A6_6 Lunar-tising

Lunar advertising, although a Sci-Fi concept, has caught the attention of company executivesbefore. In this paper, the authors examine the feasability of Moon advertising using lasers, andexamine the mechanics behind this. The paper nds that the power required to beam a messageon the Moon's surface are in the order of magnitude of 10^12 W, but any combination of normaloptical lasers can be used as there is no special requirements

A6_1 The Suitability of Russell's Teapot for Liquid Containment at an Appropriate Temperature

Russell's teapot is a hypothetical teapot floating in space between Earth and Mars. The maximum and minimum temperature of tea stored in this pot was found to be 277 K and 225 K respectively using the Stefan-Boltzmann law. An optimal tea storage orbit radius is calculated to be 83.2 million km, just inside the orbit of Venus

A6_8 The Hyperloop through the centre of the Earth II

In previous research it was shown how a 500 kg Hyperloop pod falling through the centre of the Earth would never return to the surface when air resistance is considered. In this paper two possible methods to ensure that the pod would reach the opposite side of the Earth are considered; a thruster and a winch. For 5000 kg of fuel, it was determined that the total travel time using thrusters would be 2820 s if all the fuel is burnt instantaneously, making it a feasible solution. On the other hand, the travel time using a winch was over 86 hours. Therefore using such a method would not be particularly useful given assumptions made here

A6_4 The Hyperloop through the centre of the Earth

This paper describes how a Hyperloop style pod would travel through a low pressure tunnel straight through the Earth. The equations of motion for the pod in an airless tube are derived, and the total travel time is found, agreeing with the commonly quoted value of 42 minutes. A peak velocity of about 8000 ms−1 was also calculated. Furthermore, a numerical solution to an Earth bisecting tube with low air resistance was found, and graphed to show an exponential decay in amplitude of trajectory. the loss of velocity every oscillation meant the pod would not reach anywhere near the other side of the planet

A6_5 Floating Cities

In this paper we describe the construction of a floating habitat as described by Buckminster Fuller in the 1930’s. We first examine a a 2 km wide sphere that has been heated by 1◦C and find it generates a lift of 1.64×108 N. We further examine the feasibility of carbon nanotubes as a construction material and find that they are able to withstand the tension from the interior stresses of the sphere. Lastly, we consider the general case with variable radii and temperature, and find that even the smaller spheres can house thousands of people

A6_3 Taking the Moon to Mars

We apply the Method of Patched Conics to estimate the trajectory the Moon would take if it wereto be removed from its current orbit and placed in the same orbit at Mars. We calculate thatthe velocity changes at Earth and Mars required for such a trajectory are 1906 m/s and 1356 m/srespectively. We determine that it would take one coal burning power plant in excess of 11012years to produce enough energy for just one velocity change, making the concept predictablyunfeasible with current technology

A6_2 How Hot is Tatooine

Tatooine is a fictional terrestrial planet from the Star Wars universe which orbits a set of binary stars. By considering the classification of its Suns, Tatoo I and Tatoo II, and the planets orbital period we were able to find the radius of Tatooine’s orbit, 1.15 Au. It was then possible to work out the varying solar constants for Tatooine depending on its position relative to both Suns, allowing us to calculate an average daytime temperature range of 42.3 celcius to −10.7 celcius

A6_7 "Where We Dropping, Boys?" - Investigating the Fortnite meteor

Fortnite is a battle royale game which has become popular online in the last year. In one of the updates, the game introduced a large crater created by a meteor, although, information regarding this meteor before impact is largely unknown. In this paper, we derive a simple equation which relates the dimensions and velocity of the meteor to it's corresponding crater size. We determine the dimensions of the in-game crater using footage found online, before plotting a series of solution curves which represent radius-velocity pairs the meteor could have had given the measured dimensions of the crate