pamsuX (Allen Meece) wrote in message ...

PDE research has been getting small study grants for nearly 50
years. Why would you expect a breakthrough now?

Because, thirty years after Apollo, I am experiencing boredom and
impatience with the lack of CATS which a simple high performance
chemical engine would relieve.

I think that creating and controlling continous explosions inside
a rocket tube is not that much harder than designing a chain gun.


You are missing the question.

The question is: Would exploding the fuel inside the combustion
chamber of a rocket result in any performance advantage? The
definitive jury ruling is still out on this question (although if you
look it in the technical/scientific aerospace literature, you will
find plenty of current papers debating this issue).

Roughly, the spectrum of current opinion varies between "an small,
incremental increase in specific impulse (i.e., certainly not more
than 10-15%)" to "absolutely no advantage at all, i.e.,
disadvantageous across the board."

Regrettably, neither the energy released by chemical reactions nor the
conversation of that energy into a reaction mass with a large exhaust
velocity care about your impatience for cheap access to space.
--
Andrew J. Higgins Mechanical Engineering Dept.
Assistant Professor McGill University
Shock Wave Physics Group Montreal, Quebec CANADA
http://www.mcgill.ca/mecheng/staff/academic/higgins/