--
Danny Dot
www.mobbinggonemad.org


wrote in message
oups.com...
This vehicle will land on a runway like the shuttle, right? I wish NASA
would go this route--a scaled-down version of the shuttle--rather than
go backwards to Apollo.

Is there a website with diagrams and descriptions of the Clipper?

Thanks!

Mark Lopa


I was a design engineer for NASA during the transition back to a capsule. I
proposed a requirement for a vehicle that can survive a failure of the
active flight control system on entry. A capsule can do this easily. A
lifting body would have to go to zero lift trim, flip the seats in the
cockpit, and the crew would pull 8 Gs on a low earth entry and 20 Gs on a
lunar return entry. And yes the crew can pull 20Gs on an entry. The Navy
did several 20 Gs entries in a centrifuge in 1963 and all did the entry
without any problems. The crew could even fly with a thumb wheel through
the entire entry.