Military Space Plane vs. Ares 1...which could be operationalfirst?
On Nov 22, 10:44*am, BradGuth wrote:
On Nov 10, 4:41*pm, "Jonathan" wrote:
With the cancellation of Ares1-Y, it looks to be at least
six or eight years before Ares could see a manned flight.
Does it make sense to pursue two different paths to replacing
the shuttle?
I believe that the lack of support for another moon-shot, combined
with the glaring need for lower cost to orbit means this
program is the one that now makes sense.
U.S. Air Force Aims to Launch Space Plane Next Year
"As a reusable space plane, the intent of the craft is to
serve as a testbed for dozens of technologies in airframe,
propulsion and operation, and other items in the hopes
of making space transportation and operations significantly
more affordable. "http://www.space.com/news/090602-x-37b-space-plane.html
s
Executive Summary
NASA'S SPACE SOLAR POWER EXPLORATORY RESEARCH
AND TECHNOLOGY (SERT) PROGRAMhttp://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10202&page=1
What's a really good interplanetary shuttle (half again or twice the
volumetric size of the existing shuttle), and its 100 tonne payload
capacity that’s also packing a nuclear reactor (actually as being
pulled or pushed by as an external reactor/thruster module that would
otherwise remain in LEO) with those multiple MW ion thrusters, going
to cost us?
With a sufficient cache of onboard or external energy (reactor or
possibly solar derived), most any fuel or substance can be utilized
for ion thrusting, especially nifty and extremely dense as well as
already charged up and ready to zip out the exhaust would be radon
(Rn222), as obtained from a few kgtonne of radium that could
otherwise be utilized as is within the reactor.
Btw; *our moon should have loads of radium.
*~ BG
I would love to see that. Flash Gordon tech comes true!
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