spaceship one

wrote in message
...

Well, yabut, not everyone wants to go into space. Sure it's grand
what he's doing and he's being wonderfully unique about his approach,
but it's freakishly expensive to do and horrifyingly dangerous.

I wish he'd come back down to earth and help reduce the cost of
ordinary fixed wing flying, instead of spending millions on something
that incredibly few people will benefit from.

Corky............

Unless you can figger out some way to keep humans from breeding like
lemmings, the only other alternative for survival is more real estate.
"Incredibly few people"? This is the most important thing for the future of
us ALL.

Rich S.

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:32:15 -0400,
wrote:

On 24 Jun 2004 10:11:45 -0700, (pacplyer) wrote:

Ron,

No one's sneering at brilliant aerospace Columbus types like you guys
Ron. But the era of expensive government-only exploration is over.
Burt Rutan is Mayflower. He's trying to get the rest of us slobs over
to the New World for a new life. What Burt *has* always sneered at is
the lack of follow through by the government so that all this
fantastic technology will trickle down to the common man. The common
man is what Burt has always been about.

Well, yabut, not everyone wants to go into space. Sure it's grand
what he's doing and he's being wonderfully unique about his approach,
but it's freakishly expensive to do and horrifyingly dangerous.

That's what people told my ancestors when they shipped out to
Jamestown.


I wish he'd come back down to earth and help reduce the cost of
ordinary fixed wing flying, instead of spending millions on something
that incredibly few people will benefit from.

And you don't think flying is some that "incredibly few people will
benefit from"? Better to demand that he spend the $20 M on cancer
research, if you want to get all puffed up. Me, I think he's barely
started. I'll never make it to space, but I hope my neice does.


Corky Scott

--
dillon

When I was a kid, I thought the angel's name was Hark
and the horse's name was Bob.

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 05:28:59 GMT, Ron Wanttaja
wrote:

Anyway, you do have it backwards...orbital velocity decreases with circular
orbit altitude. ~25,200 FPS at 200 nm, ~10,100 FPS at geosynchronous
altitude (~19320 NM).

You're right about the potential energy, though. Dropping from
geosynchronous altitude to ground level, you'll hit the atmosphere at over
23,000 miles per hour. And if you're an old-timer like BOb, you'll have
the turn-signal flashing the entire way....

Thanks. I've had an aversion to orbits ever since an undergraduate
dynamics final exam question: "There is an object over the pole. It's
polar coordinates and velocity are _______. Should we launch a
counterstrike?" A question from a world which is now mostly gone.
RWR, RIP.

An example of the velocity-altitude plot I mentioned is at:
http://www.ase.uc.edu/~munday/pics/trajectories.ppt

You can see Mach 3 is a long way from the STS (Shuttle) LEO return.

I assume AOTV is that winged orbit transfer trick you refered to, Ron.

--
David Munday -
Webpage: http://www.ase.uc.edu/~munday
"Adopt, Adapt, and Improve" -- Motto of the Round Table

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 07:52:56 -0500, Darrel Toepfer
wrote:

Ron Wanttaja wrote:

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.

Can't they be "Space"men? er. Spacepeople, what was I thinking... G

"Please take me along,
I won't do anything wrong."

Dave "Byrds and Beas" Munday
--
David Munday -
Webpage: http://www.ase.uc.edu/~munday
"Adopt, Adapt, and Improve" -- Motto of the Round Table

On 24 Jun 2004 14:11:46 GMT, (G EddieA95) wrote:

ISTR that there was A1P a plan to orbit an X15, using iirc a Titan rocket,
reenter, and parachute the pilot to ground. What TPS would have been used?
Might such work be of value on SS2?

I vaguely recall something along those lines, but don't know how far the
analysis got. About the same time the X-15 was flying, researchers
discovered that blunt...not needle-shapes...were the best solution for
re-entry. IIRC, the G-force is higher, but the heat is distributed over a
wider area. That's why the Mach 25 Shuttle has such a blunt profile
compared to, say, the Mach 2 Concorde.

Another concept was the Dyna-Soar, basically a mini-shuttle from the
mid-60s. It was an Air Force project. Don't really have any information
on why it was canceled, though a quickie look at one web page said it was
basically lack of a definitive mission and NASA's control of the manned
space program.

Years ago, touring Boeing Surplus, I found a lithograph of a painting of
Dyna-Soar at launch for sale. $5. Still got it.

Ron Wanttaja

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 15:47:49 +0100, anonymous coward
wrote:

The difference is Apollo 1 was flooded with pure O2 where jet fighters push O2
from a LOX converter to a face mask. Big difference.

Even then, Chuck Yeager get half his face burnt in a fire when he ejected,
IIRC.

You're right, but he didn't get burned because of his oxygen mask. He got
hit in the face by the still-glowing rocket motor that had powered the
ejection seat.

Ron Wanttaja

Ron Wanttaja wrote:

You're right about the potential energy, though. Dropping from
geosynchronous altitude to ground level, you'll hit the atmosphere at over
23,000 miles per hour. And if you're an old-timer like BOb, you'll have
the turn-signal flashing the entire way....

Ron Wanttaja

Hey Ron, help me out some more here on
rec.aviation.homebuilt.spacecraft.

For the reentry phase from orbit...
For the sake of argument (and ignoring the increased fuel required)
wouldn't slowing down too much before reentry be a problem?

Steeper path, higher G load, and even more reentry heat?

Richard (air breathing, gravity bound) Lamb

On 24 Jun 2004 10:11:45 -0700, (pacplyer) wrote:

Ron,

No one's sneering at brilliant aerospace Columbus types like you guys
Ron. But the era of expensive government-only exploration is over.
Burt Rutan is Mayflower. He's trying to get the rest of us slobs over
to the New World for a new life. What Burt *has* always sneered at is
the lack of follow through by the government so that all this
fantastic technology will trickle down to the common man. The common
man is what Burt has always been about.

Well, yabut, not everyone wants to go into space. Sure it's grand
what he's doing and he's being wonderfully unique about his approach,
but it's freakishly expensive to do and horrifyingly dangerous.

I wish he'd come back down to earth and help reduce the cost of
ordinary fixed wing flying, instead of spending millions on something
that incredibly few people will benefit from.

Corky Scott

Let's see, he's done quite a bit towards making aircraft cheaper with his
composite designs and innovations. Who knows what spinnoffs will come from this
program?

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 01:03:19 +0000, Ron Wanttaja wrote:

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 15:47:49 +0100, anonymous coward
wrote:

The difference is Apollo 1 was flooded with pure O2 where jet fighters push O2
from a LOX converter to a face mask. Big difference.

Even then, Chuck Yeager get half his face burnt in a fire when he ejected,
IIRC.

You're right, but he didn't get burned because of his oxygen mask. He got
hit in the face by the still-glowing rocket motor that had powered the
ejection seat.

http://www.ejectionsite.com/f104seat.htm

has a paragraph about the accident. The motor started his suit burning,
but the oxygen made the fire burn much more fiercly.

AC

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 22:05:10 GMT, Dillon Pyron
wrote:

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:32:15 -0400,
wrote:

Well, yabut, not everyone wants to go into space. Sure it's grand
what he's doing and he's being wonderfully unique about his approach,
but it's freakishly expensive to do and horrifyingly dangerous.

That's what people told my ancestors when they shipped out to
Jamestown.

True, but when your ancestors arrived, they had atmosphere they could
breathe, water they could drink, wind that would power any ships they cared
to build from the wood that surrounded them, and fertile ground that would,
with luck, provide limited ready-to-eat food and allow them to grow the
foodstuffs they'd need to survive.

The solar system isn't suitable for colonization. Nowhere but on Earth can
humans survive without a HUGE infrastructure first being established. That
costs money; money not likely to be available without some sort of chance
of the investors receiving a return on the investment. Even if it's
government funded, most taxpayers will never benefit from it.

The keystone of that required infrastructure is reliable, low-cost,
*high-capacity* space transportation. Emphasis on 'high capacity.' I can
go out and buy a launch vehicle for $8 million, but all that gets me is
about 500 pounds into a 1000 mile circular orbit. Apollo made it to the
Moon, but with only enough infrastructure to support two humans for a few
days (plus a return trip, of course...not needed if the occupants are
colonists).

I'd be willing to bet that the rest of the infrastructure necessary to
support space colony life exists. We can probably develop movable
factories to manufacture air from lunar or martian soil, we can probably
come up with the hydroponic farms to grow food, and nuclear power can
provide the juice.

It's just the problem of *getting* it there. How much mass would have to
be soft-landed on the Moon to be able to send over a "colony kit," complete
with air-generators, power plants, water-distillers, air locks, structural
beams, and hydroponics farms sufficient to set up a vacuum-based colony
that'll support, say, 100 people. A half-ton per person, maybe?

Plus you have the assembly crew, who'll need air, power, water, and rations
until the colony is set up. Not to mention the lander itself, and the
mining equipment needed to dig up and process the hydrogen, oxygen, and
nitrogen-bearing ore that will have to be there to have any hope of the
colony being viable. We're probably talking a million pounds.

I agree with Rich that population is the world's biggest problem. But
terraforming the Sahara or the seabed is almost within the grasp of current
technology, while soft-landing a million pounds on the moon is not. The
Apollo LM weighed about 32,000 pounds and probably had about 25,000 pounds
of payload capacity (one-way trip). So you'd need ~40 Saturn Vs to set up
one 100-person colony.

To quote Larry Niven: "The entire universe is waiting for us to invent
anti-gravity." :-)

Ron Wanttaja