CEV to be made commercially available

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 20:57:10 -0400, Terrell Miller
wrote:

erm, isn't water already liquefied?

....Not according to Mookie. Remember, he tried to start his fortune by
patenting dehydrated water.

OM
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an obnoxious opinion in your day!
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Dale wrote:

On 25 Oct 2005 18:35:48 -0700, "snidely" wrote:

Derek Lyons wrote:
"snidely" wrote:
BTW, the 299 ("Grandpa", IIRC) was more servicable than the B-17: the
wing was large enough to have a tunnel for the crew chief to scoot out
to the engines during flight.

You are confusing the B-17 with the B-19.

IT would take more time than it is worth to retrieve the cite, but no,
I'm not confused. I was reading the B-17 bio; it was the prototype for
the B-17 (not the B-17 itself) that had the in-flight access to the
engines.

Sure you're not thinking of the XB-15?

I took a stab in the dark - I knew it was either the -15 or the -19.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

On Wed, 26 Oct 2005 05:05:21 GMT, (Derek Lyons) wrote:

I took a stab in the dark - I knew it was either the -15 or the -19.

The -19 was the Douglas one- the "world's largest aircraft" at the
time, I think. Did it ever go into service? The period magazine articles
I have about it don't even show it with retracts- just fixed gear.

Reading the Boeing website today I was surprised that the XB-15
was put into service as a cargo ship for the war (XC-105- one only)
It's certainly a capable-looking plane. In the late '30's/early '40s,
photos of it and the B-17 seemed to be used almost interchangeably
in ads. Why did it take so much longer for the 294 (XB-15) to be built
than the 299 (YB-17)? I guess the former is sorta a predecessor of the
latter even though the latter flew two years earlier...

http://www.boeing.com/history/boeing/xb15.html

I think The War would have ended at least 11 days earlier had we
gone with the -15 over the -17

Dale

On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 17:51:34 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote, in part:

Of course there are.

Don't throw the hardware away, and fly a lot.

Reusability involves weight and cost penalties.

Flying a lot creates a chicken-and-egg problem.

But I do see on the Astronautix site the sad story of one attempt that
could well have been successful.

If you can't fly a lot, just build your rocket out of a lot of identical
units!

Despite clearly not being optimal in terms of overhead mass, OTRAG
apparently already demonstrated how one can significantly reduce the
costs of launching rockets into space.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html
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"John Savard" wrote in message
...

If you can't fly a lot, just build your rocket out of a lot of identical
units!

Or at least use the same system of units throughout - that helps too

In article ,
lid (John Savard) wrote:

But I do see on the Astronautix site the sad story of one attempt that
could well have been successful.

If you can't fly a lot, just build your rocket out of a lot of identical
units!

Despite clearly not being optimal in terms of overhead mass, OTRAG
apparently already demonstrated how one can significantly reduce the
costs of launching rockets into space.

That is a sad story, but perhaps it's not over:

"As of 2005, Kayser was actively searching for partners to fund an
OTRAG-type production facility in the United States and to apply his
unique low-cost technology to the requirements of the future American
space program. He founded von Braun Debus Kayser Rocket Science LLC to
transfer OTRAG's intellectual property and know-how to the United
States. Kayser, along with newer private entrepreneurs such as Musk,
Rutan, and Bezos, still dreams of achieving the goal of affordable space
transport below $ 1,000 per pound into orbit."
[http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/otrag.htm]

One can hope...
- Joe

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lid (John Savard) wrote:

OTRAG apparently already demonstrated how one can significantly
reduce the costs of launching rockets into space.

OTRAG never flew - thus they demonstrated nothing except viewgraphs.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Dale wrote:
On Wed, 26 Oct 2005 05:05:21 GMT, (Derek Lyons) wrote:

I took a stab in the dark - I knew it was either the -15 or the -19.

The -19 was the Douglas one- the "world's largest aircraft" at the
time, I think. Did it ever go into service? The period magazine articles
I have about it don't even show it with retracts- just fixed gear.

Reading the Boeing website today I was surprised that the XB-15
was put into service as a cargo ship for the war (XC-105- one only)
It's certainly a capable-looking plane. In the late '30's/early '40s,
photos of it and the B-17 seemed to be used almost interchangeably
in ads. Why did it take so much longer for the 294 (XB-15) to be built
than the 299 (YB-17)? I guess the former is sorta a predecessor of the
latter even though the latter flew two years earlier...

http://www.boeing.com/history/boeing/xb15.html

I think The War would have ended at least 11 days earlier had we
gone with the -15 over the -17


haven't found anything on the wing tunnel yet, but the key point really
is the flyoff results, which are described on the website
http://www.faqs.org/docs/air/avb171.html as follows:

quote
The evaluation program went well up until very near the end. On 30
October 1935, the Model 299 crashed on takeoff. The pilot, Air Corps
Major Ployer Hill, and Boeing test pilot Leslie Tower were killed,
though there were two survivors.

The accident was not due to any inherent fault in the design of the
aircraft. The Model 299 had a set of control surface locks that could
be set from the cockpit to prevent wind damage to the control surfaces
while the aircraft was parked. Major Hill had failed to release this
control during take-off and Tower had failed to notice the error.

Unfortunately, the ruined Model 299 could not finish the Air Corps
evaluation, and the Army selected the Douglas DB-1 instead. The DB-1
was a derivative of the Douglas DC-2 commercial transport, and was be
designated the B-18 in service. 350 were built, though the design was
hopelessly obsolete when war came.

Despite the Model 299's high cost and the accident, the Air Corps
thought the design had obvious merit, and so on 17 January 1936 the
Army ordered 13 flying Model 299s and a static test airframe from
Boeing for the sum of $3,823,807, funds that the overstretched company
badly needed to stay afloat. The 13 aircraft were to be designated
"YB-17".

[1.3] Y1B-17 / Y1B-17A

* In December 1936, the Air Corps changed the designation YB-17 to the
odd designation "Y1B-17" to indicate that these aircraft were specially
funded. In practice, the aircraft were still referred to as YB-17s in
most documentation.

The first Y1B-17 was delivered to the Air Corps in January 1937, with
the last of the 13 delivered that August. The Y1B-17 looked very much
like the Model 299 prototype, but there were significant differences.

/quote

What was the "O" plane destroyed by the Japanese in the Phillipines?
Many commentators seem to think that bomber was so out-of-date that the
Japanese did the US forces a favor.

/dps

Ah, found this...

quote
The prototype (X13372) which had crashed at Wright Field was powered by
four 750 hp (559 kW) Pratt & Whitney R-1690-E Hornet radial engines.
The cantilever monoplane wings were in a low-wing configuration, the
wing section at the root so thick that it was equal to half the
diameter of the circular-section fuselage; and wide-span trailing-edge
flaps were provided to help reduce take-off and landing speeds.
/quote

not conclusive, but supportive...this was at
http://pilotfriend.com/century-of-flight/Aviation%20history/WW2/new%20aircraft5/b17.htm

/dps

Dale wrote:

On Wed, 26 Oct 2005 05:05:21 GMT, (Derek Lyons) wrote:

I took a stab in the dark - I knew it was either the -15 or the -19.

The -19 was the Douglas one- the "world's largest aircraft" at the
time, I think. Did it ever go into service? The period magazine articles
I have about it don't even show it with retracts- just fixed gear.

No, it never went into service.

Reading the Boeing website today I was surprised that the XB-15
was put into service as a cargo ship for the war (XC-105- one only)

They did that with some submarines well - converted unique freak
prototypes into unique freak [semi] operational craft.

It's certainly a capable-looking plane. In the late '30's/early '40s,
photos of it and the B-17 seemed to be used almost interchangeably
in ads.

At a quick glance, they are quite similar visually - especially in the
tail section. The thick tail that we associate with the -17 today
didn't get added until the -E model in 1941.

Why did it take so much longer for the 294 (XB-15) to be built than
the 299 (YB-17)? I guess the former is sorta a predecessor of the
latter even though the latter flew two years earlier...

IIRC there was some construction difficulties with the -15, and later
on it took a back burner to the 299. A aviation buff of my
aquaintance has often speculated that the 299 was a 'derated' 294.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL