Opening the Next Frontier
by Anthony Tate

Part 12: But isn't this just too big?


Well, a one thousand ton capable booster is certainly much too large to perform the sorts of commercial missions of today. Heck, a one hundred ton capable booster is probably too large.

But that is assuming the commercial missions won't change. I believe there is a huge pent-up demand for resources in space, and if we could put huge payloads into orbit, uses for those payloads would appear quickly.

Orbiting hotels could be made in thousand ton chunks and orbited high enough to provide truly spectacular views. Those hotels could be shielded by enormous masses of material from a captured asteroid. L5 would also be a useful place to place such structures, and with such a powerful booster system, getting to the L5 point would be trivial. When you can designate a few hundred tons to radiation shields, space is suddenly a much safer place for humans. Not to mention recent breakthroughs in radiation resistant clothing.

Or imagine the exploration capabilities. NASA and others have designed many, many deep space exploration missions, all of which have one fatal flaw: They are too heavy. The smallest feasible Mars expedition requires 150 or so tons in Earth orbit, which takes 5 trips on the most powerful rocket flying today, the Space Shuttle.

A large nuclear powered booster could put six times that mass in orbit in one flight! If we have a large capable booster, the Solar System is easy to get to. Others have designed spacecraft to carry men all the way to Jupiter and back, which requires a mere 750 tons in Earth orbit.

We could go to Jupiter in 20 years. We could really explore the asteroid belt. We could have the ability to stop a 'dinosaur-killer' asteroid before it hits us.

Imagine a permanent space station around Saturn. Think of the science we could do there, imagine the pictures, imagine the knowledge, if scientists could go there and look for themselves for years at a time, not simply get pictures trickled back with agonizing slowness.

So, yes, this booster is far too big for what we do in space now. It is just right for what we should be doing in space for the near future.

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Contents:

1: The Frontier Spirit

2: What went wrong.

3: Where do we go next?

4: So, why aren't we going?

5: Dealing with the Devil

6: A brief technical interlude

7: So how good is Nuclear, anyway?

8: Heat, temperature, and cooling.

9: But isn't this dangerous?

10: Prometheus would be proud of us.

11: Ok, that all sounds nice, but this is just fantasy, right?

12: But isn't this just too big?

13: But doesn't this thing make nuclear waste?

14: Conclusions