How Feasible are Personal Spacecraft

[Music] after being neglected for decades spaceflight is now finally coming back around and this time it looks like it's here to stay [Music] docking request granted more and more companies and countries are realizing that spaceflight can be a profitable commercial enterprise it's only a matter of time before we have routine of flights to and from the moon well-said have the equivalent overhead ways and ocean - its face but this lacks the personal freedom granted by cars and private aircraft what we're missing at this point are the personal spacecraft and as it turns out the technologies that might enable personal spacecraft will also make spaceflight in general so inexpensive and safe that we'll finally get a star wars like future first however we must overcome some challenges before we can get our real millennium Pumpkins RX realist wasn't all the heroes of fiction overcome challenges to win their prize first and foremost our greatest challenge is the lack of a single stage to orbit and reusable spacecraft to quote Winchell chungu atomic Rockets whose work has proven invaluable to this video no self-respecting space cadet wants to go into space atop by disintegrating totem pole price is actually a secondary concern as single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft are much more easily made reusable and therefore among other reasons much less expensive dog brain [Music] eventually economies of scale would reduce the price of reusable craft especially if they could fly as one piece when we're disintegrating and expendable craft this is more difficult if we'd had reusable single-stage spacecraft for the past decade then they weren't already being for commercial space liners at least our orbit and rapid sub orbits and some wealthy individuals would by now have their own private space liners which would count as personal spacecraft thirdly we have the problem of actually reaching the other planet and who wants personal spacecraft I can only reach orbit and lastly we find difficulties posed by the lack of gravity in the high radiation of outer space we'll come back to this later for now we'll instead focus on the single stage price and interplanetary aspects over the years there have been many attempts to design single stage based craft of those that might have worked a single stage was managed either by brute force with a powerful avenging such as the Iranian the old firecracker under Tim kam or more commonly by just barely limping into space with a relatively tiny scale many of today's rockets could actually just barely reach orbit with a single stage but they ended up using a second stage anyway so they can carry worthwhile payloads most promising approach has proven to be space planes though until recently they too could hardly carry much in the way of a payload orbit or else most use a second stage rocket deployed at Maxim ltitude beginning the 1990s and with a new flurry of activity starting less than a decade ago new designs of cropped up from the hotel to end its descendant the Skylon two seemingly more exotic designs like Russia's magneto hydrodynamic lag mentat scramjet that IX scramjets particular are appealing as they can potentially change speeds approaching orbital velocity scoff jets also have the nifty property a bill to reach the upper most reach of the atmosphere only running dry when the air does this is unlike conventional jet engines which cannot function thin atmosphere found that such altitudes scrum jets are a variant of ram jets and as with all Ram Jets motion to the atmosphere drives the needed air into the engines which also compresses the air to the densities needed for efficient combustion [Music] scramjets on the other hand they allow the SU to remain supersonic throughout the engine and therefore must maintain a relatively inefficient combustion in the supersonic Airstream it's analogous to trying to keep a candle lit in a hurricane to manage this scram Jets must be specifically designed for supersonic combustion and therefore must be accelerated to supersonic speeds before they can function the i-x gets around this by using magneto hydrodynamics to decelerate the air to subsonic speeds without undue heating allowing it to potential use of regular turbojet engine magneto hydrodynamics or MHD refers to the manipulation of fluid gas or liquid via electromagnetic fields yet even without MHD we have scramjets that can reach Mach 15 and higher even up to Mach 20 for comparison the International Space Station orbits at a speed of seven point sixty six competent roughly Mach 23 scram Jets alleviate one of the main obstacles that make single stage spacecraft so difficult and take advantage of another lesser obstacle to end orbit nearly for free this major obstacle is Earth's gravity and the minor Earth's atmosphere you see when a rocket lifts off it must initially lift itself against ours pole in order to gain speed and altitude in the atmosphere with its friction doesn't help matters a scramjet or any space plane but especially scram Jets take advantage of the atmosphere to mostly eliminate gravity losses they do is feel lift in atmospheric combustion lift comes from the aerospace craft horizontal speed and there's no need to waste energy any more on both acceleration and lifting lifting surfaces take care of that and by using the atmosphere as an external oxidizer source and reaction mass an aero spacecraft does not need to carry as much oxidizer and/or propellant into these reasons that NASA themselves are looking into scramjets the goal of nast was to create a reusable launch vehicle that will use the oxygen in the air to bring a spacefaring vehicle close to the edge of our atmosphere instead of climbing all the way up carrying its own oxidizer tanks like rockets do so a space plane what allow us to make a single-stage spacecraft that lifts off and flies as one piece in other words we'll be flying x-wings or perhaps Naboo starfighters we don't just want a single staged orbit we want to be able to fly to other planets not much of an x-wing if it can't even reach the moon a personal spacecraft is going to need to carry its own propellant for this as space air is well non-existent how much propellant will depend on how efficient the crafts engines are Stein would basics will chemical engines cut the mustard that depends on what we want given that a scramjet would need very little propellant to reach orbit compared with what's required to reach another planet a real-life x-wing scramjet of course could perhaps manage to find it Mark's surprising huh the thing is the Delta V change of velocity needed to reach orbit is on its own half of the Delta V need to reach Mars indeed almost anywhere Delta V wise orbit is halfway to anywhere or just about at least now that we have a basic design how much could this conceptual aero spacecraft cost to buy spacecraft and aircraft are similar enough in the construction techniques and required tolerances that we can use the price of an aircraft to approximate a narrow spacecrafts cost it appears that commercial airliners cost roughly 2 million USD per ton of cargo capacity the rough Aero spacecraft design that we have here has a cargo capacity of 15 metric tons although we also roughed out a 2-ton arc for thoroughness these two designs would cost roughly 30 million and 4 million USD respectively I bet expensive but not completely out of reach either MHD in 3d printing could both reduce the price tag perhaps by half optimistically or at least 1/4 off so for perhaps 4 million USD you could in the near future own a spacecraft that could fly anywhere on earth and all the way to a moon or mars not too bad if you're gonna head out for the moon or mars you're gonna need radiation protection and gravity there are three main potentially achievable methods of providing gravity the first to spin gravity the second is thrust gravity and the third would be gravity magnetism no relation to electromagnetism as discussed in our previous video in a personal spacecraft at least 10 meters 32 feet in breadth at its widest point at least two meters six-and-a-half feet in height then we can actually fit a small centrifuge inside it wouldn't be large enough to spoil a Martian or Terran gravity but it will manage a bit less than lunar gravity another option is that you make some part of the spacecraft such as a field propellant tankage detachable the detached part would remain attached by a tether hood then we spooled out of ways and the whole system spun up until was whirling like a bola this way the effective diameter of the spinning system is increased so higher gravity could manage for a lower spin rate even towards the floor if desired now if we want thrust gravity then we'll need an engine was simultaneously high thrust and high efficiency in this case chemical engines were most definitely not cut the mustard chemical rockets may have high thrust some even managing a thrust to weight ratio of a hundred and fifty to one but they are monstrously inefficient ion engines on the other hand have very high efficiencies but pitiful thrust a piece of paper exerts about as much force on your hand as an ion engine it would appear that we have no option but to turn to fission fusion or antimatter and in long run that will indeed be the case spacecraft for the next decade and onward will fly on beams of superheated plasma heated by the mind of fusion or antimatter for now though we have another possibility aside from antimatter fusion and even fission metallic hydrogen recently researchers showed mathematically that metallic hydrogen may be metastable like diamond and they say diamonds are forever if this turns out to be true then we might just have a chemical means of propulsion with both high thrust and high efficiency it looks like the exhaust velocity and therefore efficiency of metallic hydrogen rocket is too low to manage any significant acceleration to even the moon one of the primary factors behind the exhaust velocity is the temperature inside the combustion / reaction chamber the reaction chamber temperature in turn depends on the pressure inside we get a temperature of some 7,000 kelvin with a chamber pressure of a hundred atmospheres it stands the reason that a chamber with a higher pressure such as around five hundred atmospheres will produce a higher temperature perhaps on the order of 10,000 Kelvin or hotter with this we could build a metallic hydrogen rocket engine with an efficiency own pars with a closed cycle gas cornica thermal rocket known as a new kind of light bulb assuming that this could be achieved let's say we have a personal aero spacecraft with a cargo capacity of 50 metric tons a dry mass of 40 metric tons including a full out of cargo so that 15 tons and a wet mass of 200 metric tons alternatively we could have a Teutonic raft with a dry mass of six metric tons and the wet mass of 30 metric tons with a dental Delta V to the 15 tower either craft could potentially marriage a 13 hour flight to the moon with a continual acceleration of 7% of us gravity half the moon's gravity not much gravity but it all shows the feasibility perhaps even higher pressures be used and with it a higher thrust gravity and shorter transit time of course there's also the ultra-dense adhering we mentioned a few videos back if that pans out then the aerospace craft could simply mount such a reactor instead of using a metallic hydrogen related note metallic hydrogen is efficient enough to allow for purely rocket based single stage spacecraft one just wonders what might be possible i combining a scramjet with metallic hydrogen and oxygen rich atmosphere with MHT to boot now we could use a controversial method proposed by dr. motion colleagues the one with the rotating superconductor which however extends dr. Robert all forwards and non-controversial work based on some rough calculations a gravity machine of a type outlined by dr. motion colleagues with a diameter of 10 meters 32 feet and magnetic fields tried to 50 Tesla an electric field strength of 4 million volts and a spin speed of 30,000 rpm it may be possible achieve an acceleration and sight machine of approximately 10% of our scraf t something to think about at least now we come to the sticky braum of radiation for this we can either use passive material radiation chilling or active field based radiation shielding the passive it appears that layered plastic and metal foils with a thickness of 30 centimeters a foot or less would reduce the radiation levels of interplanetary space to earth normal levels it's turning out to be very important to protect ourselves from radiation in deep space as a recent research has shown that beyond an increase in cancer risk radiation can cause brain damage which leads to Al himer symptoms later on in life at a foot thick this layered plastic metal foils would prove heavy and massive even at fifteen centimeters six inches such material shielding would still be heavy that said with the propulsion systems that we've been considering such bulky radiation shielding may not be infeasible now active shielding perhaps paired with passive shielding is quite promising indeed a NASA study found that 10 kilowatts can power combined electromagnetic and electric fields that would more or less completely protect a spacecraft from cosmic and solar radiation 10 kilowatts is close to the average daily power consumption by UK and US households keep in mind that we're talking about using MHD for atmospheric propulsion so why not use it for radiation shielding as well it could be quite effective we could also do something else the best radiation shielding against the proton rain of the solar wind is hydrogen and hydrogen which compounds this is because hydrogen atoms being a single proton orbited by a single electron have nearly the same mass as the incoming protons therefore just as with two equal mass billiard balls the hydrogen atom and proton rebound as much as possible the hydrogen atom of course is embedded in a bulk material so it's rebound is absorbed and taken up while the incoming protons simply bounce off and away keeping this in mind are we not just discussing using metallic hydrogen as a fuel why not plate a spacecraft with this lightweight metal metallic hydrogen is pretty much the densest form of hydrogen except for maybe ultra dense interion determines a hydrogen isotope MH dean talent hydrogen single-stage from our surface to Mars this is smelling like a typical sci-fi space fighter some people call this concept a space flyer so when we see such personal spacecraft it would appear that it's personal spacecraft would be feasible within a decade to a decade and a half given the current rate of development only time will tell and with that let's wrap up this video to recap scramjets are amazing and let us reach space and even the Moon or Mars all in one go and as one piece expect price tags on the order of a couple of million to a few million first small runabout or day Cruiser and in the lower tens of million for a small cargo hauler in personal spacecraft all of some 10 meters 33 feet across could fit a centrifuge capable of nearly lunar gravity or can whirl itself around like Ebola metallic hydrogen might have just enough of a kick to allow thrust gravity to moon also scramjet to metallic hydrogen makeup potent mix fusion would improve everything dr. muin colleagues gravity machine could theoretically provide near lunar gravity and do so without needing that much energy and with a fairly reasonable spin rate scramjet sand or metallic hydrogen can make relatively heavy physical radiation shielding feasible active shielding may have a low enough power requirements to be a feasible option and can be combined with passive shielding for even better results MHD atmospheric pollution could be theoretically adapted as radiation shielding metallic hydrogen may make for lower mass physical radiation shielding and there you have it our personal spacecraft feasible and when might we have them it appears that yes surprisingly enough personal spacecraft are feasible and that we might have them within a decade or so or sooner and that concludes this video we want to thank all of our patrons and viewers for helping to support us with a special thank you to mr. cheekymonkey 1996 make sure to subscribe and click the notification bell if you want to support us so we can keep making videos like this one then head on over to patreon a dollar can add up rather quickly patrons get an early notice about Queen videos and higher-level patrons are in rewards such as a sneak peak of work and progress scripts lastly to stay updated see the community tab on our channel homepage we post updates polls and other general announcements we also post updates on Twitter along with various scientific developments that interest us until next time [Music]

Channel: AsteronX

Views: 67,617

Rating: 4.7637029 out of 5

Keywords: AsteronX, personal spacecraft, interplanetary travel, feasibility of personal spacecraft, spaceflight, x-wing, millenium falcon, Dr. Musha, artificial gravity, centrifuge, metallic hydrogen, fusion, ultra-dense deuterium, magnetohydrodynamics, MHD, radiation shielding, HOTOL, Skylon, Ayaks, gravity machine, NASA, scramjet, spacecraft

Id: U93f121cbYQ

Length: 19min 48sec (1188 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 19 2018