Questions tagged [design-alternative]
Questions about alternative designs the asker has thought of, such as "why was X built this way and not this way"
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Shuttle-era mission profile for a desperation moon mission
It is 1996. For reasons best left to Worldbuilding SE, it has become a matter of civilizational life and death to send humans to the moon and bring them back to earth as soon as possible. Everybody is ...
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Alternative small mass payload transportation from the moon to L5 besides rail gun and mass driver?
This question asks about a low cost transportation from the lunar surface to a space settlement at L5.
Moon mining is can be a revolutionary breakthrough in sustaining a space economy, but large scale ...
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What are the biggest challenges for high altitude rail-gun launch systems?
Use a maglev railgun for initial acceleration - in a new, hyperbolic tunnel facing eastward - this exits from the burrowed -undergrade- track
to Equadors' Mt. Chimborazo peak - (a mountaintop both 6 ...
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If a spacecraft's double hull filled with water is hit by a micrometeorite, could the water freezing or surface tension stop the leak?
I'm thinking about the possibilities of water storage also serving radiation shielding for long space journeys (months to years).
Assume within the solar system but outside of upper earth orbit. ...
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Embedding foundations from low lunar orbit?
Reading about Lunar Crater Radio Telescope and Lunar regolith thickness and composition,
(roughly 5-10m of soft soil) and anchoring in soft regolith, would it make sense, in order to anchor large ...
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Solar Turbines on the moon
Related to other questions about power generation on the moon.
URL's will be added shortly...
Given that force is experienced by objects hit by sunlight, such as a solar sail, would a turbine of some ...
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Can propellant tanks in a pressure-feed rocket be pressurized by burning the propellant inside those same tanks? Recipe for Ka-BOOM?
Pressure-fed liquid fuel rocket engines use pressurized propellant tanks to deliver propellant to the combustion chamber, rather than pumps. This eliminates the mass, cost and complexity of the gas ...
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Deorbit ISS vs. Preserve ISS as raw materials for ISM?
Recent news:
NASA Seeks Proposals from US Industry for Station Deorbit Spacecraft (ISS)
NASA has released a request for proposal from U.S. industry for the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle (USDV), a spacecraft ...
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Hydrogen-propelled space elevator [closed]
I'm working on a space elevator design using kerosene-burning jet engines and dirigibles supporting 1km stages of pipeline and cable stretching up to the end of the stratosphere (~50km), then using ...
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Windmills in Space [closed]
What if we put a windmill like we use now in space like on moon or a space station so its attached to the surface and since we have no wind we use air tanks in the blades to rotate, everytime it slows ...
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Would orbital ring platforms affect the orbit of a planet?
If we built an orbiting platform of sufficient mass (let's say, made from harvested asteroids) that was anchored at both poles of the planet it surrounded, would such an addition to the planet's mass ...
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How does SpaceX prevent fuel from cluttering together in zero G [closed]
What is the solution to stop fuel inside starship collecting in center of the tank during zero G flight? Here is a rough sketch of starship with rudimentary diaphragm system to control flow of fuel ...
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How does Spinlaunch manage the counterweight right after launch?
Spinlaunch has successfully launched a suborbital test vehicle from a 1/3 scale demonstrator, see for instance aviationweek.com or space.com.
While spinning up the arm, perfect balance is achieved ...
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Can a spinning water film cool an engine cheaper and better than ablative?
Ablative cooling us an incredibly simple way to cool a liquid rocket engine, when compared to regenerative cooling. But ablatively cooled engines are (presumably) hard to refurbish.
Why not inject a ...
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Could a skyhook with double pendulum catch a payload with zero velocity?
It's my understanding the the tip of a rotating skyhook would be travelling at ~3.6 km/s (Mach 10), which presents a major problem.
Could this be overcome by attaching a second, smaller, also rotating ...
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Semi-Cryogenic HTP/LH2 engine?
Also see HTP as oxidizer for main propulsion
(for more info on history of H2O2/HTP in rocketry)
Note: HTP and H2O2 will be used interchangeably
I know the Black Arrow LV (The first orbital lipstick) ...
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Wouldn't it be easier to send human heads instead entire human bodies for space exploration? [closed]
A major part of what makes human space exploration extremely difficult is the infrastructure required to support the human body outside earth. It requires resources just to launch into space due to ...
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space is a vacuum there is no drag, so would hydrogen harvesting from space to use as fuel be possible once in orbit? [closed]
If space is a vacuum and there is no drag, would hydrogen harvesting from space to use as fuel be possible?
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Inflatable tank/balloon use for recovery
Hopefully this idea makes sense.
Basically if you've seen the space-truck (ROOST), you'll get where I'm going with this.
I'm wondering whether an inflatable tank/tank lining could be used to produce ...
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Would a laser seismometer work from lunar orbit?
Lasers today have become extremely sensible, they can detect sub-millimeter movements of a surface from a distance. Could this feature be exploited to create a lunar seismometer working from a probe ...
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Have engineers designed a docking procedure that uses a boom/pole that “catches” the target and pulls itself in?
Watching Dragon/Endeavour dock with the ISS, I was curious as to how they used thrusters to orient the spacecraft and “soft dock” with the ISS. The narrators didn’t mention what happened after the ...
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SSME/RS-25:; Why arent high pressure and low pressure pumps coaxial?
The Space Shuttle Main Engine low pressure pumps to prevent cavitation at the main pumps. This pumps were driven by separate turbines fed by high pressure fluid from the main pumps. Why? It just adds ...
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SSME/RS-25: why seal between LOX pump and preburner?
Both the the fuel and oxidiser preburners ran fuel rich. In order to prevent the preburner gas from entering the LOX pump and blowing it up, they had this complex double seal with a gas purged void in ...
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Higher density medium tube from sea level to space for travel
Is it theoretically possible to build a strong sealed tube from Earth's sea level all the way to Space, fill it with a medium (such as water) that has a higher density than humans. And then humans ...
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Why can't buoyancy of air be used to support a mega structure as an alternative to a space elevator?
The reason for asking this question stems from recent articles about large loss of strength of carbon nano tubes with even single atom movement, tested samples showing high vulnerability to space ...
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Flying saucer shape rocket vs cylindrical shape rocket
Here's my hypothesis-
Cylinder shaped large rocket is not suitable for vertical landing due to its high center of mass and bulky weight. However an equally weighing saucer shape rocket has more ...
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Wouldn't it make sense to use parachutes for aborting test flights rather than destroying the whole rocket?
Recently, a SpaceX test flight was aborted by blasting the whole device.
Wouldn't it make sense to have parts of such rocket be equipped with parachutes when test flights are performed, so at least ...
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Why wasn't Buran mounted on top of Energia?
Since unlike the Shuttle, the Buran did not carry the main engines, why was it not mounted on top of the external tank equivalent - Energia's core stage?
And even better, why wasn't Energia's second ...
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Why didn’t the N1 use detachable boosters like the Soviet’s did on Soyuz?
Why did the N1 (to my inexperienced eye) have a massive rework? Soyuz, Vokshod, Vostok, Sputnik all showed that detachable side boosters worked. If side boosters work, why wouldn’t the N1 just had ...
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Is Electromagnetic Propulsion Like Radiation Pressure propulsion?
while browsing for new propulsion methods I found the following interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_pressure
"Radiation pressure (also known as light pressure) is the mechanical ...
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What if satellites could be recovered during a launch failure? [duplicate]
How heavy would a capsule have to be to return a satellite safely to earth in the event of a launch failure? Would a satellite survive the loads endured by astronauts during an abort? If not, is there ...
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Inserting optical elements into a ring laser gyroscope to sense all three axes
Ring laser gyroscopes (RLGs) leverage the physics of ring laser interferometers and the Sagnac effect to sense rotation in a single plane. My understanding of RLGs is that they are independent systems ...
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Lunar Starship descent motors' tank design
Just recently NASA has announced the Lunar Starship as the winner of the Artemis lunar lander contract, which I have to say I'm very excited about. In the latest render however, the nose cone of the ...
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Can Solid Rockets (Aluminum-Ice) have an advantage when designing light space-tug for LEO?
This is a new subject for Space Industry – heavy spacecraft (1200-ton) in LEO that have to burn hundreds of tons of propellant to get going to their destination.
It looks inefficient to launch 7+ fuel ...
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Would it make sense to compress air around a bell nozzle during booster ascent?
Regarding boosters having one single liquid fuel engine, such as Delta 4 for example.
Would some sort of annular aerodynamic device, attached to the skirt and placed around the bell nozzle, help ...
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Sending a Soyuz ship interplanetary - a plausible option?
This is my first time on Space Exploration SE, although I have participated quite a bit over on Worldbuilding. Anyway, as an avid sci-fi reader, I have been wondering if sending a Soyuz interplanetary ...
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Why is insulation used in spacecraft thermal control?
The temperature of spaceships can range from -126° C to 149° C. Wouldn't it be better for the spaceship envelope to have as high a thermal conductivity as possible to even out the temperatures (the ...
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Why is it not concerning from a cost perspective to have so many engines on Starship?
Starship is meant to imitate (to a degree) the affordability of passenger jets. This applies to Earth-to-Earth travel as well as space travel.
Jetliners started with 4 engines, but have since migrated ...
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Propellantless propulsion in gravity field
I have a proposal for a following propellantless maneuver. It is propellantless in sense that no mass is lost from spacecraft.
It is not reactionless as spacecraft interacts with planet through ...
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Air-Augmentation on a VTO&L super heavy lift
I'm working on a basic design for an Air-Augmented first stage, which boosts the second, expendable, stage from a near-orbit, to allow for deorbit of the second stage.
Essentially it's an SSTO that ...
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attitude thrusters sharing a common combustion chamber
Most smaller satellites and other larger but simpler space craft with a less demanding mass fraction tend to use cold gas thruster, importantly with a common or as few as possible pressure vessels, ...
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Has anyone explored using sound as a heat shield?
I edited original post to better reflect question. I was looking around to see if anyone had explored the idea of using (Ultrasonic or Hypersonic)sound to deflect heat from a ship. Specifically sound ...
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Has "parasitic radar" ever been used in space?
Synthetic aperture radar or SAR is becoming a hot field of Earth observation of both natural and human activity. It is very power hungry as the beam needs to deliver sufficient power over each square ...
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How heavy is an orbital pogo stick?
Moving people from a A to B in space often requires a significant change in velocity, requiring propellant eating into the mass budget.
But most of this propellant is "wasted" in moving a ...
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Lorentz force space propulsion
While browsing for Space propulsion, I've found the following article
As shown in Figure 2, the conductor I0 gets through the coil L0, and they are fixed together and form a system. a is the main ...
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Is an open expander cycle rocket engine driven by a gasified oxygen turbine technically feasible?
Is an open expander (bleed-off) cycle engine that uses the gasified cryogenic oxidizer instead of the gasified fuel to drive the turbo pumps technically feasible?
I was thinking of a first stage open ...
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If specific impulse is directly related to exhaust velocity, would a ion post-accelerator improve the Isp of a propulsion system?
I understand that ion- and hall thrusters resemble a particle accelerator, and that led me to wonder if a post-accelerator (particle accelerator) used to boost the velocity of the ions would improve ...
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Is there any kind of research on *sub*-orbital rendezvous-ing with a space tug outside the atmosphere?
The key difference with a plain old-fashioned orbital rendezvous would seem to be that there'd be limited time to only briefly match velocities and trajectories:
Let's say a vehicle launched from ...
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Could this three-thruster spherical spacecraft de-tumble itself with zero final velocity?
@Joshua's answer to What is the minimum number of RCS thrusters capable of stabilizing a satellite against an arbitrary rotation? begins:
I know this question is old, but I randomly discovered a ...
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Can we dig for air pressure on Mars?
Digging 8km under the lowest point on Mars will get us Mount Everest conditions for air pressure.
I was thinking of two ways of doing said title:
Nuclear powered bulldozers working around the clock ...
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