Badwater Bill wrote:

Don't ya love it! Mike Melville of all people earned that ride by
working with Burt for more than 30 years on all the projects. Mike
was around before the Long EZE. At 62 years old, Mike becomes an
astronaut. Burt doesn't pick some snot nosed little 30 year old smart
ass fighter jock, but puts Mike in that seat. I just love it. If
anyone in that organization earned that ride, it was Melville.

Throwing the M&M's was a move of pure taste (no pun intended)? Good
for Melville, the first commercial astronaut in the history of our
species!

God Damn, I'm stoked. Burt and Mike doing that put humans back on the
list of something that might be worth populating this Earth.

One thing really came to mind after this mission and that was how
focused Burt and crew can be. The X-Prize is to go to 100 kilometers
and back. That little "Flash Gordon" type space ship will do that at
Mach 2.5. It's interesting that to get into orbit requires Mach 25,
or ten times the speed. At ten times the speed, since kinetic energy
is quadratic with velocity, e.g. Energy = 1/2 Mass * Velocity **2,
that means the little ship would need 100 times more energy to do
that...and 100 times more fuel to do that. Now you know why the space
shuttle has all those external rockets and the big tank. I find it an
interesting thought that a ballistic ride into space only requires
1/100th fuel getting into orbit requires.

BWB

I'm with you all the way, Bill, except for the fuel increase.

To go 100 times faster will take more than 100 times the fuel.

Drag is higher at higher speeds, and the C of D increases in the
transonic and supersonic ranges...


Richard