Yes, Patrix, I learnt more in those early exchanges than 3 years of physics at high school, and an exchange that sticks in my mind is the one between Boethius and Simon.....patrix » December 6th, 2017, 2:50 pm wrote:Important things deserve to be repeated and I feel a responsibility since I opposed the idea of rockets not working in vacuum not long ago, before I was able to mentally grasp the basic physics involved. Let me try to explain this in some new ways, but also PLEASE go back to the beginning of this thread and start reading, researching and thinking. All you really need are in those very first posts by Boethius et. Al.
simonshack wrote:
I believe that the impossibility of propelling a rocket out of our planet's atmosphere was discovered at an early stage of space travel experiments. Any rocket reaching a certain, critical altitude (for which I surely won't pretend to provide/ specify any exact figure) simply stalls - due to the absence of air, and plummets back into the atmosphere.
Boethius wrote
Yes, Simon. Tom Wolfe's book "The Right Stuff" documents high altitude flight tests with rocket powered aircraft that would invariably fail in the thin air and plummet back to earth. Chuck Yeager almost died in a NF-104A rocket plane failure while attempting to set a height record. These planes were liquid fuel rockets and not air-fed jets.
Why would NASA claim to be able to send rockets into space when the USAF couldn't get the same technology into even the upper atmosphere?
Why did Chuck Yeager not join the space program? Did he know it was a hoax?
But let's suppose a rocket actually makes it one day and released water when it entered space and if the results are similar to the project High Water experiment ....
The two Project High Water launches caused the release of 95 short tons (86,000 kg) in the ionosphere.
For both of these experiments, the resulting ice clouds expanded to several miles in diameter and lightning-like radio disturbances were recorded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Highwater
....would we experience similar lightning in the so-called vacuum of space and if so could this energy source be utilised to power the craft?
Lightning
Lightning is a sudden electrostatic discharge that occurs during a thunderstorm. This discharge occurs between electrically charged regions of a cloud (called intra-cloud lightning or IC), between two clouds (CC lightning), or between a cloud and the ground (CG lightning).
Lightning electrification
The details of the charging process are still being studied by scientists, but there is general agreement on some of the basic concepts of thunderstorm electrification.
When the rising ice crystals collide with graupel, the ice crystals become positively charged and the graupel becomes negatively charged.