# Plausible ideas for Edwardian space travel ...



## Gearhead_Shem_Tov (May 3, 2010)

That's what I'm after.  To be more precise, I'm researching for a novel predicated on the achievement of practical spaceflight some time in the first twenty years of the 20th century, with the following caveats, the first relatively easy, the second really quite hard, and the third perhaps impossible:

1) I'm disallowing handwavium, antigravitic timber, help from ancient astronauts, serendipitous discovery-and-reverse-enginnering of a crashed alien spacecraft, or any Tesla Super Scientrific Power Beams.  Rockets are good enough for us, they oughta be good enough for my Edwardian Astronauts.

2) The fact of such space travel has to be completely unknown to and unsuspected by governments then and now -- this isn't to be an X-Files sort of tale.

3) The whole ~20-year R&D effort must be underwritten by the resources of about 20,000 non-rich, non-super genius people.  In place of super-genius, assume super-stubborness.

I'm looking for ideas on just about anything that might help this work.  I'm willing to accept one or two oddball breakthroughs in metallurgy or exotic energetic chemistry, but fission and fusion rockets, say, are out because it'd be too hard to to hide such a development.

I look forward to your comments.

-Bobby


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## Vladd67 (May 3, 2010)

Well here is a brief history that might be adapted
A Brief History of Rocketry


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## Gearhead_Shem_Tov (May 4, 2010)

Vladd67 said:


> Well here is a brief history that might be adapted
> ...



I suppose I should mention that I have a solid, if somewhat dusty, engineering background, so I don't need information on rocketry per se, rather more toward things like high specific impulse fuels such as hydrogen free radicals (a.k.a. monatomic hydrogen) which would theoretically give an Isp of about 1200 seconds, three times better than hydrogen/oxygen.  Only problem is stabilising the stuff -- it tends to go boom at inconvenient times.

Actually, this last is a horrendous understatement; it's wildly unstable since each atom of hydrogen really, REALLY prefers to bond with another.  Anyone got some plausible sounding ways to stabilise Single-H?  Dilution with helium, say, and some sort of nuclear magnetic resonance dingus to turn Instant Blam into Slow Burn?

Another thing: our space rockets evolved directly from ballistic missile technology, and no space booster has ever been designed for minimum cost; all have been designed for minimum weight, and that makes things much more expensive.  The Big Dumb Booster idea applies, and would probably be the only approach that could even be approached with long-term private funding.

The bigger issue in the whole project in my mind, really, is how a secret space program could *stay* secret, assuming pioneering flights begin, say, in 1925 and continue for another thirty years? How about the logistics of getting materials and people to the launch site without arousing suspicion?  Shucks, just moving the capital required might be tricky during the inter-war years.

I'm already assuming a remote, near-equatorial launch site, but how do you keep the dozen or so flights a year from being noticed?  How do you keep tramp steamers and fishing fleets from seeing the rocket contrails, if nothing else?  Launch only during overcast conditions?  Or would a clear-air, broad-noon launch be best?

Assuming launch goes unobserved, how do you keep the spaceship from being noticed once it's in orbit?  Paint it flat black?  Hide behind a carefully oriented black sunshade until leaving parking orbit?  Or dispense with parking orbits altogether and do a direct trans-Lunar injection while still on the day side of the trajectory?

(No method would prevent it being found if someone were actually looking for it in the right place, so the key is to never give anyone a reason to start scanning the skies for fast moving long-wave IR targets.)

Before WWII radar sighting wouldn't be much of an issue, especially if no radar-carring ships were in the area, and the equipment was so crude no radar operator of the era would assuming anything but equipment malfunction if the did manage to detect a hypersonic bogey at 200,000 feet.  During and after the war, however, airborne radar becomes inconveniently common, so much so that I'm assuming that flights after 1941 would be at some risk of detection in many parts of the world, and such flights would be undertaken only on dire need.

Anyway, that's where my muddled thinking is so far.

-Bobby


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## Boneman (May 4, 2010)

Hmm, what about manipulation of earth's magnetic field? (That spreads far beyond the moon, apparently) So that a magnetised hull would be whisked along the polarity lines that exist - some mathematical genius could work it out so that certain parts of the hull would de-magnetise at the right time, and jump to the next thread/line. Ley Lines, here we come!!!


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## Gearhead_Shem_Tov (May 4, 2010)

Boneman said:


> Hmm, what about manipulation of earth's magnetic field? (That spreads far beyond the moon, apparently) So that a magnetised hull would be whisked along the polarity lines that exist - some mathematical genius could work it out so that certain parts of the hull would de-magnetise at the right time, and jump to the next thread/line. Ley Lines, here we come!!!



I can't see this being useful for a 500-tonne spaceship, unless by "manipulation of earth's magnetic field" you mean something along the lines of electromotive generators using conductive tethers and/or momentum transfers between tethers at different orbital altitudes.  Even then, I'm a bit skeptical my Edwardian Astronauts could keep such elaborate infrastructure hidden in LEO for any useful amount of time.

It's a fun problem, though!

-Bobby


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## pdurrant (May 4, 2010)

Gearhead_Shem_Tov said:


> That's what I'm after.  To be more precise, I'm researching for a novel predicated on the achievement of practical spaceflight some time in the first twenty years of the 20th century, with the following caveats, the first relatively easy, the second really quite hard, and the third perhaps impossible:
> 
> 1) I'm disallowing handwavium, antigravitic timber, help from ancient astronauts, serendipitous discovery-and-reverse-enginnering of a crashed alien spacecraft, or any Tesla Super Scientrific Power Beams.  Rockets are good enough for us, they oughta be good enough for my Edwardian Astronauts.
> 
> ...



From a brief look at the problem, it doesn't sound impossible. The only possible fuel seems to be Kerosene/Liquid Oxygen. Liquid oxygen was first made in 1877, and there's seem no reason why dedicated research couldn't have made large quantities fairly quickly, although in history it seems to have not been done until 1895. Hydrogen is a lot harder to liquify and store.

So - you need a group working on liquid-fuel rockets from the 1880s onwards. Consider that in history the first rocket flown using liquid oxygen was built Goddard in 1923 to 1926, and the first patent on a liquid fuel rocket was by Goddard in 1914. Pushing that 20-30 years earlier doesn't seem out of the question.

As for how to hide such a large undertaking - that's another matter entirely.


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## Gearhead_Shem_Tov (May 5, 2010)

pdurrant said:


> ... The only possible fuel seems to be Kerosene/Liquid Oxygen. Liquid oxygen was first made in 1877, and there's seem no reason why dedicated research couldn't have made large quantities fairly quickly, although in history it seems to have not been done until 1895. Hydrogen is a lot harder to liquify and store.



Hydrogen is a tough nut, and not just from the low temperature; its low density is a pain because it requires such large tanks when burned with LOX.  It requires about three times the tank volume as LOX & kerosene.

Liquid Fluorine & LH, on the other hand, while only a marginally better combination in terms of specific impulse (about 5% better), is much better in the size of the tanks required, (about 60% smaller).  Added together, these effects would produce a lunar rocket about half the size and weight of an equivalent LH/LOX rocket.

How would it affect cost? No idea, other than it would surely be more expensive.  Kerosene/LOX looks much more friendly than either on cost.  It's a pity you can't make a single-stage-to-orbit ship with them, though; two stages seem to be the minimum.



> So - you need a group working on liquid-fuel rockets from the 1880s onwards. Consider that in history the first rocket flown using liquid oxygen was built Goddard in 1923 to 1926, and the first patent on a liquid fuel rocket was by Goddard in 1914. Pushing that 20-30 years earlier doesn't seem out of the question.



My thinking, too.  I leave the start of R&D until 1900-1910 to let them use wireless; it's much easier to do telemetry.



> As for how to hide such a large undertaking - that's another matter entirely.



Indeed, this is the hard one.

-Bobby


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## thepaladin (May 5, 2010)

Are you looking to try strictly hard science fiction (a tall order considering the time frame) or do you plan to include an element of fantasy? 

If so, you could use an older idea combined with what was a fairly new discovery at the time. It was noted in 1880 that "some elements" emitted or released electrons when struck  by sunlight. This has led to photovoltaics and some other solar technologies. The idea Vern used of launching  the ship (or conversely parts of the ship to be assembled in space) by use of "explosive" (canon?) and then possibly a liquid rocket booster to break orbit with some sort of solar sail.

This would have to be heavily fictionalized....I'm not sure if you intend to try and stay completely away from fantasy.


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## Gearhead_Shem_Tov (May 5, 2010)

thepaladin said:


> Are you looking to try strictly hard science fiction (a tall order considering the time frame) or do you plan to include an element of fantasy?



My goal is to assume only what was already available or readily derivable from the materials and techniques of 1900-1925.  If we couldn't duplicate it today given money and time, then I'm not interested.



> ... If so, you could use an older idea combined with what was a fairly new discovery at the time. It was noted in 1880 that "some elements" emitted or released electrons when struck  by sunlight. This has led to photovoltaics and some other solar technologies. The idea Vern used of launching  the ship (or conversely parts of the ship to be assembled in space) by use of "explosive" (canon?) and then possibly a liquid rocket booster to break orbit with some sort of solar sail.



This is an interesting idea.  Solar sailing from LEO is probably too hard, given residual atmospheric drag, and radiation exposure from the Van Allen belts would be problematic, too.  But a liquid booster to get quickly out of low orbit and through the radiation belts would certainly help.



> This would have to be heavily fictionalized....I'm not sure if you intend to try and stay completely away from fantasy.



Heavily fictionalised, yes, of course.  Comes with the territory, even without outright fantasy.

-Bobby


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## pdurrant (May 5, 2010)

Gearhead_Shem_Tov said:


> Kerosene/LOX looks much more friendly than either on cost.  It's a pity you can't make a single-stage-to-orbit ship with them, though; two stages seem to be the minimum.



Something else just occurred to me. How about liquid methane? High density (6 x liquid hydrogen), similar cryogenic temperature requirements as LOX, and a slightly higher SI than Kerosene (although half the density). You'd need 10 times smaller tanks for liquid methane as liquid hydrogen, although, granted, about 2.5 times as big as for kerosene.

Basics of Space Flight: Rocket Propellants

Liquid oxygen can be made anywhere, given a source of power (hydroelectric?). How about also finding a remote location with an easily accessible natural gas field? Then the fuel requirements could all be met on site.


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## Ursa major (May 5, 2010)

pdurrant said:


> As for how to hide such a large undertaking - that's another matter entirely.


This may be the biggest problem. The more remote a launch site is (in order to avoid the launches being seen), the more visible the transfer of significant materiel to the back-of beyond location. And it isn't as if the world is full of places that are habitable but simultaneously inhabited. (There'd have to be bribes or more permanent restrictions on the locals. These things, too, risk being noticed.)

And after 1939 - and possible earlier in the Pacific - I expect closer watch was taken on sea traffic than before, so radar wouldn't be the only issue. (On the other hand, if one could get the materiel** into the ship at the dock, its later disappearance (and that of the ship) could be explained by "enemy" action. Then again, the ships would, presumably, be targets and as they wouldn't be travelling as part of armed convoys, could be vulnerable to attack or seizure.)


** - Don't forget that in this period there were no containers, so there'd be a risk of thieves trying to get at the goods at the docks and discovering what was there***. And to stop this, there'd be the risk of the security becoming noticeable, if the amount of materiel was significant.

*** - Who'd they tell is another matter.


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## Gearhead_Shem_Tov (May 5, 2010)

Ursa major said:


> ...
> ** - Don't forget that in this period there were no containers, so there'd be a risk of thieves trying to get at the goods at the docks and discovering what was there***. And to stop this, there'd be the risk of the security becoming noticeable, if the amount of materiel was significant.
> 
> *** - Who'd they tell is another matter.



Ah, brilliant!  I would never have thought of this.  Very helpful, maybe a good plot point.

-Bobby


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## Parson (May 6, 2010)

Maybe I'm being stupid, but it seems to me that when something can't be absolutely hidden the best way to avoid exposure of what you want hidden is to get people to direct their attention in another direction. Maybe you could envision something like a high performance airplane testing grounds. Provide the public occasional glimpses of exotic airplanes. Let the protagonists actually be in the forefront of airplane technology that is bought and sold. Thus contrails and material are explained but the real purpose is hidden.


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## Ursa major (May 6, 2010)

In theory, I agree, Parson.

However, if the timeline coincides with a major conflict involving the country where the testing is occurring, wouldn't we expect that the government of that country might become very interested in the technology hinted at by the cover story?


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## Parson (May 6, 2010)

Hm, But the lead in said the take off site was near the equator. That could easily mean Brazil or some other non-allied nation in WWI. Also there might be room for a little more alternative history in this yarn.


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## Gearhead_Shem_Tov (May 6, 2010)

Parson said:


> ... when something can't be absolutely hidden the best way to avoid exposure of what you want hidden is to get people to direct their attention in another direction. ...



Misdirection could be very useful, but it would take real nerve to pull it off.

In a sense the story depends on this already in that the group of people behind the project would be considered by most other people as being incapable of such a thing.  Biggots would never imagine a spaceship being built in Haarlem, say.

-B


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## Ursa major (May 6, 2010)

Parson said:


> Hm, But the lead in said the take off site was near the equator. That could easily mean Brazil or some other non-allied nation in WWI. Also there might be room for a little more alternative history in this yarn.


Wikipedia has a handy list of countries, oceans and islands along the equator:
Equator - Equatorial Countries and Territories - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia​All of the land territories save for Ecuador, Colombia and Brasil were colonial possessions. I did notice, however, this US-owned island:
Baker Island - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia​It was US from the beginning (though there may have been**, briefly, a UK claim), and it seems to have been entirely the domain of private endeavour until that UK claim was made.




** - A may-have-been that is easily deleted from an alternative history. Similarly, the attempt at colonisation in the 1930s could easily be averted.


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## chrispenycate (May 7, 2010)

This thing is going to be BIG. Forget Saturn five's mere three stages; I can't see us getting up with fewer than five, increasing in size at about the same rate. Fortunately they would not have to build the VAB around it vertically (That would have been taller than any skyscraper built at the time) because we are going to launch it more or less horizontally – it makes no difference, as long as we achieve the necessary speed (and there's nothing in the way, like a mountain, of course).

Part of this extra size is due to the control systems – with no electronics, stability is achieved with gyroscopes mechanically linked to fuel controls, ropes like a ship's rudder, and lots of human intervention.

I'm going to start in the mountains; not for the tiny advantage in distance to be travelled, but reduction in atmospheric friction. Even with all the rivet heads polished smooth to the hull until a blind man can't sense where they are (that's right, rivets, like a steam boiler. and steel plate; none of your titanium or aluminium available in that sort of quantity) reasonable velocities at low altitudes are going to make heating a major problem. It also helps that I can gently slope the catapult track – oh, hadn't I mentioned the catapult? Just a few kilometres  (ten or so) of wide gauged track, with a few steam engines for motive power. You really hope the first stage fires when they've got you up tou a thousand kilometres an hour, and you're ballistic over the Himalayan plateau…

Not a great percentage of your final velocity, but you've still got all your fuel. 

(Short diversion – read Pournelle's "King David's spaceship" for an alternative means of propulsion.)

The thing is still going to weigh as much as a battleship, and the huge number of curved metal segments are going to look very military.

My first stage (for the time being) is solid fuel; possibly smokeless powder, but it is the age of the cookbook chemist, so probably tested with different compositions to give the most even, regular burn. This is fireworks technology; the fuel is its own combustion chamber and nozzle, and there is almost no shell; just a tinfoil tube that burns away. You need a region with a tradition of dragons; these things are going to be big, roaring overhead; at least three times the size of a Saturn first stage. But you're getting your thrust without heavy pumps, fuel tanks, complex directive systems; there's no way to steer, and nothing to aim at if you could. 

Second nightmare moment, explosive separation of the first two stages. Fireworks technology again, and now you can steer. Unfortunately, there's nothing to tell you which way, and ground can't direct you over the radio; partly because you haven't one, pertly because the aerial build to withstand that treatment doesn't exist ( I'm looking forward to space heliographs and semaphore flags). It doesn't matter much, anyway; as long as you've still got acceleration, and not towards the planet, that stage is going to get you out of the atmosphere before it burns out.

Not into a stable orbit, no; but you've got time to think, time to get into your modified diving suit and take the steel plate off your windows, get the sextant out and check your trajectory, check the separation of the second stage; you're falling, but very slowly. If your line is reasonably good, you can steer by adjusting fuel flow to rocket motors, if not, use altitude rockets to change your heading. Then light up your third stage's relatively low power engines, and gently spiral out. Your tables, sextant and abacus (the Babbage engine is too heavy to bring with you) should get you to LEO with this stage, saving the last two for geostationary, and return (probably parachute braking, and very, very slowly)

How many people do I need to do life support for? (I assume this is manned; ---babbage robotics are a bit beyond me) There is a lot of money involved in all this, even if you say they're not super rich, and are all trained machinists, chemists, biologists and the like there are a lot of raw materials, like the quartz viewports, or the tungsten combustion chambers; millions, at least.


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## ventanamist (May 13, 2010)

This covers the technology and the concealment aspects but it may be unworkable. Tunnelling and air pumping were well established technologies, but this would involve pushing them both to their limits.

 Take a very tall, very isolated mountain, tunnel into its base, create a large launch chamber then continue a tunnel slowly curving upwards until it emerges at the summit. The launch is achieved by increasing the air behind the rocket and decreasing it in front. To decrease it in front will involve an air-lock at the summit that will flip open at the last minute. Other problems will include: keeping the rocket away from the sides of the tunnel with a minimum of friction, creating a fairly air tight plunger to fit behind the rocket, and creating a tunnel with totally smooth even sides.

If, by any chance,  you can make this work, you will certainly eliminate the need for the first stage of the rocket, probably a lot more. What made me think of this was Brunel's atmospheric railway that ran between Exeter and Newton Abbot. This imaginative 19th century technology allowed the trains to reach 80 mph, pulled along by a plunger in an evacuated tube. It only failed because rats ate the leather seals.

Hope this helps.


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## ventanamist (May 15, 2010)

I've been thinking some more. 

Vast underground chambers would be created to store compressed air. A fraction of the high air pressure behind the plunger could be channelled forwards then projected out to cushion the rocket from the sides of the tunnel. These jets could also be used to make the vehicle rotate - this will make it more stable, like rifling in a gun barrel. It would of course put the astronauts under even more g force.

The whole enterprise could be disguised as a mining project. Launches could take place on overcast days. I am assuming a daytime launch would allow more accurate navigation.

The thrust should continue some way above the mountain top if the air pressure is high enough.

The seal at the top I visualise as a slightly domed circular segmented hatch. Each segment would be sprung so it would fly open when there is no longer low air pressure to hold it shut. Each segment must make a very good seal.

The plunger could be made from some sort of solid fuel mix that could be ignited to give more thrust.

Brunel - you could get him on board. Fake his death to escape his debts or something. He could make it work.


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## ventanamist (May 16, 2010)

More thoughts:

A vertical shaft would be better and the launch chamber could be as far beneath the mountain as the height of the mountain itself. Lots of room for acceleration then. 

It would be essential to exit the tunnel faster than sound - no trouble with sonic booms de-stabilising you then. Possibly much faster than sound. I can't do the sums.

The launch would be about as silent as you could hope for.

The mining enterprise to conceal the launch should be a real coal mine. Lots of energy to compress all that air then.

I thought this was a crazy idea when I first read it. But now, well, it wouldn't surprise me if it had actually happened. If you don't write this story, I will. Dammit I think the Victorians could have done this. What if Prince Albert hadn't died. He was so into science and technology. There were so many great engineers around. Empress of Luna. Hey how about that for a title?

Someone hurry up and point out all the flaws in my idea or my head is going to explode


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## Ursa major (May 16, 2010)

So that's why the Albert Memorial looks the way it does....


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## ventanamist (May 16, 2010)

Now that's what I call a rocket. What style! It makes the others look like tin cans. How about the space suit - some sort of nano-thin, intelligent, reflective membrane. No need for a pressurised cabin.


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## skeptical (May 18, 2010)

Rockets are not the problem.  Control is.

If you want an Edwardian space ship, you need a combination of immensity, high risk, and manual controls.   

1.  *Immensity*.  Imagine a rocket system that is substantially larger than a space shuttle.   Since everything will be made out of 'inferior' materials (compared to our space age), the rocket system has to lift a life support pod that is extremely heavy.   In fact, everything will be heavy compared to the equivalent today.  This means the total system has to be enormous.

It may be necessary to have a large number of smaller rockets strapped on, with manually triggered electrical controls to cause them to fall off as their fuel is used up.

2.  *Manual controls*.   There are no computers, or sophisticated controls.  So you need a pilot or pilots who are incredibly skilled - the Biggles of space.   They will need to adjust the attitude of the rocket by manually firing small sideways pointing rockets.  

3.  *High risk*.  There will also be a terrible risk, due to the inferior technology and the reliance on human skills.   The percentage of flights that result in fatalities will be quite high.  Big losses in your supply of biggleses.

I trust your story requires this rocket to be enormously important - a case of life or death for the human species, in order to justify the risk and (probably) the fatalities.


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## Ursa major (May 18, 2010)

Good points.

It reminds me of something Neil Armstrong said**, possibly in jest, about the quality of the equipment on which he had to rely: "just remember that all the mechanical parts in the Saturn V were made by the lowest bidder.”





** - I found this version of the words in a Daily Telegraph article about Armstrong, although he also made this comment on a TV documentary I saw in the last few months.


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## ventanamist (May 18, 2010)

Don't assume that steel is the only material that could be used. They had the technology to make ceramics. It has only recently been realised how incredibly strong that ceramic materials can be made. It is a question of using pure materials and accurate mixing and firing. It might require some exotic stuff, rare earths etc. but it could have been done with a bit of r&d.

Huge kilns could be used to fire whole sections of the rocket in one go.


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## Ursa major (May 18, 2010)

If I were an astronaut in a ship fired in a kiln, I'd be bricking it....


* cough *


Seriously, though, I think you'd probably need a good deal more than "a bit" of R&D.


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## assasin (May 20, 2010)

i dont have any formal knowledge of any of this but from what i do know here are a few questions.

1. did they have the tech for a safe reentry.
2. g forces, what would they be like.

and just something for you to think about. you said the first tewnty years. thats barely after the first world war. before icbm,s. before jet engines. part of it before the first heavier than air flight. they wouldnt be3 able to comminicate and their computers would have been as effective as an advanced abicus. unless they were a secret society that had access to tech before public or even moswt5 government knowledge, this would be completetly and utterly imposible. 

i could be wrong but i doubt it.


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## Vladd67 (May 20, 2010)

Ursa major said:


> So that's why the Albert Memorial looks the way it does....



There was an episode of The Goon Show where they went into space in the Albert Memorial, maybe Spike Milligan knew something?


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## Gearhead_Shem_Tov (May 20, 2010)

> Rockets are not the problem.  Control is.
> 
> If you want an Edwardian space ship, you need a combination of immensity, high risk, and manual controls.
> 
> ...



I reckon simple electromechanical timers & relay logic would suffice to jettison strap-on boosters 



> 2.  *Manual controls*.   There are no computers, or sophisticated controls.  So you need a pilot or pilots who are incredibly skilled - the Biggles of space.   They will need to adjust the attitude of the rocket by manually firing small sideways pointing rockets.


 
They wouldn't have electronic digital computers, but they would certainly have electromechanical _analogue_ computers.  Think Norden bombsights.

Also, torpedoes of the era had quite sophisticated guidance systems with a gyroscope, pressure sensor, and pitch pendulum forming a mechanical analogue computer that maintained heading and depth.  Some torpedoes  could even be programmed to follow a zig-zag path (the better to hit targets in convoy).  A revolution counter attached to a little propellor (on the torpedo nose, typically) controlled a special dive program to cause the torpedo to head for deep water after a specified range was exceeded.  Nothing worse than your torpedo missing its target -- then coming back around to hit you! 



> 3.  *High risk*.  There will also be a terrible risk, due to the inferior technology and the reliance on human skills.   The percentage of flights that result in fatalities will be quite high.  Big losses in your supply of biggleses.



Maybe.  On the other hand, they won't have _complicated_ rockets, so they can potentially be very reliable.  Russian boosters have always been simpler than their American equivalents, but they ultimately became much more reliable.



> I trust your story requires this rocket to be enormously important - a case of life or death for the human species, in order to justify the risk and (probably) the fatalities.



I expect fatalities early on.

-B


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## Gearhead_Shem_Tov (May 20, 2010)

assasin said:


> i dont have any formal knowledge of any of this but from what i do know here are a few questions.
> 
> 1. did they have the tech for a safe reentry.



The Germans did it with their V2 by making it out of cold-rolled steel, and they used a tonne of Amatol for the warhead instead of something more potent because Amatol tolerated the high temperatures.

Still, you're right to mention reentry.  The Russians and the Americans independently developed the same technique: blunt-body ablative heat shields.  The need was recognised early on (the German V2 experience), and it took just a few years of experimentation.  I understand Werner von Braun had some hoped that a glider with light wing loading might reenter without too much heating, but that required multiple skips in and out of the upper atmosphere, with the craft cooling off a bit between skips.  This wasn't a desirable approach for reentering nuclear warheads because it would've slowed everything down and greatly complicated the terminal guidance system.



> 2. g forces, what would they be like.



They would've been aware of the problem (it's simple physics), and they would've come up with seat-of-the-pants solutions as they expanded the envelope while testing their first rockets.



> and just something for you to think about. you said the first twenty years. thats barely after the first world war. before icbm,s. before jet engines. part of it before the first heavier than air flight. they wouldnt be able to comminicate and their computers would have been as effective as an advanced abicus. unless they were a secret society that had access to tech before public or even most government knowledge, this would be completetly and utterly imposible.
> 
> i could be wrong but i doubt it.



The genesis of the notion would occur around 1905.  Serious practical work wouldn't begin until about 1915, and a working "baby" unmanned test rocket wouldn't fly until about 1918.  First atmospheric manned flight about 1923, first orbital shot 1925.

-B


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## assasin (May 20, 2010)

more to think about. how will tests be done. chimps are to dumb to manually fire off rockets. this means manned flights which means kaboom. without communications and computers it would be extremely difficult. no unmanned tests. the entire project would have to be entirely mechanical.

i really dont see this working. ww2 was pretty much a technological revolution. everything from early computers, to jet, to radar and communications. pre ww2 would never have the tech to pull this off. 

and how would they tell what to fix for future missions if they didnt know wht happened. how could they tell if the oxygen composition is too high. no way to communicate that. i guess itll take a sh*tload of trial and genocide to figure it out.


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## Gearhead_Shem_Tov (May 21, 2010)

assasin said:


> more to think about. how will tests be done. chimps are too dumb to manually fire off rockets. this means manned flights which means kaboom. without communications and computers it would be extremely difficult. no unmanned tests. the entire project would have to be entirely mechanical.



You don't need digital computers to control rockets; the V2 had no digital computers, only timers and analogue feedback control systems.  In fact, the V2 control system didn't even use radio valves, it used magnetic amplifiers, a technology that had been in use for thirty years by the time WWII started.  Shucks, Tesla demonstrated a radio controlled boat in 1898!  (And, no, I'm not a Tesla nut; this work of Tesla was eventually used as evidence of prior art to invalidate some of Marconi's wireless patents.)

Then, too, Elmer Sperry (of Sperry gyroscope fame) and Peter Hewitt designed an entire aircraft autopilot system _in 1916._   It included a gyroscopic stabilizer, a heading gyroscope, an aneroid barometer to regulate altitude, servo-motors to control the rudders and ailerons, and a travel distance sensor. These were installed in an airplane which could climb to a predetermined altitude, fly a pre-set course, and after traveling a pre-set distance (say 50 miles), drop bombs or dive into the ground.  Sperry added radio control to the system the next year.  It wasn't accurate enough to hit a target ship, say, but it worked.



> i really dont see this working. ww2 was pretty much a technological revolution. everything from early computers, to jet, to radar and communications. pre ww2 would never have the tech to pull this off.



Radar as we know it -- giving both range and direction -- was developed in secrecy in several countries between 1934 and 1939, but demonstrations of detecting ships in fog using radio waves were made in 1904 by Christian Huelsmeyer.  Sir Edward Victor Appleton used radio in _1924_ to calculate the altitude of the ionosphere, and in 1930 Lawrence A. Hyland detected passing airplanes with radio.

And plain radio communications were old hat by the time we're talking about.  It takes just _one_ radio valve to make a useable telemetry transmitter using Edwin Armstrong's regenerative circuit, and he patented that in 1914!  Voice communications would not have been much more difficult, especially after better radio valves were developed in the 1920s.



> and how would they tell what to fix for future missions if they didnt know wht happened. how could they tell if the oxygen composition is too high. no way to communicate that. i guess itll take a sh*tload of trial and genocide to figure it out.



Wired telemetry systems developed in the second half of the 19th century, and at least two different wireless systems, one based on pulse repetition rate and one based on Morse code were in use by 1930.  This wasn't sophisticated equipment, true, but it worked.  And you don't even need telemetry for everything.  Up through the 1950s it was common to simply place movie cameras  aboard rockets to photograph instrument dials during flight.  And Goddard flew a recording barometer aboard at least one of his rockets in the 1930s.  The issues with these sorts of systems was recovering the cameras or chart recorders after the flight -- tricky, but definitely doable.

I could go on, but I've made my poiint: it's not as hard as you are supposing to instrument and control an unmanned rocket using early 20th century technology.  WWII advances only made it easier to do.

-B


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## Gearhead_Shem_Tov (May 22, 2010)

assasin said:


> i dont have any formal knowledge of any of this but from what i do know here are a few questions.
> 
> 1. did they have the tech for a safe reentry. ...



Poking around the web a bit more I've found Robert Goddard had worked out the basic principles of inertial control and reentry in a Smithonsian report submitted in 1920!  Here's an extended quote where he describes control and reentry of a lunar photographic probe:

...
                   Guiding of Apparatus.

        The variables which are present are the direction and magnitude
        of the resultant force of gravitation, and the direction and
        magnitude of various sources of radiation, as the sun, moon and
        stars. All of these variables will be functions of the time of transit.
        If the initial velocity and direction of the apparatus be known, the
        value and direction of the force of gravitation at any subsequent
        time can be predicted, and it should be possible to employ a
        correcting device which depends upon the difference between the
        predicted and the actual value of the above variables, at particular
        times; a reference axis being maintained by gyroscopes.

        Side jets on the multiple charge principle, in line with the center
        of gravity of the apparatus, could be operated automatically,
        depending upon the discrepancy between the actual and the
        predicted value of the variables chosen. The jet need not be
        powerful, for the reason that a small sidewise velocity will
        produce a large sidewise deviation, if given at the start of a
        long path.

                   Precautions on Landing.

        Although a sufficient excess of propellant might be taken to
        check the velocity, on landing, it is very likely that this would
        not be necessary, providing the apparatus were made to
        traverse the atmosphere tangentially.

        In the case of meteors, which enter the atmosphere with speeds
        as high as 30 miles per second, the interior of the meteors
        remains cold, and the erosion is due, to a large extent, to
        chipping or cracking of the suddenly heated surface. For this
        reason, if the outer surface of the apparatus were to consist of
        layers of a very infusible hard substance with layers of a poor
        heat conductor between, the surface would not be eroded to any
        considerable extent, especially as the velocity of the apparatus
        would not be nearly so great as that of the average meteor.
...

I knew Goddard had been far ahead of his time, but I had forgotten just _how_ far ahead he had been.  In this same paper he goes on to talk about aerobraking, parachute recovery, using hydrogen/oxygen propellants, using solar energy, and even using ion propulsion in space.

It's worthwhile mentioning that between 1917 and 1940 Goddard designed, built, tested, and flew nearly every element present in a modern liquid fuel space launch vehicle, including gyrostabilisers, thrust vector control, pressure-fed rockets, turbopump-fed rockets, regeneratively cooled combustion chambers, clustered combustion chambers, and he did this all with less than $2 million in 2010 dollars.

I'm supposing that my guys start very small in 1905, but that funding steadily increases over the next twenty years so they wind up spending about $2.5 million total ($50 million in today's dollars).  Since they are explicitly working toward manned spaceflight from the get-go, not ballistic missiles, they would have a lot more freedom in their design choices.  They wouldn't need miniaturised equipment because they would be designing large boosters from the start, and that alone would reduce costs tremendously.

Everything they build would be, say, 5-10% heavier than equivalent systems in boosters derived from ICBM technology, but that means the equipment will cost a fraction of the gold-plated mil-spec gear _and_ it will be more reliable since it will have larger safety factors built in.

No, the more I look at this, the more I see the technology isn't the problem; the real show-stopper is keeping the whole shebang absolutely secret.

-Bobby


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## ColdBurn (Jun 6, 2010)

I know it's a bit of a cliche, but I suppose the Freemasons could pull the whole thing off without anyone getting  wise.  They're  supposed to be pretty good at keeping  secrets, even from their own membership.  You could even call the  vehicle _The Craft_.


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## Steve Jordan (Nov 28, 2010)

Leaving aside for a minute the discussions about the rocket itself (ingenious solutions... I don't for a minute expect that they would work!), I have a simple idea for concealing the rocket: _Weather._

If you wait until the significant area around the launch site is very cloudy, you can launch your ship... people might hear the rocket noise and assume it's thunder, but clouds will prevent them from seeing the rocket or exhaust plume.

Your boffins might be experienced enough with cloud-seeding to allow them to create their own cloud-cover, a day or two before the launch.  And public dis-information could convince the public that the noise they hear is caused by thunder or some geo-thermal process that is dangerous (hence limiting public exposure) and being studied by elite scientists.

Okay, back to launching the thing: How about a curved track that allowed the ship to use gravity-assist to build momentum, ala _When Worlds Collide_.  The track could be a concealed underground tunnel, limiting its exposure to the public until it launched at the end.


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