Getting to space without violating the Proscriptions

Silverwall wrote:

To get down to cyro temps needed for fractional distilation of air is a much much more complex problem and the lack of phase change in air is a huge issue causing massive inneficiencies which is why I am ruling it out.

Well, nitrogen is my business, when I'm not teaching Sunday School to fifth grade girls, but I have to confess that I'm much more interested in gassifying it rather than liquifying it. However, when we discussed the production of liquid oxygen I had access to a book about fractional distillation, and it described a process using only air as the working medium. If you're interested I'll try to search out the title. In the meantime, you might wish to see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_separation#Cryogenic_liquification_process.

~Tonto

From an industrial perspective http://www.uigi.com/cryodist.html is a much better analysis of the problem.

Getting solutions to the CO2, water and organics contamination would be doable by safehold tech. I am unsure if they would have the technology for the cold towers and leakproof feedlines and without the brazed aluminimum heat diffusers will need to use vastly less efficient steel.

Argon removal will also be a real pain but probably doable.

Tangentially to this discussion the main thing holding back safehold chemistry will be the inability to conduct any electrolysis which will limit us to compounds which do not require elemental chlorine in the production process. But at least hydrogen reformation and the Haber process are theoretically possible.

Silverwall wrote:From an industrial perspective http://www.uigi.com/cryodist.html is a much better analysis of the problem.

Getting solutions to the CO2, water and organics contamination would be doable by safehold tech. I am unsure if they would have the technology for the cold towers and leakproof feedlines and without the brazed aluminimum heat diffusers will need to use vastly less efficient steel.

Argon removal will also be a real pain but probably doable.

Tangentially to this discussion the main thing holding back safehold chemistry will be the inability to conduct any electrolysis which will limit us to compounds which do not require elemental chlorine in the production process. But at least hydrogen reformation and the Haber process are theoretically possible.

If you are making ammonia, making hydrazine, and then unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine(UDMH) would be a small step. Add fuming red (or white) nitric acid and you get a blast suitable for launching a Titan missile (hello Mercury / Gemini / Soyuz). This is why the Titan is made from stainless steel, but does not require refrigeration (these are storable - if very nasty - propellants).
Fluorine based propellants will pack a bigger punch, for example the use of chlorine trifluoride or hydrofluoric acid as the oxidizer would significantly boost the thrust - but this will require electrolysis to produce the constituent chlorine and fluorine. (The exhaust redefines nasty - a mixture of nerve gases and other toxics, but it works and is in service with various military organizations round the world). (Chlorine trifluoride will burn sand (and is used to clean semiconductor equipment to remove silicon residue)...)

I just imagined that - the ICSN (Imperial Charisian Space Navy) military crewed spaceship... which is:


- wooden-hulled (wood is much less prone to produce secondary radiation than metal...)
- launched on the enormous solid-fuel booster of thousands of small engines
- maneuvered on orbit by the solar thermal rocket
- mechanicals calculating machines, chemical air purifications and thermal control, ect., ect.
- and with great telescope to observe the surface and large membrane mirror to signal the data on surface observation posts

Hm, i wonder, what the GoF reaction would be?...

- Merlin, you are the maniac! - decided Clyntahn, watching the nightmarish structure, being prepared for launch.
- Nonsense, nonsense! - dismissed Merlin, hammering the final nails in the booster superstructure, - It's all right, OWL personally calculated everything...
- For God's sake, Merlin, there is no way something like that could fly! - Duchairn tried to reason him, - I may not knew anything about spaceflights, but there is more than ten thousands rockets on this... this... this this, and if any one exploded...
- They couldn't - Merlin reassured him, - This is charisian-made solid fuel engines, after all, and as you knew, it is suddenly turned so all Charisian artisians are great in rocketry. Oh, and also we accidently have all the necessary industry already build, and all our workforce accidently trained in rocketry by the guidance of the secret society, that exist for a thousand years... - The sudden piano trill of the nearest bushes interrupted him.
- No wonder, - Clyntahn murmured sarcastically , - after all, all of Charisians are natural-born Mary Sue...

(Please don't consider this little joke as a fanfiction!)

This discussion makes me think about this book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David%27s_Spaceship

Isilith wrote:This discussion makes me think about this book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David%27s_Spaceship

Yeah.

Dilandu wrote:I just imagined that - the ICSN (Imperial Charisian Space Navy) military crewed spaceship... which is:


- wooden-hulled (wood is much less prone to produce secondary radiation than metal...)
- launched on the enormous solid-fuel booster of thousands of small engines
- maneuvered on orbit by the solar thermal rocket
- mechanicals calculating machines, chemical air purifications and thermal control, ect., ect.
- and with great telescope to observe the surface and large membrane mirror to signal the data on surface observation posts

Hm, i wonder, what the GoF reaction would be?...

Now for the proposals to take out the OBS with that... that!

JeffEngel wrote:

Dilandu wrote:I just imagined that - the ICSN (Imperial Charisian Space Navy) military crewed spaceship... which is:


- wooden-hulled (wood is much less prone to produce secondary radiation than metal...)
- launched on the enormous solid-fuel booster of thousands of small engines
- maneuvered on orbit by the solar thermal rocket
- mechanicals calculating machines, chemical air purifications and thermal control, ect., ect.
- and with great telescope to observe the surface and large membrane mirror to signal the data on surface observation posts

Hm, i wonder, what the GoF reaction would be?...

Now for the proposals to take out the OBS with that... that!

Ooookay, the SWS (Snippet Withdrawal Syndrome) is now declared to be in full swing. This thread started with a more-or-less weird subject (steampunk rocketry) and has now officially graduated to full-on crackerpottery.

If RFC doesn't give us a fix soon, we'll probably start seeing fanfics of Clynthan singing opera in the shower (shudders).

peke wrote: This thread started with a more-or-less weird subject (steampunk rocketry) and has now officially graduated to full-on crackerpottery.

More or less? Well, more or less, it is possible. It would be VERY hard, but seems that it is really possible to build - without any use of electricity - the unguided multi-stage rocket, that would be capable of launching a few pounds on LSfO (Low Safehold Orbit).

But it would be enormously costly and hard to build. I inclined to think that it would be possible to synthesize effective solid fuel on pure chemical and thermal reactions, but it would be costly, the construction work of the rockets would be unadequate (simply because the non-electric power tools are unsufficient for such accuracy of operations). Also, because we couldn't put any testing equipment onboard, we wouldn't be able to determine what's going wrong with failed launches, and we would be forced to just build a hundreds of this rockets and fire them in hope that at least one would work.

The practical use of this rocket is almost zero. The only thing, that it could possibly do, is to launch some sort of inflatable satellite, made of metal foil, to serve as the low-orbital object for astronomical observations. I really doubt that it would be cost-effective.