Dilandu wrote:SWM wrote:Dilandu, it's not nearly as hard as you think. Getting to a specific orbit and approaching a specific point in space at a specific time is not that hard. It does not require microsecond timing. It can definitely be done by precision mechanical equipment. In fact, quite a bit of equipment on historical space probes was mechanical, not electronic.
Well, i consulted some my friends that knew rocketry and mechanic pretty good. And he prove to me that this is possible, indeed... after couple of thousand tries.
Yes, it theory this is pretty easy. On practice - and there is always this practice, that ruined so much pretty good in theory ideas... like artillery shells with wheels (c) - the rocket motors that could be build on pre-electrical level wouldn't be reliable, and wouldn't work perfectly. In fact, they would fluctuate pretty hard. And because you haven't got any datalink with rocket, you couldn't correct the trajectory if the motor would start to fluctuate.
Simply: the mechanical system would not be able to actually determine how much speed the rocket did not gain, or how much the trajectory is erroneous because the rocket burning is erractic due to the fuel quality. It would be impossible to correct on purely mechanical system.
Please understood me: i'm not doubting that the pure mechanical system is possible. I doubt that it would be even slightly effective. Yes, you could achieve the parameters eventually - after thousands of launches.
It's not nearly as bad as you think. Rockets did not start having ways of correcting their trajectories in flight until relatively recently. Hundreds of satellites have been put into orbit without the ability to correct the launch trajectory. Solid rockets can be quite reliable.