http://www.gizmag.com/go/8282/

Hmmm, no loss of Helium and VERY LARGE (read "real cargo levels") load/unloads.

Put Aeros and JP together and perhaps the dual-use ICBMs won't be the only way to get things up and Down … and, as noted, all current rocket/crashdown systems fail both routes for useful tonnage.

Who else has read the book?

Sept 22nd 2008: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/22/aeroscraft_pasternak_airship_design_darpa_pork/page2.html

(previous under the mainstream radar report: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/22/aeroscraft_pasternak_airship_design_darpa_pork/page2.html)

I surely like to see some of that flight data. I'm not sure about balloons as the end-all (and without full flight data I'm sure that you aren't yet finalized on full designs yet either)… but I am very intrigued by all that you have done. And, in my opinionk, it was a very well crafted book.

Best of luck, keep flying!

I'm afraid there's no rules of thumb for the cargo to vehicle size. There are just too many factors. One of the big ones is the location of the Dark Sky Station.

Having the station large enough for cargo balancing is critical. It's clear that mission cargo masses in the first stage won't match those of the third stage. No at least in any optimized way.

The drag manage systems will also have a big impact on vehicle size. There is huge amount of lab data and very little flight data on these. We're conducting a test of a system at 120,000 feet in just a few days. It won't manage any drag, it's a system shakedown at altitude.

JP

Now, here is the question. Stop talking a bout Launch, it's all we ever talk about and it is not the only issue under the sun.

What system do you know of for for getting cargo ****Down From Orbit to the Earth Surface****?

The Balloon book, directly addresses this question, hence my interest. Have you read this book… it's worth it if only to have real points to talk against.

Thanks.

Here's where they have an issue though, it's what I'm starting to think is *The* Elephant because you – no flame at all, I am very happy and appreciative for your time and careful thought – but, you just forgot the big beast was in the room too, and it was all of the tail of my previous post:

How do you get big payloads *Down* from orbit?

Zubrin, Lewis, Schmitt, O'Neill and on and on have excellent plans for stuff that is already up there (and/or can justify the cost of going up) but they also all say that a reason for going up that normal non-space nuts can comprehend and get behind is that of all of the asteroidal platimum or Mars product or Lunar Heilum3 or all of those ISS Microgravity miracle claims including chip-revolutionary crystaline structures or pharmaceuticals.

All great. Till Andy Grove says "I'll pay for manufacuring all the way… but I have to be able to have 100 ISO cargo containers of product on the surface grid per week."

I was being over the top when I said that NASA appears to only be able to put those ISS products in the zip pockets of our American cosmonauts maybe once a month. A reentry capsule can probably bring down a half ton. Yes? No?

But that's not the Trillions of dollars worth of product folks have been using to push the "easy pickings, as in potentially In Our LIfetime" value of Space Business.

On careful re-reading the experts that I've read like Zubrin, Schmitt and O'Neill I notice the tendancy to cleverly mix in that Space Resources and Space Manufacturing will be used primarily to power the manufacturing of more spaceside bases and platforms for doing more manufacturing.

It's like that old joke: I use coke so I can work harder so I can make more money so I can buy more coke so I can work harder so I can …

The Space Elevator, yes, has the Down potential. I hear you, I have years in the choir.

However I have read one or two NASA bits (I have the Smitherman 2000-2006 Advanced Earth-Space Infrastructure compilation right here) and I just grabbed my Swan & Swan and skimmed it and I don't know right now where my dog eared "blue book" went but I know it was only two nights ago that I had it out and found a mention of a 20,000 pound cargo target.

That's not a single ISO container.

Could you perhaps provide me with more recent tonnage numbers and references? As you can tell, I am in need of data.

Again, it's not up.. it's down that has me.

Now.. I'm waiting for JP to come up with some just generally ballpark guesstimates because his book doesn't have them either. But again, his book isn't pretending to be of the technical ilk of Schmitt and Zubrin. But, I would give Powell's numbers some pondering because he is actually flying his designs.

Karl, I am With You in the Space Elevator backing. I do however currently believe that it ain't gonna happen without International Committment if only because the space where it will sit is alive with 13,000+ tracked objects from the USSTRATCOM catalog. And I want my DirecTV and cellphones to keep working. Yes, I've heard we can move the SE out of the way of the ISS but ISS isn't the only workhorse we've sent up. Wall-E made it look clean.

However, while we wait for such issues to work themselves out and for the ribbon to start unwinding…

Have you read "Floating to Space" yet? Buy it from a half priced Amazon merchant and spend an hour and a half with it… then please tell me what you came away with after reading just the short chapters 1 through 15.

Many thanks.

Robert

Another very cheap (and much easier) way to get bulk payloads off earth would be a rail gun. A mountaintop exit (say at 5000-6000m) would get the launch point above half the atmosphere with no need for balloons.

Dumb as it may sound in the grand scheme, what gets me good is the potential for being able to have some real commercial volume "shipping option" beyond the only one NASA & Co. seem to have on any books (crash-shipping product home from space in a cosmonaut's pockets just doesn't scale well, know what I mean?).

(btw: a pre-book and pre-several-flights 2004 discussion of JP Aerospace is here http://www.spacekb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/space-policy/1014/JP-Aerospace-Airship-to-Orbit )

I really want someone to read this book

However, I stayed focused on Rockets and the Space Elevator as "real" options. I was continuing to happily ignore the ElephantS in the room… the Cost Of Payload Launch AND (what no one ever talks about) the cost of getting worthwhile amounts of cargo Back down here.

Then I saw this book in the store and figured it would kiill a few hours.

Can I make a suggestion? Before adding more to the thread about how 'it couldn't work' or 'did he tinnk of XYZ?' go sit in the bookstore and read the book. It is short and it is entertaining. Like the reviewer said, the first few chapters can either be loved or not, but the good stuff does all come in (Chapter 11 put me over the edge, he finally talked about micrometeors and later makes points that even Branniff should listen to about making money in Space Tourism – more like Disney and less like running a Concorde fleet.

Then let it sit in your head for a day and come back here and post. I'd really like to get other people's opinions of The Book, because I could not (and can't) get the ideas out of my head.

Aside from the recent news that inexpensive Helium may fast be gone from the reserves (and only Russia has the big H4 goods now), the book lays out a very interesting set of technical and business points that – when I stop the years of being told that only ICBMs can get to space – Powell appears to have thought out very well.

And unlike the Space Elevator (which IS a cool idea, even after reading the NASA papers that went into the real costs) Airships to Orbit don't appear to suffer that fatal requirement called "Requires An International Commitment" we all saw how well that requirement turned out with the ISS

You don't know me… but I do strongly recommend this book. And I'd love to hear what you thought of it After you've read it.

Thanks. I'll be lookin' for updates.

Check your math?

What I get: 60 mph over 4 days works out to an accel of 0.0000776 meters/sec^2.

To reach 8 kps at that accel it would take a little over 3 years, not 76.

Put on 30 of the thrusters (instead of the 3 used by the NASA spacecraft in this example) and and you are looking at only 4 months – in this example.

I think.

I've seen the JP Aerospace website & this wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_airship

They suggest the idea is to accelerate a specially designed high altitude blimp with ion drives. How this can possibly overcome the air drag, I fail to see.

OTOH launching a relatively conventional rocket from a high altitude balloon does have advantages. There are also uses such as communication & observation for high altitude balloons.

I'm not sure if you actually have to tether a space elevator to the ground but if you could have come within 100,000 feet of the ground that would save on weathering and about 19 miles of structure.

In any case these two technologies where definitely made for each other.

The demands of building a structure strong enough to reach the 20,000km from Earth to geostationary orbit are quite different to the demands of building a structure that can withstand the wind damage, weathering and corrosion caused by Earth's atmosphere.

So why not build the space elevator in two sections? The upper section, in space, could be made of carbon nanotubes or whatever super strong tensile material they come up with, and it could be made of light materials because it wouldn't be exposed to atmospheric attack. The lower section, reaching from the surface to where the atmosphere becomes too thin to worry about, could be made of conventional material that's resistant to weathering. It could be substantially heavier stuff, because you could hook big balloons to it to take much of the weight.

Is this a typo? 400 km in an airship does not seem possible. According to the following website, http://www.heavens-above.com/orbitdisplay.asp?satid=25544 , the ISS orbits at a height between 337 and 351 km. Space starts at 100 km.

Balloons are also difficult to control on the ground or in bad weather, especially big ones with thin skin. I think thats going to be the biggest problem here.