A new way of interplanetary transport

Oláh, András Béla

doi:10.1109/rast.2011.5966923

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…This way the reels of the electric engine are located in the rotor of the vehicle, and they receive the current from the rollers on the outstanding cantilevers described above. A small rocket engine (a traditional chemically fuelled engine or a new type of an ion thruster [8]) is located on the back of the vehicle (in the rotor part), which enables maneuvering in orbit, or even taking longer journeys in space.…”

Section: The Detailed Description Of the New Toolmentioning

confidence: 99%

From surface to orbit

Oláh

2011

Proceedings of 5th International Conference on Recent Advances in Space Technologies - RAST2011

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Space travel is highly expensive and has significant limitations. Among all space activities the process of travelling from the surface to orbit requires the greatest amount of energy, materials and cost. Basically even today, more than 61 years after the first artificial satellite was set to orbit, these difficulties have been the greatest barriers of the dawn of the real space age. This problem is two-sided. The far more significant side is the reaching of the first escape velocity (∼8 km/s), while the other issue is the air-drag of the atmosphere, which has a significant (thermal and mechanical) impact on vehicles with such speed near the surface.Up till now orbit travels had been carried out by rocket propulsion, mostly thanks to the historical directions of development. Even nowadays, the improving of jet engines is the main direction, in which case the problem of the air-drag can be turned into an advantage by using it as a fuel component. Nevertheless, using such single-step space shuttles with scramjet engines will not provide inexpensive, safe and widespread space travelling.The present study introduces an inexpensive, low energy and material cost alternative to space travel which minimizes the significant collateral infrastructure and material costs resulting from the production, storage and transport of the high amount of special rocket fuels. This solution uses a certain remote propulsion system instead of rockets and planes, which carry the major amount of the necessary fuel with them. This eliminates those mass limitations, which otherwise always apply to rocket propulsion. As the travel distance is only a couple hundred kilometers vertically, and several tens of thousand kilometers horizontally, the space vehicle remains very close to Earth. However, there is a significant energy difference (the kinetic energy belonging to the first escape velocity) which has to be overcome, and rocket propulsion requires a huge amount of rocket fuel (multi-step rocket systems). These facts all confirm that it is practical to rather use remote propulsion.The new solution introduced in the present study can be simply realized, does not require radically new technologies and materials, and almost all of its elements are already in use. Essentially this remote propulsion is purely a mechanical propellant. The great advantage of mechanical acceleration is that it does not require any fuel, only (electric) energy, thus only the useful mass has to be accelerated, which remarkably increases the efficiency, furthermore significantly decreases the cost and energy consumption.Due to the mechanical propulsion the accelerating period must be located on the surface of Earth, which necessitates a solution to the air-drag at the end of the acceleration. Thus the schematic structure of the system is the following: the space vehicle accelerates in a vacuum tunnel, in which the acceleration does not lead to any energy loss and the vehicle can easily be accelerated to the necessary 8-10 km/s. The end of the tunnel is sealed by an ela...

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Section: The Detailed Description Of the New Toolmentioning

confidence: 99%