hell of a long Carbon Nanotube Rope, which is lighter than air but stronger than spidersilk. About 5-10 Nanotube Ropes would be dropped for a single elevator, and a small space station for control would be built around the end point, with a complex control facility at the base. Once it is set in place it would be stabilised and things would be lifted up, bringing the cost/kg of sending things into space from about $1500 down to about $100, I believe.

I think they made a multiple meter length Nanotube recently. I haven't kept much of an eye out, as it'll be a few years before 100+km ropes are made of the stuff - but they couldn't make strands longer than a millimeter in 2000, and they didn't exist in 98. We're over a meter now, and from here it's gonna get easier and easier. Likely around 2010-2015, we'll see the materials come into a stage of useability ripe for space-elevation. Optimistically.

Originally posted by Amuk
How much energy does it take to lift one pound pay load from the Earth to orbit? Traveling through space doesn't require much once you get there...

You forgot that spacecraft is still in sun's gravity well.
And to get away from Earth's orbit you have to accelerate probe (more speed/orbital energy) to widen its orbit. And it works to other way, to get something to inner solar system you'll have to accelerate it, this time that acceleration is just backwards compared to its velocity vector leading to decrease of speed and orbital energy.

Also even if there wouldn't be any gravity you would still have to take into account Newton's second law and conservation laws. (and those forces depend from mass)

So if you would have to move lot of matter/mass it would still require lot of energy.

Originally posted by Amuk
Except for one little problem.

It takes thousands of times more energy to move a ship from Earth to Titian and back than the amount the ship could haul. It doesnt even matter how big the ship is, the bigger the ship the more energy it takes to move it.

Not exactly. That may be the case if you have a constant fuel burning, or electrical supply for monitors. But in reality, a nuclear reactor can last a real long time if its only used for minor electronic sensors (we can get messages from saturn cant we?). All you need is the lift of from earth, landing on titan, lift off again from titan, and then a parachute into the ocean. All that distance in between would take nearly zero energy except for occasional travel direction change. An object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by another force. That little law is what allows space ships to orbit earth using very little fuel.

As far as mining the energy source, there would need to be operations set in place before the arrival of any tanker. Thats a really big deal that is kinda far out there in my opinion.

There is also that whole "it takes like forever to get to saturn thing". I honestly don't see it as a practical idea RIGHT NOW. I cannot however predict the furture, nor could I rule that out. I do feel though, that energy importation may very well be necessary in our future.

If we are thinking extreme, we have to think of extreme measures.

Ferrying fuel from space is doable with the right infrastructure, but I'd hate to see global warming at the point where we are ferrying fuel from other planets/moons. It would be a lot cheaper and safer to just focus on alternative energy, as much as the gas companies don't want us to.

You know, I dont think that issue is as bad as people think. I honestly believe the technology is already in place for a rough transfer of energy at least in vehicles. When people start getting squeezed for fuel charges, they will voluntarily force the gas companies to change policies as well as forcing vehicle manufacturers to produce more and more energy efficiant vehicles. Also businesses will eventually ee a cost benefit to do so as well if the situation gets out of control. Capitolism will solve it as much as some hate to hear that.

Originally posted by Seapeople
. All you need is the lift of from earth, landing on titan, lift off again from titan, and then a parachute into the ocean.

That is what I am talking about. How much energy would it take to lift one pound from Earth to Titan and back again? More energy than a pound of methane would procuce

they might do it cheaply if they use tethers thowing ship/containers to titan and then catching them up there fill them up and then throw them back.
emptying them here ..
like here

www.cnn.com...

You simply build a reactor/generator on or near titan. Burn the fuel and transmit the energy to earth via microwave or light energy. Maybe even plasma or some other exotic medium of transmitting the energy at the speed of light. No need to move the actual gas. Yes there would be a loss of energy vs moving the fuel to earth and burning it here but you would lose all that you gain by moving it in a ship.

Burn it there and transmit the energy back to earth.

X

Originally posted by sardion2000
Well Believe, the reason people keep shooting it down is because it isn't all that feasable. It could be feasable if a space elevator is built, but why use methane? Seems kinda low-tech doncha think? I believe that in say 50-100 years time if we are still around we will be mostly dependant on He-3(Helium-3) which is very abundant on the moon.

The atmosphere of Jupiter contains 90% H2. Thats alot of Hydrogren already there no need to split up. I say Find a way to exploit Jupiter for resources.

www.solarviews.com...

Allthough we are just using today as a guide for tomarrow, we could devise some other power source we havn't even considered yet..

[edit on 30-1-2005 by sardion2000]

My frend trust me 'low-tech' has no practical meaning in realistic consideration of future development. Consider internal combustion engine (100 year-old-tech) is #1 means of transport in most advanced societies. About 4/5 of World population is heating their dinners (when they have it) with wood, talk about low tech!

My frend trust me 'low-tech' has no practical meaning in realistic consideration of future development. Consider internal combustion engine (100 year-old-tech) is #1 means of transport in most advanced societies. About 4/5 of World population is heating their dinners (when they have it) with wood, talk about low tech!

You're trying to apply current day knowledge on future fuel sources and needs. Also added to low-tech(I stand by that, I consider anything that was a primary fuel source on Mad Max "Low Tech" ) it's also looking backwards when we should look foward. BTW I am a realist and a futurist they can co-exist you just have to keep up-to date on the current trends. One of them is H2 energy storage as well as Advanced Nuke Power tech as well as Fusion. Why would you want to add more hydrocarbins into the atmosphere? That is the primary flaw in the design you propose.

Harvesting gasplanets will probably happen in the far future, but it will be used as fuel for/ and driven by nuclear engines. In space , its all a matter of Specific Impulse. Nuclear power provides both a very high specific impulse to be efficient as well as pure raw power to haul heavy stuff from the immense gravity from Jupiter.

Compared, ion-engine has high specific impulse as well, but lacks the raw muscle and chemical propulsion provides muscle, but not very effient, the size of your methane tankers would have to be exponential enormous to bring back a amouints that will cover the costs....


However, one could build powerstations on the surface of titan itselve and use energy/partice beams to provide energy or propulsion to flyby spaceships. Have network of those beams throughout the solarsystem and one could travel fast long distances with small spaceships.

In theory, one of the most efficient ways of propulsion would be 100 percent decoupling of the fuel and the "oxydizer" from the spaceship. Imagine two particle beams, one relaying a beam of protons and the other a beam of anti-matter, both beams intersect at a magnetic "burningcavity" at the back of the spaceship and provide propusiol through annihilation. Both relative weight and complexity of shipdesign could be drastically reduced. Both The Specific Impulse and Peak Power s enormous.



[edit on 2-2-2005 by Countermeasures]

Dont know why they dont build nuclear propulsion engine tankers or whatever ships on the moon or in moon orbit, they dont even need to take it all up in one go but in bits, and reasemble it in space.

They know its possible to build these engines but their excuse is it can damage the atmosphere when launching or relanding, so why not moon orbit them in space kep away from Earth make sense?

[edit on 2-2-2005 by Blobby 2]

With current space technology Amuk is correct.
However assuming a space elevator was built and orbital tethers were used to provide the propulsion for space tankers it could become feasible
www.tethers.com...

Don't worry, once we find a true military application for what is there, all the funding needed wil be available....

Ha ha ha, we use free energy saucers and motherships to bring all that methane to earth, above top secret of course. Then hire more men in black to suppress free energy, while drawing Oil company salaries. Hey aliens have expenses too! More CO2 emmissions are needed for the new home planet, stupid greedy earthlings. Then our plan makes an atmosphere agreeable to Muldervians, and we have plenty of Scully and Bones poodles to pull it off. Ha ha ha! Cackle!

Why not export our CO2 to Titan to meet Kyoto standards?

THere is some work done with low-energy tragectories taht only need about 150m/s of delta V. withen the Earth moon system. I think it would be feasible to come up with some others for orbits that would end up at other planets for a type of cheap "shuttle" that only needs current Ion drive like the one used on the SMART-1 probe, or a low mass chemical engine

Tho it would be really nice if we could develope a type of low ISP reactionless drive

or a bergenholm inertialess drive