{"id":1960,"date":"2014-11-15T00:05:03","date_gmt":"2014-11-15T06:05:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1960"},"modified":"2014-11-14T02:21:31","modified_gmt":"2014-11-14T08:21:31","slug":"weekend-musings-do-you-want-to-design-a-rocket-ship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1960","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Walkabout – Do you want to design a Rocket Ship?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"According to Wikipedia<\/a>, a “Walkabout” is “…a rite of passage during which male Australian Aborigines would undergo a journey during adolescence and live in the wilderness for a period as long as six months<\/em>“.\u00a0 But a Walkabout is also, according to the Urban Dictionary<\/a>, “…a spontaneous journey through the wilderness of one’s choosing in an effort to satisfy one’s itchy feet<\/em>“.\u00a0 We all have the urge to explore new territory and, while this is THE Space Elevator Blog, I have occasionally posted items which are not strictly space-elevator related.\u00a0 They were, IMHO, something which might be of interest to you or maybe just something I wanted to opine about (it’s a FEATURE not a BUG \ud83d\ude42 )…\u00a0 These posts have been varied, ranging from How I Installed DSL for My Mother<\/a> to Blaming NASA for Selfies<\/a>.\u00a0 In the future, I’m going to make these types of postings the “Weekend Walkabout” feature of this blog, leaving the weekday postings to ‘strictly’ space elevator related items.\u00a0 These Weekend Walkabout postings might be related to space exploration or anything else, but I’ll try and keep the Politics to a minimum.<\/p>\n

I’ve set up a new Blogroll category; “Weekend Walkabout” and will label all future such postings with it and will also, as time permits, perhaps revisit older postings which fall in this category (posted on a weekend or not) and label them as such…<\/p>\n

And without further ado, our first Weekend Walkabout…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Conventional wisdom (if I can use that term while referring to a Space Elevator) says that, once we have a Space Elevator, we won’t need Rocket ships anymore.\u00a0 Not so.\u00a0 We (the human race) will need even MORE rocket ships once a space elevator is built.\u00a0 There will be a much greater need to send people and cargo to really interesting places like the Moon, Mars, the Asteroid belt, etc. and that will still require rocket ships.<\/p>\n

So, if you are a fan of space elevators, don’t think of Rocket ships as “obsolete” or “evil” – they have their place, it’s just not where they need to use 95% of their weight (the propellant) to get stuff out of earth’s gravity well…<\/p>\n

And that brings me to this; the National Space Society (NSS)<\/a>, an affiliate of the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC)<\/a> has launched a project called “Enterprise in Space<\/a>“, a multi-year effort to “…design, build, fly, and eventually return to Earth an orbiter containing student experiments.\u00a0 This project will be a tribute to the many great visionaries of science and science fiction.\u00a0 It will demonstrate and pioneer new technologies while inspiring and encouraging space enterprise.\u00a0 It will promote the development of educational curricula and activities contributing to related future endeavors in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM).\u00a0 This project engages and inspires the next generation \u2013 all ages and walks of life \u2013 by igniting a renewed interest in space exploration and development.<\/em>”<\/p>\n

The NSS Press Release<\/a> gives this information about the project from the project’s manager, Jim Plaxco:<\/p>\n

“My first tip is to do it. Not only are there some great prizes for the contest winner but the winner will have a place in the history of private\/personal space exploration.<\/p>\n

My second tip is that you don\u2019t have to be a master of 3D or CAD software. I\u2019ll remind you that such software is a very recent invention. It\u2019s the design that counts and that can be illustrated using nothing more complex than paper, pencil, and ruler.<\/p>\n

Third is to follow the rules. An important rule is to not design a spacecraft that looks like a spacecraft that is associated with a spacecraft from TV or film. It must be your own original design.<\/p>\n

Fourth is to be mindful that the spacecraft you design will be housing somewhere around one hundred student experiments. That means avoiding a design that minimizes internal volume. Once manufactured, your orbiter will physically have as its maximum dimensions 8 feet by 8 feet by 6 feet so be mindful of the factors 8 x 8 x 6 in designing your craft.<\/p>\n

So now is the time to either fire up your favorite graphics software or grab your drafting supplies and get to designing a spacecraft that is truly unique. The submission deadline is fast approaching so don\u2019t delay. But first make sure you fully understand the contest by reading the Enterprise In Space Design Contest Rules.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Designing a rocket ship?\u00a0 This sounds \u00dcber-cool.\u00a0 The deadline to get your design in is December 7th – not very far away…<\/p>\n

Oh, and why did I use that particular picture thumbnail (which I obtained from here<\/a>) in this post?\u00a0 Check out the Enterprise in Space<\/a> website to find out…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to Wikipedia, a “Walkabout” is “…a rite of passage during which male Australian Aborigines would undergo a journey during adolescence and live in the wilderness for a period as long as six months“.\u00a0 But a Walkabout is also, according to the Urban Dictionary, “…a spontaneous journey through the wilderness of one’s choosing in an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekend-walkabout"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1960"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1978,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1960\/revisions\/1978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}