Does Rocketry Work beyond Earth's atmosphere?

[Discumbobulate]

By what mechanism could shock waves form in a vacuum? The vacuum would negate any pressure build up surely.

For what it's worth my opinion is that you could not produce ignition of rocket fuel in a vacuum let alone a prolonged fuel burn. Basic chemistry as I recall - to increase the rate of chemical reaction apply heat/pressure , to retard the rate of chemical reaction reduce heat/pressure.

Sorry to be such a stick in the mud. I've not read ISS thread yet - so much to catch up with. Will also pay a visit to your website. Sounds very interesting .

[kalliste]

By what mechanism could shock waves form in a vacuum? The vacuum would negate any pressure build up surely.

For what it's worth my opinion is that you could not produce ignition of rocket fuel in a vacuum let alone a prolonged fuel burn. Basic chemistry as I recall - to increase the rate of chemical reaction apply heat/pressure , to retard the rate of chemical reaction reduce heat/pressure.

Sorry to be such a stick in the mud. I've not read ISS thread yet - so much to catch up with. Will also pay a visit to your website. Sounds very interesting .

I agree with you this is not a complete theory. I'm not saying a rocket will work in a vacuum I'm saying if it does this could be a reason why. Like you I'm unsure if shock waves can form in a gas expanding in the vacuum of space but in high velocity turbulent flow rocket exhaust I imagine it's a possibility.

Ignition of a rocket engine in a vaccum isn't an insurmountable problem to my imagination: hypergolic fuels ignite spontaneously on mixing and can be pumped at high pressure at the injector plate in the engine to ensure mix at high pressure. Plasma igniters require no flame and again some kind of turbopump powered electrically or what have you could provide high pressure jets of fuel.

It's the rocket equation and how a rocket engine is purported to work as a physical system I have issues with. I believe a rocket engine is not a "reaction engine" instead it's a very inefficient internal combustion engine with the nozzle and in the case of shock wave formation the exhaust gases being the substitute for a piston.

As mentioned by others, we have only NASA's word for the conditions near earth. They've now said earth's atmosphere reaches the moon in a highly attenuated form so the goal posts are constantly changing. Just how hard really is the vacuum in inter-planetary space within the solar system. There's planets and all sorts of random stuff off-gassing.

[Mansur]

_________

@ glg

Maybe you are right; I focused rather on the video as such and its maker and on the possibility of its being a fraud (though seems that without the string, the thing lying on the ground or even levitating somehow, it would happen pretty much the same - but I don't want to make an issue of it either, the thread seems about to take an interesting turn).

[kalliste]

As mentioned by others, we have only NASA's word for the conditions near earth. They've now said earth's atmosphere reaches the moon in a highly attenuated form so the goal posts are constantly changing. Just how hard really is the vacuum in inter-planetary space within the solar system. There's planets and all sorts of random stuff off-gassing.

My guess, at this point, is that liquid fuel rockets work in space but very poorly and mainstream science has no real understanding of what's going on. Much like they can only hand wave about what is the actual mechanism for aerodynamic lift on a wing. Much more fuel than their equations tell them is required after the rocket leaves the majority of the earth's atmosphere and not all rocket engine designs work in the absence of significant atmospheric pressure and they don't understand why. Hence the Apollo debacle and the need for fakery. Apollo had to work to steal all that money from the taxpayer and be able to keep stealing it. The ISS is as high as it can get and NASA/ESA spends the whole time working hard to keep it up there. None of this can be admitted for obvious reasons.
This video which commentators seem to think is from the late fifties is classy

full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZiTKXTKa9Q

[patrix]

My guess, at this point, is that liquid fuel rockets work in space

Well your guess/belief is not in accordance with proven physics then. Please start reading and studying the very first posts in this thread. It was demonstrated in the 19th century that rockets have no possibility to create thrust in space. Using liquid fuel does not make a iota of difference. NASAs "rocket equation" is pure pseudo physics.

[kalliste]

My guess, at this point, is that liquid fuel rockets work in space

Well your guess/belief is not in accordance with proven physics then. Please start reading and studying the very first posts in this thread. It was demonstrated in the 19th century that rockets have no possibility to create thrust in space. Using liquid fuel does not make a iota of difference. NASAs "rocket equation" is pure pseudo physics.

I'm proposing a different mechanism for rocket action and the rocket equation is not of any central importance to how I envisage rocket engines to work in a vacuum. So read my stuff again. Solid fuel rockets aren't interesting because you have no control over stop/start. I'm saying rocket engines work by transferring the energy of the exhaust gases to the rocket via shock waves in the nozzle and/or exhaust stream. The exhaust gas is not expanding freely into the vacuum. It's in effect an internal combustion engine with the nozzle acting as a piston. It's also why I guess that if you get it right the rocket can move in the direction the nozzle and exhaust gases are pointing or a least you could design a nozzle where that was possible, counter-intuitive though that may seem and in contradiction to how NASA/ESA claims rockets work. In atmosphere the external atmospheric pressure would make this unlikely I think since in atmosphere I envisage the rocket mainly developing thrust by the exhaust pushing against the atmosphere. In high vacuum the efficiency (amount of thrust for amount of fuel consumed) of the rocket engine would plummet dramatically is my guess, so a great deal more fuel would be required to do work than expected from the rocket equation. My guess is because it's pushing not against the mass of external air but against the generated shock wave and it takes energy to generate the shock waves. In atmosphere shock waves would reduce the rocket engine thrust according to my thinking.

As I've noted, modern science still only has hand waving to explain aerodynamic lift on a wing so it's no stretch to imagine science hasn't got a proper explanation of how rocket engines work.

Notice aerospike engines and rotating detonation rocket engines appear to have been flavour of the month for a while then got dropped. Empirical testing has got them engines that can do something in a vacuum but they still haven't figured out how they've actually done it.

One a vaguely related note. This video of Werner Von Braun is pretty awesome about what they thought they were up to in the fifties
[Youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK4RbeBxqso[/Youtube]
...and then there's this...
[Youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLZPOYj0roA[/Youtube]

[simonshack]

I'm saying rocket engines work by transferring the energy of the exhaust gases to the rocket via shock waves in the nozzle and/or exhaust stream. The exhaust gas is not expanding freely into the vacuum. It's in effect an internal combustion engine with the nozzle acting as a piston.

Oh dear...

[kalliste]

Oh dear...

I also think they had to fake the early A bombs but they got them to work to some extent eventually. The problem with nuclear power stations is not so much they don't work but they're too expensive to construct, are destroyed very quickly by the radiation and high temperatures, and are really only made to make more nuclear materials for bomb experiments and sundry nefarious purposes.

[Youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKQHoAk6ONw[/Youtube]

Here's footage of a rocket powered upwards by shock waves, in this case from actual explosions but it's how I contend rocket engines in general work

[Youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njM7xlQIjnQ[/Youtube]

[patrix]

No offense but you can believe what you want to and be in plenty of company since most of the human population has bought into the NASA bullshit including me until a few years ago when I found this site.

But here we're interested in what can be scientifically/forensically confirmed and as for NASAs own explanation as to how their rocket creates thrust, it can be demonstrated to be pseudo physics which is done in the very first posts in this thread. Please study that. And if you find any observation or experiment that disprove the claims made there, congratulations! You will be famous since you've then found something that will change the laws of physics.

Atom bombs and atom physics fall in the same category as viruses and contagion - scientifically unconfirmed. And since several "nuclear events" including Hiroshima can be demonstrated to use false imagery there's no rational reason to think they are real until some actual evidence has been presented.

[kalliste]

No offense but you can believe what you want to and be in plenty of company since most of the human population has bought into the NASA bullshit including me until a few years ago when I found this site.

Here we're interested in what can be scientifically/forensically confirmed and as for NASAs own explanation as to how their rocket creates thrust, it can be demonstrated to be pseudo physics which is done in the very first posts in this thread. Please study that. And if you find any observation or experiment that disprove the claims made there, congratulations! You will be famous since you've then found something that will change the laws of physics.

Atom bombs and atom physics fall in the same category as viruses and contagion - scientifically unconfirmed. And since several "nuclear events" including Hiroshima can be demonstrated to use false imagery there's no rational reason to think they are real until some actual evidence has been presented.

I've described a mechanism of how rockets can work in a vacuum, whatever NASA is telling us to believe. I'm not saying I know 100% rockets work in the vacuum of space but I'm saying it is possible they do actually work in the vacuum of space just not how NASA wants us to believe. I don't believe the BS NASA is pushing as propaganda of what they're doing. The Moon Landing photos were faked obviously because there's no way those Hasselblad cameras could have functioned on the moon unless conditions on the moon are drastically different from what NASA is telling us to believe. The pictures therefore must be fake or not taken in the manner NASA describes which again is lying for some purpose to deceive even if the pictures were taken on the moon and they did everything they described to us on the moon. There's footage of moon walks where they're so obviously on wires it baffles me that people can't see it. The moon EVA suits make no sense and are laughable if the conditions on the moon are as NASA described there is no way people could survive inside them on the moon's surface. This isn't even debatable, it baffles me how anyone buys this stuff. The stuff they're showing from the ISS is ludicrously fake. The problem is we can't know what they're really doing. We don't know if the ISS observers can see from the ground is a space station which they're doing nefarious things in or just a dummy to give us something to look at from the ground or some other illusion pulled off with covert technology.

We can demonstrate lies but the problem is discerning what is actually true. For all I know they recovered alien tech at Roswell and so they can fly to the moon all the time and then Eisenhower really did meet up with the Greys at Edwards Air Force Base and sign a treaty. NASA then has to run a giant disinformation campaign so we don't cotton on that "They Live" was actually a documentary.

Since you mentioned atom bombs I think they faked the early ones but my hunch is they eventually got them to work. My guess is a big problem with them is that radiation destroys the bombs so they won't function if they're stored for any length of time in an assembled form and using them as practical weapons is logistically extremely difficult. Likewise I think nuclear reactors sort of work but they're actually impractical for real world use because, again, radiation damages the components and structure so much they don't function for any significant length of time without massive amounts of work replacing components, re-welding metal, etc. They're basically too expensive to use for real when if you just light something with carbon in it on fire you can get all the energy you need. On the other hand, nuclear reactors are just the ticket for looting as much money as you want from the taxpayers. If you want to put nuclear reactors in your ludicrously expensive aircraft carriers they're just the ticket. No expense needs to be spared. Likewise weapons too terrible to use are ideal for taking the taxpayers money hand over fist without having to show anything for it other than some scary looking pictures. The Occam's Razor answer to all this is they're just hard at work stealing our money and they'll sell us any old BS we'll swallow to get it

Listening to Elon Musk talk for five minutes tells you everything you need to know that we're being lied to on a monumental scale. He's supposedly the richest man in the world. It's beyond insanity, it's the Twilight Zone.

[Discumbobulate]

Kalliste , imagination does not provide a method for a rocket engine to provide thrust in a vacuum. We know from scientific controlled experiment that a rocket engine cannot do work in a vacuum.

The video of rocketry you posted earlier was interesting in that this is an early example of a mixture of science and pseudo science used to programme the masses.

In the video the method of achieving travel to the moon used by Jules Verne was the only known way of getting from earth to the moon , because science was aware of ramifications of Joules experiment. Could only be achieved via an enormous artillery shell since rockets were known not to work in a vacuum.

The description of the three stage rocketry was as I remember from the sixties. But since becoming aware of Joules experiment it is apparent that achieving the 18,000mph in the upper atmosphere for satellite deployment is nonsense too . Nothing can fall around the earth according to the theory of gravity as an attraction of mass across distance by unknown means.

You may of course provide a constant force of acceleration to enable a satellite to orbit around the planet , but without this force any satellite will spiral down towards the centre of earths gravity .

Was nice to see a mention of the N-body problem associated with orbiting bodies , sun moon and earth. A problem which is unsolvable within the heliocentric system.

[kalliste]

Kalliste , imagination does not provide a method for a rocket engine to provide thrust in a vacuum. We know from scientific controlled experiment that a rocket engine cannot do work in a vacuum.

We haven't seen that as far as I can tell. Check the video I posted from Project Orion, where a capsule is being propelled by high explosive shock waves. My mechanism for rockets to work in space doesn't involve Joule Expansion.

In another sense it doesn't matter. We can observe that NASA is lying about a bunch of things, we have no good way of definitively determining what is true and what is disinformation or misdirection.

The more interesting avenue of investigation is what can we figure out of what they are hiding from us? I suspect the answer to that is, "not much." Though an hour or two in a room with Tim Peake shackled to a chair and some secateurs and I'd find out something for sure.

[glg]

(...)

We can observe that NASA is lying about a bunch of things, we have no good way of definitively determining what is true and what is disinformation or misdirection.
(...)

kalliste, can you name anything practical, no matter how minute, that you think has originated and been devised solely by way of space travel?
Can you name anything practical, that you think would not be possible without access to space travel?

If you can answer in the affirmative and conclusively, I will start pondering if NASA is actually hiding things and question what about them is true or not, but if you find nothing, I will be content not bothering so as if they simply hide everything (which would be of no consequence to me) or otherwise, not bothering because I know they are full of rubbish.

[patrix]

I posted this on Facebook the other day:

Good morning. I will record myself dancing naked in the street and post here if anyone can provide me any ACTUAL scientific confirmation (a relevant repeatable observation or controlled experiment) that viru5es exist, that rockets can create thrust in an unrestricted vacuum such as space, or that the Earth orbits the Sun. Oh, and I find plenty confirmation that Earth is a rotating sphere btw. No problems there. :-)
*****

And again, no offense but I think I speak for most cluesforumers: No one here is interested in your unconfirmable beliefs regarding rockets. Read the thread will you, and if you have something that hasn't been examined already go ahead and post, if not please don't. And if you're right you will have the dubious pleasure of being able to watch me running naked down the street.

[simonshack]

*
Dear all,

I find it quite fascinating that this particular Cluesforum thread ("Does Rocketry Work beyond Earth's atmosphere?" - started by our member Boethius back in 2013, i.e. a DECADE ago!) has now over a million views - yet, and so far, not ONE single substantiated argument has been put forth in support of the physical possibility of rockets being able to propel themselves beyond the Earth's atmosphere.

That's right: we are now in 2023 - and ten years of discussions have not yielded a shred of evidence to back up NASA's 65-year-old (yet ongoing) space travel narrative.

I will therefore solemnly declare (for now - and until any contradictory proof is submitted) the case closed: NO rockets can exit the Earth's atmosphere.

As for Robert Goddard, considered to be the "father of space rocketry" (although his toy rockets only reached a few miles of altitude), here's what we may read on the Wikipedia:

In 1924, Goddard published an article, "How my speed rocket can propel itself in vacuum", in Popular Science, in which he explained the physics and gave details of the vacuum experiments he had performed to prove the theory. But, no matter how he tried to explain his results, he was not understood by the majority. After one of Goddard's experiments in 1929, a local Worcester newspaper carried the mocking headline "Moon rocket misses target by 238,7991⁄2 miles."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Goddard

"He was not understood by the majority"... Well, this may well be a case where the majority was quite right !

Space travel is a silly joke, folks - get over it. Now.

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For some more hilarious reading about Robert Goddard's ambitious projects, go to this NASA website article (see short extract of the same below).

"Toward the end of his 1920 report, Goddard outlined the possibility of a rocket reaching the moon and exploding a load of flash powder there to mark its arrival. The bulk of his scientific report to the Smithsonian was a dry explanation of how he used the $5,000 grant in his research. The press picked up Goddard’s scientific proposal about a rocket flight to the moon, however, and created a journalistic controversy concerning the feasibility of such a thing. The resulting ridicule created in Goddard firm convictions about the nature of the press corps, which he held for the rest of his life."

Oh yeah, we all know that the press corps is such an eeeevil entity !