Mission To Venus

Venus is the closest planet to Earth (min distance of 40 M km vs 56 M km for Mars). One of the major problems of a Lander (Rover) on another planet is the energy source. Solar panels are sensitive and their efficiency drop with dust and heat. On the other hand, surface of Venus is about 465 °C. My proposition of direct heat to electricity conversion would generate continuous high power for the Venus Lander and negate the need of a bulky battery. (https://fabsole.com/TEG.aspx) Venus has about 465 °C temperature, almost 100 ATM pressure and highly acidic atmosphere on its surface.  That's a challenge for the Lander designers however it is possible with today's technology. Electric motors and magnets wouldn't work at that temperature. Therefore, the Lander should utilize pneumatic systems with stainless steel pipes and pistons. Lander's movement and drilling would be conducted using pneumatic hydraulic systems. Thermionic generators keep inside the robot cool and generate continuous electricity. Even than SiC chips should be used instead of Si for reliability. The dense atmosphere of Venus helps lifting of the Lander easier. Therefore, the Lander can fly and walk like a fly and explore much larger areas than a Lander on Mars can achieve. Finally, I believe there are more life forms can be found on Venus than on Mars. (Animals found living underground near deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Life flourishes around the vents - including giant tubeworms reaching lengths of 10 feet (3 meters), mussels, crabs, shrimp, fish and other organisms beautifully adapted to this extreme environment. The giant tubeworms do not eat as other animals do. Instead, bacteria residing in their body in a sack-like organ turn sulfur from the water into energy for the animal.)

Balloon Borne Space Station

Building and maintaining a Space Station like ISS is very expensive and engineering vise very complicated. I propose hydrogen filled Space Station. Compared to 408km altitude of ISS it would have 50km. It would be robot operated and for safety measure it would be above a sea or an ocean. It would compensate for atmospheric drag using its hydrogen propulsion engines. It would be build using multiple sections like ISS, so balloons need precise positioning system on them to rendezvous and lock together. It would be solar powered but hydrogen fuel cells can also be utilized. It will be periodically resupplied with hydrogen. A platform like the offshore oil platforms would be generating hydrogen from the sea and transfer it to the station using balloons. The station would accommodate telescopes and other scientific research equipment onboard. Because of its fixed position relative to ground, communication to and from it would be higher bandwidth than ISS. Multiple Balloon Borne Space Stations can be deployed around the world. Balloons will be cascaded together to increase the lifting capacity that enables a space launch platform to be mounted. LEO micro satellites can be launched from these stations at a lower cost.

GNP Increasing Products Road Map

GNP (Gross National Product) is the value of all finished goods and services produced by a country's citizens, both domestically and abroad. Short lifetime non serviceable products reduce GNP of nations. The consumers keep spending money on the products but the GNP stays the same because total number of products active stays the same as the short lifetime non serviceable products fills landfills and drop from the GNP of the nation. I recommend nations to come together and develop and mandate standards for longer lifetime and serviceable products within their countries, especially EU. The operating systems and firmware deployments could be centralized. Companies' intellectual property rights could be protected with pre-defined standards for software deployment. These standards would fix most product failures due to software issues, else these products turn to bricks. For critical failure parts more reliable parts should be used, ex: stainless steel screws instead of easy rusting cheap metal screws, some critical parts can be replaced by metal parts. Avoiding propriety standards by companies, ex: old iPhone jack. Developing reliable and durable connections for communication and power transfer, at the moment all standards use cheap technologies for electro mechanical contact including all USB and HDMI technologies. The inflated cost due to increased standards can be overcome by direct sales of these products eliminating the intermediary resellers, making them modular and splitting the outlook from the technology, ex: change the color of a speaker via colored shell not by producing each colored product individually.

Radium Rocket Engine

For traveling longer ranges in space chemical reaction based propulsion is not feasible. Here I propose a nuclear propulsion system using Ra₂₂₄ (Radium 224 isotope). The idea is to fission Radium to emit alpha radiation and Radon 220 which is a noble gas. The basic mechanism of all rocket engine is to emit high gas from a nozzle. In this rocket design the gas is Radon 220 and heat source is the fission reaction of Radium 224. Radon is a heavy atom which would increase the efficiency of the rocket engine. The fuel is solid therefore the volumetric efficiency of the fuel is also high. 

Thorium 232 is quite abundant on Earth and is not radioactive like Uranium.   Turning Thorium 232 into Thorium 228 is not easy but can be achieved. Later Thorium 228 can be turned into Radium 224 which is much easier. Here is the Thorium decay cycle.

This rocket engine can even be used on earth. Rocket emission Radon 220 decays to stable Pb 208 (Lead) with a half-life of last than 12 hours. Lead is not environmentally good but dispersion on a large area would be less problematic compared to other nuclear rocket engine emissions that have much longer half-lives and pollute the land for centuries. 

The Sustainability

A sustainable roadmap that is financially viable roadmap that relies less on the tax payers. The first Spaceship can be constructed in small size (~20m wingspan) and can be used for military and meteorological surveillance purposes. With minimum investment the idea can be checked. If successful a bigger version would be built that can deploy low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites like Starlink (550km from Earth). The velocity of the LEO satellites to stay in orbit is around 28,000 km/h. The Spaceship does not need to reach that speed. Once it reaches the required altitude, slightly above the target orbit, Spaceship releases a small rocket that carries the satellite and Spaceship returns to earth like a plane. The small rocket will be one time used simple rocket utilizing the same thrusters of the Spaceship. It will only operate in space so no need to have features required for atmosphere passage. Once the satellite reaches the required speed the small rocket will release itself and burn in the atmosphere. With this approach the satellites do not need to withstand high G and can be send to space in the final form and do not need to have complicated folding mechanisms that open up in space. Once this version of Spaceship succeed it would generate revenue for LEO satellite deployment. The next phase would be a bigger Spaceship that can deploy satellites to geosynchronous orbit (GSO) with similar design that include a smaller rocket for satellite deployment. Once this is successful and generate revenue by satellite deployment the final Spaceship can be build. For the location of Lunar Base, I propose somewhere near Apollo 11 landing site. Lunar landing sites are historic places and need to be preserved therefore there should be a no construction zone. Why I chose Apollo 11 site?

- It is the most famous of all the Lunar sites

- It has the smallest are that need to be preserved later missions covered and left marks in more area.

In the initial missions to Moon, construction robots and Spidercam (cable-suspended camera system) setup material would be deployed. A Spidercam setup would be mounted around the Apollo 11 site which would record the area in close detail without disturbing the footsteps. Things that can fund the project while building the base:

- The broadcast of the footages from Apollo 11 site

- Lunar tourists visiting Apollo 11 site

- Late Night Shows live from the Moon

Much comfortable travel (low acceleration) would allow more people to be a space tourist.

Space Construction

Space construction know how starts on earth. We should be able to utilize fully autonomous and swarm operating construction robotics on earth first. I propose a robot design as follows:

- It should fit within a half container for easy transportation.

- It should be modular and each part should be self-containing. The removable legs should have its actuators build in. Mecanum wheels should have hub motors build in.  The removable arms should have removable extenders to be used for different purposes. Robot runs on batteries that are removable.

- The robot should be able to replace all these removable parts by itself. Therefore, each removable part should have mounting mechanism that is easily controllable by robot’s arm extenders.

- The robot moves on train using its legs that have paws to grasp the ground firmly. Legs are replaced with Mecanum wheels on the road.

- The robot digs the ground using drill bits like in a CNC machine. They will not be like excavators that have buckets.

- Some of the arm extenders: spindle motor for attaching drill and carving bits, modular part mounting mechanism, sensors to examine the ground (Sonar, X-Ray…)

The Fuel Consumption of The Spaceship

Here are some points regarding the amount of LNG (liquid natural gas) and LOX (liquid oxygen) required for Earth to Moon cargo transfer using the Spaceship I propose. High aspect ratio wing design of the Spaceship will ensure high lift-to-drag ratio and increase the efficiency. With less fuel more weight will be lifted. Also, lower take off speed and shorter take off distance. Therefore, the thrusters do not need to be very powerful. LNG and LOX can flow into the combustion chamber with gravity, conservation of inertia and gas pressure. No complicated pumps and mechanical parts required, improving the reliability. The Spaceship will climb up the sky in a helical pattern and increase its ground speed slowly so that the outside of the plane does not get hot. Stainless steels low heat conductance will be beneficial. After the Spaceship leaves the atmosphere, it can climb vertically while the wings do not have an effect anymore. The Spaceship will keep accelerating even with the same thrust because as the distance from earth increase earths gravitational slowing force decrease and the Spaceship gets lighter while consuming LNG and LOX. The acceleration will continue up to a precalculated velocity. At that point the thrusters will stop and the Spaceship will decelerate due to earths lessening gravity until the Lagrange point (point where Moons gravity cancels Earths gravity, neutral point). The Spaceship will reach the Lagrange point with almost zero velocity. After that point Moons gravity will accelerate the Spaceship with thrusters off. It is a freefall to the Moon. Close to the point where the Spaceship will orbit the Moon the thrusters will fire and increase the velocity of the Spaceship to maintain its orbit around the Moon. Once in orbit the thrusters can be turned off.  The unloading of cargo to the Lunar Transporter will happen in this orbit. After cargo transfer, the Spaceship will fire the thrusters for the translunar injection. It will be a short burst. It will be just enough for the Spaceship to reach the Lagrange point. After that point Earths gravity will accelerate the Spaceship with thrusters turned off. Here comes the point where the Spaceship will consume LNG and LOX to decelerate before entering the earths atmosphere. Apollo programs didn’t consume fuel for deceleration and burned the command module to hell and splash on the ocean. The Spaceship don’t use expensive heat shield that requires complex maintenance procedures instead uses its thrusters and its aerodynamic design to lower its speed so that the outside of the plane does not get too hot. Overall, you don’t need to burn LNG and LOX continuously throughout the whole journey.