Ron Wanttaja wrote snip
Second...and, probably more-easily overcome...there's the G-load issue.
IIRC, Melville experienced about 5 Gs, maximum, during re-entry. 5 Gs from
a re-entry speed of Mach 3 vs. a re-entry speed of Mach 25. Hmmmm...think
we'll have to trim the size of shuttlecock tail. :-)

Actually it was 6 G's


Finally, we get to the heretical part of this posting: Why wings at all,
for an orbital mission?

Forty years ago, a few square feet of ablative heat shield was good enough
to handle most manned space missions. The Russian space program has flown
them continuously.

You have to keep in mind the objective of Burt's program. Hitting the
ground hard with frozen parachutes might be O.K. for a Ruskie
government pilot, but it's just too risky for common carriage
passengers; the Russians have thumped to death an otherwise successful
mission crew at the last few seconds more than once. Splashing down
at sea might be O.K for a U.S. military pilot, but the expense of
recovery (ships etc,) and possibility of drowning are increasing the
complexity of the mission. Again your government sanctioned solutions
are contrary to everything Burt stands for. On SS1 Burt has dispensed
with parachute heaters, window heat, heavy RCS, expensive launch
facilities, ground simulators, the list goes on and on. And Rutan's
endeavor cost in the ten's of millions, while the illustrious
government shuttle costs two billion just to build and an additional
one-hundred million per launch. Now I love the shuttle, but it's too
old and just too complex to operate commercially. Burt will
undoubtedly offer scaled up orbital versions that can handle
pax/commercial payloads if the gov weenies and corporate CEO idiots
leave him alone all the way to fruition. E.g. the Beech Starship that
failed commercially is not the same as the prototype we saw flying at
Mojave. Burt's is devoid of all the heavy crap that Beech loaded down
the production model with, which in turn with all the gov and
corporate interference ran the cost out of sight (up to bizjet
prices.)


Just because you want to re-use an orbital vehicle doesn't mean it has to
have wings. Unless the vehicle is able to reposition itself from its
landing location to launch location, you're still stuck with considerable
infrastructure to recover, service, and transport the vehicle. Wings on
your deorbit vehicle don't help those functions. They allow pin-point
precision landings...but if you're just going to land out in the desert,
does it really make a difference? If you're aloft for more than one orbit,
you are not going to be able to land at your departure point until about 12
hours later.


The base being in the desert is really immaterial. The purpose of a
winged vehicle is that it can deorbit burn and abort into any public
airport in the world. Again no recovery sites required. Again cost
is low. Mojave is not maintained by Scaled or Vulcan. It is a public
airport open to anyone. You do it any other way and now you have a
recovery range to prepare, maintain, pay for, and at all costs reach
with the vehicle. I know the purpose of a gov contractor is to run
costs out of sight so these cost-saving concepts will probably be
alien to you for a while. ;-)



For the most part, American capsule landings were within sight of the
recovery base. Isn't that accuracy enough?

In sight of a multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier? Do you have any
idea how much an old non-nuke recovery ship burns? What about the
cost of the crew alone? How is that efficient?


snip good aero stuff here


By the way, NASA has "Astronauts," Russia has "Cosmonauts." We need a name
for the ordinary folks who fly on SpaceShipOne:

I hereby suggest "Commonauts" for those lucky SOBs who get to ride Burt's
space bird.

Ron Wanttaja

Naa. These people are colonizing space in a much more efficient
manner than the government ever could. For the first time manned space
is going to be commercially viable. I would think "Colonaut" would
be a much better name for them.

Cheers "aye"

pacplyer