- #1
GypsyBoy
- 2
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Hi
I’m a 14 year old student and my school is having a science competition for the students in the grades above me, but i thought I would enter because I love scientific competitions.
Basically the competition is a hypothetical scenario where you have a group of scientists/engineers and $200,000 in cash and you can do whatever you want (as long as it's realistic) and the winner is the one who comes up with the most interesting idea
What I came up with is sky diving from space and I thought I would run a couple of ideas past you to see if they are realistic or not.
To get up to the correct height of 100km, I initially thought of using a modified sounding rocket but would a human payload experience too much g-force during the boost phase?
As for the suit I thought of using a mechanical counter pressure suit, which would be lighter than the usual gas pressure suits that are normally used but would the suit hold up in a vacuum?
Also to protect against high temperatures when freefalling I thought of using heat resistant materials like nomex that f1 drivers use
Isn't aerogel a very good insulator as well? but I don't know how you could fill a suit with the stuff
What about a ceramic paint or thermal suit like what scientists use when collecting lava samples?
The person would obviously need to breathe, so how about a rebreather system like what divers use but modified for high altitude and with enough air to last 45 minutes.
What about temperature inside the suit, is it true that a counter pressure suit doesn’t need a heat management system because you are so tightly wrapped in?
I read somewhere that when you jump from very high altitudes you can go into an uncontrollable spin, why is this? and how could this be solved?
When they jump out from 100km they will reach very large speeds during freefall but as they hit air will their velocity come down to acceptable skydiving speeds by 5,000 feet?
Any advice will be great
If any of you guys have any other interesting ideas that I could do for my competition entry, I’ll be glad to hear it
Another idea I had was to have a small dimension nuclear reactor producing about half a Megawatt Electric, would it be possible to make and fit something like this (including the reactor and the generator) into a container?
I ask because I’ve just read about a proposed reactor design called the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor and it seems really interesting.
I’m a 14 year old student and my school is having a science competition for the students in the grades above me, but i thought I would enter because I love scientific competitions.
Basically the competition is a hypothetical scenario where you have a group of scientists/engineers and $200,000 in cash and you can do whatever you want (as long as it's realistic) and the winner is the one who comes up with the most interesting idea
What I came up with is sky diving from space and I thought I would run a couple of ideas past you to see if they are realistic or not.
To get up to the correct height of 100km, I initially thought of using a modified sounding rocket but would a human payload experience too much g-force during the boost phase?
As for the suit I thought of using a mechanical counter pressure suit, which would be lighter than the usual gas pressure suits that are normally used but would the suit hold up in a vacuum?
Also to protect against high temperatures when freefalling I thought of using heat resistant materials like nomex that f1 drivers use
Isn't aerogel a very good insulator as well? but I don't know how you could fill a suit with the stuff
What about a ceramic paint or thermal suit like what scientists use when collecting lava samples?
The person would obviously need to breathe, so how about a rebreather system like what divers use but modified for high altitude and with enough air to last 45 minutes.
What about temperature inside the suit, is it true that a counter pressure suit doesn’t need a heat management system because you are so tightly wrapped in?
I read somewhere that when you jump from very high altitudes you can go into an uncontrollable spin, why is this? and how could this be solved?
When they jump out from 100km they will reach very large speeds during freefall but as they hit air will their velocity come down to acceptable skydiving speeds by 5,000 feet?
Any advice will be great
If any of you guys have any other interesting ideas that I could do for my competition entry, I’ll be glad to hear it
Another idea I had was to have a small dimension nuclear reactor producing about half a Megawatt Electric, would it be possible to make and fit something like this (including the reactor and the generator) into a container?
I ask because I’ve just read about a proposed reactor design called the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor and it seems really interesting.