Let's face it y'all… rockets they kind of suck! They use a lot of fuel to get a
handful of people and a bit of cargo about 400 kilometers look I'm not saying
that rockets are bad, I'm saying we should be doing so much better!
We don't need rockets, we need the next thing. So, let's talk about that
Hey everyone, Trace here thanks for watching Uno Dos of Trace this is
episode 2 of 5 on Leaving Earth. Today, we're gonna talk about how to leave cuz
yesterday we talked about why and tomorrow where! So… subscribe for all the
episodes we're gonna get into some engineering and some rocketry and I'm
really excited. Let's kick into it. Rockets are old like really old like
super old technology most people think oh the rocket that was the world war 2
right the V-2 and that was used to bomb London and then we took those German
scientists and we invented the Apollo program and went to the moon easy peasy
but the first rocket was not actually invented in the 1940s it wasn't by
Germans or Russians but by the Greeks it was built in 400 BCE by a
mathematician named arc itis the story was then written down by a Roman named
Argos Delos it was a wooden bird that was aerodynamic and inside the bird was
a little bladder probably actually an animal's bladder and it was attached to
like a pole and arrow using fire our kite a seated water inside of a metal
ball and then eventually would release it the escaping steam from the ball
would work as a propellant just like that anime steam boy which is super cool
it is not a rocket in the way that you're thinking but like a rudimentary
rocket the steam propelled the bird and made this beautiful amazing display that
awed and shocked people in 400 BCE the first rocket rocket who has invented in
1100 CE II in China they use solid fuel Rockets like gunpowder essentially and
it's used for fireworks and weapons and it was continued along that path until
the 20th century and that is when we think of Rockets right the Germans and
the war and Waliullah Rockets came into their own though on
October 4th of 1957 we realized what they could be they weren't just weapons
they were something different they were a breakthrough technology the
Soviet Union launched Sputnik and everyone who had a radio tuned to the
right frequency heard that little beep beep beep beep as it flew over their
heads all around the planet they launched it on an r7 ICBM an
intercontinental ballistic missile it was a weapon but they used it in a
different way basically this missile from World War 2
was powerful enough to push a payload so fast and so high that it fell around the
curvature of the earth that is what orbiting is it's sort of like you're
falling but you're going so fast forward that the earth curves away from you
underneath and this is what we still do this is what the International Space
Station does is what the space shuttles do that is how orbiting works we
literally did it again this week SpaceX's Falcon took off and took two
astronauts to the International Space Station it was considered an affordable
mission base X according to their data launches for roughly 55 million dollars
per person that's affordable they have a famously reusable rocket stack if you do
the math there that's about a hundred and eighty thousand dollars per pound of
human how many pounds of human could you trade your house for if you own a house
the Space Shuttle was even bigger could carry more stuff but that big orange
fuel tank that is so recognizable on the space shuttle
that's a one-time-use thing they had to make a new one for every rocket so that
meant 135 new tanks and each shuttle launch cost 450 million dollars and this
is the problem with rockets and why I'm saying they're bad I'm not saying that
they're bad like we shouldn't use them I'm saying we need a breakthrough
technology in the way that Rockets were a breakthrough technology that allowed
us to go to space we need a new breakthrough technology that allows us
to go even further chemical rockets have been around they've been around for
thousands of years we've pretty much peaked at making Rockets as efficient as
we can I mean even the shuttle engines were over 99% efficient at burning their
fuel and maybe we can do better but after a century or two centuries or five
centuries of work we need something new there are other plans so if the goal is
to get to space the Karman line 100 kilometers up above
our heads the imaginary line where jet engines don't work anymore and you need
rocket engines so if we need this technology this is what we need to solve
we need the jet to burn the fuel in the atmosphere mix so here's how it works
jets burn fuel and atmosphere and mix them together to create thrust rocket
propellant creates everything to make the thrust and burn it without needing
extra air so what we really need is a breakthrough technology and the thing
about rockets is there's a lot of money in rocketry in the early 20th century
and because of that we were able to try all sorts of things there are lots of
different minds trying and working on stuff so you think oh well if the
atmosphere is thicker close to the ground 99% of the atmosphere is you know
gone if you can get up in the air so why not put a rocket on a balloon they did
that 1949 it's called a raccoon raccoon take little teeny sounding rockets and
move them above a majority of the atmosphere so they need less fuel at
that point from there they shoot off of the balloon and they can go wherever you
need them to it was used for high-altitude atmospheric science they
don't have huge payloads the balloons need to be real big and they can't carry
people which is too bad but that doesn't mean that they're not people trying it
there is a company called leo aerospace that's working on it that's the kind of
fanciest one I found although they had a lot of coverage in 2019 which was last
year they haven't actually launched anything yet it doesn't seem at least I
can't really tell from their website so still a lot to go on that another
project which i think is really cool is the Skylon project it flies like an
airplane in the atmosphere their rocket engine but once it passes the Karman
line and runs out of atmosphere to mix with the fuel it adds onboard liquid
oxygen into the engines it's called a synergetic air breathing rocket engine
or a sabre and it's from reaction engines inc it's super cool but it's not
there yet and on top of that you have to carry all of that liquid oxygen with you
which adds to the weight which adds to the requirement of the rocket to be able
to go anywhere and reduces the amount of cargo that you can carry that's it this
is still cooler in some ways than sticking everything on top of a missile
like we've been doing for almost a hundred years in my opinion though the
best plan is to issue chemical rockets and balloons
and combinations of jets and rockets because all of that is taking old
technology and smashing it together in order to make something that does one
thing better than another thing right isn't it's not the best the best plan I
think is something completely new the space elevator think about it think
about a tower that extends from the surface of the planet all the way to
space not like a tall building but think of like a yo-yo on the end of a string
and this works because the yo-yo is light and the string is strong and now
imagine a school bus or two on the end of a hundred and fifty kilometers string
spinning at 1600 km/h that's the rotation speed of the earth and thanks
to space exploration we know that satellites and space stations can work
and they'll stay up there but the cable the string that's the trouble we cannot
make a cable strong enough yeah the one thing that we do know of thus far that's
strong enough is single crystal graphene graphene is an atomic carbon in a sheet
it's literally one atom thick and if you roll it into a tube you get carbon
nanotubes which maybe you've heard of if you've been around science for the last
twenty years or so it's got a tensile strength this single crystal carbon of
1,300 Giga Pascal's that's very strong it's the strongest material ever tested
the problem is we can only make a few grams at a time we're gonna need more
than a few grams to make a cable that is hundreds of kilometers long and we are
not there yet we need a breakthrough technology we
need you to go into stem and go and learn about how to do engineering and
physics and space and all sorts of cool stuff and invent it we need you until we
can move people off of the earth for less than hundreds of thousands of
dollars per kilogram for less than a Midwestern house for every pound of
human we're stuck here in this cradle trapped in the terrarium that is
spaceship earth and since we're trapped here we should
take care of each other I think and the easiest way to do that I mean seriously
the easiest way is to just open a new tab that's it
ooop open that tab open tabs to donate to charity
using tab for a cause tab for a cause is a browser extension that donates to
charity each time you open a new tab which let's face that we do constantly
download the extension with this link it's in the description too and it
benefits people in need and of course supports the making of an erosive trace
just a little bit once you've installed it just browse the web like normal every
time you open a tab it donates a little money to tab for a cause it is so simple
that brief keystroke for you translates to real money for charity and that real
money does make a real difference to real people as of this recording tab
errs have raised over nine hundred thousand dollars for charity already
that's like a million bucks zodes almost tab for a Cause charities help families
get fresh water they help educate young people and they give money directly to
families in need which research shows can help them raise themselves out of
poverty get the Chrome extension with this link you'll be able to get
charitable in just a few seconds think of all the tabs that you've opened in
all of your life without anyone getting a benefit it seems crazy now right
thanks for being a good human let's you know go back to spaceship earth and
Isaac Asimov so Asimov says in an interview in 1975 that lunar cities are
common in science fiction but a city just floating out in space a space
station by itself in what's called free space unheard of anticipate anything
like this in any of your science fiction nobody did really because we've all been
planet chauvinists we've all believed people should live on the surface of a
planet the closest I came to a manufactured
world in free space was to suggest that we go out to the asteroid belt and
hollow out the asteroids and make ships out of them it never occurred to me to
bring the material from the asteroids in towards the earth where conditions are
pleasanter I love this interview I highly recommend you check it out this
sci-fi author and this physicist spent an incredible 30 minutes talking about
all the villages and cities that we could build in space and control the
day/night cycle and spin to give it gravity and grow plants for food and
atmosphere who would be free of pesticides because there'd be no pests
it free of plant diseases because we'd be
able to look at their DNA and know if they have any but this is all predicated
of course on going to space and doing it with something that can lift more than a
few pounds at a time I would love to be part of that conversation personally but
for now it's just a conversation we need to make it real maybe private
spaceflight will change that maybe private commercial companies can find a
way to make this more affordable to lift things to low-earth orbit and from
low-earth orbit we can get to the moon but we need a breakthrough technology to
do that so let's talk a bit about the moon let's talk a bit about Mars if we
can get off this planet and get to other planets that would be a breakthrough
technology or at least help us fuel more because we can use the resources on the
moon or on Mars to go further into space and we can do the same thing with
asteroids and other planets along the way but the journey of a thousand miles
it begins with that single launch right now we're kind of toddling around
falling back to earth and landing on our butts every time hoping that eventually
we will find a way to get up there and stay and once we do where do we go we've
left the nest we've left the crib where do we fly next where do we toddle next
time we'll talk a bit more about that stick around subscribe so you get all
five of the episodes in this series it didn't watch the episode before go back
and watch that one special thanks again to tab for a cause for sponsoring this
episode and thanks to you for watching it I am trace thanks again and I will
see you in the future