On 30 Jun, 12:56, Sylvia Else wrote:
Ian Parker wrote:
Skylon has some of these details - fiber reinforced ceramic. Loads
purely aerodynamic. This design has I understand been around for some
time. There must be snags somewhere otherwise NASA would have adopted
it.

The main snag in that regard would be that it wasn't invented in America.

Sylvia.

Interesting! I have been promoting the Adam Smith launcher. This,
essentially, is putting payloads into space by the cheapest method
regardless of technology of flag.

In point of fact if you used Soyuz, Proton, Long March you would save
a lot of money.

OK you will say, a lot of the difference is wage costs. Well this
isn't taken into account anywhere else. If we see a pair of shoes we
like we don't ask for the real cost in man hours. Similarly for cars.
We pay $15,000 say, for a car and simply ask "What is its performance?
how long is its warrantry?"

No, no - An American car must be buily using the latest labor saving
technology to be competitive. We don't buy a Ford Shuttle at $200,000
simply because it is American.

I have just asked the $64 billion dollar question. To what extent is
space nationalistic. I think I made my views on nationalism both in
space, and generally, abundantly clear. The fact I have had the stick
I have had indicates something.

To get back to as hypersonic plane. I feel that the concept of the
Adam Smith launcher mandates people putting their shirt on a
particular concept. Could I persuade people to put their shirt on a
hypersonic plane? Quite possibly, but a SMALL plane, 2 astronauts max.

One last remark about Concorde and supersonic aviation. The money is
now on an executive NOT an airliner. We could have one hypersonic
variant which was an LEO launcher and another that was a long range
executive. One imperative - a small launcher must operate WITHOUT a
pilot.


- Ian Parker