NASA
NASA is missing the boat (rocket?) when it comes to making spacecraft. Imagine they were all fish scientists, living at the bottom of the ocean. What would they do? Try to build a craft out of the materials they had at hand (fin) and then try to propulse it upward, fighting against gravity, knowing that once the craft had cleared the ocean it would have a much easier job of flying up through the air than through he water.This is exactly what humans do: they pack loads of fuel on board a really heavy rocket and use most of that fuel to get the craft up and out of he earth’s atmosphere. Once there, the air resistance and gravity being so weak, much less fuel is needed to keep the craft flying.
It all makes sense, and it all works. But it’s immensely expensive and difficult. But look at the problem from another perspective: try to sink an empty plastic pop bottle - it’s very difficult, and everyone knows why - it’s because the bottle has buoyancy. So here we are, at the opposite end of the problem to the fishy scientists. They can’t get their rocket to the surface; we can’t get ours down to the bottom. What’s my advice to the fishy scientists? Make your rocket out of buoyant materials, then release it and it will shoot upwards.
Humans do this already with helium-filled balloons, but we’ve only gone half way to solving the problem. We shouldn’t just fill a big bag with helium, but try to construct the bag itself out of materials which ‘float’. That way, our main problem will be keeping the craft on the ground, rather than launching it out of the atmosphere. There’s absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t be able to produce building materials which are lighter than air, any more than the fishy scientists shouldn’t be able to make their rocket out of plastic.
We should stop trying to force rockets upwards, and return to first principles: objects lighter than air are bound to rise, so let’s focus our technology on engineering such objects.
I received an email in July about this article.