Spacecraft Definition and 216 Threads

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion What do you guys think, is it time we start looking at options such as Orion again? Most of the necessary pieces of the project had/have been developed, and it is tempting to know that the first planned flight for an Orion-based spacecraft was to...

I have two questions I'm a bit confused on... 1st: Ten days after it was launched toward Mars in December 1998, the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft (mass 629 kg) was 2.87 \times 10^{6} km from the Earth and traveling at 1.20 \times 10^{4} km/h relative to the earth. a.) At this time...

How could the explosion (re: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0410511 ) be contained/ funneled out (without blowing up the actual spacecraft )?

this is the problem which i need to solve: A space-craft is at a distance of 100; 000 km from the Earth’s centre and is moving with a speed of 4 km/s, as measured in the assumed inertial frame of the Earth, with no thrust from its engines. It is currently moving along a direction that...

I was watching Star Wars and started to wonder. If a man were flying a spacecraft in space, would he be able to turn quickly and speed up quickly? Or would there still be a G force like in jets on earth? Kind of hard for me to explain it. I know that the jets now days can turn faster than the...

An unmanned spacecraft is in a circular orbit around the moon, observing the lunar surface from an altitude of 56.0 km. To the dismay of scientists on earth, an electrical fault causes an on-board thruster to fire, decreasing the speed of the spacecraft by 16.0 m/s. If nothing is done to...

I have a neat idea that has been modified. It may work. What if you used such a spacecraft in Geo. orbit to block out the suns ionizing radiation? Would this tend to cool SSTs thus limiting a hurricane or a tornados power? A "Solar Sail" could also work in this application. But, his...

i'm stuck on my school project :confused: and the question goes like this: design features in a spacecraft to overcome the negative effects of : time dilation, length contraction and mass increase. thanks :blushing:

is it true that if a spacecraft travled into space from Earth, it will ultimately reach the other side of the Earth (supposing it travled though the universe)?

Dear reader, here is a neat problem, but kindof over the edge. when it is about the same distance from the Sun as is Jupiter, a spacecraft on a mission to the outer planets has a speed that is 1.5 times the speed of Jupiter in its orbit. Which of the following describes the orbit of the...

Einstein asserted that the mass would have become infinite and/or created a black hole. But then came Alcubierre in 1994 who said it might be possible by contracting space in front of the ship and expanding space behind. They said this would violate laws of energy conservation, but the physicist...

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/11/05/voyager.solar.boundary/index.html

Hello. "Another notable thing is that Pioneer 10 used the gravitational catapulting effect of Jupiter. That was the first time that was ever done for interplanetary light. Pioneer 11 followed in its footsteps about seven years later to go out of the solar system." That text was taken from...

just have a while questions: Is it only used to speed up or slow down spacecraft s? What are some other benefits except that it saves fuel in spacecraft s?

These 'laws' were compiled by Dr. Dave Akin, head of the Space Science Lab at University of Maryland. While the list is about spacecraft design, the vast majority of the laws apply to all forms of engineering. Pulled from this website:

A spacecraft whose bulk consists of magnetic fluid shaped by an internal magnetic field has several advantages over conventional solid metallic craft. 1. It would better be able to absorb high-velocity space debris. 2. It could change shape to the demands of atmospheric viscosity or for...