A revolutionary propulsion system

Speaking of revolutionary propulsion, why is there no news on two such systems;
the magnetoplasma sail and pulse detonation engines?
PDE research got a 7 million$ grant in 2000 and no news on breakthroughs to
this day. U of Oregon got big bucks to develop what they called the M2P2 system
about the same time.
My guess is that they WORK and promise CATS! And therefore have gone
classified to keep them out of the hands of us crazy civilians who want to go
to space cheaply.

^
//^\\
~~~ near space elevator ~~~~
~~~members.aol.com/beanstalkr/~~~

In article ,
Allen Meece wrote:
PDE research got a 7 million$ grant in 2000 and no news on breakthroughs to
this day.

PDE research has been getting small study grants for nearly 50 years. Why
would you expect a breakthrough now?
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

pamsuX (Allen Meece) writes:

Speaking of revolutionary propulsion, why is there no news on two such
systems; the magnetoplasma sail and pulse detonation engines? PDE research
got a 7 million$ grant in 2000 and no news on breakthroughs to this day.
U of Oregon got big bucks to develop what they called the M2P2 system
about the same time.
My guess is that they WORK and promise CATS! And therefore have gone
classified to keep them out of the hands of us crazy civilians who want to
go to space cheaply.


M2P2, which can not work at all until you are on the far side of the Earth's
magnetosphere, is going to deliver Cheap Acces *To* Space?

Here are a couple of general rules, oversimplified of course but no more so
than your post.

1: Any propulsion system that you learn about from a web site is useless.
If it were actually useful, the people who would be putting up a web site
would be too busy actually doing things with it.

2: Any theory you come up with that involves a grand conspiracy, is bunk.
If you can come up with the theory, so can so many other people that the
conspiracy would have failed years ago.


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
* for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *

PDE research has been getting small study grants for nearly 50 years. Why
would you expect a breakthrough now?
Because, thirty years after Apollo, I am experiencing boredom and impatience
with the lack of CATS which a simple high performance chemical engine would
relieve.
I think that creating and controlling continous explosions inside a rocket
tube is not that much harder than designing a chain gun. So where, pray tell,
after fifty years, are the PDE developments?
Could it be that they would make such excellent CATS ships and cheap,
easy-to-make missiles that they are being withheld for our own "security?" [the
very same reason that manned spaceflight has been so utterly stagnant for
thirty years?]
^
//^\\
~~~ near space elevator ~~~~
~~~members.aol.com/beanstalkr/~~~

On 16 Dec 2003 01:51:43 GMT, in a place far, far away,
pamsuX (Allen Meece) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

PDE research has been getting small study grants for nearly 50 years. Why
would you expect a breakthrough now?
Because, thirty years after Apollo, I am experiencing boredom and impatience
with the lack of CATS which a simple high performance chemical engine would
relieve.

Nonsense. You have no idea of why space is expensive if you believe
that.

pamsuX (Allen Meece) wrote in message ...

PDE research has been getting small study grants for nearly 50
years. Why would you expect a breakthrough now?

Because, thirty years after Apollo, I am experiencing boredom and
impatience with the lack of CATS which a simple high performance
chemical engine would relieve.

I think that creating and controlling continous explosions inside
a rocket tube is not that much harder than designing a chain gun.


You are missing the question.

The question is: Would exploding the fuel inside the combustion
chamber of a rocket result in any performance advantage? The
definitive jury ruling is still out on this question (although if you
look it in the technical/scientific aerospace literature, you will
find plenty of current papers debating this issue).

Roughly, the spectrum of current opinion varies between "an small,
incremental increase in specific impulse (i.e., certainly not more
than 10-15%)" to "absolutely no advantage at all, i.e.,
disadvantageous across the board."

Regrettably, neither the energy released by chemical reactions nor the
conversation of that energy into a reaction mass with a large exhaust
velocity care about your impatience for cheap access to space.
--
Andrew J. Higgins Mechanical Engineering Dept.
Assistant Professor McGill University
Shock Wave Physics Group Montreal, Quebec CANADA
http://www.mcgill.ca/mecheng/staff/academic/higgins/