tomcatwarneOcean City, Plumouth, Devon, England UK17,106 posts
Albertaghost: Not raw materials. The moon has everything the earth has including iron and water. You can smelt it there, refine it and place it into blocks and shoot it into space using one sixth the gravity as you would need from earth.
That takes care of the bulk material but, specialized stuff can be made on earth and shot out at much higher expense.
Yes I can see it may be possible, but a major operation constructing ore processing plants and launching methods on the moon. Also manufacturing in space. A big operation, compared to just lobbing it up from earth, ready made.
Need Nuclear Reactors to produce the energy needed!
Spectacular! Practical?
These are military rail guns, not developed under the lines I exposed, slow acceleration and larger size to send biggest projectiles.
I think it's practical because the same rail guns avoids built these gigantic rocket first stage of a single use.
As a tonne of steel balls, I repeat, is not to build the biggest shotgun in the universe, but to apply the design of rail guns to launch satellites, for example, weigh less.
The problem is not the length that the rail should have acceleration to achieve a soft enough not to break the equipment inside the projectile. Space rockets and satellites have circuitry designed to resist strong vibrations and cooled in the different conditions in which they work.
Conrad73: Yep,Kinetic Weapons! Crude,but most effective! Only needs a small Rocket-Engine and a relatively unsophisticated Computer! Were mentioned in Clancy's "Red Storm Rising",and I wouldn't be surprised of some System like it was already circling!
now imagine the effect of that on an otherwise "safe" nuclear instalation near a lage populated area, a target that doesn't even move like a carrier or go underground like some missile sites. and we come right back to what I was saying earlier.
Albertaghost: Not raw materials. The moon has everything the earth has including iron and water. You can smelt it there, refine it and place it into blocks and shoot it into space using one sixth the gravity as you would need from earth.
That takes care of the bulk material but, specialized stuff can be made on earth and shot out at much higher expense.
I think private enterprise will aim for Mars while China will aim for the moon. As for the rest of the world, I think they will start to hand it all over to private enterprise.
Space X made a rocket that can be turned into a heavy rocket simply by strapping two more duplicates of itself on as boosters. It becomes the most powerful rocket ever by making it four boosters. They have spent less than a billion to get the rocket working. Nasa spend astronomical amounts to get just a test bed proof of principle rocket flying (which failed) a few years back then had their funding dropped. Now I have nothing against Nasa and applaud their work - but it does really show the difference between the way governments do things and private enterprise.
When Nasa or the ESA or Russia or some joint mission put together by all three get to Mars they are likely to find that private enterprise has beaten them to it. Therefore I find it highly likely that governments will even bother.
Especially when the moguls of private enterprise say that they could be at Mars in a decade if they were put in charge of Nasa and given only a tenth of their budget.
I'm not having a go at America. This sort of thing is everywhere. It's beaurocracy at its best.
Perhaps China find how to make cheapest rockets, even doing what I said it's possible. Using electromagnetism for launching the rocket makes no necessary carry so much weight. And if the use of the rocket is transporting materials (bolts, beams, pipes, pieces of light alloys) are not affected by the blow can produce it at low speed. No matter if those materials are used for orbital stations or satellites or defense systems, I only speak of the method.
COILGUN, GAUSS GUN, other names, perhaps. Electromagnetic guns, but the only became real for shoting anything have been the Rail Guns. Maybe Siberia hids many secrets.
If you use to make a weapon, the term is Gun; if not, Mass Driver is better. But I don't believe "interplanetary artillery" will be possible, only a way to launching an unmanned rocket, as I said.
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That takes care of the bulk material but, specialized stuff can be made on earth and shot out at much higher expense.
Yes I can see it may be possible, but a major operation constructing ore processing plants and launching methods on the moon. Also manufacturing in space. A big operation, compared to just lobbing it up from earth, ready made.