Welcome, Grape Juice!

[pauldear]

Welcome to Grape Juice, the N-Prize's latest team!

[Jay]

Welcome indeed! The more, the merrier! Um...where does Grape Juice come from?

[SANEAlex]

And welcome from me as well just back from another meeting of the Potent Voyager team still doing the tortoise thing but we are now have a couple more diagrams to add to the patent application that we really do hope to get finished this year. Is Grape Juice planning to use traditional rocketry to attempt the prize or something more exotic Anyway best of luck I am enough of a space enthusiast to hope someone wins this prize even if it is not my team(tho I do think/hope we will be capable of achieving the tasks specifications eventually)

[NickPerry]

Hey Awesome, Thank you guys so much for the welcome's! I'm glad to be here! =D
(I'm the sole member of Grape Juice)

pauldear:
Thank you!

Jay:
Thanks!
Simple really, I'm not much of a coffee or beer drinker, and pop can be expensive. so I often drink juice when I'm programming. so for one of my programs I used 'Grape juice' as a project name, since it was right beside me. and the name just kind of stuck.

SANEAlex:
Thank you aswell!
Glad to see there are more people still active, looking around the forum/web it looked like most of the interest had died off. I hope you guys get approved for the patent(s)
Innovation is always good

and I'm going for something a bit more exotic, though I have 2 idea's bouncing around in my head, here's a summary:

1) air/vacuum cannon using the pressure of the ocean through ~km long tube with a kink in it (I'll explain the kink in a later post) wich should bring it up to (at least) mach 2-5. without using any on board fuel, after which I plan to use a hybrid engine to bring it up to mach 20-25 and enter orbit. fairly simple in principle, but will need a boat load of math (I've mainly just scratch built model airplanes that focused on slow+lots of lift for rubber power, so this is way outside my experience zone but I feel confident I can calculate it, and if the numbers look promising then I'll build it)

2) Orbital airship, I thought I was the first to come up with this Idea, but when I started doing some crude research I found that it's a real thing, and JP Aerospace's design is eerily similar to what I had in mind. and what I had in mind:
Delta shape, Hydrogen filled + partial vacuum and instead letting the internal gas expand, I'll just increase the vacuum as I go up.and I would use 3 solar powered ion thrusters for thrust.
I'll give further details in another post.
my biggest issue with this is weight (power conversion for ion thrusters) + expense (leading wing edge I plan to use tungsten to deal with the hypersonic friction heat), so I might use this Idea for when I attempt the Lunar X challenge instead, unless i find out to make this feasible for cheap. then I'll try doing both challenges at once :p

anyways, I have a lot of math to do, so hopefully in a few days I'll make a larger post with diagrams + pictures describing my thoughts/Idea's.

[SANEAlex]

On your first idea you may be interested in this link.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/articl ... lies-space

As it is along the lines of using sea pressure to contain a hydrogen cannon blast i am not sure how far along with the idea as i don't recall anything posted about it recently but the link may give you some help looking for people who may have data useful for you idea if it does share some simile aspects.

Ps for Paul if you are also reading this I still don't seem to get notifications by email from the site that changes have happened to a thread.
Edited to add i have just checked the settings and it seems that unlike other forums running on the same software you are not automaticly added as being subscribed to a thread when you post to it here you have to manually tick the subscribe button for each subfora i have now added this one and a few others and hopefully that will fix the problem i will let you all know if it does or doesn't if there is a reply on this thread.

[Jay]

I offer my (digital) self as a Guinea pig, Alex.

[SANEAlex]

[microsat]

Welcome Nick (Grape Juice).

You mentioned you would be explaining the 'kink' in your tube. From your description, I'm assuming you are placing the tube under a vacuum and then applying pressure behind your payload; at least that seems the logical approach. The cover could always just be loosely placed on the end held by the vacuum and when the projectile came close, even with a good vacuum pulled in such a long tube, the pressure ahead of the projectile might be enough to blow it aside before getting hit by your payload. Reminds me of a ocean water power generation project I read about that was done off Cuba; it pumped cold water from a tube extending thousands of feet deep to cold water where it was pumped to the surface and acted with the warm surface water to create a low pressure turbine system. I believed they also tried it in the US off the Hawaiian coast. Different purposes than what you want to do but none the less, if your cannon launcher doesn't work, convert it to a power generator.

Differs from John Hunter's cannon. I have some questions for his approach. He says an iris will close after the launching to 'save the hydrogen gas'. Seems hydrogen would be an inexpensive commodity in such a project. Also, he doesn't say anything about evacuating his cannon before firing. If he expects the half ton 'payload' projectile to be moving at 13,000 mph when it exits the cannon, that would build up a lot of pressure in from of the projectile, especially in already increased air pressure 1,600' below sea level. I would also be interested in how he plans to lube a 13,000mph 1/2 ton projectile in a 3,300' long 'barrel'. I suppose if I could raise $500 million dollars I would play with the idea.

And the there is this approach

or on a larger scale

We wish you success in your effort (you really need to find some other team members).

Team Molesats

[Jay]

[microsat]