Balloon into orbit ?

[The Other Mike]

In late July this year

[Reentrant]

Also the size of the nucleus is irrelevent. It's tiny compared to the whole atom. Theoretically the electrons' orbit (strictly the 1S orbital) should be closer for He as there are two protons attracting each electron, with no shielding.

I wonder why they don't use a mixture of H2 and He. He is very expensive (and we're running out) and I'd expect a mixture to be less inflammable than pure H2. The lifting power is pretty much the same.

[Martin Bonner]

You're not the only one. There is probably a Nobel Prize in it for the person who finally manages to unify General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

[Tim Streater]

That I suppose is possible and could be calculated. Interesting point.

[Pete Shew]

I recognised bits near Biggleswade and Old Warden.

Pete

[dennis]

balloon envelope.

[dennis]

You can escape it, at some point the gravity from other mass exceeds that of the Earth and you have then escaped Earths gravity.

[dennis]

You mean TNP hasn't already done that!?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Of course I have, but using metaphysics, so it doesn't count..

[tony sayer]

I used to be a member of Gransden lodge and no one there any more odd than the general populace;!...

[tony sayer]

Ere guv!, how do yer know that?, U bin there then;.....

[Tim Streater]

You've escaped from its gravity but not its influence. After all, on leaving the moon and coming here, we escape from the moon's gravity. But if you don't think the moon's gravity influences the earth, in particular the *water* in the *oceans*, then think again.

Its gravity also keeps the earth's spin axis pretty stable. In some billyuns of years time, when tidal effects have caused the moon to recede quite some distance, the gravitational effects of the giant planets could quite well cause chaotic shifts in where the spin axis points.

[Tim Streater]

Might have.

[Alan Braggins]

That was my point. But the further away you get, the less that influence gets (inverse square law). There's a reason that "escape velocity" is called that.

You can't escape gravity from inside a black hole *at all*, but that's different. (Waiting for it to evaporate is cheating, as is using a time machine and a white hole:

)

[Andy Champ]

You forgot the electrons. Read this

and of course there's Mr Peek's point.

Andy

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Depends if there's anyone around to hear you scream.

[geoff]

In message , "dennis@home" writes

Stupid boy

[geoff]

In message , Tim Streater writes

Got as fridge magnet ?

[Nick Odell]

I hope I'm not duplicating something that's already been written here but this seems to be one of the most popular approaches by people intent on winning the N-Prize.

anyone just looking for the executive summary, the N-Prize is being offered to the first person or team to launch a satellite weighing between 9.99gm-19.99gm into space and complete 9 orbits - all for a cost of less than GBP999. The prize is a princely GBP9,999.

Even the organisers think that it's pretty well impossible but that's not stopping folks having a lot of fun. Including the on-line tech blog called 'The Register' Read the saga from here:

and

and

- oh work the rest out for yourselves!

The Register - or 'El Reg' as it is known to its aficionados - is following the balloon launch route towards the prize but they are insistent that for health and safety reasons only helium gas will be considered.

Personally I reckon that nobody created anything really exciting by complying with health and safety (Was Barnes Wallis considering the effect of ten tons of toluene on plant and fish life in the Rhine when developing the bouncing bomb? Did Robert Oppenheimer do all his work on the atomic bomb from behind a lead shield?)

Helium is safe and lighter than air. Hydrogen is _much_ lighter than air but not so safe but - guess what? If I've done my sums right then a lethally explosive mixture of hydrogen and ozygen is a bit heavier than helium but still much lighter than air. I can't see the point in filling a balloon with some inert gas for it to go 'pop' and fall back down to Earth when, with a bit of risk-taking you can fill it with something dangerous and have it go 'bang!' and boost your rocket in its merry way! Add a cheap, lightweight, disposable rocket motor and let your fuel float your rocket up to the stratosphere then let the fuel push the rocket the rest of the way.

Any takers?

Nick

[Tim Streater]

An explosive mixture's no good, now, is it. Light the blue touch paper to any part of it and it all goes up. You need to keep your H2 and O2 separate until you want to mix them. This is called a rocket engine and you may have heard of it. I expect YouTube has the Challenger video if you want to see what happens when you mix and ignite it all together.