On Space....

 Just thinking wildly..... We need to face the atmospheric drag and also gravity while launching our launch vehicles. A significant amount of payload mass gets eaten up in working against these both. Now let's consider...... We have mountains upto 7000 m above sea level in Himalayan region. Let's consider something that doesn't pose a strategic risk and which is well with in Indian mainland. What if we launch our rockets /LVs from mountain top i.e. from an altitude of 7000m. We would have lesser problems of atmospheric drag and also we would be gaining quite some amount in terms of working agains gravity. Now the problem remains of logistics. How does one transport finished rocket stages, does minimum work on it and transports it to mountain top? One can consider developing a dedicated aircraft for transporting huge rocket stages to an assembly centre based in the valley of the said mountain. There would be a dedicated airport within the assembly centre meant for this. Ther...

Now I am not a hacker, however I presume that the satellites can be hacked if sufficient effort is put in, atleast they can be jammed. What I am suggesting is to have a hacksat, it would go in the vicinity of the target satellite, jam all earth communication and then proceed to hack into the satellite controls. Let's say that it is possible, then it would initiate sequence to send the target satellite back into Earth atmosphere. It would maintain the link with the satellite and could even follow it till the satellite has been thrown away to a point of no recovery.  Another option is, if you are unable to hack into the satellite, then go near it and attach a jammer satellite to it. The jammer satellite would have its own power generation module (say solar panels etc) and it would have the necessary interfaces to mechanically attach itself to the target satellite. Also it would have sufficient disruptive power to jam all the communication from earth. I am not sure if signals being se...

It is a reboot of an old idea. Let's assume that we need to have satellites in sun sunchronus orbit, other LEO orbits, geosynchronous orbit, GTO, GEO etc. We can assume that we would need full coverage along its track.  Now considering the example of India, the problem becomes simpler of covering the Indian subcontinent mainly. Due to exponential increase in satellites being launched, there is a serious problem of debris. The method being suggested, if implemented would stop any further spread of roaming satellites and it's debris.  Solution: The suggestion goes like this - 1) Have integrated platforms for satellites. Let's say we need coverage along the full track of sun sunchronus orbit, we may need some 5-8 such platforms (just a suggestion, detailed calcs can be done) moving along a fixed sun sunchronus orbit. 2) The platform would be such that its power, propulsion, thermal management etc shall be concentrated i.e. there would be a single propulsion module for the enti...

Building on the concept of how a mechanical battery can function, here is a suggestion on how to improve the design of rocket propulsions systems and make it more compact and lightweight. Instead of using a pressurant like helium or using turbopumps for creating the fuel/ oxidiser flow, one may consider storing the energy in stress based shape memory alloy.  Store the energy in a shape memory alloy rod/ shaft (pull it create a strain and thus charge it). While releasing the energy the rod/ shaft would act against the fuel/ oxidiser stored in cylindrical tanks. Now one must find a way to transform the small displacement/ high energy density for of stored energy to large displacement form of energy thus pushing out the fuel / oxidiser from tanks. This might provide much needed weight savings. A suggestion for transforming the low displacement/ high energy density energy to large displacement form of energy - Gear based mechanism can be explored to obtain such. The shape memory alloy ...