Transorbital Railroad

"Transorbital Railroad" Proposed
by Freya Jackson — last modified 2010-10-13 12:32
The following article by Mars Society president Dr. Robert Zubrin appears in the October 4, 2010 edition of the industry weekly Space News. The proposed “transorbital railroad” would greatly facilitate space development ventures of every kind, including both government and privately funded robotic and human Mars exploration, while stimulating the growth of the launch vehicle industry and a vibrant orbital economy.

Opening a Railroad to Space
Space News, October 4, 2010
Robert Zubrin
In the history of the American frontier, the opening of the transcontinental railroad was an epochal event. Almost instantly, the transit to the West Coast, which had previously required an arduous multi-month trek and a massive investment for an average family, became a quick and affordable excursion. As a result, the growth of the nation accelerated exponentially.
How can we today deliver a similar master stroke, and open the way to the full and rapid development of the space frontier?  We need to open up a transorbital railroad.
Here’s how it could be done.
First, we could set up a small transorbital railroad office in NASA, and fund it to buy six heavy-lift (100 metric tons to low Earth orbit) and six medium-lift (20 tons to LEO) launches per year from the private launch industry, with heavy- and medium-lift launches going off on schedule on alternating months. The transorbital railroad office would pay the launch companies $500 million for each heavy launch and $100 million for each medium launch, thus requiring a total out-of-pocket program expenditure of $3.6 billion per year, roughly 70 percent that of the space shuttle program. It would then turn around and sell standardized compartments to both government and private customers at subsidized rates. For example, on the heavy-lift vehicle, the entire 100-ton capacity launch could be offered for sale at $10 million, 10-ton compartments for $1 million, 1 ton for $100,000, and 100-kilogram slots for $10,000 each. The entire 20 tons of the medium-lift launcher could be offered for $2 million, with 2-ton containers made available for $200,000 and 200-kilogram spaces for $20,000. While recovering only a tiny fraction of the transorbital railroad’s costs, such low fees (levied primarily to discourage spurious use) would make spaceflight readily affordable to everyone.
As with a railroad, the transorbital railroad’s launches would occur in accord with its schedule, regardless of whether or not all of its cargo capacity was subscribed by customers. Unsubscribed space would be filled with containers of water, food or space-storable propellants. These standardized, pressurizable containers, equipped with tracking beacons, plumbing attachments, hatches and electrical pass-throughs, would be released for orbital recovery by anyone with the initiative to collect them and put their contents and volumes to use. A payload dispenser, provided and loaded by the launch companies as part of their service, would be used to release partial payloads to go their separate ways once orbit is achieved.
As noted above, the budget required to run the transorbital railroad would be 30 percent less than the space shuttle program, but it would accomplish far more. Instead of perhaps 60 tons (three shuttle launches) delivered per year to orbit, it would launch 720 tons. The U.S. government thus would save a great deal of money, since its own departments in NASA, the military and other agencies could avail themselves of the transorbital railroad’s low rates to launch their payloads at trivial cost. Much further savings would occur, however, since with launch costs so profoundly reduced, it no longer would be necessary to spend billions to ensure the ultimate degree of spacecraft reliability. Instead, commercial-grade parts could be used, thereby cutting the cost of spacecraft construction by orders of magnitude. While some failures would result, they would be eminently affordable, and moreover, enable a greatly accelerated rate of technological advance in spacecraft design, since unproven, non-space-rated components could be much more rapidly put to the test.
With such a huge amount of lift capability available to everyone at low cost, both public and private initiatives of every kind could take wing. If NASA’s Exploration Mission Directorate were to desire to send expeditions to other worlds, all they would have to do is buy space on the transorbital railroad for their payloads. But private enterprises or foundations could use the transorbital railroad to launch their own lunar or Mars probes — or settlements — as well. Those who believe in space solar power satellites would have the opportunity to put their business plans into action. Those wishing to launch and operate orbital space hotels would have the low-cost lift capacity necessary to make their concepts feasible. Those hoping to offer commercial orbital ferry service to transfer payloads from low Earth orbit to geostationary orbit or beyond would be able to get their crafts aloft, and have plenty of customers. As such enterprises multiplied, a tax base would be created both on Earth and in space that would ultimately repay the government many times over for its transorbital railroad program costs.
While the implementation of a cargo-only transorbital railroad would be a great advance over our current situation, we should not limit it to that. As John F. Kennedy said at the dawn of the space age, “A new ocean has opened, and free men must sail it.” Thus the transorbital railroad’s compartments should be open to receive passenger capsules provided by private vendors, thereby making affordable trips to orbit possible for anyone. Some might say that such open access to human spaceflight would put people at risk, and this is true. But bold endeavors have always involved risk, whether personal or financial, and free men and women should be allowed to decide for themselves what risks they are willing to accept in order to achieve their dreams.
We don’t have to wait for years to implement the transorbital railroad. We can begin it straight away, with 12 medium-lift launches per year. This would cost only $1.2 billion yearly, leaving several billion dollars per year to support the development of heavy-lift vehicles through two or more fixed-price contracts issued to industry on a competitive basis. Once these heavy-lift launchers become available, they could be integrated into the program to enable the full transorbital railroad capability discussed above. With a guaranteed market, launch vehicle companies would be able to put mass-production techniques into action, thereby causing the costs of their rockets to fall over time. This, in turn, would allow the transorbital railroad to increase further the frequency of its service, from one launch per month to two, three or more, and result in a dramatic drop in the cost of launch vehicles bought outside of the transorbital railroad program as well.
Some might say that the implementation of the transorbital railroad would represent an anticompetitive subsidization of the U.S. launch industry. But the federal government has always subsidized transportation, supporting the development of trails, canals, railroads, seaports, bridges, tunnels, subways, highways, aircraft and airports since the founding of the republic. Rather than complain, the Europeans or others distressed by low American launch prices could create transorbital railroads of their own, thus multiplying humanity’s capacity to reach into space still further.
Within a few years, we could be sending not a mere handful of people per year to orbit, but hundreds. Instead of a narrow space program with timid objectives moving forward at the snail’s pace of politically constrained bureaucracy, we could have dozens of bold endeavors of every kind, attempting to realize every vision and every dream — reaching out, taking risks and proving the impossible to be possible. With the aid of the transorbital railroad, the vast realm of the solar system could be truly opened to human hands, human minds, human hearts and human enterprise, a new ocean for free men and women to sail, their creativity unbounded, with prospects and possibilities as unlimited as space itself.
Robert Zubrin, an aerospace engineer, is president of the Mars Society (www.marssociety.org) and author of “The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must.”

The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia

Keep up with the latest extrasolar planets found!

The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia:

Airships to return?

U.S. Navy Airship Akron launching a plane from its flight deck.

I am a great fan of lighter than air rigid inflatables.  Zeppelin NT is a German company bringing back commercial Zeppelins, though I think they are only semi-rigids as opposed to full zeppelins like the Hindenberg or Blimps like those flown by the Goodyear company.

NASA and Lighter than Air, see the New Scientist and a NASA video Test Inflation Video

See video of the Hindenberg crash...filled with Hydrogen.

Good books:  Dr. Eckner's DreamMachine, about very successful Graf Zeppelin

 or Skyships, a history of Airships in the U.S. Navy

I have read both of these as well as several of the others listed at the University of Colorado website referenced here.

To fly in a Zeppelin, check out Airship Ventures  in California.

For those of you in Oregon, as I am, many of the books listed above are available at the Multnomah County Library.  

Also, consider visiting a WWII Navy Dirigible base, The Tillamook Air Museum, at the site of the old Tillamook Airstation, a port for anti-submarine flights in WWII.

Smallest Exoplanet Is Most Earth-like Yet | Wired Science | Wired.com

From Wired magazine...maybe the smallest exoplanet yet found. Astronomers are getting better and better at this....I really don't believe they can do it, but they do!



Smallest Exoplanet Is Most Earth-like Yet | Wired Science | Wired.com
The smallest exoplanet ever seen is less than twice the size of Earth, and orbits a star similar to our sun 390 light years away. Astronomers recently spotted this world, the most Earth-like planet yet discovered, with the COROT satellite.

"For the first time, we have unambiguously detected a planet that is
‘rocky’ in the same sense as our own Earth,” said Malcolm Fridlund, ESA
COROT project scientist.

For all its similarity to our own globe, though, it is still a far cry away from a habitable Earth-twin. For one thing, it is so hot — between 1,830 and 2,730 degrees Fahrenheit — that scientists think it might be covered in lava. It orbits extremely close to its sun and whips around the star once every 20 hours.

Nonetheless, the discovery takes us one step closer to finding another world that could host life. The newly found planet, dubbed COROT-Exo-7b, is distinct from most of the roughly 330 exoplanets so far discovered, which are by and large gas giants like Jupiter. This planet, however, is a terrestrial world like Earth, and seems to have a density similar to that of our own planet.

Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/smallplanet/#ixzz0iUa1Ajgm

SPACE.com Image Gallery: Views from Space: Imagery from Past Shuttle Missions

SPACE.com Image Gallery: Views from Space: Imagery from Past Shuttle Missions

Click above for interesting images from space.

NASA Needs a Destination — The Mars Society

The existing Lunar program and boosters has been ditched. The new plan says that there are new "game changer" technologies in the pipeline that would cut travel time for a manned voyage to Mars significantly. However, Rubin of the Mars Society says that is not so. Click below to go to the Mars Society site.
NASA Needs a Destination — The Mars Society: "Consider the following: At the same time it announced its new space policy, NASA gave notice that the three key supposedly “game-changing” inventions it would seek to develop as part of the effort would be the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VaSIMR) propulsion drive, orbital space depots, and heavy-lift technology."

02.12.2010 - New fiber nanogenerators could lead to electric clothing

02.12.2010 - New fiber nanogenerators could lead to electric clothing

This is from a U.C. California, Bezerkely site. Would you wear electric clothing? What about eclectic clothing (That will teach you to read my blog!)

Also, see about generator knees:

Generate power while you walk

An energy-capturing knee brace can generate enough electricity from walking to operate a portable GPS locator, a cell phone, a motorized prosthetic joint, or an implanted neurotransmitter.

Knee brace device is a bit heavy, but it can help generate electricity.

20090616_waves_saturn_rings.jpg (JPEG Image, 300x289 pixels)

20090616_waves_saturn_rings.jpg (JPEG Image, 300x289 pixels)

shadows of small Saturn ring moon

Destination Phobos: humanity's next giant leap - space - 27 January 2010 - New Scientist

The Moon is so yesterday...plus there will be delays. Aeres I will probably be scrapped and we will rely on the Russians and the Japanese to get us into orbit for a while. However, Phobos, a moon of Mars beckons! Be sure to see OMSI Space! if you make it to Portland, OR

Destination Phobos: humanity's next giant leap - space - 27 January 2010 - New Scientist

Exolanguage: do you speak alien? - space - 20 January 2010 - New Scientist

"Exolanguage: do you speak alien? - space - 20 January 2010 - New Scientist: "THE cosmos is quiet. Eerily quiet. After decades of straining our radio ears for a whisper of civilisations beyond Earth, we have heard nothing. No reassuring message of universal peace. No helpful recipe for building faster-than-light spacecraft or for averting global catastrophes. Not even a stray interstellar advertisement.

Perhaps there's nobody out there after all. Or perhaps it's just early days in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and we're listening to the wrong star systems or at the wrong wavelengths."

From the New Scientist

Supermassive black holes – the fathers of galaxies - space - 06 January 2010 - New Scientist

Supermassive black holes – the fathers of galaxies - space - 06 January 2010 - New Scientist: "ONCE upon a time, a vast cloud of cold gas was floating in the void of space, a patch of inert blackness against the even deeper blackness behind. Then, as if from nowhere, a thin jet of matter streaked towards it at ultra-high speed. It slammed into the cloud, compressing its matter and triggering a firestorm of star formation. What had once been a dormant gas cloud was now a full-blown galaxy.

Is this how a galaxy is born? David Elbaz's team of astrophysicists is convinced of it"

Earthlike Wet Planet Discovered

Too hot for us, but almost...signs of liquid water in the spectrum.  It orbits around a red dwarf inside the habitable or "Goldilocks" zone.  Click link above for WSJ video.  Also, see Space.com for a recent story on the subject. 30 Billion Earths? New Estimate of Exoplanets in Our Galaxy 
The photo below is from the Woodside Cosmology blog.


 See NASA comment on finding Spock's home world, Vulcan






See the Exoplanet Database Here 

Dark power: Grand designs for interstellar travel - space - 25 November 2009 - New Scientist

Dark power: Grand designs for interstellar travel - space - 25 November 2009 - New Scientist

You may recall the 1060's proposal for intersteller travel, a ramjet propelled by hydrogen scooped up in magnetic fields as the ship sped on. The article above from SCIENCE magazine proposes something similar, propelled by scoops of dark matter!

Timewarp: How your brain creates the fourth dimension - life - 21 October 2009 - New Scientist

Timewarp: How your brain creates the fourth dimension - life - 21 October 2009 - New Scientist

"THE MAN dangles on a cable hanging from an eight-storey-high tower. Suspended in a harness with his back to the ground, he sees only the face of the man above, who controls the winch that is lifting him to the top of the tower like a bundle of cargo. And then it happens. The cable suddenly unclips and he plummets towards the concrete below."

This describes an experiment in which someone is thrown off a building to safely fall in a net. It was to measure how time slows..You know, like when you are in a car crash and everything g..o..e..s..so S>>L>>>O>>W!

The Wireless Future of Energy Tranfer | Singularity Hub

The Wireless Future of Energy Tranfer | Singularity Hub: "The Wireless Future of Energy Tranfer
"June 30th, 2009 by Drew Halley
Filed under computing.

The electronic revolution of the past century has been a tangled affair. Remember when phones were always wired into the wall? When the internet required one more cord from the back of your computer? Wireless is the future, which is all well and good for information transfer. But what about energy itself?"


Remember Nikolai Tesla? He invented alternating current, transmitted energy through the air (not too successfully), and first detected cosmic background radiation? Wireless battery charging is on the horizon. Read the blog referenced above as well as MIT Technology Review and the Patent for such a device.

Radio Australia - Innovations - Solar Prints

Radio Australia - Innovations - Solar Prints: "DESLEY BLANCH : In a country as sunny as Australia, you would think that every rooftop should have a solar panel on it. But the uptake of solar has been quite slow, mainly because of cost. Well, a consortium of Australian scientists may have an answer that is right on the money.

For ABC TV's science and technology program Catalyst, Mark Horstman investigates."

I heard this a few months ago an an Australian Broadcasting Company podcast. A company specializing in printing currency is on the verge of a breakthrough. See Also:

Australia's Printable Solar Cells : Renewable Energy News

Printable solar cells on the way | COSMOS magazine.

iTWire Discussions • View topic - New technology enables solar ...

Mercury looms large as probe closes in for final flyby - space - 29 September 2009 - New Scientist

Mercury looms large as probe closes in for final flyby - space - 29 September 2009 - New Scientist: "NASA's Messenger spacecraft is set to make its third and final flyby of Mercury on Tuesday. If all goes well, the manoeuvre will use Mercury's gravity to slow the probe down enough to go into orbit around the planet in 2011."

The previous Pioneer spacecraft took a few pictures in a flyby long ago. After this, only Pluto, the "Dwarf Planet" will remain unexplored until NASA's New Horizons spacecraft arrives.

Reconstruct Mars Automatically in Minutes! | Mars Today - Your Daily Source of Mars News

Reconstruct Mars Automatically in Minutes! | Mars Today - Your Daily Source of Mars News: "Reconstruct Mars Automatically in Minutes!

A computer system is under development that can automatically combine images of the Martian surface, captured by landers or rovers, in order to reproduce a three-dimensional view of the red planet
. The resulting model can be viewed from any angle, giving astronomers a realistic and immersive impression of the landscape. This important new development has been presented at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam by Dr. Michal Havlena."

Cosmos - Google Docs

Cosmos

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Does the Universe Exist if We're Not Looking?

06.01.2002

Eminent physicist John Wheeler says he has only enough time left to work on one idea: that human consciousness shapes not only the present but the past as well

Mars Rover Spirit Hits 2,000 Sols | Mars Today - Your Daily Source of Mars News

Where has Mr. Cosmical been? Not off planet, unfortunately, just preocuppied. However, I am back!
Mars Rover Spirit Hits 2,000 Sols | Mars Today - Your Daily Source of Mars News: "Mars Rover Spirit Hits 2,000 Sols Still alive long after it's projected life. Interestingly, raw photos are posted immediately on the web. Often, amateur enthusiasts download and process the pictures immediately, giving the NASA folks a head start when they get to work. Click HERE to get to the raw images and give it a try. The following is from Mars Today


"August 18, 2009: Today marks the 2,000th Martian day, or sol, of what was initially planned as a 90-sol mission on Mars for NASA's Spirit rover.

Spirit's twin, Opportunity, will reach the 2,000-sol milestone on Sept. 8. Both rovers have found rocks altered by past action of water on Mars. Both show some signs of aging but remain capable of further scientific investigations.

Since their landing halfway around the planet from each other in January 2004, Spirit has driven 4.8 miles and Opportunity has driven 10.7 miles. Together, they have returned more than 246,000 images. Each Martian sol lasts about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day.}

Mars Rover Spirit Hits 2,000 Sols

August 18, 2009: Today marks the 2,000th Martian day, or sol, of what was initially planned as a 90-sol mission on Mars for NASA's Spirit rover.

Spirit's twin, Opportunity, will reach the 2,000-sol milestone on Sept. 8. Both rovers have found rocks altered by past action of water on Mars. Both show some signs of aging but remain capable of further scientific investigations.

Since their landing halfway around the planet from each other in January 2004, Spirit has driven 4.8 miles and Opportunity has driven 10.7 miles. Together, they have returned more than 246,000 images. Each Martian sol lasts about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day"

Larger image of Spirit's traverse
Larger image of Spirit's traverse"

List of phases of matter

List of phases of matter: "List of phases of matter

This is a list of the different phases of matter including the more exotic ones."

Everything you wanted to know, as if it mattered!

Searching For ET: Kepler Launch A Success, Search For E.T. Is Underway

Searching For ET: Kepler Launch A Success, Search For E.T. Is Underway: "Gizmodo

As noted earlier, the Keppler launch took place on Thursday and I can now report, it was a success. Click on the link above for the Gizmodo site for more comment. Gizmodo is great for those of us who love electronic gadgetry! Click on this NASA site for mission information.

Beyond Green Roofs: 15 Vertically Vegetated Buildings | WebEcoist

Beyond Green Roofs: 15 Vertically Vegetated Buildings | WebEcoist

Above is a link to a green building website. It is fascinating and hopefully a harbinger of the future. You should see also the first edition of Scientific American Earth 3.0 about the same subject. This also discusses urban farming and mentions a commercial garden in New York City that was in business until about 20 years ago. You could buy local and eliminate all transportation costs from farm to market!

NASA - Search for Habitable Planets

NASA - Search for Habitable Planets

Extra Solar planets keep popping up all over the place. Gas Giants orbiting close to parent stars...against previous theories of planetary formation. Rocky planets have also been found. Keppler will build on the already 230 planets discovered looking for earth size planets in the habitable zone. If launch goes okay, we will increase our knowledge exponentially!
Kepler Scientific Objectives

Image above: Kepler's targeted star field. Credit: Carter Roberts of the Eastbay Astronomical Society The scientific objective of the Kepler Mission is to explore the structure and diversity of planetary systems. This is achieved by surveying a large sample of stars to:

• Determine the percentage of terrestrial and larger planets that are in or near the habitable zone of a wide variety of stars
• Determine the distribution of sizes and shapes of the orbits of these planets
• Estimate how many planets there are in multiple-star systems
• Determine the variety of orbit sizes and planet reflectivities, sizes, masses and densities of short-period giant planets
• Identify additional members of each discovered planetary system using other techniques
• Determine the properties of those stars that harbor planetary systems.

Magenn Power Inc.

Magenn Power Inc.: "Magenn Power's MARS is a Wind Power Anywhere™ solution with distinct advantages over existing Conventional Wind Turbines and Diesel Generating Systems including: global deployment, lower costs, better operational performance, and greater environmental advantages."

"Magenn Power's MARS is a Wind Power Anywhere™ solution with distinct advantages over existing Conventional Wind Turbines and Diesel Generating Systems including: global deployment, lower costs, better operational performance, and greater environmental advantages." They just keep coming up with better and more varied green solutions to the energy problem. The big problem remaining, however is storage and transmission.

Click here or the outline of the issue as discussed at a Boston conference last year.

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