Space Antiproton Decelerator

The Antiproton Decelerator is a unique machine that produces low-energy antiprotons for studies of antimatter, and “creates” antiatoms. Isolated and stored antimatter could be used as a fuel for interplanetary or interstellar travel as part of an antimatter-catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion or another antimatter rocket. Since the energy density of antimatter is higher than that of conventional fuels, an antimatter-fueled spacecraft would have a higher thrust-to-weight ratio than a conventional spacecraft.

It is very difficult to create and store antimatter on earth while a collision between any particle and its anti-particle leads to their mutual annihilation. An ideal location to create and store antimatter would be where there is no matter in the first place. The vacuum of space is an ideal location. The South Atlantic Anomaly is an area where Earth's inner Van Allen radiation belt comes closest to Earth's surface, dipping down to an altitude of 200 km. This leads to an increased flux of energetic particles in this region.

My proposition is to create a robotic space station that would create antimatter in space. Like in ISS it would be composed of sections. One of the sections would be Antiproton Decelerator. Its orbit would pass over the South Atlantic Anomaly to harvest the highly energetic particles already created by the sun. Ideally, it should be powered by nuclear batteries in order to reduce drag of solar panels at lower altitudes.

To have particle accelerator on earth and anti-particle decelerator in space makes sense.

Rocket Drafting

If you have watched a bicycle race, you should have noticed the drafting of the riders. Drafting is an aerodynamic technique where two moving objects are aligning in a close group to exploit the lead object's slipstream and thus reduce the overall effect of drag. This technique is exploited by the migrating birds as well as in the form of wake updraft. Airbus believes an aircraft can save 5-10% of fuel by flying in formation, 2.8–3.7 km behind the preceding one.

This technique can be used by the space rockets as well. The countries that only have small rockets with limited payload can launch several rockets in formation to increase payload. This technique can also be used on high energy space missions such as geostationary satellite launches, lunar and planetary missions. A single stage rocket with an aerodynamic nose cone can fly ahead of the main rocket to reduce its fuel consumption and increase its payload capacity. Wake updraft would only work for the first stage of a rocket while the rocket still travels through the thick air.

It would pave road to swarm of space rockets. Swarm satellites are already in use by NASA’s Starling mission, A Multi-CubeSat Mission to Demonstrate Autonomous Swarm Technologies.

Alternate SR-72

The Progressive Rocket I proposed can be altered to function as a SR-71 replacement. Rise of anti-access/area denial tactics and counter-stealth technologies renders speed more promising than stealth for penetrating protected airspace. Therefore, a hybrid rocket, ramjet, scramjet plane would suffice the requirements. The main difference of my design compared to SR-72 (SR-71 replacement) is that it will utilize rocket engines instead of turbofans at low speed.

Inefficient but much lighter rocket engines (compared to turbofans) will be fired on takeoff until the adequate speed is reached for the ramjet to fire. Once ramjets are fired, the rockets will be shot down. Beyond certain speeds, the ramjet will transform to a scramjet for efficiency. Transformable ramjet is much lighter and simpler than a turbofan engine. This reduces the R&D and manufacturing cost of the plane.

The plane will have multiple wings like a biplane. Reduced thickness of the wings will not have a drag penalty compared to traditional wings. This will increase the lift capacity of the wings so that the plane can fly at higher altitudes. Additionally, vertical sections supporting the wings will double as vertical stabilizers. The presence of liquid oxygen on board will also allow the plane to fly at higher altitudes by supplying oxygen to the engines.

In order to compensate for extra fuel consumption, the plane can be build larger. Simpler design (compared to SR -71) of the plane allows easy scalability. My design also allows fast servicing times and reduced preparation times compared to the original SR-71. It can also be refueled in air by a tanker version of it.

The plane’s common technologies with the progressive rocket, reduces the R&D budgets and manufacturing costs for both of them.

The Progressive Rocket

Based on the ideas I proposed earlier, I would like to define the progressive rocket I mentioned previously. The objective of this rocket is to utilize earth’s atmosphere for the reusable first stage of the rocket. As a result, the first stage will have wings and additional ramjet engines to assist the rocket engines.

The first stage of the rocket will utilize RP1 as fuel and LOX as oxidizer. The rocket will takeoff like a plane from an airfield. Initially, the rocket engines of the first stage will be fired. This will give fast acceleration to enable shorter take off. When the rocket reaches minimum speed for ramjet to operate, the ramjet engines will be fired and some of the rocket engines will be shot down for efficient flight. Plane like takeoff will require much less thrust compared to a vertical one. Therefore, there will be fewer engines on the first stage. Also, the engines will not be throttleable and will not have gimbal. The ramjet engines will have thrust vectoring. During takeoff ailerons will be used.

Ramjet nozzles will have regenerative cooling which will preheat liquid oxygen before being injected into the ramjet engines. At low altitudes, ramjet engines will utilize external oxygen. As altitude increases, liquid oxygen will be injected to maintain thrust. The air entering the ramjet will be accelerated by the exhaust gases which will increase its efficiency compared to a rocket engine even at higher altitudes. However, most of the thrust will still come from the rocket engines.

The wings of the rocket will enable it to takeoff with much less thrust compared to a vertical takeoff. The lift generated by the wings will also reduce the thrust lost to counteract the gravity. Additionally, the wings coupled with ramjets will reduce the fuel requirement for the return to base flight. It will be also much easier to land the first stage of the rocket with wings. The first stage of the rocket will be like a biplane. Unlike traditional wings that are thick to generate lift. These wings will be thin to reduce drag. Airlift will be generated by angle of attack. Thin vertical sections supporting the wings will double as vertical stabilizers. The upper stages of the rocket will also have much smaller wings to improve the stability of the plane.

The first stage of a rocket usually reaches Mach 8. Ramjets cannot operate efficiently at those speeds. The engine would need to transform into a scramjet during flight. If that wouldn’t be possible the flight trajectory and final speed of the first stage would be adjusted accordingly.

The previous attempts on this idea tried to come up with a magical engine that would do everything. However, I propose the existing engines which would support one another to improve fuel efficiency.

Progressive Rocket

Yesterday I read about progressive rock and listened to “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band”. Then, I decided to write this article. Progressive rock style emerged from psychedelic bands who abandoned standard rock traditions in favor of instrumental and compositional techniques more commonly associated with jazz, folk, or classical music, while retaining the instrumentation typical of rock music. A landmark work of British psychedelia, Sgt. Pepper is considered one of the first art rock LPs and a progenitor to progressive rock.

That’s what we need to do with our rocket designs, abandoning standard rocket design and add more innovation to every piece of the design. Reusability is one good example. However, it is a single, we need an album. For example, in my previous articles I had proposed wings for the first stage, cascaded propellant tanks for liquid methane and oxygen, high bypass nozzle for the first stage and many more.

Today’s advanced simulation technologies allow radical designs to be tested with minimal cost. AI can be used to perfect the details as well. We need to break through from the traditional approaches to achieve our ambitious space exploration goals.

Orbital Flight Trajectory

I would like to say few words on orbital flight trajectory. The orbiting of an object relies on the centrifugal force counter acting the gravity. When a rocket propels itself away from the earth, the earth's gravity effecting on the rocket doesn't change much within couple of hundreds of kilometers. On the other hand, if that thrust is diverted to increase the rocket's horizontal speed, the centrifugal force would reduce the effect of gravitation on the rocket. That's why the rocket trajectories are designed to increase the rocket's horizontal speed even at denser lower atmosphere.

A complex alternative to reach orbital speed would include the use of light weight but sturdy wings on the first stage of the rocket. Close to 1 g of the rocket's thrust is lost to counteract the gravity. The wings would reduce that need while they would contribute to the lift passively. However, they would induce drag. That's why I stated that the design would be complex. A perfect design which would have less drag compared to the positive lift it generates can be developed. I think it is totally feasible. One benefit of the wings is that they would help the first stage of the rocket return to the launch site safely with less propellent and less complex engines.

Aviation Strategy

I was looking at the comparison of orbital rocket engines. There was so much different design. It reminded me of mobile phone manufacturers that would use tens of different cameras on their product line where as Apple would perfect a sensor for years. If a country has billions to spare there is no problem with experimenting with so many different designs. However, I would like to propose strategies for countries with limited budget.

Within the aviation sector, space has a considerably small percentage. There are more than 100 thousand one-way flights daily worldwide. The main cost of these flights is jet fuel. In the meanwhile, most space launches still use RP1 as the rocket fuel. Which is a more refined version of jet fuel. My proposition for the countries is that they should invest more on jet fuel refining to reduce the cost of RP1 and increase its production. Even though, liquid methane is becoming a new standard as a rocket fuel, RP1 has still have many advantages that would never go away. Most important of being a liquid at room temperature and having higher energy density per volume. This allows simpler engine design and smaller propellant tank for the same thrust.

The countries with considerable military budget should also invest on solid boosters as well. While most of the missiles use solid boosters on their initial stages. Additionally, solid boosters give so much thrust with simpler design compared to liquid rocket engines. Therefore, the rockets with solid boosters would require fewer liquid engines which would simplify the design. It is also important to establish a solid booster manufacturing facility that is consumed regularly. The produced missiles are mainly stocked pilled and only a few are tested regularly. On the other hand, regular space launches would allow the process to be continuously tested in real life. Establishing strong civilian roots for military is important. They would reduce the costs and keep high production capacities alive in peace time. That's why I propose RP1 as rocket fuel which has its root on jet fuel and solid boosters which has its root on military missiles.

Data Manager

Modern technology allows people to generate huge amounts of personal data. However, at the moment there is no data management standard. What I mean is a data tracking and management standard. When you take a picture or video or receive a media from social media platforms, they are stored on your phone and depending on your subscription some of them are uploaded to cloud. Many people even do not have such cloud syncing. My proposition is that an app would index and assign a GUID to such data once it is created. Then, as this data is duplicated, the management platform would note that. As a result, you would know where the copies of that data is stored. It can be cloud platforms or external disk drives or other computers or mobile devices. Additionally, this standard and GUID would be shared over the social media platforms to track the same data. If you have the original photo, you don't need to store the small copy of it created by Instagram or WhatsApp.

Once the standards are set, the data management apps with the help of end user and AI can aggregate and classify your data. It should also prioritize them so that the most important ones are duplicated more and stored on expensive cloud services before the less critical ones.

Storage Medium for 4k

For some time, I have been watching a YouTube channel that displays old audio and video equipment. Watching the progress of storage medium is very interesting. At the moment the highest capacity storage medium is 100 GB with a triple-layer UltraHD Blu-ray disk. I would like to propose an alternative to that. A 120 mm floppy disk with a hard disk drive platter inside.

As solid state storage became the standard for computing, the demand for mechanical hard disk drives is diminishing. The know how developed on these magnetic disk drives can be transferred to come up with an alternative to optical counterparts. The mechanical disk drives have a higher storage density then their optical counterparts. They are also more reliable in the long run especially compared to multi layered disks. They would be somewhat more expensive though.

The trend with video is online. However, very high bit rate quality video and audio cannot be streamed over internet to many locations around the world. There would be still need for a read only medium to distribute very high-quality movies. Buying a very big and expensive TV and consuming highly compressed and lower quality media over internet can raise demand for such new medium. An enclosed hard disk drive platter can be an alternative to Blu-ray disks while they would allow much higher capacities and retain info more reliably.

Jewelry Manufacturing Ecosystem

It was in 2009 when I got inspired by the Apple App Store. I was among the first developers in the platform including the first iPad apps. Creating a platform for the designers can be extended to manufacturing as well. I have several ideas on that. Here is one on jewelry manufacturing.

The objective of this platform is to utilize technology to develop jewelry to reduce the need for environmentally and humanitarianly corrupting gold and diamond. There are already materials available that can substitute them. However, they lack the trend. The idea relies on a technical manufacturing facility to develop materials and alloys that would be used to manufacture jewelries. Some of the manufacturing process would also be automized to reduce costs and improve quality.

The jewelry designers would create designs that can be manufactured by this facility and sell them online over the dedicated website. The manufacturing company will handle the financial transactions and the shipment as well as provide servicing to the products. The jewelry would be produced on demand and shipped after manufacturing and quality control. There would be several manufacturing facilities around the world for fast delivery. It’s a kind of jewelry version of Amazon’s book publishing. Instead of authors, the designers would get the commission. Unlike book publishing there would be some limitations to be accepted as a designer. At least one sample should be produced and photographed before sale.

Proposals for material substitutes:

- Instead of Diamond (C), Moissanite (SiC) would be used. It would be lab grown, so that it would lack imperfections which improve brilliance and clarity. Additionally, they could be perfectly colored with proper additives.

- Instead of Gold (Au), different alloys will be used. The alloys will be selected to have corrosion resistance and dermatologically safe. There would be no plating which peals of after several years. One suggestion that goes well with Moissanite would be Aluminum Silver (AlAg) alloy. It’s lightweight, strong, and corrosion-resistant. More importantly Aluminum forms a eutectic with silicon at 577 °C. As a result, the gemstone can be directly fused on the jewelry negating the need for prongs.

- I also propose specially etched silicon wafers used as ornaments. Silicon when etched in nanometric scale reflect light in specific wavelengths. Like the nanostructures on a butterfly wing. These colors are generated with sealed nanostructures that never fade.

Rules and Regulations by Authorities

When I returned home from vacation, I was welcomed by graffitied elevator. The chamber of engineers had made those ugly stickers mandatory for residential elevators. The elevator had more important flaw of not settling level with the current floor. However, this was not considered as a problem. The authorities are being paid to develop standards and regulations. However, when the people occupying those seats are short sighted, problems arise. Unfortunately, capable technical people are scarce and those who work for authorities are not usually the best. I propose the regulations to be questioned by semi-technical people with broader view before being published.

An extension of this problem can be seen on the environmental protection. When the regulations are set without solving the root cause of the problem. The problem is transferred to locations with less regulations. However, when the environment is polluted, it is transferred to the origin country as well. The objective of rules and regulations should be to solve problems, not to create obstacles for the industries or the society. It is easy to write and publish a rule, however it is much more difficult to come up with solutions. Therefore, more effort should be put on the solutions. I, myself almost always come up with solutions when I see a problem. I wish, I could transfer my mindset to more people as well.

Finally, the rules and regulations should be developed in coherence with the trends. Innovations don’t happen in a day and they take some time to spread around. Unfortunately, the regulators lag behind such trends even though they had time. As a result, the innovations and reforms should start from the regulatory side to speed up the advancement of the humanity.

Hybrid VTOL

My previous VTOL design relied on rocket engines. This time I am proposing a hybrid design. The plane will use efficient turbofan engines during flight and utilize rocket engines during takeoff. SpaceX Merlin engines can be modified to operate with jet fuel instead of RP-1. Even though, jet fuel is not an ideal rocket fuel, rocket engine would only operate during takeoff and landing. Takeoff requires so much power which cannot be met with vector thrusting turbofan engines. Here is an example: Boeing 737-800’s engine CFM56-7B27 generate 121 kN thrust from 2,370 kg dry weight. On the other hand, SpaceX Merlin engine generates 845 kN thrust from 470 kg dry weight.

Hybrid VTOL would require a new plane design. The passenger cabin would accommodate the luggage like in trains. The entire bottom of the plane would be used to store jet fuel, LOX and the rocket engines. Turbofan engines of the plane would have thrust vectoring for stabilizing the plane during takeoff and landing. They would also assist the ailerons during flight. This design eliminates the need for some of the complex flaps on the wings as well.

As a conclusion, a VTOL plane can be easily developed using current turbofan and rocket engines. More importantly utilizing the same fuels. The only additional requirement would be liquid oxygen. Which would only be consumed during takeoff and landing. Airports can be modified to accommodate such planes. The boarding of the planes would also be different with luggage carried inside the plane like in trains. This would eliminate the need for waiting for the luggage. More importantly, the luggage would not be lost or damaged!

The Washing Machine

All consumer electronics have moved away from the real-world cases to complex products with lots of bells and whistles that fail frequently. I would like to propose a washing machine design based on my use cases.

The objective of this washing machine is to clean and dry the cloths effectively with highest reliability and lowest disturbance. The machine will not have detergent drawer and will not spin dry. Its user control will only have push buttons and LEDs. It will have a mechanical on/off button and a wireless enable switch. The clothes will be washed up to 35 degrees Celsius which is approximately the body temperature. The clothes will be dried using a heat pump assisted air dryer. The reasoning behind all these as follows:

- In real life, when a cloth has a critical stain, it is treated before wash with special chemicals. Therefore, a washing machine do not require a prewash. Additionally, there are detergents with softeners. As a result, there is no need for a detergent drawer which attracts mold and gets very dirty and is hard to clean.

- Almost all washing machines have a rotary switch. They are susceptible to accidental rotation. Once they are rotated, the program is completely altered. On the other hand, a push button can be deactivated when required. The selection would be displayed as a LED when needed. The washing machine will only have buttons for classical use cases. Additional features will be accessible via mobile app. As a result, there is no need for complex button schemes and displays on the machine. The screen of a phone or tablet will provide the best user interface to access additional features if needed.

- Mechanical switches permanently turn off a device and functionality unlike push buttons. Therefore, wireless connectivity can be permanently disabled if needed.

- Detergents of today are activated even at very low temperatures. As a result, there is no need to heat up the water above 35 degrees and deform the clothes as well as consume power. Additionally, the washing machine will have a small heat pump to heat the water with less electricity compared to a resistor.

- Modern houses are getting smaller and smaller in Europe. As a result, there is no room for a dryer or place to hang the clothes after wash. The washing machine should dry the clothes after washing without the destructive spinning method. The heat pump and an air blower inside the drum reservoir will air dry the clothes. Eliminating the spinning also reduces the power requirement for the main motor of the machine.

- For a better cleaning, the drum of the machine will be large. The dry weight of the clothes will be measured before washing and the user will be alerted on overload conditions before the washing begins.

Ultimate Electric Highway

I had previously proposed a robotic highway. I would like to enhance that idea further. The new idea is an ultimate electric highway. It would be composed of suspension bridges with wind turbine towers. The electric generated by the wind turbines would be feed over the single lane roads. The vehicles operating on this elevated highway will be powered from the road. As a result, they don’t need to incorporate a large battery on board. However, they will still have a small capacity battery. The highway’s electric infrastructure would also be connected to the mains grid. The surplus power from the wind turbines would be fed into the grid and vice versa. All the vehicles would be autonomous while traveling on the highway and would be manually operated outside the highway. This allows the electric vehicles to operate point to point. While traveling long distances they would operate autonomously and powered from the road. When outside the highway they would function like a traditional electric vehicle with battery and manual control. This setup allows personal cars to operate on the highway as well. Unlike my previous idea on robot only highway. The overall objective of the idea is the come up with a solution to operate electric vehicles over long distances without the need for larger batteries. The idea relies on already mature wind turbine construction. The suspension bridge architecture also speeds up the construction.

Lunar Transporter 2

On 11ᵗʰ of November 2024, I had written about a Lunar Transporter.

I would like to re-emphasize the importance of such a rocket stage in order to establish a lunar base. The main objective of lunar transporter is to preserve the momentum between the lunar-earth transporter orbit. The transporter would be accelerated on LEO and ideally preserve most of its momentum by orbiting the moon. While it is orbiting the moon, it would deploy its cargo to the drop zone, I had discussed earlier. Then it would fire its engine for an earth injection. Once it reaches earth, it would orbit at LEO. Then, it would be refueled and loaded with a new cargo. Finally, it would fire its engine for a translunar injection to complete a full lunar-earth transporter orbit.

Lunar Drop Zone

Lunar base requires many sorties from earth to moon. Therefore, developing a new rocket architecture is a necessity. I will discuss about it on my next article. This article is about minimizing the cost of each lunar delivery. I propose a lunar drop zone like in the military where personnel or equipment may be delivered by parachute or by free drop. Due to lack of atmosphere on the moon, the drop zone will be a free drop area.

On the image you can see tilted Hawke crater, the impactor that excavated it struck the sloping inner wall of Grotrian crater. Tilted crater is an ideal drop zone. It would allow a hollow travel area for a free-falling object with a horizontal speed. The lunar orbit velocity for the Apollo missions was a little over 1600 meters per second (5760 km/h). This is faster than the speed of a bullet ~3000 km/h. As a result, I propose the lunar cargo container to have a small rocket as well. This rocket would be a fixed-thrust hypergolic rocket engine like the one used on lunar module ascent engine (LMAE). It would be fired close to impact to slow down and maneuver the cargo to the drop zone. It would be a much simpler and smaller rocket engine compared to a direct descent engine. The web like drop zone would catch and stop the cargo safely.

The drop zone would be made of web like impact absorber. A spider like lunar bot would screw poles on the lunar regolith. Then carbon nanotube (CNT) fibers would be attached across these poles using special springs. These springs would absorb the impact over the CNT fibers. After the cargo is caught, the tilt of the crater would be used to roll the cargo down to the lunar base with minimum energy.