"T minus three ... we have ignition."

[unixronin]

In honor of the largest rocket ever built, the largest model rocket ever built, a 1/10-scale Saturn V, was recently launched from Price, Maryland. Video of the launch is available on YouTube, linked from that article.

You really want to sit and wait all the way to the end. Trust me on this. The slow-motion repeat at the end looks, and sounds, as close as we'll ever see again to the real thing outside of Hollywood movies. I have a hard time finding words for quite how I'm feeling right now.

Comments

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

I see some hope. Recently, some physicists were able to crack the quantum mechanical effect in chlorophyll that allows plants to recover 95% of the radiant energy which lands upon them — at least, 95% in the early stage of the photosynthesis cycle; successive stages are nowhere near as effective.

So now imagine you have a very small, light spacecraft. It's got an ion engine and a small amount of reaction mass. (“Small” is relative, but we’re talking orders of magnitude less than a Saturn V.) It also has no onboard power for the ion engine. At launch, you beam a high–energy laser at it and use that to power the ion engine. The ion engine then accelerates small quantities of reaction mass to unspeakably high velocities, and presto, you get lift.

It’s definitely science fiction, but — it’s a lift vehicle idea that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t violate any laws of physics, and manages to avoid the phenomenally wasteful “let’s put half a million pounds of fuel into orbit just to propel the vehicle out of orbit and onto the rest of its journey” problem the Saturns had.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

There's a couple of different groups working on laser-launch ideas. The Lightcraft is another; it relies on laser power to heat air in a thrust chamber, iirc, to get thrust in-atmosphere without having to carry propellant. And there's things like Virgin Galactic.

I don't see any of these things becoming practical reality soon enough that I'll ever be able to afford to go into space, though, barring some really revolutionary development.