Space Lecture 1 Flashcards
(19 cards)
New space
The trend of moving space missions to commercial flights: reduction of cost; driven by private funding; SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, Boeng; contracts for servicing ISS; re-usability of rockets;
Space Tourism
VirginGalactic SpaceShip 2; Blue Origin New Shepard; SpaceX Crew Dragon;
Large satelites
Higher bandwidth, geostationary orbit
Smaller satelites
reduction of cost, fractioned spacecraft (if one of them fails, the other continue), constellations (less space debris with higher coverage), involvement of non-classical players
Hosted payload
You pay someone to put instruments on their payload
Cubesats
Volume: 1-12U (Where U = 10x10x10cm), major reduction in cost, problems: radiation hardening, power, communication
Solar sailing
Using the momentum of photons to travel
Manned missions to Mars, Moon
Interantional Competition, NASA/ESA gateway (space station around moon), private competition, larger rockets
Vacuum
altitude > 100 km; no lift/drag; no “breathing” atmo; outgassing of materials (decomposition due to lack of ambient pressure), fluid evaporate (again due to low/no pressure), agressive environment ( atomic oxygen erodes plastics), vacuum
Thermal environment in space
no convection (lack of gravity), radiation, conduction, solar flux on Earth distance (400-600 W/m^2), solar flux in space around Earth - 1367 W/m^2; extremely hot and cold (-270 to 120)
Radiation
no atmosphere to shield from high-energy particles, destroys living tissue, electronic, plastics (everything), full EM spectrum is observable!
High-energy
protons and electrons, Van Allen belts, South-Atlantic anomaly, solar flares/ eruptions (even noticable on Earth)
Weightlessness
Helps move heavy object in orbit using robot arms
Failure of jet engines in space
No oxygen/air to “breathe” (to use for combustion
Why do we need rockets
Jet engines have no air to “breathe”; brute force to fight against gravity and drag; to achieve necessary high orbital speeds;
Types of space propulsion
solid-propellant rocket engine, liquid-propellant rocket engine, hybrid rocket engine, thermo-nuclear rocket engine, electro-magnetic propulsion (ion thrusters), solar radiation sail
Solid propellants pros and cons:
Pros: cheaper (less components), less volume; Cons: less controllability
V2 Characteristics
Single stage; Liquid propellants (liquid oxygen and alchohol); steel structure; lift-off mass 12800 kg; propellants 8800 kg; Thrust 250KN;
