CEV to be made commercially available

snidely wrote:

Could be Delrin or "engineering plastic", which show up in model
railroad kits for parts that would be too delicate in styrene.


Now that you mention it, it did somewhat resemble Plastruct engineering
model plastic.

Intermountain seems to have a decent reputation in model railroading,
fitting in to the "Lexus" price range compared to Athearn's "Toyota"
price range, but not up to the "Daimler" price range of some craftsmen
kits (I know, I shifted countries in that analogy).

Maybe the boss is a space freak, too, eh?



I found the story of where it came from:
http://www.imrcmodels.com/iss/issinfo.htm

"THE MODEL
A project of the scope and character (of the International Space
Station) requires that models be available as educational tools for all
aspects of the planning, development, and utilization of the prototype.
With this in mind and responding to the growing demand, Johnson
Engineering of Houston, Texas and InterMountain Railway Company of
Longmont, Colorado have cooperated in the development of a 1:144 scale
model of ISS. The dimensions of the completed model are 30x22x20". It is
injection molded in styrene plastic, and will be mass produced in
several versions to meet the varying needs for such a model."

They say it's styrene, I don't know if they changed the plastic, or if
it's some sort of super styrene.

Pat

And there's no way that CEV will be cheap even if flown a thousand
times a year, if it flies on top of an expendable.

Agreed. That's why you should fly it on the Stick rather than the
EELVs. EELVs are fully expendable. Stick is fully reusable.

wrote in message
ups.com...
And there's no way that CEV will be cheap even if flown a thousand
times a year, if it flies on top of an expendable.

Agreed. That's why you should fly it on the Stick rather than the
EELVs. EELVs are fully expendable. Stick is fully reusable.

The stick is only planned to be partially resuable. Unfortunately, the part
that is planned to be reusable (the SRB) doesn't save you much money over
building it as an expendable.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

On 17 Oct 2005 11:26:57 -0700, in a place far, far away,
" made the
phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

What's lacking are companies that would be willing to do it as expensively as the use of a CEV would require.

Then increase the flight rate. No such thing as a manned spacecraft
that'll be "cheap" if only flown a few times a year.

And there's no way that CEV will be cheap even if flown a thousand
times a year, if it flies on top of an expendable.

On Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:13:39 GMT, in a place far, far away,
lid (John Savard) made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

On Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:55:27 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote, in part:

There are many companies with rational reasons to have personnel flown
to the moon. What's lacking are companies that would be willing to do
it as expensively as the use of a CEV would require.

That's quite correct. It is absolutely true, every word of it.

However: just as Shenzou VI would not be out of the Earth's gravity if
it had a slightly higher orbit...

are you claiming that there are ways, absent the development of
far-future technologies such as a space elevator (or non-Newtonian
propulsion!), to send personnel to the moon at prices that would be
rational for even a *few* private companies to take advantage of?

Of course there are.

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

Or, to put it more simply, the supply curve that the CEV system would
have, would be so far up the graph that it never meets the demand
curve.

-kert

In article ,
John Savard wrote:
...What's lacking are companies that would be willing to do
it as expensively as the use of a CEV would require.

...are you claiming that there are ways, absent the development of
far-future technologies such as a space elevator (or non-Newtonian
propulsion!), to send personnel to the moon at prices that would be
rational for even a *few* private companies to take advantage of?

There's no fundamental reason why not. The only absolutely inescapable
cost of doing so is fuel... and fuel is cheap. The fundamental cost of
putting mass into orbit with LOX/kerosene is under $1.50/kg. Of course,
most of that mass is vehicle; it'll be up around maybe $8/kg for payload.
There will be some other operating costs, not large by comparison because
rockets are so fuel-intensive. Call it $10/kg to LEO.

Handily, the delta-V for TLI, landing, and return is about the same as for
reaching LEO. So similar mass ratios apply, and we get a cost of around
$1000/kg for payload to the lunar surface and return. That could be
reduced significantly with refueling on the lunar surface, and perhaps
further with lunar LOX exported to LEO, but I'll disregard those options.
Figuring person plus spacesuit plus baggage plus odds and ends at 200kg, a
return ticket is $200,000. Which is a lot for an individual and nothing
much for a company.

The trick is getting the overhead costs down to a small fraction of fuel
costs. We are nowhere near achieving that; currently the overhead costs
are utterly dominant and fuel costs are insignificant. It would take
fully-reusable highly-developed hardware, greatly streamlined operations,
and a high flight rate. There's not the slightest chance that NASA could
do that. But there is nothing impossible about it.

Of course, looking at prices in my local department store... if it
weren't for the effects of the balance of payments deficit, perhaps the
U.S. could just buy Shenzou rockets from China!

Not that helpful, not on this scale. Cheap hardware, but it's still
expendable... and it uses quite costly fuels, much more expensive than
LOX/kerosene.

(By the way, Shenzhou is the spacecraft -- the rockets are Long March.)
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Pat Flannery ) wrote:


: Eric Chomko wrote:

: "Yes your honor, it was a model project back in grade school that made
: quit school and use and sell drugs."
:
:

: There's a South Park episode lurking in there somewhere.
: (Cut to image of Kenny impaled on a solar array.) :-D

Yes, South Park dares to go where no other cartoon will. SP makes the
Simpsons look like Saturday moring cartoons.

Eric

: Pat

Stick is fully reusable.

The stick is only planned to be partially resuable.

Planned, yes. However, the simple fact is that the first solid stage is
reusable, while the second stage goes to orbit, leaving large
propellant tanks and the SSME available. The tanks would make a fine
basis for a space station or an upper stage (or a propellant storage
facility, hab modules for the lunar surface, raw materials for SPS, you
name it); the SSME can be cut off and returned. It's only a lack of
even moderate imagination that makes the 2nd stage expendable.

Really. As the man said: Don't think inside the box. The box is not
your friend.