This incredible milestone changed the way humanity looked at our planet and access to deep space. The amazing events leading up to Apollo 11 and uncovers the fascinating future NASA has in store for space exploration.
This week unlike the last has been super busy with launch activity. SpaceX Starship Updates and 20 Engine Static Fire for Booster, Atlas V, Electron, Falcon 9 and NS-22. We have multiple flyovers of both SpaceX’s Starbases in Texas and Florida, and wow are we seeing huge work done. Strap in, because there is a lot to cover today.
The space launch system is very expensive, and may cost $4.1 billion per launch. And according to the current NASA plan it can only be launched once per year at best.
That’s not enough to sustain a Moon bases.
In this video we will explore a suggestion to launch additional Moon missions without relying on the Spaces Launch system and Orion, while using existing components or components that are already required by the Airtimes program.
The material of the future could make an imaginative concept of the past real.
Brief history of the space elevator
Like most time-honored revolutionary ideas for space exploration, the space elevator can be traced to Russian/Soviet rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857−1935). Considered to be the top contender for the title of the “Father of Rocketry” (the other two being Hermann Oberth and Robert Goddard), Tsiolokovsky is responsible for developing the “Rocket Equation” and the design from which most modern rockets are derived. In his more adventurous musings, he proposed how humanity could build rotating Pinwheel Stations in space and a space elevator.
This proposal was inspired by his visit to Paris in 1,895, where he witnessed the Eiffel Tower for the first time (construction had finished in 1889). From this encounter, Tsiolkovsky conceived of a structure that reached to geostationary orbit (GSO), or an altitude of 36,000 km (22,370 mi). However, Tsiolkovsky’s version of the idea called for a compression structure rather than a suspension one. He also noted that the idea was unrealistic since no known material was strong enough to support the weight of the standing structure.
A laboratory-model Hall-effect spacecraft thruster was developed that utilizes bismuth as the propellant. Xenon was used in most prior Hall-effect thrusters. Bismuth is an attractive alternative because it has a larger atomic mass, a larger electron-impact-ionization cross-section, and is cheaper and more plentiful.
The design of this thruster includes multiple temperature-control zones and other features that reduce parasitic power losses. Liquid bismuth (which melts at a temperature of 271°C) is supplied by a temperature-controlled reservoir to a vaporizer. The vaporizer exhausts to an anode/gas distributor inside a discharge channel that consists of a metal chamber upstream of ceramic exit rings. In the channel, bismuth ions are produced through an electron impact ionization process and accelerated as in other Hall-effect thrusters. The discharge region is heated by the discharge and an auxiliary anode heater, which is required to prevent bismuth condensation at low power levels and at thruster start-up. A xenon discharge is also used for preheating the discharge channel, but an anode heater could provide enough power to start the bismuth discharge directly.
