tomcat wrote:
delt0r wrote:

Assuming that you are asking "why not the NASP".....

What is about aircraft that fly in a atmosphere that make people that
they are anygood for a space craft?

Wings are not a good thing when there is no air or your going kinda
fast, eps if your on a budget and don't need cross range.

Non wing based SSTO or any other kind of xxTO will be cheaper and
easier than a winged one.
We are not flying... we'er orbiting.

All IMHO of course (or IMO if you prefer)




Wings use air to gain an advantage on gravity. Therefore, they can
reach the airless void using less energy than a vertical tublular
rocket. They also enable a spacecraft to 'fly' to a runway and land
softly after deorbit. Wings are unnecessary for a spacecraft that is
not designed for, and never intended for, planetary takeoff or
planetfall.


Wings do not allow for less energy to be used to orbit a craft- while
they provide lift they do not provide any energy. In fact, since they
also generate drag, a winged vehicle would almost certainly require
more fuel to reach orbit, since the tubular design will have less
drag to overcome. The wings are only useful during the descent and
landing stage, where they allow you more options for a landing point,
such as using a runway or some other point farther from the ground
track of your orbit.


The proof that wings gain an advantage is that a bomber can reach
20,000 feet and stay there for the hours it takes to reach target and
return on 1/10th of the thrust to weight ratio that a vertical tubular
rocket requires just to slowly leave the launch pad.

This is totally irrelevant to wings being used on a spacecraft. While
they do allow aircraft to fly with lower thrust to weight ratios, that
has nothing to do with the fuel required to put a payload in orbit.
Heck, in your example, most of that fuel is burned in cruise, during
which you aren't even adding speed or altitude (i.e. energy) to the
aircraft- you are just replacing that lost to drag. On a vertical
launch, as you go higher you have less atmospheric drag to contend
with- winged or not.


Air molecules are compressed by gravity and that compression gives lift
with a properly designed airfoil.

This is utter nonsense. An airfoil will produce lift through forward
motion whether the air is "compressed by gravity" or not. The lift
is determined by the density of the fluid (air in this case), not by
how it got to be that dense.

Mike