Space Age Vision of the Future: Solar, Electromagnetic Propulsion, and Scramjets

Solar Technologies

Solar technology is improving rapidly and will be used to generate electricity and fight global warming. This improved technology is also applied in outer space.

Scramjets

One technology that is currently being worked on for passenger and commercial space flight are the scramjets technologies. Scramjets are hypersonic engines known as supersonic combustion ramjet or scramjet.

• scramjet-powered vehicles must first be accelerated to March 4 before their scramjets can work.
• unlike turbojets, scramjets do not use spinning blades to compress the air entering the engine. Instead the high speed of the vehicle compress the incoming air which is then fed into a combustion chamber where the burning fuel creates an exhaust jet that exits the engine faster than the air that entered.
• NASA’s 2004 X-43A scramjet aircraft flew at March 9.68, a new world record for jet-powered travel.
• DARPA is working on another style of engine called Vulcan capable of launching a craft from a runway like a commercial airliner before accelerating it to hypersonic speeds.
• Vulcan will use a modified turbojet engine to accelerate to about March 2, at which point its hypersonic engine, possibly pulse detonation design, would kick in to push it beyond March 4.
• estimates for their top speed range from March 12 to 20, still short of the March 25 or so needed to propel them into orbit so rockets may play a role on a scramjet-powered spaceplane as final–stage boosters.
• a civilian hypersonic airliner could take travelers right around the globe in just 4 hours.
• a trip from Sydney to Los Angeles or London to Tokyo would take about 1 hour with a scramjet going at speeds of March 10 and about 10 to 13 hours with a regular passenger aircraft.

Scramjet Launcher

One idea to save on fuel costs for commercial space and passenger scramjet travel would be to build a launcher similar to an air craft carrier but on a much larger scale.

The first stage of the launcher could use the same technology as an air craft carrier followed by the second longer acceleration phase that would be several miles long and use something like electromagnetic propulsion.

The result would add up to considerable fuel savings on repeated commercial passenger and space launches and the speed reached without using any of its fuel payload would result in the scramjet having more fuel payload for something like a final-stage rocket booster to reach orbit.

The fact that the launcher could be used for both commercial passenger and space launches would also result in cost savings.

Space Launcher

The same idea and technology could be used in outer space. The science fiction equivalent would be the jump gate, quantum gate, or hyperspace gate.

The launcher could be used to launch satellites, space crafts, and even missiles at incoming objects like an asteroid. The idea is that the missile would be launched at high speeds and requires fuel only for navigation or once in close proximity to the target.

Living in Outer Space

It’s unlikely that we will find planets with the right conditions and the right gravity for humans. It is possible that we will be settling planets with the right gravity and possibly even terra-forming them.

But what’s more likely to happen is that we will be building our own planets like giant space stations that will orbit different suns, and there’s plenty of material in outer space to do it too.