[mcappleton]

I kind of feel like entering the space race requires building a rocket, not paying someone else to launch your satellite.

[Dylan16807]

I wonder why you got downvoted. Cubesats aren't usually newsworthy. You can buy kits, or build one as a thousand-dollar hobby.

Space becoming more accessible is great! But a cubesat launch means nothing on the international level.

[JPLeRouzic]

Like they did 55 years ago? NASA nowadays uses someone else's rockets to launch its own satellites, and it makes sense economically and strategically.

Rockets cannot be a smart space system, we have to invent something else, more fluide, secure, economical and less catastrophic in its essence.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Rockets cannot be a smart space system

It's chemical rockets, nukes or a space elevator. At least given known physics.

[JPLeRouzic]

In your answer you mix a space elevator with rockets, a space elevator is not a rocket. But people have invented many other designs that are not rockets, there is a huge page on Wikipedia about them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rocket_spacelaunch

[JumpCrisscross]

How do I mix them? I said the alternatives to rockets are nukes or a space elevator, both of which, for Earth to space launch, are beyond current feasibility. Ditto with most of the ideas on that Wikipedia page. Air breathing only gets you 10% of the way and the others are limited by our materials.

[JPLeRouzic]

Sir, English is not my native language but what I see on my screen is that you wrote:

> It's chemical rockets, nukes or a space elevator. At least given known physics.

So I have a hard time to understand how that would mean: "the alternatives to rockets are nukes or a space elevator"

In addition nukes are rockets (as far I know), so how could they be alternatives to rockets?

And they are not beyond feasibility, NOVA has been studied at NASA extensively, I think it was even fired for testing but I can't find a reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_(rocket)

And there are other proposals, rockets are really a dead end, I only need a few centuries to be proved right!

[dtparr]

Regarding the interpretation of

> It's chemical rockets, nukes or a space elevator. At least given known physics.

He's giving a series of 3 things that he's asserting are viable given known physics, so the second two are alternatives to the first. Would it make more sense to you with an Oxford comma? E.g.

> It's chemical rockets, nukes, or a space elevator. At least given known physics.

Are you interpreting the nukes/elevator as sub types of chemical rockets? That might be written (counterfactually) as

> It's chemical rockets: nukes or a space elevator. At least given known physics.

[olewhalehunter]

>we have to invent something else, more fluid, secure, economical and less catastrophic in its essence.

like UFOs?

[JPLeRouzic]

Without going as far in the unknown there is this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_drive#Spac...