Isn't it possible to cut down the cost of space rockets?

Question

It seems the reason for the "fuel problem" with our rockets getting into space is that everyone is in too much of a hurry. If you utilized a cheaper technology, such as a hot helium balloon, to get the rocket at a decent height before finally firing up the rockets, couldn't you cut down on the costs of the launch quite a bit? Also, wouldn't storing the energy in a flywheel be a lot smarter than using tons of rocket fuel?

You have to remember, you can't just say no fuel is more efficient than another based on the Laws of Conservation. Why? Because some fuels store more energy for each kilogram of mass they add to the load!

A flywheel would be more efficient than tons and tons of fuel because the energy is stored kinetically. The only requirement would be to keep it suspended and in a vacuum. Also, a flywheel doesn't HAVE to be massive. It could be small and spinning VERY fast.

As for propellant? Why not use a helium balloon to assist in lifting, and also use that helium as the gas to eject from the bottom of the rocket?

Answer 1

Fuel is a more compact way to store energy than a flywheel.
Also remember you would have to carry the flywheel up all the way too while you only have to carry the fuel until you burn it.
The main cost to launching rockets is not the fuel.
It is in fact a very small percentage, if I were guessing I would say less than one percent.
The main cost is building a rocket that does not explode on the way up and ends up where you want it.
It takes a small army of people to build and launch one rocket into orbit.
Some people are working on using helium balloons or airplane as launching platforms and one or the other might one day be standard.
There is one company whose goal it is to reduce lanching costs by a factor of ten by using less people to build and launch a simplier system, check them out at spacex.com.
Here is a couple of companies working on plane launch systems
www.scaled.com
www.transformspace.com
or look up the x prize for other ideas people are trying
www.xprizefoundation.com

Answer 2

You have a very interesting question here. First, your flywheel idea won't help, because it isn't just 'energy' that a rocket requires. It has to actually spit out material carrying momentum so that the rest of the rocket will be propelled the other way. A flywheel has no exhaust. It's the high speed exhaust that makes a rocket go.

And raising the rocket to some degree before firing it wouldn't help that much. The energy required to reach an orbital velocity is very large compared to the energy gained by raising it part way in a balloon.

The way to cut down on fuel costs is to launch smaller rockets and miniaturize and lighten the payloads as much as possible. But for any rocket it's always going to be pretty much a huge tank of fuel topped with a tiny little payload. There's really no other way.

Answer 3

Unfortunately not in the manner u said. U can cut down the cost by using cheaper fuels combined with cheaper and more reliable realisation methods. Helium baloons to lift the pay loads of present genus require huge size. Actually storing energy in fly wheels is a waste because of friction involved. More over there are various conversion efficiencies to be considered.

Answer 4

Think of the Law of Conservation of Energy.

No matter the route you take to launch a rocket to a given height/speed....it will always take the same amount of energy.
Whether that energy was supplied totally by liquid/solid rocket fuel, or only partially so, the same total amount of energy needs to go into it.
If the rocket was lifted into the air by balloons, those balloons had to give up some of their potential energy in order to lift the shuttle...if we ever want to get those balloons back, we'll need to spend extra energy to pull them back down....the same amount of energy needed to launch the shuttle. Or we could just waste the balloons and the gas inside...but this would be awfully inefficient since we would have to buy new gas each time.......and it would take A LOT of gas.
The fly wheel idea suffers from a similar draw back in that in order to extract energy from the fly wheel; energy needs to have been put into it in the first place.

You will never escape spending the bare minimum amount of energy to do the task, the trick is to find out how to do it as efficiently as possible so that that is all your spending, as little waste as possible.
I doubt that the energy going into filling a giant balloon or charging a fly wheel comes out to be less than the energy needed to produce the various fuels used to launch rockets.

Also, often times, rocket launches have a very narrow "window" of opportunity in which to launch, if they miss the launch window, they have to reschedule. When it is time to launch, you need to get going; you don’t have time to lazily drift up on a balloon.

Answer 5

There is a way to have VERY high powered fuel. That is the destruction of matter and anti-matter by colliding two opposite forms. This totally converts ALL the mass into energy, creating much more energy than nuclear fusion.

Answer 6

lol.

what in the hell can haul 1,000's on tons of rocket up into the air?

I'm pretty sure the guys down at N.A.S.A have it handled.

they are... well rocket scientists.

Answer 7

what the hell is a flywheel