From: alizard@pil
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Space: The Final Frontier
Date: Sat, 02 Jan 93 16:50:05 PST

> From: bwhite@oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu (William E. White )

>No, I think A.Lizard is right.  I never got the impression that either he
>or the people he talked to were talking about human payloads.  The real
>use of railguns and coilguns (I tend to favor the latter) are in payloads
>like satellites, automated landers, even raw ore and minerals (thus the
>idea of shooting off of the moon towards Earth).
>And a lot of traditionalist rocket jocks are very much against it.  But
>not all.  I remember hearing a NASA physicist talk about railguns and
>coilguns, and he said that it's feasible NOW, just that A) non-manned
>space activity is nowhere near as glamorous, B) a lot of people have too
>much money in existing programs, and C) we still need better high-temp
>superconductors.

You are correct, I wasn't talking about human payloads especially, though if
Pat Robertson wants to test a 1000+ g rail gun in person, I would feel morally
unqualified to stop him from preaching the Gospel from the point of view of a
pancake afterwards. (grin!) (moreover, a pancake floating in a solution of
blood and gore... no, not Albert... if this ever happens, look for the GIFs
in alt.tasteless, with cross references here to FTP sites, and for the
nit-pickers around here, I have not stated any opinion as to whether Mr.
Robertson is human.)

Though a E/M (electromagnetic launch system) could be configured to
accelerate a manned vehicle at a much lower acceleration level, using the
railgun to replace the booster stage only, with upper stage Scramjet or
rocket engines providing the rest of orbital velocity. This would improve the
mass/ratio of rocket engines DRASTICALLY. Resulting in smaller, cheaper
manned vehicles for getting into orbit with. We do need a manned space
presence to make this concept work, (totally automated factories, like
intelligent Christian fundies, are more heard of than seen) but we need to be
able to get people into space in a much more cost-effective way than NASA and
its contractors have sold the government on. We need to be able to get into
space via common carrier at prices comparable to a conventional airline
ticket.

Could you dig this NASA physicist up and get him onto this newsgroup? In this
case, I don't care WHAT his religious beliefs, if any are... if we are to
settle this discussion even at the level of what to hit up our public
officials for, we need some input from both the people Ashley cites and
people who might be a bit better informed. And provide some discussion on
differences between railgun vs. coilgun... If we are going to have a
discussion of using technology to ensure and improve the future of our
species, it might as well involve the most informed available people, and
virtually all of these people are on Internet ... and most have access to
this newsgroup. (last arbitron says that >60% of sites have access to
alt.pagan.)

Also, if anyone around here is involved with the beamed power proposals to
the DOE coming from Alaska and Hawaii, PLEASE POST.

As for high temp superconductors for E/M launchers, I regard them as:
1) helpful
2) fun
2) not actually necessary to build a rail gun, but VERY convenient... we can
certainly do energy storage using traditional cryogenic temp superconductors.
3) part of what we can buy in the context of a multi-billion dollar
investment in building rail/laser launch systems.

>Let's assume you're accelerating at 8000 meters/second, which is easily
>within range of railguns.  This takes, of course, 1 second to get up to
>speed; in that second we travel 8000 meters (simply enough).  Now this is
>cake, we can bend it into a logarithmic spiral for that matter.  Heck,
>8000 m/s is really slow for railguns but I'm assuming a heavy payload
>and/or using a coilgun instead.

And as for accelerating at 8000 m/sec/sec ... while this is fine for properly
packaged bulk payloads (Orbital Transport Services was discusing comparable
accelerations for sending things like liquid oxygen and hydrogen), I would
have no faith in the safe arrival of my computer to orbit at 800+ Gs, even
shipped in knocked down configuration, surface mount components would
probably peel right off the board... depends on what one wants to ship, I'm
interested in sending factory components in vehicles in the 1-10 metric ton
range at about 25 Gs.  (about 240 m/sec/sec) 25 gs is a compromise of total
E/M launcher size vs. acceleration, the higher the acceleration, the shorter
the track length. I want to be able to move things like semiconductor fabs
into orbit with as little redesign and as much use of "off the shelf"
components as possible. It's FAR cheaper to order stuff out of an industrial
catalog than to use the traditional aerospace approach of custom designing
everything.


>From: pciszek@nyx.cs.du.edu (Paul Ciszek)
>>Let's assume you're accelerating at 8000 meters/second, which is easily
>>within range of railguns.  This takes, of course, 1 second to get up to
>>speed; in that second we travel 8000 meters (simply enough).  Now this is

>8000 meters/second is NOT an acceleration.  It is a speed.  This is not a
>nitpick-- someone who does not understand the meaning of the terms
>"acceleration", "velocity", and "speed" is not qualified to talk about
>the feasablility of  various launch techniques.

>>Uh .... excuse me?  Whoever said that we were going to accelerate at 9.8
>>m/s^2?  I mean, come on, a handgun accelerates bullets faster than that,
Looks like bwhite@oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu (William E. White ) knows
where the squared term in the acceleration equations go to me...
I suggest you review your own qualifications, if any on this
subject... a willingness to read a post befor blasting the poster
would be a good start.

And a private note to  hz225wu@unidui.uni-duisburg.de (Micaela
Pantke):

I can recommend the following BBS, which offers Internet Mail Access:

Maus Duisburg 1 & 2    Numbers:   +49-2841-536777
????????  +49-2841-55275
If the other system number I posted is too far from you to be
convenient, I hope this is a bit better for you.


Blessings...
                                                 A.Lizard
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