neofuel new fuel: Near Earth Object fuel

This site contains some of the presentations and technical notes of the author.  Just before he left the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), United States Department of Energy, and where he worked from 1991 thru 1998, he was the last and de-facto Principal Investigator, Nuclear Space Transport Systems.  The INL space activities have changed there sometime during ~ 2006 All the technical work of the 1990's on this site was paid for and supported by the United States Departement of Energy, at the Idaho National Laboratory. The 2010 work was commissioned by Paul Sturrock.

	Water Balloon Space Ship             to bring train loads of things back to orbits around Earth < 6/24/2010 9:30:29 PM a zuppero, commissioned and paid for by Paul Sturrock.   Imagine an ice cave inside some near Earth object, with water dripping into pools and collection tanks. Imagine a Space Shuttle nudging a water balloon as big as the 85 yard line of a football field, silently, through the black night of space. Imagine someone in orbit around earth getting hold of five long train loads of anything,      like 50,000 tons of steel or water,           to use for making space ships,           rocket fuel propellant,           shielding,           solar power satellites,           really big space ships,           and all kinds of imaginative, spacey things. (600 words + technical appendix)  poetry: exodus dark stormy night 20100625
	The Ice Ship A giant space ship made of ice, as presented at the       NASA Workshop on Using In Situ Resources for       Construction of Planetary Outposts,               April 30–May 1, 1998 Narrative format. poetry:  Iceship story draft ~ 700 kbytes
	"To Inhabit the Solar System"        Anthony Zuppero had worked for the US Department of Energy national laboratories and large aerospace companies, and spearheaded teams investigating how humanity could not just visit the solar system but occupy it.          Anthony found ways to harness the unexpected and abundant forms of water in the near earth objects: neos. Using "small," nuclear-heated steam rockets to propel spaceships the size of supertankers, his spaceships could reach far enough to colonize the nearly two dozen giant ice moons in the solar system. He envisioned travelling a thousand people at a time between the planets in slowly spinninig ice-igloos. He would leverage the peculiar orbits of the abundant neo's to divert asteroids and comets from killer collisions with earth, using steam rockets and without nuclear warheads. It was almost fanciful. "Almost" makes curiously it interesting. An Illustrated Story, rough draft,  pdf                           ~ 12 MB, 250,000 words, many color illustrations
	neospace  MAPS of near earth objects      Schematic maps of the solar system, showing         near earth asteroids         near earth comets Almost half are recently discovered "water objects" which could be useful either as "gas stations" in space, or things with useful resources (e.g. platinum, hydrocarbons) None of these will crash into Earth any time soon. Only the ones that are not on the map might.
© art by zuppero	( link to Technical work ) a simple way to transport people and 10,000 ton payloads through the solar system, payloads as big as the largest supertankers some discoveries in the space around or near Earth could provide nearly unlimited amounts of "rocket fuel" in space the swarm of potentially "killer" asteroids, and a swarm of comets all relatively close to earth

Technical papers follow here

" Propulsion to Moons of Jupiter Using Heat and Water  Without Electrolysis Or Cryogenics "

This work was performed using United states Department of Enery funding at the Idaho National Laboratory
and the report was published under the sponsorship of NeoKismet L.L.C., May 2005.

Submitted draft, is a longer, better story with color illustrations    
       (PDF, 206 kBytes, color, better story)

Final Draft of Paper is a shorter, concise technical paper with black and white illustrations. 
      (PDF, 198 kBytes, black and white, per conference rules)

Conference Slides, Power Point

Compares a mission to Callisto using either water or liquid hydrogen propellants, and carrying along the hardware to extract water from space objects such as near earth asteroids, Earth's moon, comets and ice moons.

 
conference:  http://www.sesinstitute.org/Papers/call.html

Paper Identification Number: 09211248Zupp
Author: Dr. Anthony Zuppero
Affiliation: NeoKismet, L.L.C.
19 Jan 2005

Anthony C. Zuppero, William D. Richins
for presentation to the at the American Nuclear Society 1998 Annual Meeting    Annual Meeting, June 6-10, 1998 Boston, MA

short paper on water pump needed for steam rocket.

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Spaceships Made of Ice

• injecting water into the walls of a big plastic bag shaped like a huge donut or tire makes a space ship.
• no astronauts need to walk around it trying to fasten bolts and parts. Just repair holes.
• (( these are the speaker's notes for a NASA Workshop presentation 1998)
• (( start of story for book:   Iceship story draft html ~ 700 kbytes   (word document)          ))

1998 version of lunar ice water truck1999artwork by Mark Maxwell

with retired NASA Johnson Space Center structures expert as coauthor

lunar ice water truck (1997)

describes nuclear-heated steam rocket in the role of a water truck, to take lunar ice
from the moon's North or South poles and into orbit around the Moon.

• Published at the Joint Propulsion Conference, June 1997, Seattle, Washington, USA
• (journalists version) (rather raw data)

factor of 1000

Origin of How Steam Rockets can Reduce Space Transport Cost by Orders of Magnitude

Discovery of Abundant, Accessible Hydrocarbons Nearly Everywhere in the Solar System

A Zuppero

First Zuppero paper proclaiming water in the solar system, from planet Mercury all the way to the Kuiper belt.

Space Mineral Resources session, SPACE 96, Fifth International Conference and Exposition on Engineering, Construction and Operations in Space, Albuquerque, new Mexico, June 1-6, 1996

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"Manned Mars Missions Using Propellant From Space,"  describes using comet water,  presented at "10 TH Symposium On Space Nuclear Power And Propulsion," January, 1993, Albuquerque, New mexico, USA    195 Kbytes

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The Space of Earth-Crossing Objects

images of the swarm of objects that cross the orbit of earth     cropped, printable version (download, 2 MByte)

nearly unlimited dirty oil shale from space

One use of the rocket fuel could be to bring back to Earth some of the nearly unlimited supply of hydrocarbons, which are something like "oil shale from space." The amount of hydrocarbons (dirty oil shale from space) is more than the capacity of Earth to absorb or use.     (( draft story for book inhabit/  ))

these comets appear to make a donut starting at Mars and ending at Jupiter
 

medium resolution (300 kbytes)
high resolution (2.2 megabytes) jpg of near earth asteroids and comets
 cropped printable version (download, 2 MByte) for students

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this is a 1997 working paper that shows the asteroid and comet distributions, and a conjecture about how spent comets might bring water to the poles of the moon and Mercury.

 

rocket fuel around Earth itself, for a faster internet connection
Another use is to bring back "rocket fuel" to orbits around Earth. The rocket fuel would make space missions much less expensive. Commercial communication satellites would make a fast cell phone internet connection to a laptop computer.  How could we use the recently discovered "rocket fuel" from space to make the cost of communication satellites less expensive?

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Abundant mass in space can dramatically lower the cost of a satellite that generates electricity and sends it to Earth.
   (text available on request, and still in draft form)

• using a uniquely close comet for its rocket fuel, "space oil shale"

solar heated steam rocket

• how it works, how it would take payloads from a low moon orbit to elsewhere

data on solar heated and nuke-heated steam rockets

• plot of payload per launched space truck,  space ship or space tug.
• assume they can fill up their tanks at a space water station.
• solar thermal steam rockets should work very well according to estimates based on Univ. of Alabama, Huntsville, Johnathan Jones figures. He has experimental data, paid for by NASA Marshal Space Flight Center, Huntsville

derivation of optimum rocket specific impulse

example: from Earth to Mars

• physics of rocket systems where the energy comes from one source and the propellant comes

from another.

• derives equation showing how a medium specific impulse delivers the largest payload, at lowest energy cost, and fastest.
• depends on abundant rocket propellant in space

space98 viewgraph raw notes

The same, optimum value of delta_V/Vsp

•      maximizes payload
•      maximizes speed delta_V
•      minimizes energy required

more space98 viewgraphs and interesting charts

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

(index-offensive  html removed 2002.10.28, thanks and apollogies to Dr. Lee Plansky)
byron bay (nosp)

index_likewaterships.html#watership
2010.07.12_p1200 az  /z   charlou    patents html  [format it correctly]      also see        writing sample ? [sine spaces];  ref, data and nugget are pdf