NASA uses 450,000 gallons of water to shield launch vehicles from acoustic damage

boing
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I feel like this is just more proof that the Bellagio Hotel has been launching rockets for years.

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this sort of thing?

https://www.amazon.com/Baby-Toy-Aquashots-Creative-Educational/dp/B078KGX78W/ref=sr_1_224?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1514519996&sr=1-224&keywords=rocket+pump

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Yep, when they get the emdrive working properly

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That was pretty incredible. Like one of those dam spillway tests.

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all the more reason to populate space. cities in lunar lava tubes, that sounds fun…although alittle “the moon is a harsh mistress” but that’s fine…we get a fun robot buddy at least.

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Yup, Earth’s Moon is far more amendable to a beanstalk for exactly the reasons you mention. Mars is an edge case, but you’d still have most of the same stability issues. The Martian atmosphere is a wee bit thin for aircraft to be much help, but it also resists a catapult less and a rotovator could reach lower without experience significant drag. I suspect the Moon is uniquely qualified for a beanstalk. However, there’s no need for an L2 beanstalk. A transfer orbit from L1 to L2 takes a pittance of energy. If you’re thinking of the L2 beanstalk for launching elsewhere in the solar system, that’s where a smaller momentum exchange tether is more useful as it can be somewhat aimed on an efficient orbit.

Most likely any use of Lunar water would remain on the Moon for local projects. The rest of the Solar System has plenty of water-ice.

You’d be better off placing automated solar stations at the Earth-Moon L2 point. Alternatively you could place them at the L4 or L5 points for easy beaming to LEO satellites.

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Sorry, you will lose to machines. You need way too much life-support crap to be economically competitive with sending probes and robots.

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Listen man, they explained this.

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I think so too. And the extremely low lunar population density is a big plus for safety. :wink:

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Zach Weinersmith / www.smbc-comics.com

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I remember getting one of those for a single-digit birthday. My mother thought it would be better to fire it horizontally, foe easier spotting and retrieval. We were subjected to a startlingly damp physics lesson to prove that was a bad idea…

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There is a forum out there for folks who build these out of plastic pop bottles. Some of them are multi-stage with telemetry and guidance computers.

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