This document provides detailed technical notes on the challenges of both short-term and long-term manned spaceflight, and compares technology solutions based on low- and high-performance hypersonic gliders versus conventional ballistic spacecraft layouts. It also addresses the limitations of conventional propulsion as related to propellant mass requirements...

"Space travel represents a daunting challenge for human beings. Space is devoid of any life support elements for earth born humans. So human space travelers must carry all of their life support systems along with them. For short, earth orbit missions carried consumables and repair parts that can be re-supplied from earth provide a near term, acceptable solution.

As humans attempt to explore further and further from earth, the system that enables increasing the distance traveled is still propulsion. In fact, food and other life-sustaining matter increase linearly with travel time and crew size, while Tsiolkowski's law shows that accelerating a spacecraft by expelling mass (i.e., using Newton's third principle) needs a propellant mass increasing exponentially with increasing speed and initial mass. Because human lifetime is defined, the more distant the travel the greater the speed required.

Currently there is much discussion about the breakthrough technologies required to take the next step into space. In fact the technical and engineering foundation the established by the efforts in the 1960's already documents the industrial capability necessary to construct the hardware for the next step. So it is appropriate it to review." - Prof. Paul Czysz

Related: Aurora & Beyond (PDF), Paul Czsyz Video Interview, Paul Czysz Audio Interview, AJAX and Magnetohydrodynamics, Hypersonic MHD Implementation, Hypersonic Technical Data, Russian AJAX Technical Analysis, Space - The Final Design Frontier, Model 176 Hypersonic Shuttle, Hypersonic Design Notes, 2025 and 2050 Military Aerospace Vehicles