Title text:
It does come at the cost of some launchpad expansions and increased fuel requirements, but that all comes out of the facility’s budget.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3291/
From the “Futurama solves global warming” school of thought.
I thought of Futurama too, but instead how the Ships engines move the Universe around IT
It came to me in a dream, and then I forgot it in another dream.
That’s a complete load!
Nothing’s a complete load! Not if you can imagine it; that’s what being a scientist is all about!
Don’t dream it, be it.
rip
no, it’s only a third of the load. i left the other two thirds with a friendly laotian couple.
I was thinking of the robots all firing their exhaust upward to push earth away from the sun.
I thought that was a silly joke but that’s actually more or less how an alcubierre drive would work.
Is it though?
Giant chemical engines to push a planet away is like bending space around a spacecraft?
The giant chemical engines were not being compared to the alcubierre drive. The commenter was discussing how the engine of the ship in futurama, which “moves the universe around it” would fairly neatly describe the function of an alcubierre drive in layman’s terms. This is why you were downvoted.
I don’t know why you got downvoted for what seems like a reasonable question. I think it might be the lateral nature of the solution that is comparable.
It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia theme plays
The Gang Launches a Spacecraft
Also a Phineas and Ferb episode.
You laugh, but China made a big-budget action movie about this very concept.
True! Based on a Liu Cixin story. Never read it but loved his Three Body Problem series.
The Wandering Earth.
It was good
Incredibly silly movie, but a fun watch!
The end with lots of fire coming out should point towards the ground.
If it points towards space, that’s a big problem, and we will not go to space this day :/
Sounds like a Scott Manley quote.
Haha that’s awesome. It’s also xkcd
This reminds me there was a project about 10-15(?) years ago where they were trying to rig the F15 with an attachment to launch satellites in quick need situations. The F15A shot down a satellite in 1985, so it makes sense it could put one up there as well. Think they ended up terminating the program because it became cheaper to launch them in mass.
Aka they probably just took it out of the public eye
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no they cancelled it because thats impossible lol. you can shoot a satellite with a suborbital object but thats a loooong way from the projectile being orbital.
Nah, it’s not that long a way. You just need to adjust your goals, add an extra stage, accept a much smaller payload.
If you can get a payload to space, you could put a payload 1/4 its mass into orbit with an additional stage.
I mean, the anti-sat F-15 test was pretty wild. But is arguably less wild than other airlaunch systems like the Pegasus or spaceship one. Saying that airlaunch is impossible is silly, because it’s happening.
These systems get cancelled because they’re expensive and complicated and reusable rockets are cheaper and easier.
They are saying a missile that went faster than, and tracked a target at orbital speed and velocity, can’t be reached… Obviously it can, or they’d miss everytime. Yet they shot it down using a rocket deploying a payload 41 years ago. Same shit, different payload.
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It’s 1 moment to land am object that can land relative location with a small amount of fuel to readjust course. Like most other projectiles we shoot. On a scale of 1/10. If landing a shuttle on a landing pad is a 8/10 that’s. 3/10
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So let’s just say we had missiles that can go 9000 meters per second. (Russia, China and the the U.S. already do). You believe those are impossible as well? The term impossible is my problem with your statement.
Just because no one has shown a tool designed to do it yet doesn’t make it impossible. Your math showed it was possible.
The issues come down to weight and fuel sources used. Once you have the payload going in the speed/tragedy needed, yes it would need to be able to correct itself. When we launch 20+ satellites, they all have similar instruments in them, they aren’t all just dropped into 1 orbit
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I mostly agree. It’s not an efficient way to get to orbit.
It was an early attempt at reusable launch vehicles, it was a good idea, that turned out to be overcomplicated. The Pegasus 100% worked though, it went to orbit, so it’s not a question of “could it work someday”, it did work, it was just more expensive than the standard methods.
Again, I’m not saying this is an avenue worth exploring, I’m just saying that it’s incorrect to call it impossible.
Wouldn’t the main benefit to air launch be the elevation gain? Flight through wings is way more efficient than just raw thrust
I think the main advantage of air launch is there is less air in the way.
If you didn’t have any air resistance you could go faster earlier and reach orbit faster. This means less fuel wasted on fighting gravity, but because we have an atmosphere, there is a speed limit.deleted by creator
I was sad to see Reaction Engines go, they were local-ish to where I grew up.
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Its roots were even older too I think.
You’re not totally right. A jet engine can provide a large amount of the ∆V required to get into orbit, so your orbital injector could be significantly smaller than a full orbital rocket.
Yeah, a mixed-mode engine is probably not the ideal. You’d probably just use a liquid fuel rocket carrying oxidizer, like every other orbital rocket, as the payload on the jet, but you’d get to skip a large portion of the launch. Keep in mind that the rocket equation means that most of the fuel is used for the initial portion of the launch. If we can have an air breathing jet handle that then the rocket can be significantly smaller.
If you’re just trying to insert a single small payload into orbit, it makes some sense. It’s very limited by the capabilities of the aircraft though, obviously. A rocket can do significantly larger payloads with more versatility, so it ends up being more practical per ton of payload.
Everything you just said was confidently false.
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Show your math.
I still say we should mount rockets into a rollercoaster rail🎢 that way stage one can be spent on the ground doing a horizontal launch and then the rail would have to change the angle to be more horizontal
This was actually tested in 2001 and found to be effective method to launch a crew into space
Sweet now I have a working example to show. Also I remember seeing jimmy neutron movie in theaters
i remember the 2000s being a lot less colorful. and pointier.
Sure, it’s just 2000 kilometers long. We’ll just take over the northern half of Brazil to build it
You need a bit less than 1/3 of it…
But it’s supposed to be build in an ocean. Forests do not make for good logistics.
(It’s also supposed to use a series of hypersonic iron pellets running inside a tube, that will explode and endanger a hundreds of km radius if something like even an air leak appears there… So yeah, the size is the least of the issues here.)
Just do it in the winter, otherwise it might get too hot…
STOP GIVING ELON IDEAS
Kerbal launch cannon go brrrr
Wrong approach, if they are going to the moon they need to attach engines to the moon and bring it closer
They have to get to the moon first to attach the engines, only then will they be able to do this
You should not be getting blocked by a small problems like this, think big!
not the moon, but maybe smaller asteroids. nothing large enough to affect tides.
Ah good thinking
No new idea under the sun
https://xkcd.com/2909/
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Eh, Niven did it first.
This kills the planet. ☹️
The planet is fine. The people are fucked.
If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today.
Nah, it’s fine, you just have another launch, 12 hours later, to push it back. That’s bound to work, right?
this is like 2 steps removed from laser propulsion
