h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message ...
On Tue, 6 Jul 2004 06:22:32 -0700 (PDT), in a place far, far away,
Graham Drabble made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

If you've got suggestions as to how to make the group work better then
the mods would be gald to hear them. It's a difficult balance between
the delays inherent in hand moderating every article and the trust
required to white list someone.

For now I'd just like to remind people to be careful and keep talking
about the space issues not the personal ones.

The problem isn't the off-topic flamage, of which there's very little
in absolute terms. The problem is that there's so little content at
all. People simply aren't posting to the group, and I have no ready
solution to that.


I read the topic here and thought - 'hoo boy, someone is talking about
off-the-shelf rocket engines and how they could be better used' - and
I read it to see they're talking about existing vehicles, not existing
engines. Ah well, C'est la vie!

Lots of information in minutiae - not a lot of fundamental information
and serious thought about that.

There is very little content because rocket science isn't that easy
and whenever someone tries to spread a little knowledge they *are*
flamed by those who are held in high regard here.

I mean, how often does anyone talk about the rocket equation? You
know,

Vf = Ve * LN(1/(1-u)) ?

where u=propellant fraction and Ve=exhaust speed, and Vf = final speed
of stage

and how that impacts all aspects of rockets.

let alone more interesting things like Calculus of Variations and how
to use to to figure out optimal take off thrust, or Goddard
Trajectories, or - anything useful really.

I mean it would be cool to see an analysis of each rocket stage in
terms of the rocket equation - the performance of a stack related to
the calculus of variations computation - and the actual trajectory
compared to the goddard trajectory for the stack.

This would give people who read and post here some real capacity to
think usefully about rockets and give their commentary some weight.

and this is just getting to orbit stuff that has been known since the
1950s.

Don't even try having an intelligent discussion about more outre - but
still perfectly reasonable stuff like - what the cost per Nm2/sec must
be for suborbital vehicles to compete against long-range aircraft here
on Earth, or how the annual cost of a manned base on the moon relates
to these fundamental costs.