Would it be possible to build a ship out of household items?

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Bernie
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Would it be possible to build a ship out of household items?

Post by Bernie »

lets brainstorm ways in which this could be possible. (or not. i dont care :p)

im not all too technical but it looks like keen's ship takes off like a plane, diagonal or horizontal takeoff- so maybe first tackle the issue of making a plane out of household items, then worry about how to get it into space.

then if amazingly we find out how it could be done, i say one of us make it :dopekeen or get the mythbusters guys to do it.
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Post by chrissifniotis »

Okay, then the first thing to tackle in making a plane is what are the main components of a plane.
Would we agree that we'll need a cockpit, engine, wings and thrusters as a basis?
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Post by Bernie »

i suppose so. he has a vacuum cleaner based thruster thing at the back, so i guess, how could one boost the power of a vacuum cleaner to, like, 100,000x? besides vacuums suck in, so i dunno what he did with it (i think some vacuums *can* blow outward, am i right in this? my vacuums old so i dunno).

and his controls are a joystick, so i guess one could interface a joystick to a vehicle. or a computer program taking in the joystick's controls and in turn controlling the ship. i dunno.
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Post by Keening_Product »

I assume you mean spaceship.

Anyway, easy: Just need a giant camera film canister-like container, aspirin and loads of water.

Tape yourself to it and fill a large plastic bag with oxygen. Done.
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Post by Bernie »

heh, but i mean, you know, with the ship zooming around outerspace with cool exhaust coming out of the back. im taking this very seriously :celtic
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Post by Benvolio »

A very clever guy called Billy figured it all out a long long time ago. And about two years after that, another very clever guy also called Billy also figured it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th-AqMvvBzE
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Post by Roobar »

In reality, you can build a rocket. But for a spaceship for space travel, you need much more than household items.
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Post by StupidBunny »

Bernie wrote:i suppose so. he has a vacuum cleaner based thruster thing at the back, so i guess, how could one boost the power of a vacuum cleaner to, like, 100,000x?
I think you're going to need an order of magnitude a bit higher than 100,000 to even get into space, let alone to other planets.

Are we designing a ship capable of faster-than-light travel, or simply one which can get us into space? In the latter case, the technology exists but will require a very large amount of fuel to even deliver an eight-year-old kid into space, especially with a fuel as slow-burning as Everclear. Unless of course we're considering technologies which don't exist that can make it more efficient, in which case we can also allow for faster-than-light travel but also make technical considerations far more difficult, since we're pondering such nonexistent technologies.
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Post by Levellass »

In reality, you can build a rocket. But for a spaceship for space travel, you need much more than household items.
There are two things we must consider here, intelligence level and ship capability.

We seem to be working off 'ordinary human' and 'standard NASA rocket' here, in which case the simple answer is 'No, there's no way Keen can do this.'

However if we assume that Keen is indeed a hyperintelligent 8-year old, then we can ask 'Is it physically possible to make a spaceship out of household components given unlimited intelligence'?

Now I'm going to ignore all physically impossible things, faster than light travel say, since if we don't we don't have any logical basis and can just go 'Keen invented the Jobs field, which allows you to make stuff out of junk with no effort.'


The first issue is of course, thrust; this is a big issue, perhaps the most important issue. Keen will need to leave earth at an escape velocity of 11m/s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity to leave the earth. Or at the least he will need to provide him and his rocket with enough kinetic energy to overcome earth's gravitational pull (And air friction). This is much more than the energy in a single bottle of alcohol and a car battery. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_propellant

Ergo Keen must be obtaining energy from a nonchemical source. The flames from his ship suggest that it moves by emitting exceedingly hot plasma (Normal oxygen-fuel flames don't work in space, and carrying sufficient chemical fuel to fly across the galaxy using them is unfeasible, ergo these cannot be fuel-oxygen flames.) This suggests a canister of compressed fuel, solid xenon perhaps, or maybe gas collected in situ, that is then ejected via ion propulsion at high speeds and temperatures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster

The orange color of the flame suggests sodium impurity, as would be encountered in using impure materials as the fuel source. This suggests Keen moves his craft by vaporizing mass that he picks up wherever he is, meaning as long as he does not spend too long in space, he will always have propulsion fuel.

But how to ionize that fuel? It can't be via the battery, we need a massive, definitely nuclear source if we wish to keep Keen's rocket's weight down. A small and efficient hydrogen fusion reactor would suffice, if strong enough magnets could be produced to keep the plasma volume down. Everclear would make a fine hydrogen source. The only setback is the reactor would not be able to run full time; an idling reactor would burn through a massive amount of fuel, so it would need to operate in bursts, and thus have some way of starting it from scratch. A car battery would do.

The next question is that of airtightness; even a small leak would rapidly deplete the air in Keen's small craft, so it is vital that this be so. Fortunately the smaller a craft the easier this job is, and there is no reason multiple layers f soup cans welded into a shell wouldn't serve the purpose. (The problem of heating on reentry can be treated here, it only exists if you wish to freefall to earth, which also gives you the problem of ahem, landing. If Keen uses his propulsion system to slow him down, cans would suffice as shielding.)

Providing Keen doesn't do anything too strenuous, or hit space junk, a plexiglass cockpit and rubber seals should work fine for sealing as well.

The problem of control is trivial, Keen's ship seems to operate merely as a conveyance from place to place, and so aside from simple controls governing the stop-and-start of propellant, a simple joystick interface would suffice for his purposes.
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Post by guynietoren »

Levellass wrote:Providing Keen doesn't do anything too strenuous, or hit space junk, a plexiglass cockpit and rubber seals should work fine for sealing as well.
That was my first concern. You might be able to escape earth's pull at minimum velocity/acceleration without tearing apart a ship made using tin/aluminum cans. But he'd also need to descend onto planets very slowly without proper heat shielding.

The building of inertial dampeners or any space time altering device would require exotic particles/material. It would be unlikely to make anything stable out of household materials.
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Post by Levellass »

The building of inertial dampeners or any space time altering device would require exotic particles/material. It would be unlikely to make anything stable out of household materials.
You don't need those; the heating is caused by high velocity compressing the air in front of the object. A shallow entry angle lessens this effect, as does simply firing your rockets. The reason our craft don't do this is because it would require the burning of about 3/4 of the fuel needed to get up, and it's easier to just fall like a stone and warm up than to carry that extra fuel (and expense.) up with you. In many ways our rockets are glorified stones.
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Post by Bernie »

heh i had a feeling there'd be a long technical detailed reply from levellass. :p nicely done though.

how about radiation in space? wouldnt we need some kinda shielding from it? (i dont actually know how one shields themselves from radiation). see, this ties into my theory that keen has cancer, cause its the one thing he overlooked.
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Post by chrissifniotis »

Well, have there been references to radiation in Keen? And generally where does radiation naturally occur in space?
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Post by Bernie »

hey look at that, a fellow sydneysider :)

yeah i dunno, but apparently theres radiation in space. maybe from the sun?
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Post by Keening_Product »

Bernie wrote:yeah i dunno, but apparently theres radiation in space. maybe from the sun?
There's radiation in everything from everything.

There are many sources of radiation in space.

But to answer an old question: radiation poisoning is why Keen is so pale.
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