Here's the math behind making a star-encompassing megastructure.

In 1960, visionary physicist Freeman Dyson proposed that an advanced alien civilization would someday quit fooling around with kindergarten-level stuff like wind turbines and nuclear reactors and finally go big, completely enclosing their home star to capture as much solar energy as they possibly could. They would then go on to use that enormous amount of energy to mine bitcoin, make funny videos on social media, delve into the deepest mysteries of the Universe, and enjoy the bounties of their energy-rich civilization.

But what if the alien civilization was… us? What if we decided to build a Dyson sphere around our sun? Could we do it? How much energy would it cost us to rearrange our solar system, and how long would it take to get our investment back? Before we put too much thought into whether humanity is capable of this amazing feat, even theoretically, we should decide if it’s worth the effort. Can we actually achieve a net gain in energy by building a Dyson sphere? //

Even if we were to coat the entire surface of the Earth in solar panels, we would still only capture less than a tenth of a billionth of all the energy our sun produces. Most of it just radiates uselessly into empty space. We’ll need to keep that energy from radiating away if we want to achieve Great Galactic Civilization status, so we need to do some slight remodeling. We don’t want just the surface of the Earth to capture solar energy; we want to spread the Earth out to capture more energy. //

For slimmer, meter-thick panels operating at 90 percent efficiency, the game totally changes. At 0.1 AU, the Earth would smear out a third of the sun, and we would get a return on our energy investment in around a year. As for Jupiter, we wouldn’t even have to go to 0.1 AU. At a distance about 30 percent further out than that, we could achieve the unimaginable: completely enclosing our sun. We would recoup our energy cost in only a few hundred years, and we could then possess the entirety of the sun’s output from then on. //

MichalH Smack-Fu Master, in training
4y
62

euknemarchon said:
I don't get it. Why wouldn't you use asteroid material?
The mass of all asteroids amounts to only 3% of the earth's moon. Not worth chasing them down, I'd guess. //

DCStone Ars Tribunus Militum
14y
2,313
"But [Jupiter]’s mostly gas; it only has about five Earth’s worth of rocky material (theoretically—we’re not sure) buried under thousands of kilometers of mostly useless gas. We'd have to unbind the whole dang thing, and then we don’t even get to use most of the mass of the planet."

Hmm. If we can imagine being able to unbind rocky planets, we can also imagine fusing the gas atmosphere of Jupiter to make usable material (think giant colliders). Jupiter has a mass of about 1.9 x 10^27 kg, of which ~5% is rocky core. We'd need to make some assumptions about the energy required to fuse the atmosphere into something usable (silicon and oxygen to make silicates?) and the efficiency of that process. Does it do enough to change the overall calculation though? //

Dark Jaguar Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
9y
11,066
The bigger issue is the sphere wouldn't be gravitationally locked in place because the sun is cancelling it's own pull in every direction. Heck even Ringworld had to deal with this flaw in the sequel. That's why these days the futurists talking about enclosing the sun recommend "Dyson swarming" instead.

Edit: A little additional note. You can't really get the centrifugal force needed to generate artificial gravity across an entire sphere like you can with a ring. A swarm doesn't negate this. If you orbit fast enough to generate that artificial gravity, you're now leaving the sun behind. Enjoy drifting endlessly! No, rather each of these swarm objects are just going to have to rotate themselves decently fast.

A successful engine relight demonstration would pave the way for future Starships to ascend into stable, sustainable orbits. It's essential to test the Raptor engine's ability to reignite in space for a deorbit burn to steer Starship out of orbit toward an atmospheric reentry. //

The second change SpaceX will introduce on this test flight involves the vehicle's heat shield. These modifications will allow engineers to gather data before future attempts to return Starship to land at SpaceX's Starbase launch site in South Texas.

Perhaps as soon as next year, SpaceX wants to bring Starship back to Starbase to be caught by mechanical arms on the launch tower, similar to the way the company recovered the rocket's Super Heavy booster for the first time last month. Eventually, SpaceX aims to rapidly reuse Super Heavy boosters and Starships.

"The flight test will assess new secondary thermal protection materials and will have entire sections of heat shield tiles removed on either side of the ship in locations being studied for catch-enabling hardware on future vehicles," SpaceX wrote on its mission overview page.

SpaceX installed catch fittings on the Super Heavy booster to allow it to be captured by the launch tower's catch arms. The ship will need similar fittings jutting out from its heat shield.

"The ship also will intentionally fly at a higher angle of attack in the final phase of descent, purposefully stressing the limits of flap control to gain data on future landing profiles," SpaceX said. //

SpaceX seeks to fly Starships as many as 25 times next year, so cutting down the turnaround time between flights is fundamental to the company's plans. Making Starship capable of sustained orbital operations—something the in-space engine relight should enable—is a prerequisite for launching Starlink satellites or refueling Starships in orbit.

The Falcon 9 rocket is truly delivering on the promise of rapid, reusable launch.

SpaceX recently hit some notable milestones with its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, and even in the full context of history, the performance of the vehicle is pretty incredible.

Last Tuesday, the company launched a batch of Starlink v2-mini satellites from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a Falcon 9 rocket, marking the 400th successful mission by the Falcon 9 rocket. Additionally, it was the Falcon program's 375th booster recovery, according to SpaceX. Finally, with this mission, the company shattered its record for turnaround time from the landing of a booster to its launch to 13 days and 12 hours, down from 21 days.

But even though it was mere hours before the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, SpaceX was not done for the month. On Saturday, November 30, the company launched twice more in a little more than three hours. The payloads were more Starlink Internet satellites in addition to two Starshield satellites—a custom version of Starlink for the US Department of Defense—for the US military. //

So far this year, SpaceX has launched a total of 119 Falcon 9 rockets, for an average of a launch every 2.3 days. The company has already superseded its previous record total for annual Falcon 9 launches, 92, completed last year. If SpaceX achieves its goal of 15 additional Falcon 9 launches this month, it would bring the company's total this year to 134 flights. If you add two Falcon Heavy missions to that, it brings the total to 136 launches.

That is a meaningful number, because over the course of the three decades it flew into orbit, NASA's Space Shuttle flew 135 missions.

The space shuttle was a significantly more complex vehicle, and unlike the Falcon 9 rocket, humans flew aboard it during every mission. However, there is some historical significance in the fact that the Falcon rocket may fly as many missions in a single year as the space shuttle did during its lifetime. //

The principal goal of the Falcon program was to demonstrate rapid, low-cost reusability. By one estimate, it cost NASA about $1.5 billion to fly a single space shuttle mission. (Like the Falcon 9, the shuttle was mostly but not completely reusable.) SpaceX's internal costs for a Falcon 9 launch are estimated to be as low as $15 million. So SpaceX has achieved a flight rate about 30 times higher than the shuttle at one-hundredth the cost.

Space enthusiast Ryan Caton also crunched the numbers on the number of SpaceX launches this year compared to some of its competitors. So far this year, SpaceX has launched as many rockets as Roscosmos has since 2013, United Launch Alliance since 2010, and Arianespace since 2009. This year alone, the Falcon 9 has launched more times than the Ariane 4, Ariane 5, or Atlas V rockets each did during their entire careers. //

Booster no. 1067 completed its 23rd flight by launching the Koreasat 62 mission into geostationary transfer orbit. Maybe we'll see it go for two dozen before 2024 is out? //

PhillyJimi Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
7y
154
Missing another really important point. SX is going to build over 100 2nd stages this year and they have build over 400. Yes, reusing the 1st stage is great but that is some impressive production from SX to kick out that many 2nd stages. //

Wickwick Ars Legatus Legionis
14y
37,082
OrvGull said:
Goes to show what a cul-de-sac manned space flight was.

The Shuttle's flight rate was not limited to what it was because it was manned.

By the time it retires, Atlas V will have flown about 115 flights in 24 years. That's a worse cadence than the Shuttles maintained. By your logic, it's an example of what a cul-de-sac unmanned flight was. //

pavon Ars Tribunus Militum
17y
2,206
Subscriptor
That shuttle comparison isn't apples to apples. First, Crew Dragon missions cost a lot more than a normal Falcon 9 launch. SpaceX is paid $350 million per mission, and OIG has estimated Space X's internal cost to be around $220 million per mission. In addition the Shuttle was able to launch both crew and cargo at once, and usually did so with ISS missions. The shuttle cargo capacity was roughly double a reusable Falcon 9 or half a reusable Falcon Heavy. Published Falcon Heavy mission prices vary a lot (from $117-330 million), but lets take a WAG and say $100 million internal cost. So depending on mission needs the comparison would range from:

Crew Dragon + Falcon Heavy Cargo $330M ~= 1/4.5 Shuttle
Crew Dragon + Falcon 9 Cargo $235M ~= 1/6 Shuttle
Falcon Heavy Only $100M ~= 1/15 Shuttle
Falcon 9 Only $15M ~= 1/100 Shuttle

So for the most common ISS case the Shuttle was about 5 times more expensive than Space X, and that is internal cost - it would be closer comparing the actual price NASA pays. That is still a big multiplier, but it was only when the humans weren't a mission requirement and were only along for the ride that it was stupid expensive. //

mhalpern Ars Praefectus
6y
42,765
latteland said:
SpaceX is amazing, world beating even, but this comparison is misleading. The shuttle was human rated and a generic falcon 9 is not. The human rated versions of falcon 9 have performed extremely well, but they don't launch them over and over for human use, just once afaik.
all F9s flying today are human rated, they just don't put people on them after their 5th flight

The Voyager probes have entered a new phase of operations. As recent events have shown, keeping the venerable spacecraft running is challenging as the end of their mission nears.

As with much of the Voyager team nowadays, Kareem Badaruddin, a 30-year veteran of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), divides his time between the twin Voyager spacecraft and other flight projects. He describes himself as a supervisor of chief engineers but leaped at the chance to fill the role on the Voyager project. //

With physical hardware long gone, the team has an array of simulators. "We have a very clear understanding of the hardware," said Badaruddin. "We know exactly what the circuitry is, what the computers are, and where the software runs."

And the software? It's complicated.

There have been so many tweaks and changes over the years that working out the exact revision of every part of Voyager's code is tricky. "It's usually easier to just get a memory readout from the spacecraft to find out what's on there," said Badaruddin.

We're sure there are more than a few engineers on Earth who are not entirely sure what their systems are running. The challenge for the Voyager team is that the spacecraft are nearing the half-century mark, as is the documentation. //

The Voyager spacecraft are unlikely to survive another decade. The power will eventually dwindle to the point where operations will be impossible. High data rates (relatively speaking – Voyager's high data rate is 1.4 kilobits per second) will only be supported by the current Deep Space Network (DSN) until 2027 or 2028. After that, some more creativity will be needed to operate Voyager 1's digital tape recorder.

Badaruddin speculates that shutting off another heater (the Bay One heater) used for the computers would free up power for the recorder, according to the thermal model, but it'll be a delicate balancing act. //

Badaruddin hopes to stick with the mission until the final transmission from the spacecraft.

"I love Voyager. I love this work. I love what I'm doing. It's so cool. It just feels like I've got the best job at JPL." ®. //

The Farthest
The Farthest is an excellent documentary on Voyager produced by a friend of mine, Clare Stronge.

Watch it here - https://youtu.be/1g6uFe3vZE0?si=BIQR-GjLt1E2a4Xh

The Starship launch system is about to reach a tipping point, Gwynne Shotwell said, as it moves from an experimental rocket toward operational missions.

"We just passed 400 launches on Falcon, and I would not be surprised if we fly 400 Starship launches in the next four years," Shotwell said at the Baron Investment Conference in New York City. "We want to fly it a lot."

That lofty goal seems aspirational, not just because of the hardware challenges but also due to the ground systems (SpaceX currently has just one operational launch tower) as well as the difficulty of supplying that much liquid oxygen and methane for such a high flight rate. However, it's worth noting that SpaceX will launch Starship four times this year, twice the number of Falcon Heavy missions. An acceleration of Starship is highly likely. //

"Starship obsoletes Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule," she said. "Now, we are not shutting down Dragon, and we are not shutting down Falcon. We'll be flying that for six to eight more years, but ultimately, people are going to want to fly on Starship. It's bigger. It's more comfortable. It will be less expensive. And we will have flown it so many more times.". //

As Starlink has come online, it has significantly increased the valuation of the privately held company. A decade ago, SpaceX was valued at about $12 billion, and this grew to $36 billion in 2020. Most recently, the company was valued at about $255 billion. //

DDopson Ars Tribunus Militum
22y
2,397
Subscriptor++
daddyboomalati said:
Can someone unpack this for me? I cannot understand how a massive rocket is a better choice than the Falcon 9 for medium-weight payloads. My only thought is that it delivers multiple satellites at once. I do it all the time in Kerbal Space Program, but is this a thing in real life, or an eventual likelihood?
It's simpler than that. Starship costs less to launch than F9.

Each F9 launch expends a second stage that costs roughly $20M to fabricate. They do recover the $40M booster and the $6M fairings, but they have to fabricate a new second stage for every launch. And that second stage consumes one Merlin engine, but that's only a relatively small fraction of the stage's cost, on account of SpaceX's spectacular efficiency at manufacturing rocket engines for <$1M, literally hundreds of times cheaper than, eg, the RS-25 engines NASA buys.

The cost to fuel a Starship is on the order of a few million, possibly in the $2M or $3M ballpark (this was estimated in a prior thread), probably more when including their current fueling logistics costs, possibly a bit less at scale when they are manufacturing their own LOX and can amortize various bits of fueling infra over a consistent level of demand.

Ground logistics add additional costs (control center staff, ground crew, amortized share of launch complex, etc), but these are hard to estimate. Dividing the entire Boca Chica facility cost over ~5 test launches would produce an unfavorable number, but that's silly. The ground facilities should amortize fairly well as the launch cadence increases. And this stuff is probably mostly comparable between the two platforms.

Sticking with relatively conservative numbers, I expect their all-up internal marginal cost per Starship launch to be well under $10M per flight, much less than the cost of fabricating a new F9 second stage.

Launching Starship is thus cheaper than launching F9.

Now that's an internal cost that we may never learn with precision, and SpaceX will make a business decision about what price to charge to their customers. They may create very attractive rates for rideshares. They will likely maintain high prices for "white glove" launch contracts that include significant payload preparation and other services, especially DoD and NASA, which already typically pay more per F9 launch contract than the sticker price on the website for "just a launch". //

Delta-V required for transfer orbit between planets

KSP Visual Calculator, online tool that determines delta-v required for multiple checkpoint missions

In reporting on a radiation study, a nearly universal practice of the 'experts' is to show us only the subjects' total doses. They do this despite the fact that usually what is measured is the dose rate profile, often in the form of daily doses. The total dose is computed by adding up these daily doses, and then tossing aside everything but the total. Analyzing radiation harm by only looking at total dose is like an electrical engineer attempt to analyze a complicated circuit by only looking at the annual energy input.

The human body is an extremely complex circuit. It has to be analyzed dynamically. The essential element of SNT [Signmoid No Threshold] is not the shape of the acute dose response curve, it is chopping the dose rate profile into repair periods, and analyzing each period separately. //

Where would we encounter 1 and 2 mSv/d dose rate profiles for decades? That's an easy one. Space travel. The astronauts in Low Earth Orbit get between 0.5 and 1.0 mSv/d, with occasional spikes during solar flares. High Earth Orbit or a trip to Mars will about double that. If LNT were valid, the shielding requirements would be prohibitively expensive.

NASA can't afford LNT. That's why it ignores all the EPA and NRC limits. The EPA says more than 1 mSv per year is unsafe. NASA says 1 mSv per day is routine. That's the difference between the top and bottom of Figure 1.

NASA is not the only entity that cannot afford LNT. Space travel is a luxury that humanity may or may not be able to afford. The benefits of manned space travel are at best speculative. The benefits of cheap nuclear electricity are undeniable and cornucopic. If we can correctly trash LNT to go into space, surely we can junk this counterfactual hypothesis to get cheap nuclear.

NASA uncovers 50 ‘areas of concern’ including leaks and cracks on the 25-year-old space station. //

Over the past two decades, the ISS has been a hub for groundbreaking scientific research. The microgravity environment has enabled significant advancements in studying diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, asthma, and heart disease. The unique conditions allow researchers to observe cellular and molecular changes impossible on Earth.

Without the interference of Earth’s gravity, Alzheimer’s researchers have studied protein clusters that can cause neurodegenerative diseases. Cancer researchers studied the growth of endothelial cells on the space station.

Endothelial cells help supply blood in the body, and tumors need that blood to form. Space station-grown cells grow better than those on Earth and can help test new cancer treatments.

Why do this in space? Studying cells, organoids, and protein clusters without the influence of gravity – or even the forces of container walls – can help researchers get a clearer understanding of their properties, behaviors, and responses to treatments.

The answer is significantly dependent on how much aerodynamic pressure and heating you can tolerate, and whether it's possible to achieve high specific impulse from a rocket engine exhausting into Venusian atmosphere.

At 10km above the Venusian "reference altitude", a speed of only 46 m/s (~100 mph) puts you at a Q of 39.5kPa -- a little higher than "max Q" of most Earth-orbit launchers. If your Q limit is on that order of magnitude, it's going to take you a very long time to get out of the Searing Black Calm, which means you're going to lose a lot of delta-v to gravity -- it takes about 8 minutes going straight up before you can even think about pitching over into a gravity turn.

At least one person has estimated the delta-v to reach Venusian orbit at 27km/s, but they did not provide much detail on their methodology.

By having elfin engineers provide a magical rocket engine capable of ~240s specific impulse when exhausting into 60 atmospheres of pressure, I was able to reach orbit in my home-brewed simulation, lifting off from Maat (to save me 8km and 30 atmospheres of vertical suffering), with about 15000 m/s of delta-v. Max Q achieved was 55 kPa.

It would be physically possible, but there's no practical way to do it just with chemically-propelled rockets. The extremely high density of the atmosphere caps the top speed of the rocket until it's at high altitude, exacerbating gravity loss, so you'd need a ridiculous propellant mass ratio. (At only 100mph, the dynamic pressure at low altitude is comparable to the supersonic max-Q of a terrestrial rocket launch.)

What could conceivably work would be to use balloon ascent to get up to a high altitude "for free" and then use a chemical rocket from there. Designing and engineering something that can land, collect samples, inflate a balloon in the Venusian surface environment, and conduct an interplanetary launch from there is left as an exercise for the reader. //

@jwenting don't forget being chemically resilient to sulfuric acid at 700 K

I'm over the left pretending like it cares about the human race when it consistently exhibits a disdain and sometimes hostile attitude toward it. All the venerated minds that the left holds in high regard, seem to think that humanity is killing the planet, chiding and lecturing us about our use of fossil fuels and claiming we've stolen the hopes and dreams of future generations. //

As Susie Moore reported on Sunday, Elon Musk and SpaceX are making huge advancements all the time, bringing humanity closer and closer to being a space-faring species. In an incredible display of technological advancement, SpaceX was able to catch a Super Heavy booster with "Mechazilla" arms. An engineering feat that will go down in history as one of the greatest achievements in space travel. //

Of course, there are people out there who are so shortsighted, they see these advancements as negatives. They see it as billionaires wasting money that could be used for other things like feeding the hungry, saying that if the world does end, then the only people who will be able to leave are the billionaires building these rockets.

Dr. Grouf @DGrouf
·
Government efficiency to billionaires it means taking from the poor and enriching the wealthy and their servants, which is what this sob is going to do, people keep getting poorer while these b@stards keep building their net worths and wasting societal wealth on flying rockets.

Elon Musk @elonmusk
I hope I am able to serve the people in this regard. It is sorely needed.
10:37 AM · Oct 14, 2024 //

Sci-fi author Devon Erikson put it beautifully in his post on X:

Devon Eriksen @DevonEriksen
·
This is what will matter 1000 years from now.

Not your politics. Not your stupid tantrums about who platformed who on some website. Not your incomprehensible desire to send NASA's entire budget to the third world.

This guy reignited the Space Age.

He spent his own money,… Show more

Instead of fighting over little patches of land, we will have an infinite 3d volume. Enclose it in steel, pump it full of air, spin it, and it's a habitat. Instead of scratching tiny scraps of metal out of the crust of one planet, we will break down entire asteroids and smelt them. Instead of drilling for hydrocarbons and turning water wheels, we will harness entire suns, split the atom, and eventually draw our fuel from the substance that makes up 99% of the entire universe. None of your local, temporal Earth politics matter compared to this. This is more important than pride parades and abortions, more important than tribal conflicts in eastern Europe and southwest Asia, more important than tensions with Russia and China. //

If the left truly cares about people like they say, or pretend they do, then with every successful advancement, every launched rocket, every person sent to space by a private company, they would whoop and cheer... but they aren't. It should make the left's ideological foundations morally suspect.

This is a short-term forecast of the location and intensity of the aurora. This product is based on the OVATION model and provides a 30 to 90 minute forecast of the location and intensity of the aurora. The forecast lead time is the time it takes for the solar wind to travel from the L1 observation point to Earth.

Alert and Alarmed
7 hours ago edited
Martians land on the White House Lawn. They say they have been studying our broadcasts and speak our language. They ask for a televised interview with our world leaders. The Pope takes his turn saying "Honored guests, the most important question I have is: Do you know Jesus?
Martians: Yes we know Jesus, the Son of God. He comes to see us every year.
Pope (visibly shaken): What? Every year? Well we have been waiting two thousand years for His Second Coming.
Martians: Maybe He didn't like your chocolates.
Pope (even more rattled and hardly able to speak): Chocolates? What do chocolates have to do with anything?
Martians: When He came to see us, we gave Him a giant box of our best chocolates. What did you do when He came to see you?

The space suits worn during SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission are a sci-fi reimagining of NASA’s classic marshmallow suits. There’s a good reason why they look so different.

In mid-November 2023, a disastrous SpaceX launch, which saw the explosion of not one but two rockets, offered a rare opportunity to study the effects of such phenomena on the ionosphere.
A study by Russian scientists revealed how this explosion temporarily blew open a hole in the ionosphere stretching from the Yucatan to the southeastern U.S.
Although far from the first rocket-induced disturbance in the ionosphere, this is one of the first explosive events in the ionosphere to be extensively studied. //

November 18, 2023, wasn’t a great day for the commercial spaceflight company SpaceX. While testing its stainless steel-clad Starship, designed to be the company’s chariot to Mars, the spacecraft exploded four minutes after liftoff over the skies of Boca Chica, Texas. //

This new study confirms that the ionosphere experienced a “large-amplitude total electron content depletion,” likely reinforced by a fuel exhaust impact of the Super Heavy rocket engine, which also exploded a little more than a minute earlier at lower altitude once it separated from the Starship. The research team collected this data from 2,500 ground stations scattered across North America and the Caribbean and found that the hole extended largely from Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula and the southeastern U.S., though the exact size of the hole is unknown. //

scientists report that this Starship-induced ion hole caused by “catastrophic phenomena” closed up after 30 or 40 minutes. But these kinds of interactions are still poorly understood, and that’s concerning considering how central the ionosphere is to global technologies—not to mention human health.

Download Cylinders for free at my Bandcamp
Stream it on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and everywhere else

Experts in South Korea are convinced that bricks moulded from microwaved stardust could produce materials on site and boost humanity's hopes of living on the lunar surface.

The scientists said: "NASA has announced the Artemis Mission aiming for a long-term presence on the lunar surface. However, infrastructure expansion such as lunar base construction plays a vital role.

"Yet transporting construction materials from Earth to the lunar surface via landers incurs a significant cost of $1.2 million per kilogram.

"To solve this problem Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology has developed technology for producing construction materials using in-situ resources from the Moon."

Meanwhile, it was revealed recently that space fanatics could be able to watch TV coverage from the Moon when man returns there for the first time in over 50 years for the Artemis III mission.

Fatesrider Ars Legatus Legionis
11y
21,506
Subscriptor

llanitedave said:
I hadn't thought about the space sickness angle. Yeah, NASA made the reasonable choice, but it does suck. And YES, Boeing is to blame here.
The quote in the article is pretty low key:

A non-trivial percentage of professional astronauts succumb to space sickness during the initial hours of their spaceflights.

The figure is 60-80% of all professional astronauts.

Non-trivial indeed.
https://www.colorado.edu/today/2024/02/29/space-travel-comes-motion-sickness-these-engineers-want-help

wagnerrp Ars Legatus Legionis
14y
26,915
Subscriptor
faffod said:
The question I have from the article, that I haven't seen an answer for is :

• Are experienced astronauts less susceptible to space sickness?

I assume that is the case, which would explain changing the pilot assignment, but if it is not then what does the change gain?

They probably take extra Dramamine.

butcherg Ars Centurion
11y
292
wagnerrp said:
They probably take extra Dramamine.

Sadly, I have some experience with this...

Zero-G and unfamiliar motion present two different causes for so-called 'motion sickness. Without gravity to provide a steady downward tug to internal organs, the feeling of them floating around in your body cavity is horrid, initially. This is in addition to the lack of weight on the fluids in the inner ear, which is a bit different than the stimulus provided by irregular motion. Same result, however, puke your guts out. While motion stimulus is usually short-lived, weightlessness is with you All The Freaking Time in space.

According to the Wikipedia page on space adaptation syndrome (nice term for it), they tend not to medicate it for newbies, the preference being to have them accommodate it over time. They do however use Dramamine dermal patches for spacewalks, because vomiting in a spacesuit is quite egregious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_adaptation_syndrome

I got motion-sick as a kid, probably a stupid idea to try pilot training. While there, however, got to push the stick over a few times to make stuff float around the cabin, horrid feeling the first time, but you could just stop pushing and it would go away, go figure. They did send me to 'sick school' at Brooks AFB, where they were doing research on the causes, came back with some tools that helped me get through T-37s. However, it really was just becoming familiar with the environment that did the trick. Moving to Colorado, flights to and from the Front Range were fraught with turbulent motion, again, got used to it over time. Worst feeling on an airplane ever was riding in a E/RC-135 during refueling as receiver, keeping the boom connected required maneuver that, in the rear of the airplane, felt absolutely horrible, worse than the zero-g stunts.

Spent 4 days on the USS LaSalle in the Med, flat-bottomed hull and worst-riding ship in 6th Fleet, collecting data from an exercise, staring at a screen all day in the TIC. Speed-ate Dramamine for the entire time, kept things down, but I was a nervous wreck for about a week after. So, medicating not such a great idea...

butcherg Ars Centurion
11y
292
alisonken1 said:
Every time my ship pulled out of port, I would be feeling really dragged for about a week (or until I puked), then I was fine the rest of the voyage.

Unfortunately, it happened every time we left port. Seems like my body reset itself whenever we hit dry land.

And Dramamine didn't help. BTW - I was a cruiser sailor (think Belknap-class CG's type).
I had a pattern too; typical training flight was to trundle over to the aux field, do some touch-and-goes, then climb up to the areas for aerobatic work. The place I'd get sick was on climb-out from the aux field, go figure. Got good at handling it, I'd ask the instructor to take the airplane, and in about 10 seconds pull out the bag, ralph into it, close and stow it, and take back the airplane. Didn't want to give 'em the idea it was a problem... :biggreen:

rocket bodies, satellites, space debris in earth orbit