Affordable Access to Space

The ability to put large accommodations in space at really affordable costs requires a two pronged approach. First, a launch tube (LT) is necessary to pre-accelerate a rocket before it leaves the ground and second, a much better, Million-Dollar-Rocket (MDR) needs to be built because both the cost of the rocket must be reduced 100-fold and the reliability of the rocket must be increased 1000-fold. Fortunately all three of these objectives can be achieved for less than 1% of NASA's budget and in can be achieved before the 2020 election.

A LT is constructed by first suspending beneath an ocean barge, a 10-30 foot diameter pipe inside a 20-60 foot diameter outer pipe. The pipes would be approximately 200 feet long. By pumping concrete between the two pipes and allowing the concrete to pass  along the length of the pipes and slide into the ocean, a thick walled concrete tube is constructed for little more effort than just pumping concrete into a bottomless form. If the barge is stationed above the Mariana's trench near the Mariana Islands, the tube would be 7 miles long. If it is poured at 6 inches per minute, it would take 2 months to complete.The total amount of concrete required could cost from $5-$50 million. Set up and steel costs might double those costs, if contracted to a competent contractor and not performed by the government. 

The reason a LT can be built so inexpensively is because concrete is really cheap, it can be formed easily, and concrete is designed to withstand pressure, which is  the principal issue with a tube suspended in the ocean. In contrast, NASA built a possible one-time use launch pad for $1 billion, or 50 times more than this proposed launch tube.

The advantage of a LT is difficult to overstate. Because ocean pressure is so great, pressures as high as 15,000 psi can be used to accelerate a projectile and a barrel length of 7 miles means that material can conceivably be put into space for as much as 1000 times less than current costs. This is based on the observation that battleship artillery were accelerated to nearly 1 mile-per-second using a 60-feet long barrel with an internal pressure of 18,000 psi. A 500 times longer tube can easily achieve the 6 times greater velocity needed for orbit. 

Even more importantly, a launch tube would have a nearly non-existent failure probability. Even an imperfect launch would allow the payload to be stopped in the tube or make a safe ascent and then descent into the ocean. For satellites that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and decades to construct, the savings in money, and more importantly time due to a nearly flawless reliability is difficult to overstate.

Another critical point is that an LT would enable the launching of very-large, pressurized canisters of 30 feet in diameter and 3000 feet long. Using normal rocket launch pads, a space station may take dozens of launches whereas with an LT, entire, very-large, fully-fueled, deep-voyage rockets or space stations can be orbited with a single launch.

An LT nearly eliminates or might eliminate entirely the need for a rocket when launching material. Imagine just shooting something into space! However, because humans cannot be accelerated beyond a certain acceleration, a LT cannot simply shoot humans into space. Instead, an LT pre-accelerates a rocket to a speed that is equivalent to the speed a conventional rocket achieves after expending the first stage of the rocket. Basically, an LT would eliminate the need for the first stage or 80% of a rocket's mass which accounts for 90% of its cost. In effect, pre-accelerating a rocket decreases the rocket size by 4/5th or increases the payload by a factor of 5. Unfortunately, If a conventional rocket is used, it will still cost tens of millions of dollars per launch with an unacceptable probability of failure. That is why it is not only necessary to build a LT, but it is also necessary to build a very, very, low-cost, but completely reliable rocket.

Current rockets consist of a fuel tank, a jet powered fuel pump, a great deal of complex auxiliary processes, and a nozzle. The jet powered fuel pump and auxiliary systems make current rockets exorbitantly expensive and unacceptably dangerous. These pumps cost millions of dollars each, many pumps are needed, and they operate at such high performance levels, at 30,000 rpms, and high levels of complexity, that the quality assurance costs and failure rates are unacceptable. Consider that rocket success rates are 95%-99%. In contrast, a Pressurized Rocket (PR), based on a pressurized fuel tank concept, can be estimated to be 100 times cheaper and 1000 times more reliable because it operates entirely on simply physics principals.

A PR is 100 times less expensive because it is nothing more than a pressurized tank with a valve, an injector array, and a nozzle. The nozzle itself is just the concave end of the fuel tank like on the bottom of a spray paint can. Heat from the nozzle boils the liquid oxygen in the fuel tank to generate pressure. This generated pressure is then used to push fuel into the nozzle. The only disadvantage is that tank pressure is limited to about 300 psi. However, the pressure rating of a tank can be doubled by wrapping the tank in carbon fiber. While this fiber only adds 20% to the rockets weight, it would double the cost of the tank.

Full disclosure, the greatly reduced cost of a PR does come at a performance penalty of about 20%, which equates to a lift capability only 25% that of a conventional rocket. Therefore, a 100 fold reduction in cost comes at a 4 fold reduction in payload, for a 25 fold improvement in cost effectiveness and a 1000 fold improvement in reliability. However, when such a rocket is pre-accelerated, payload discrepancy become irrelevant as payloads far in excess of conventional rockets become possible.

A PR the size of Falcon-9 rocket might be manufactured for as little as a quarter of a million dollars. This is because a 300 psi, 100,000 gallon propane storage tank, which is nearly the same size as the first stage of the Falcon-9,  costs $100,000. Arguably, the cost of building a concave end section, a valve assembly, and an injector array should be easily achievable for significantly less than $150,000. The reason this is possible is that there is no complexity involved. It really is primarily a fuel storage tank with a built in torch assembly. In contrast, the latest price quote of a Falcon-9 rocket was over $50 million or 200 times higher. Hence, a goal of achieving a million-dollar target is arguably reasonable.

Great Engineering is simplicity, and low costs. The deep state does not seek low-costs. On the contrary, the deep state serves special interests by plundering the taxpayer. How else could a single space shuttle launch cost $1 billion. President Trump really can reduce costs by 99.9% and revolutionize the world.