Robert Zimmerman and Sissi Cao between them are talking "space" tourism - with a focus on balloons. Which isn't space. But that's good enough for this blog!
Airships are awesome and I should like to see more of them. Starting price for Space Perspective is $125k but that's going down (okay sure, the number stands to stay the same, as Bidenbux catch up...).
With there being an actual economy behind getting balloons 30 km over the surface I can easily see the Zeppelin factories ramping up again. I doubt we'll see "skysteading" à la Bio-shocque Infinite. I can see longterm high-floating labs. Maybe even factories: it must be easier to pump out a good vacuum at 30 km than it is, say, at these 5 km mining towns. Solar energy will be consistent as well. (We assume, at night, telescopes are remotely-controlled and already being used in balloons.)
A good Zeppelin could dock with those mines, mind.
One longterm drawback is that strato-vacuum removes that one more macguffinite to encourage us into space. Remember George O. Smith's Venus L4/L5 colonies, powered by sunlight through mercury-boilers? Heinlein's vacuum-tube shops on our Moon? Nyrath Chung remembers. And now we got photovoltaics and transistors down here. Sigh. And of course why be a space tourist in LEO if you can see the curvature of the Earth for a 'plane ticket or just, er, on the job.
On the plus-side: starting at 30 km or - better - higher, a balloon might catch light cargo from LEO (currently the only cargo from LEO) before cargo aerobrakes. Cargo hits the balloon which fills up with foam like your car's airbag; balloon just drops, cargo is now slow enough a Zylon parachute can do the rest. Although I am unsure how said cargo drops, what, 200 km to hit the fluffy pillow gently. I suppose: high-eccentricity orbit to minimise delta-V (which is just V when it hits the stationary target). Seems like some aerobraking will be needed from 130-30 km. But this way we don't need the full return-vehicle.
Also: how about SpinLaunch firing off propellant-canisters at a high altitude?
No comments:
Post a Comment