We Can Go There: How Did We Miss This?

By Matthew H Burch

Have you ever wondered why NASA and other space agencies have been telling us that moving payloads outside Earth orbit is so hard? The short answer is the rocket equation. The long answer is that space propulsion was focused on two major methods, carrying the fuel with the payload, or collecting propulsive energy from a remote source. Every serious space project since we've gone to space has done one or the other, either carrying all the required fuel away from Earth orbit in one mass, or receiving power to accelerate from a remote source (solar sails, for example.) Carrying the fuel with us is terribly fuel inefficient. Remote power provides anemic acceleration. There is a way to combine fuel-carrying with remote power that is efficient and effective, but we aren't using it.

We can use various existing technologies to combine the basics of the two methods described above. It is explained in simple English, with no math at all, in the first chapter. The potential is demonstrated mathematically in the second chapter, and in the third chapter, there is a more detailed model including fuel and energy requirements for a mission with sufficient payload mass and Delta-V to take humans to Mars and back, easily and quickly. The fourth chapter explores some challenges, and further demonstrates how we can use our existing technology and dramatically improve the efficiency of how we move around in space after leaving orbit.

We can combine the two existing methodologies for moving payloads around in space to create a new method, which is more efficient than carrying all the fuel with us, fuel wise, and simultaneously capable of supplying more acceleration than remote power. This book describes a new way to provide remote fuel with yesterday's technology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthew H Burch
• Release date: May 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310314230

Matthew H Burch

The author lives near Atlanta, GA.

Book preview

We Can Go There: How did we miss this?

By Matthew H. Burch

Copyright 2014 Matthew H. Burch

Smashwords Edition

Updated 20 June 2014

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This E-book is free. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Credits:

The contents of this pamphlet describe, in a paraphrased manner, the contents of USPTO 14/074,983, which is patent pending.

Thank you to the people who checked my math and tried to find logic holes.

Cover designed by Judy Bullard http://www.customebookcovers.com/

Editing services provided by Edit911 http://edit911.com/

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Table of Contents

Forward

Chapter #1: First, Without Math

Chapter #2: More Structure, Science Project

Chapter #3: More Math, Energy Example

Chapter #4: What Really Matters is Practicality

Afterword

Change Log

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Forward

The purpose of this pamphlet is to describe new methods for delivering items in space. There are no new machines described, just a different way of using what we already have.

Currently, there are two major methods used to move items around in space outside of planetary orbits. The first method is to leave orbit with all the fuel that a mission needs, from beginning to end. Until very recently, every successful mission outside Earth orbit utilized the first method. The second method is to leave orbit with very little or no fuel, counting on some sort of beamed or remote power acceleration for the payload. Recently there was a solar sail probe launched, Ikaros, which, to my knowledge, was the first remotely powered payload with a purpose beyond proof-of-concept, so the second method is now proven.

The problem is that both of these methods are inefficient to frightening degrees if one needs significant velocity changes (otherwise known as mission Delta-V) over the life of a mission. Every other methodology of moving items around in space that does not fall easily into the two methods above is either some sort of barely understood or uncontrollable physics improbability that we might figure out how to make useful at some vague point in the future, or a reckless combination of technologies that we would have to be desperate to contemplate seriously.

In the following four chapters, I demonstrate a new method using three different written presentations. The first chapter simply describes the method without math. It is possible to do so in such a way that most adults