Does Rocketry Work beyond Earth's atmosphere?

If NASA faked the moon landings, does the agency have any credibility at all? Was the Space Shuttle program also a hoax? Is the International Space Station another one? Do not dismiss these hypotheses offhand. Check out our wider NASA research and make up your own mind about it all.
SacredCowSlayer
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Re: Does Rocketry Work in the Vacuum?

Unread post by SacredCowSlayer »

patrix » November 3rd, 2017, 8:37 am wrote:Dear SacredCowSlayer,

Great post. Laughed out loud :D I also find the "Don't you believe in Newton!?" argument utterly absurd. Although I still need to stay humble since I not long ago was firmly convinced rocketry had no problems with vacuum. To my only defense I can say that I never actually tried to understand the physics, but now that I have, I find them impossible.

I would love to see some "Newton rocketeers" prove their point by performing common space docking maneuvers sitting in easy rolling shopping carts using whatever mass they like and throw it out of the carts...
That’s an interesting thought. But it doesn’t sound dangerous enough.

I’ve seen the condescending and irrelevant points (to “prove” rocketry in the vacuum) by SpaceFanBoy clubs about sitting in chairs with wheels on a solid surface and throwing a bowling ball, thereby moving the chair in the opposite direction. There is no need for me to point out the numerous flaws with this flimsy “point”, as they have been addressed on this fine forum at length.

But I do think it’s high time they put their rockets where their mouths are. So, if my Orbital Suggestion (November 2, 2017, on this Topic) is just too much to ask, I’ll propose another “less risky” (and more cheap) experiment.

I will challenge any one of them to try the following:

1. Climb aboard a plane fit for skydiving with any and all solid objects (of your choice) that can most easily be thrown, fired (including a .50 caliber machine gun), or otherwise accelerated (including rocket boooster(s) affixed wherever you like);
2. Jump out at a mere 1,000 feet (or higher if you like) and use the items and/or devices to demonstrate how Newton’s law will save your ASS from suffering an Epic Flattening!;
3. No parachutes either. That would just be disingenuous.
4. Also, Absolutely No “landing” in an abandoned/hollowed out/ mineshaft filled with 200 feet of feathered pillows on top of 20 memory foam mattresses- or anything of the kind. In fact, just aim for a Walmart parking lot. :lol:
5. Let me know when and where so I can make certain that I send an independent photographer to capture the moment. We will extract the data (not the parts though) from there.

Poor Mr. Newton. I feel a little bad for the fella. Undoubtedly, he would have no way to know that his observations would be sullied by the government (NASA clowns) to sell space fantasies, and in turn flip (or attempt to) science on its head.
dblitz
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Re: Does Rocketry Work in the Vacuum?

Unread post by dblitz »

As long as it is airtight, a container of gas or whatever under pressure is isolated from the pressure outside. I don't think an outside decrease will result in an inner increase in pressure. The only way to increase inner pressure is to increase the volume of whatever is inside.
Flabbergasted
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Re: Does Rocketry Work in the Vacuum?

Unread post by Flabbergasted »

dblitz » November 5th, 2017, 4:06 am wrote:I don't think an outside decrease will result in an inner increase in pressure.
Then why does a gas balloon burst in a vacuum chamber?
The_White_Lodge
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Re: Does Rocketry Work in the Vacuum?

Unread post by The_White_Lodge »

dblitz,

How is a container which is actively releasing fuel going to be airtight?
SacredCowSlayer
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Re: Does Rocketry Work in the Vacuum?

Unread post by SacredCowSlayer »

dblitz » November 5th, 2017, 2:06 am wrote:As long as it is airtight, a container of gas or whatever under pressure is isolated from the pressure outside. I don't think an outside decrease will result in an inner increase in pressure. The only way to increase inner pressure is to increase the volume of whatever is inside.
I want to make sure there isn’t any confusion about the points made about pressurized tanks.
The atmospheric force exerted onto the exterior of the tank matters. . . a lot.

Consider a recent road trip of mine with the family that included an elevation change of roughly 950 feet above sea level to about 10,800 feet above sea level.

We took a small rubber basketball that was flat enough that it couldn’t bounce (at home)- but it did have some air in it (if it had been a bicycle tire, the rims would have been scraping pavement). Since we “home school” (I don’t even like that phrase, as few things disrupt meaningful Education like calling it “school”) our children, it was an opportunity along the way to teach something that could be observed, which is nice for a change. I just love it when that happens!

[A Side Note: It always strikes me as odd just how little science I really got to observe for myself during my tortuous years spent in rectangle, bell ringing, loud speaker blaring, sensory overloaded, environments (called school) jam packed with people, nearly all of whom were there under compulsion in one form or another. I’ll leave that be, lest this post be deemed more appropriate in the “Parenting In The Simulation Age” Topic.]

While driving into the mountains I was explaining to my kids why our ears hurt and have to “pop” to relieve the pressure. So I asked my son to grab the ball from the back to see if it felt any different.

He passed it up front and we were surprised at just how firm it was.

When we got back home it was sad and deflated again.

But, we had certainly Not injected any more volume into the ball on the way through the mountains.
The difference was purely due to atmospheric pressure.

With little nearly a 10,000 foot climb in elevation, the expansion was dramatic.

It’s simple. As the atmospheric pressure dropped, the ball had less force exerted on its exterior.

I asked my kids “so, if we placed this ball in a monkey’s lap at sea level, and launched it at full throttle straight into the atmosphere, what would eventually happen?”

We all agreed (after considerable laughter) that the ball would eventually fail at its weakest point and it would blow apart.

The point I’m trying to make is that yes, you are correct that volume isn’t being added to the tank.
However, the ever decreasing atmospheric pressure from the outside the tank will render the pre-existing contents incapable of being stored as such.
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Re: Does Rocketry Work in the Vacuum?

Unread post by brianv »

^Simples. The pressure in the container is greater than the pressure outside...

Now in contrast, my son along with his fellow pupils visited a certain planetarium/observatory here in Ireland about two years ago ( I did mean to post at the time but was afraid my son could have been identified). They got to see a video of the Wavy Flag Moon Sequence, and without any prompting from me..."Dad, it looked fake as feck!". Moving on, then they got to watch Koko the fucking Clown for about 60 minutes pulling balloons out of his ass. Finally they got to play some stupid game on a 10 year old PC. "Daaad, it was crap".

But son, did you not get a visual tour of the Planets on a big screen or some sort of VR setup?

Nope, nothing like that. Just what I told you.
dblitz
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Re: Does Rocketry Work in the Vacuum?

Unread post by dblitz »

Then why does a gas balloon burst in a vacuum chamber?
...the ball would eventually fail at its weakest point and it would blow apart.
We are not talking about stretchy rubber things we are talking about metal fuel tanks. For a container with flexible walls the pressure will attempt to equalize by changing the size and shape of the container, thereby reducing the density of the gas. This does not apply to fuel tanks. In a strong enough container, no matter how far up you go, the pressure remains constant. There is no increase in internal pressure as external pressure drops.
How is a container which is actively releasing fuel going to be airtight?
Airtight, slight leak, major leak, controlled exhaust; all these scenarios result in the same pressure or a decrease in pressure, not an increase.

As I see it, and I think I'm making sense, the only difference a reduction in external air pressure will have on the strength of a pressurized container is the loss of whatever force was imparted to the surface of the container by atmospheric pressure at surface. This loss would make little difference to the strength of a properly engineered container. Pressure at surface is only 14.7 psi, while a weak high-pressure hose can give 5000 psi and its not exploding. I think a fuel tank that can survive the vacuum is feasible.

Image

Edit: Clarity.
Flabbergasted
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Re: Does Rocketry Work in the Vacuum?

Unread post by Flabbergasted »

dblitz wrote:In a strong enough container, no matter how far up you go, the pressure remains constant.
In a certain sense, yes. What changes in the metal fuel tank is not the absolute pressure, but the relative pressure. For example, the difference between the inside and the outside pressure may change from 10x to 1000x. In that sense, it is comparable to an increase.

Rigid or stretchy, it´s simply a matter of reaching the point where the resistance of the container is overcome. With the necessary information at hand, you could calculate how thick/strong a container (or the windows of the iSS) would have to be to withstand the "suctional force" of near-absolute space vacuum.
hoi.polloi
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Re: Does Rocketry Work in the Vacuum?

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

dblitz » November 6th, 2017, 12:25 am wrote:
Then why does a gas balloon burst in a vacuum chamber?
...the ball would eventually fail at its weakest point and it would blow apart.
We are not talking about stretchy rubber things we are talking about metal fuel tanks. For a container with flexible walls the pressure will attempt to equalize by changing the size and shape of the container, thereby reducing the density of the gas. This does not apply to fuel tanks. In a strong enough container, no matter how far up you go, the pressure remains constant. There is no increase in internal pressure as external pressure drops.
Are you sure about that?

Isn't "flexible" relative? Is there truly no increase in internal pressure as external pressure drops? Or do you mean to say that the internal pressure's increase cannot effectively change the flexibility of the container?

I thought pressure equalization was pretty basic physics.
The_White_Lodge
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Re: Does Rocketry Work in the Vacuum?

Unread post by The_White_Lodge »

As the recent NASA fakery discussions have been getting more technical, I would like to introduce the NASA Technical Reports Server, a wealth of documentation about non-existent technologies and the imaginary engineering that would explain how they worked if they did exist.

https://archive.org/search.php?query=cr ... NTRS%29%22

The scope of this documentation alone may suggest quite a bit about how NASA is structured as an organization. I have met people who have worked on the "technical side" of organizations like NASA and other operations of the military-industrial complex and they all seem to be completely oblivious that their jobs are literally fake work. There is a lot that I wish to say about this with regards to left-right brain disassociation, but I will save that for another thread, however what I will say relevant to this discussion is that the purely technical approach to disproving NASA using numbers and formulas only is likely to fail since they have invented their own labyrinth of fake science to explain everything.

I'm sure somewhere in that library they have a few documents with formulas and equations dictating how a fuel tank is able to be engineered so that it does not explode in a vacuum, and were one to think that the formulas and equations themselves were the reality and that they can be used with utter abandon and liberality they might get lost in that illusion and believe it.
patrix
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Re: Does Rocketry Work in the Vacuum?

Unread post by patrix »

The_White_Lodge » November 7th, 2017, 5:15 pm wrote: The purely technical approach to disproving NASA using numbers and formulas only is likely to fail since they have invented their own labyrinth of fake science to explain everything.
Dear WL,

I would say their main goal during the 20th century has been to turn science into religion and boy have they been successful. They hate science because its core message is that we should believe in our objective reality - what we can observe and confirm by experiments. So through media, bullshit science and the nuclear and space saga they have made the world instead believe in their reality/religion. And if they control our reality, they feel that they control us.

So I would say the way forward is to tirelessly call them out on their bullshit like Simon's been doing for more than a decade now. Less than two years ago, I was convinced the Moon Landings was real and that 9/11 happened like the media said. I've never been much into conspiracies and critical thinking. But here I am. Firmly convinced by Simons and the other fine researchers here and through my own observations and reasoning that there's no way the Earth can revolve around the Sun because it's simply a geometrical impossibility. And if I can wake up, so can others.

So let's introduce people to real science, where a formula/theory cannot be disproved by observations and experiments and still be held as true. Joule-Thomson disproved rockets in vacuum in the 19th century. Explain to as many as possible why that is as I have to relatives, friends, colleagues and internet strangers. And some day we might drag humanity out of this rabbit hole that's been digged for many centuries.
dblitz
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Re: Does Rocketry Work in the Vacuum?

Unread post by dblitz »

Are you sure about that?

Isn't "flexible" relative? Is there truly no increase in internal pressure as external pressure drops? Or do you mean to say that the internal pressure's increase cannot effectively change the flexibility of the container?

I thought pressure equalization was pretty basic physics.
I know, it seems to make sense at first. When I first read white_lodge's post I assumed he was correct and that the internal pressure would become explosive in the near-vacuum. But I thought on it for a while, searched around a bit and consulted a friend who is a structural engineer and realised I was wrong.

The things is, equalisation only occurs when there is interaction between the pressure zones, as in the case of a slow leak, or when the container is flexible enough to allow the gas inside to either expand or be further compressed. The vacuum cant 'see' the condition of the gas inside the tank, it doesn't know to 'suck harder' as height increases. It just sees it as another surface. Think of pressure like coldness. There is no such thing as coldness, just less and less heat. The near vacuum still has some pressure to it, however minuscule, it only seems to us like a sucking force because of all those scenes where the person gets sucked out of the spaceship window or whatever.
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Re: Does Rocketry Work in the Vacuum?

Unread post by simonshack »

dblitz » November 8th, 2017, 8:11 pm wrote:patrix,

Do you mean the Joule-Thomson effect? I did some reading on it but its over my head for now. Could you explain how it relates to rocketry? I searched the forum and came up with nothing.
Dear dblitz, you may read about the Joule-Thomson effect in the very first post of this thread, courtesy of its OP - Boethius:
http://cluesforum.info/viewtopic.php?p=2384856#p2384856
Nathan Draco
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Re: Does Rocketry Work in the Vacuum?

Unread post by Nathan Draco »

patrix » November 7th, 2017, 1:36 pm wrote:
The_White_Lodge » November 7th, 2017, 5:15 pm wrote: The purely technical approach to disproving NASA using numbers and formulas only is likely to fail since they have invented their own labyrinth of fake science to explain everything.
Dear WL,

I would say their main goal during the 20th century has been to turn science into religion and boy have they been successful. They hate science because its core message is that we should believe in our objective reality - what we can observe and confirm by experiments. So through media, bullshit science and the nuclear and space saga they have made the world instead believe in their reality/religion. And if they control our reality, they feel that they control us.

So I would say the way forward is to tirelessly call them out on their bullshit like Simon's been doing for more than a decade now. Less than two years ago, I was convinced the Moon Landings was real and that 9/11 happened like the media said. I've never been much into conspiracies and critical thinking. But here I am. Firmly convinced by Simons and the other fine researchers here and through my own observations and reasoning that there's no way the Earth can revolve around the Sun because it's simply a geometrical impossibility. And if I can wake up, so can others.

So let's introduce people to real science, where a formula/theory cannot be disproved by observations and experiments and still be held as true. Joule-Thomson disproved rockets in vacuum in the 19th century. Explain to as many as possible why that is as I have to relatives, friends, colleagues and internet strangers. And some day we might drag humanity out of this rabbit hole that's been digged for many centuries.
Not knocking the idea by any means but how did you come to the conclusion that the earth doesn't revolve around the sun or really what I should say is that the heliocentric model isn't "correct" I guess.

Like is there a topic on here I could get pointed to in order to read up that?

again, by no means is this me taking a shot at you or anything, I just wanna be convinced too. Completely open to the idea.
patrix
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Re: Does Rocketry Work in the Vacuum?

Unread post by patrix »

Nathan Draco » November 10th, 2017, 4:56 am wrote:
Not knocking the idea by any means but how did you come to the conclusion that the earth doesn't revolve around the sun or really what I should say is that the heliocentric model isn't "correct" I guess.

Like is there a topic on here I could get pointed to in order to read up that?

again, by no means is this me taking a shot at you or anything, I just wanna be convinced too. Completely open to the idea.
I've been fortunate since I'm helping Simon building a digital planetarium based on his model, but read the archived SSSS thread here on the forum, listen to the latest Clues Chronicles podcast and make only one wish to Santa this year - That Simon finishes his book. :) His goal is to release it during next year.
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