British Space Exploration project to rival India's and China's

[Mich the Tester]

I once did a science project where we were going to use a giant water filled rocket and heat it up using ground based lasers so the steam would propel it into orbit, we calculated the rocket would need to be about 3 miles across and 12 miles high, even then we were probably miles out.

It's still better than the yanks idea of propelling a space station into orbit using a series of nuclear explosions, they only ditched the idea in 1971.

The easy way to do it is of course the American way; hire a nazi rocket scientist who’s bored of blowing up London and pay him a humongous salary to work it out for you, but we're British and we're better than that.

[TimberWolf]

Right, I’ll start. If you’re fit, you can produce about 300 watts continually for an hour or so. Top cyclists on EPO might manage 600 or 700 for a while, that bloke Hoy who won everything in Beijing might hit 1200 watts for about half a minute or so.

If someone can work out how many kilowatts are needed to accelerate an average man (80kg) and the average home trainer (15 kg), so 95 kgs to 9 km/s then we have a theoretical idea of how long a given cyclist would have to ride to store enough energy in the magneto catapult. Of course, we’d have to build in a big margin, maybe as high as 60% to account for the loss of kinetic energy to thermal energy in the catapult and the pulleys.

A top cyclist may not make the best cyclenaut since the fuel to mass ratio is a big consideration. A fat man might be butter. You can actually guess out how far matter can propel itself from it's energy density (e.g. its calorific value), as those who know about dimensional analysis may be able to see from the units of used. E.g. Joules per Kg = Kg.m^2 / (s^2 . Kg) = (m/s)^2 = speed squared.

[NotAllThere]

It's still better than the yanks idea of propelling a space station into orbit using a series of nuclear explosions, they only ditched the idea in 1971.

Using Project Orion, you'd get to Pluto and back within a year. And you can lift thousands of tons of payload. It was only the nuclear test ban treaty that canned the project. Apparently, a 5000 tonne Orion would produce the same fallout as a 1-megaton blast.

[Pondlife]

A top cyclist may not make the best cyclenaut since the fuel to mass ratio is a big consideration. A fat man might be butter. You can actually guess out how far matter can propel itself from it's energy density (e.g. its calorific value), as those who know about dimensional analysis may be able to see from the units of used. E.g. Joules per Kg = Kg.m^2 / (s^2 . Kg) = (m/s)^2 = speed squared.

You see what you did there?

[gingerjedi]

A top cyclist may not make the best cyclenaut since the fuel to mass ratio is a big consideration. A fat man might be butter. You can actually guess out how far matter can propel itself from it's energy density (e.g. its calorific value), as those who know about dimensional analysis may be able to see from the units of used. E.g. Joules per Kg = Kg.m^2 / (s^2 . Kg) = (m/s)^2 = speed squared.

Then Threaded is your man... I've seen a picture.