Future directions for Las Vegas

Virgin Galactic did it's first flight today. It's a shame that space programs are going to Albuqurque, and Biosphere is at Tucson. Las Vegas has a potentially vast infrastructure to support programs like this. Although the private astronauts who are spending $200K to fly in space for a few hours can afford to fly anywhere, the vast array of support people and potential tourists are much better off in a place like Vegas.


The most likely technology for high speed rail to go to Los Angles is this Bombardier design that is being used in China (and in Sweden). These trains goes up to 150 miles per hour, so they are certainly not cutting edge. The original high speed rail that opened in Japan for the 1964 Olympics went 130 mph However, this train is adequate for trips under 300 miles.

http://www.virgingalactic.com/

Wow. VERY interesting stuff.

Now I have a reason to work that betting system to a $200K win!

I agree with everything you say about it being better in Vegas, but anyone who is doing space tourism has the ability to gamble money in Vegas. Not everyone who is gambling in Vegas has the money to go on a space flight. This is (possibly) a big thing that Vegas missed out on that could have started to revitalize the area, I know nothing about the politics but they should have been first in line to offer steep compensation for it to be in the area. I have heard that the state governments (at least in NM, I have a family member there) have put a lot of money into this entire endeavor.

Also, to throw in a little math, you only lose about 1% of the earth's rotational velocity if it's in Vegas as compared to Tucson/NM which works out to be less than 10 m/s which is negligible. Personally I'm a big skeptic about space tourism, there really isn't an easy way around the fuel requirements necessary to get a single person into orbit. You need to have, basically, 5 pounds of fuel for every pound you're putting in orbit if you use very expensive cryogenic fuel. I am prepared to eat my words though.

Quote: ahiromu

Personally I'm a big skeptic about space tourism, there really isn't an easy way around the fuel requirements necessary to get a single person into orbit. You need to have, basically, 5 pounds of fuel for every pound you're putting in orbit if you use very expensive cryogenic fuel. I am prepared to eat my words though.

I am a bit skeptical... but I hope I have to eat my words! The idea just tickles me. IF things like this could go off, then suddenly space travel would have a marketable way to produce revenue for itself and the whole enterprise could get a much needed boost from economic pressures. Ultimately, that would benefit the actual scientific uses and give a better shot at developing any possible alternative technology.

The initial return is going to be on shipping cargo into space in large quantities. The simplest technology is simply to shoot a few kilograms at a time with guns going round the clock. Then collecting them together (see article).

Slightly more sophisticated, but still for cargo would be electromagnetic accelerator, or railgun, to fire a payload so fast it reaches orbit. You would still be at 100 G's.

But the most optimistic think that carbon nanotube technology is dropping so fast in price that it will be possible to start construction of a space elevator within a decade for less than a billion dollars. The tether has to go to 22,600 miles above the Earth where you have a geo-synchronous anchor.

Albuqerque may be setting themselves up economically for a 100 years.

Launch loops would require a system more than 2500 km long and 80 km high and could put things into orbit. Such a system might have to be built in the third world. Since 1963 the FAA has prohibited any structures over 629 meters from being built in the USA. Since 80 km is well above the height of most aircraft flight routes (8.5-10.5 km, with a world record of 26 km high) you would need a large area to avoid the loop ascent and descent. The USA may not be willing to give up that much airspace (and certainly not a major city).

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Blasted into space from a giant air gun

When Jules Verne wrote about a gigantic gun that could be used to launch people into space in the 19th century, no one expected it to become a reality. Now physicist John Hunter has outlined the design of such a gun that he says could slash the cost of putting cargo into orbit.

The gun is based on a smaller device Hunter helped to build in the 1990s while at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California. With a barrel 47 metres long, it used compressed hydrogen gas to fire projectiles weighing a few kilograms at speeds of up to 3 kilometres per second.

Now Hunter and two other ex-LLNL scientists have set up a company called Quicklaunch, based in San Diego, California, to create a more powerful version of the gun.

At the Space Investment Summit in Boston last week, Hunter described a design for a 1.1-kilometre-long gun that he says could launch 450-kilogram payloads at 6 kilometres per second. A small rocket engine would then boost the projectile into low-Earth orbit.

Huge g-forces

While humans would clearly be killed and conventional satellites crushed by the gun's huge g-forces, it could lift robust payloads such as rocket fuel. Finding cheap ways to transport fuel into space will lower the cost of keeping the International Space Station in orbit, and in future it may be needed to supply a crewed mission to Mars.

The gun would cost $500 million to build, says Hunter, but individual launch costs would be lower than current methods. "We think it's at least a factor of 10 cheaper than anything else," he says.

Franklin Chang-Diaz, a former astronaut and physicist at the Ad Astra Rocket Company based in Webster, Texas, says a launch gun might make more sense on the moon, where there is no atmosphere. "You don't have to worry about drag or heating or anything like that," he says.

Welder's torch

Hunter acknowledges that the projectile would be slowed by its passage through Earth's atmosphere. But he says drag would be minimal on a pointy-nosed projectile, causing it to slow by only half a kilometre per second.

He also admits that the heat generated by the high-speed passage through the atmosphere is "like a welder's torch". However, it would be relatively short-lived, he says, with the projectile clearing the atmosphere in less than 100 seconds. Designing the projectile so that it could survive having some layers of its outer skin burned off would get around this problem, Hunter says.

I doubt you can build a space elevator within 50 years for less than half a trillion dollars. But I've been wrong before.

Meanwhile the real action is with companies like SpaceX, T-Space and others, including Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace.