"Ron Wanttaja" wrote in message
...

"Moon Zero Two", 1969, starring James Olson.

Ooh - I'll look that one up!

With a weight increase, the amount of fuel needed increases
disproportionately.
Also, if you add a second seat, you're always going to have to have a body
or
ballast in the spot to keep the beast in balance.

We'll just make the ship expandable. When you've got a passenger, just
unlatch it in the middle and pull the ends out - like you do with the dining
table when Grandma's coming.

You're not going to be able to work a keyboard, and if you have buttons
and
whatnot to push, they're going to have to be well separated to ensure you
don't
punch the wrong one. It's gonna be tough to fly without a pressurized
cabin.

Who sez the spacesuit can't have a keyboard- or even a joystick? Pull your
arms inside and start typing. 'Course the chest area would look like Jayne
Mansfield's.

2000 miles is about 1/3 the way around the entire moon...2/3rds the
maximum
distance you'd want to fly, anyway.

Hmmm... I forgot about how small the circumference is. Maybe 2,000 miles is
more than we need. There's bound to be other colonies less than 2K miles
apart.

Like Robert said, though, we could use a mass driver or other ground-based
system to throw the vehicle, and just rely on onboard fuel to land. This
drops
the required onboard fuel to about 750 pounds. Not too bad.

Naw - can't go for the ground based system. What if you want to stop for a
picnic on the shore of the Mare?

Yep, ballistic wouldn't be much fun. You want a "Hollywood" moon flight:
Take
off, climb to a given altitude, cruise at that altitude through the entire
flight, then descend to land.

If we don't have antigravity, what's it going to take?

Well, maybe we *do* have antigravity. After looking at your figures (not
that I understand them), did you say that 5,000 fps is orbital velocity at
10 NM MSL? If so, then what speed is orbital velocity at 1,000' MSL (Moon
Surface Level)? Cruising at that speed would obviate the need for constant
vertical thrust. Half that speed would require less constant vertical thrust
than a hover. If you could find a happy medium, perhaps a small fuel cell,
plutonium reactor, cold fusion motor, or bag of rocks and Hernadez's 98 mph
fast ball would do it.

C'mon guys. There's got to be another Rutan out there. What are we going
to
do when he's history?

Live far more boring lives, I reckon....

"May you live in interesting times"

Rich "Call Hazel Stone" S.