Sunday, June 12, 2011

Retro Rockets.

Eleven years and counting and the guy behind Man Conquers Space is apparently still doggedly plugging away.



If rockets could be fueled by stubbornness...
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13 comments:

SiGraybeard said...

Now, that's cool.

I've never heard of this, so count me impressed with the determination.

wv: logon Really.

1:07 PM, June 12, 2011
og said...

"If rockets could be fueled by stubbornness... "

If you could fuel rockets with stupid, interstellar travel would be cheaper than a grocery run on a moped.

1:44 PM, June 12, 2011
Darrell said...

"God Schmod, I want my monkey man!"--Bart Simpson

Pity, we seem to have lost the will to do such things. :(

1:49 PM, June 12, 2011
An Ordinary American said...

If rockets could be fueled by stubborness, I could be halfway to Neptune and back by now.

--AOA

1:57 PM, June 12, 2011
Anonymous said...

Pffft, silly girl, engines are fueled with Hope and Change and lubed with unicorn piss.

Shootin' Buddy

2:32 PM, June 12, 2011
drjim said...

Hmmm....thought I was the only one watching and waiting for this film to be released.
Oh, well....

2:57 PM, June 12, 2011
Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

Sounds like someone has been reading Bobbi's stuff.

2:59 PM, June 12, 2011
Dr. StrangeGun said...

It'd be an interesting concept, for someone to develop not 'warp drive' or other reactive means of propulsion... but a 'frame brake'.

A device, as it were, that brakes itself in it's universal positional frame.

Basically you'd wait until the earth's rotation had you on the trailing side (also accounting for the sun and galaxy's movement in free space) and hit the brakes. Your vehicle would simply, suddenly, appear to leap off the surface of the planet and hurtle into deep space at frightening speed and acceleration. In actuality... you've slowed down incredibly.

Everyone forgets to reference that we're zooming around in interlocking circles at incomprehensible speeds...

3:05 PM, June 12, 2011
Roberta X said...

A) There ain't one. Universal stable from o' ref, that is.

B) If there was, it'd suffer the "gravty screen" problem: you can't step onto it, as it takes the same force as gettin' far enough way from the said mass from which is it to screen you to not be affected by its pull.

C) But it is still kewl and may be fictionable with the right sort of handwaving.

4:52 PM, June 12, 2011
bluesun said...

I've never heard of this, but now that I have, I'm all depressed.

6:58 PM, June 12, 2011
Justthisguy said...

Yup, Bobby, your point B was the problem with Cavorite. Energy difference, and all.

I prefer the Broussard Drive, invented by a brain-damaged autistic coon-ass genius, as expounded in the John Varley novels.

A rocket with an infinite mass ratio is a very cool thing. It can also lead to dangerous lunatics accelerating big chunks of rock to relativistic velocities.

2:46 AM, June 13, 2011
Jenny said...

1. looks AWESOME.
2. Real Artists Ship.
3. Am I wrong in thinking LBJ killed this future?

6:49 PM, June 13, 2011
Roberta X said...

Jenny: 1 and 2: Chesley Bonestell. He's dreamy. (I have most if not all the Collier's-inspired, Bonesetell-illustrated books -- Conquest of Space, the Moon, Mars).

3: Only about half. von Braun and Co. came to the States hoping they'd get the keys to a whole new Peenemunde and instead got stashed on an obscure Amy base in Texas for over a year, then most of 'em ended up at an underfunded Army project in Hunstville.

Despite eventual success, budget issues and internal rivalry dogged 'em ever after, politics even more so. (The best recent example being the way manufacture of the Shuttle was spread out over key districts, coast-to-coast while engineering concerns were downplayed throughout the design process).

So -- no space wheel. No quick-turnaround shuttles. No permanent base on the Moon.

Not yet.

7:27 AM, June 14, 2011

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