Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization"Robert Zubrin is a true engineering genius like the heroic engineers of the past." --Frederick Turner, American Enterprise Using nuts-and-bolts engineering and a unique grasp of human history, Robert Zubrin takes us to the not-very-distant future, when our global society will branch out into the universe. From the current-day prospect of lunar bases and Mars settlements to the outer reaches of other galaxies, Zubrin delivers the most important and forward-looking work on space and the true possibilities of human exploration since Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Sagan himself said of Zubrin's humans-to-Mars plan, "Bob Zubrin really, nearly alone, changed our thinking on this issue." With Entering Space, he takes us further, into the prospect of human expansion to the outer planets of our own solar system--and beyond. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 15
... ( exhaust velocity ) , or T = mC ( 2.1 ) The higher the exhaust velocity , the more thrust can be produced for a given propellant mass flow . Rocket engineers therefore use this characteris- tic to rate engines by their specific impulse ...
... exhaust velocity of a rocket propellant is equal to the square root of twice the enthalpy ; thus , 5.1 km / s for chemicals , 12,800 km / s for nuclear fission . That's a lot better . The speed of light is 300,000 km / s . A fission ...
... exhaust velocity will drop by a fac- tor of 5 ( because exhaust velocity is proportional to the square root of the propellant's energy / mass ratio ) , but since we have 25 times the propellant , the net result is that the total impulse ...