On Mar 25, 3:33*pm, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article , nospam@
127.0.0.1 says...



On 3/23/2013 7:25 PM, Anonymous wrote:

Most importantly, I'm convinced that no winged space plane will ever be safe
since an explosion of the booster rocket will almost certainly rip the wings
and / or tails off the mini-shuttle,
making a safe RTLS unlikely.

Umm, the USAF wasn't as convinced as you seem to be. The X-20 DynaSoar
program mounted a winged vehicle atop a Titan III.

The risk of exploding booster is easier to manage when the vehicle is at
the top of the stack instead of on the side. Don't draw too many
conclusions from the old shuttle design...

But as NASA found out with Ares I, it's not as easy as they'd like it to
be. *Case rupture of a large solid, resulting in a debris cloud of
relatively large, relatively dense, relatively hot pieces of solid
propellant, is an issue to be dealt with most carefully.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

the ares problem was excess vibration which could of killed the crew
by liquifying some of their body parts like their liver and spleen....

launching humans on solids is just plain dumb..