Getting to space without violating the Proscriptions

Dilandu wrote:

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.

You might be surprised what can be achieved with non-electric powered equipment. The late Victorian metal smiths were quite capable of building large & light structures and the tooling used to build the early rockets was all manually operated lathes and milling machines operated by skilled tradesmen (and women in many cases). The limiting factors are more to do with alloys that need electrochemical refining like aluminum and titanium. Iron & Nickel alloys would have to be used in stead (and have historically - including being used for aircraft structures as stainless steel has similar strength to weight ratios).
Numerically controlled machines date to the 1790's, Babbage had a design for a functional programmable computer (but a satellite launcher doesn't need one, analog computers are adequate) and an A-4 (V-2) or Scud class launcher scaled up to Redstone size could orbit an ECHO class mirrored balloon communications satellite (look it up...)(which could produce interesting reactions from the OBS as it pops up in front of it, if nothing else).

AirTech wrote: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).

The main problem I see with this is that RFNA isn't really storable. You have to add some HF, otherwise the acid attacks the steel and corrodes it's way out of the container. WFNA has the same problem. I'm pretty sure you can't make F any easier that you can make Cl without electricity.

Granted, you could make the RFNA next to the launch pad, but that really doesn't scale very well.

(Read Ignition! for more details..)

The first spy satellites returned their data by ejecting film pods. You don't need radio to get data back.

Here's the ultimate steampunk idea. What if Safehold is a young enough planet that U-235 natural concentrations are as high as they were here when the natural reactor in Gabon went critical?

Then you can build a natural uranium light water reactor. No enrichment needed if the eons haven't depleted it in the first place. No high-tech expensive heavy water plant either.

Then you are making plutonium, which can be separated chemically.

Then you can build an Orion craft. It won't need the tight margins and low safety factors of chemical rockets and will be easier to build. If the Victorians had had nuclear explosives they could have built one.

AirTech wrote: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)...)

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/20 ... uoride.php
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/20 ... s_time.php

during World War II, the Germans were very interested in using [chlorine trifluoride] in self-igniting flame-throwers, but found it too nasty to work with. It is apparently about the most vigorous fluorinating agent known, and is much more difficult to handle than fluorine gas. That’s one of those statements you don’t get to hear very often, and it should be enough to make any sensible chemist turn around smartly and head down the hall in the other direction.

The compound also a stronger oxidizing agent than oxygen itself, which also puts it into rare territory. That means that it can potentially go on to “burn” things that you would normally consider already burnt to hell and gone, and a practical consequence of that is that it’ll start roaring reactions with things like bricks and asbestos tile. It’s been used in the semiconductor industry to clean oxides off of surfaces, at which activity it no doubt excels.

It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively.

No thank you.

AirTech wrote:
You might be surprised what can be achieved with non-electric powered equipment.

I might be surprised, but there is definitely no way of building effective space rocket without electricity.

Numerically controlled machines date to the 1790's, Babbage had a design for a functional programmable computer (but a satellite launcher doesn't need one, analog computers are adequate) and an A-4 (V-2) or Scud class launcher scaled up to Redstone size could orbit an ECHO class mirrored balloon communications satellite

They would not work without electricity. Simply speaking - their control systems would not be able to work on pure mechanic. The delays and irregularites would be enormous. The pure mechanical solutions would not work at the speed of kilometers per second.

And let's not forget, that without electricity - no data transfer, no data collection onboard. So if our rocket failed, we simply would not be able to understood WHY. All that we would have after the test is that "it failed for some reason".

Expert snuggler wrote:
Then you can build an Orion craft. It won't need the tight margins and low safety factors of chemical rockets and will be easier to build. If the Victorians had had nuclear explosives they could have built one.

They could. But there is no way of building implosion-type nuclear bomb without electricity. They could only build the uranium gun-type bomb, and if i'm not mistaken, they are completely useless in "Orion"-type pulse drive.

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

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

Yes, one of the absolute classics!

[First read in the 1970s, in pulp format, as "A Spaceship For The King"]

Dilandu wrote:They could only build the uranium gun-type bomb, and if i'm not mistaken, they are completely useless in "Orion"-type pulse drive.

I don't see why. The Orion principle would work even with chemical explosives -- the original Orion guys in the 50s built a little test vehicle propelled by C-4 (though it only flew to a few hundred feet).

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/oriotrod.htm

Dilandu wrote:

AirTech wrote:
You might be surprised what can be achieved with non-electric powered equipment.

I might be surprised, but there is definitely no way of building effective space rocket without electricity.

Numerically controlled machines date to the 1790's, Babbage had a design for a functional programmable computer (but a satellite launcher doesn't need one, analog computers are adequate) and an A-4 (V-2) or Scud class launcher scaled up to Redstone size could orbit an ECHO class mirrored balloon communications satellite

They would not work without electricity. Simply speaking - their control systems would not be able to work on pure mechanic. The delays and irregularites would be enormous. The pure mechanical solutions would not work at the speed of kilometers per second.

And let's not forget, that without electricity - no data transfer, no data collection onboard. So if our rocket failed, we simply would not be able to understood WHY. All that we would have after the test is that "it failed for some reason".

I would suggest you do further digging. Mechanical automated machine punches and drills date to 1847(look up Richard Roberts & Henry Maudslay)and Jacquard weaving machines to the 1790's. Punch card systems were used for the US Census in the 1890's.
Electronic control of machine tools only dates to the 1970's - Apollo was built using manually operated machines and hand drawn blueprints - technologies dating from the 1800's. Flight data recorders built on mechanical systems (and recording data on steel foil) date from the 1950's, you just have to make them crashworthy (or fire a few hundred to get things right - worked for the Germans in WWII).
Electronics can be fast but their big advantage is that they are LIGHT. The V-1 cruise missile used an all mechanical control system - electronics came later. Electronic computers exceeded the capabilities of mechanical computers in the late 1960's and until 1980 pneumatic and hydraulic control equipment still had capabilities that were unavailable from electronic systems. A mechanical computer with display capabilities is certainly possible but by the time this became required electronic systems were being pushed forward out of the defense industries.
Anything you could do with electricity, that doesn't involve the use of wireless transfer of information or long range transfer of data, can be performed using mechanical means. Its easier with electric power but steam powered machine tools (and in smaller shops hydrocarbon powered engines) date to the late 1700's.
The limits on mechanical systems are data transfer - its hard to shift data from place to place faster than a pneumatic tube system can deliver it and bulk data needs a truck or train to move it. Storage density is also poor for digital data.

MTO wrote:

AirTech wrote: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)...)

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/20 ... uoride.php
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/20 ... s_time.php

during World War II, the Germans were very interested in using [chlorine trifluoride] in self-igniting flame-throwers, but found it too nasty to work with. It is apparently about the most vigorous fluorinating agent known, and is much more difficult to handle than fluorine gas. That’s one of those statements you don’t get to hear very often, and it should be enough to make any sensible chemist turn around smartly and head down the hall in the other direction.

The compound also a stronger oxidizing agent than oxygen itself, which also puts it into rare territory. That means that it can potentially go on to “burn” things that you would normally consider already burnt to hell and gone, and a practical consequence of that is that it’ll start roaring reactions with things like bricks and asbestos tile. It’s been used in the semiconductor industry to clean oxides off of surfaces, at which activity it no doubt excels.

It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively.

No thank you.

And chlorine triflouride is available in 20 ton shipments from chemical suppliers as a cryogenic liquid. (Truly nasty is chlorine pentafluoride). A lot of commercial chemicals are nasty but can be handled safely with respect.