SS1 flight set for June 21

On Sat, 5 Jun 2004 15:27:31 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

The first Sea Launch flight carried a mass dummy.

....Ah! So *that's* where John Maxson went! :-)


OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

Henry Spencer wrote:
[snip]
Only if you are the government, or have government sponsorship, are the
technical problems dominant. Only in that case does the *technical*
difference between suborbital and orbital make the former doubtful as
a step toward the latter.

The government-aerospace mindset goes deep, but it is possible to break
out of it, if you try.

As I pointed out in another post, manned rocketry is
fully 6 *decades* old. Space rocketry as well. Manned
spaceflight is over 4 decades old. Yet today it's
still nearly as expensive as it always has been. It's
only more common because it's slightly less risky and
the politics of manned spaceflight keep it budgeted.
It's worthwhile considering how thin a volume listing
all the manned rocket flights in history would be.

SS1 is very definitely a technology demonstrator. But
it is not a demonstrator of rocketry, or pressure
hulls, or reentry systems, or any technology of
subsystems. It's a demonstrator of the technology of
putting it together and managing it without
unnecessary overhead.

SS1 as a thing is not terribly impressive. It's way
behind the technology and sophistication of today's
manned spacecraft. But SS1 as a thing built for a
fraction of the cost and with a fraction of the
workforce of any other sub-orbital rocket in history,
even the X-15, is quite an achievement. One that has
the potential (along with the other folks doing
similar things like X-COR) to open up that thin
volume of manned rocket flights to damned near
everyone and make it quite a bit thicker very soon.

Herb Schaltegger wrote:
One of the most thoughtful and reasonable posts yet. I may steal this
next time I take on those zealots at slashdot. (I really wish more
the clued in regulars here would join in there.. Stuffie has more
common sense and intelligence than they collectively do.)

I keep my mouth shut most of the time there; it's far, far too easy to
get drowned in the noise when every single damn topic gets nigh on 250
posts in just a couple hours (the first fifteen or twenty all being
clueless "FP, loozer biatches!!!!!!")

The trick is to wait a bit for the mods to get in there with their
knives trim things down a bit, read at +2, and be sure the +'s and -'s
are set properly in your preferences. Slashcode is *not* User
Friendly and requires a bit of work.

Consequently, since I post infrequently and metamoderate very carefully,
I have excellent karma . . . :-)

My Karma is currently ****. I've been violating the hivemind, and got
nailed on some of my mods by the meta's, in retrospect the meta's are
right and I was wrong.

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

Joe Strout wrote:

Nonsense -- it's already advanced the state of the art. Just a few of
the new technologies developed and demonstrated:

If you use the marketroid meaning of the word technology... I.E. so
watered down as to be essentially meaningless.

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

"Christopher M. Jones" wrote:
It's a demonstrator of the technology of putting it together and
managing it without unnecessary overhead.

Given that it hasn't flown in regular service, and isn't planned to do
so, it 'demonstrates' no such thing.

But SS1 as a thing built for a fraction of the cost and with a fraction of
the workforce of any other sub-orbital rocket in history, even the X-15,
is quite an achievement.

Given that it's not in the X-15's class (it's inferior), and that
there *is* no other suborbital rocket to compare it to...

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

Derek Lyons wrote:


Only to those with low goals and willingness to delude themselves that
a sub orbital ballistic trajectory constitutes 'going to space'.


As the ghosts of Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom closed in on Derek from
behind, he suddenly felt ectoplasmic chimpanzee crap descend on his
head...... :-)


Pat

In article ,
(Derek Lyons) wrote:

My Karma is currently ****. I've been violating the hivemind, and got
nailed on some of my mods by the meta's, in retrospect the meta's are
right and I was wrong.

I don't post argument there. I nearly always stick to fact (with
supporting links when possible) and avoid ANYTHING that sounds too much
opinion. I decided to do this as an experiment - I find that my factual
posts quickly get up to +5, while the best-written, most persuasive
argument I make on any topic rarely gets above a +3. Once I adopted my
current philosophy (kinds of on a lark just to see what would happen), I
found myself with excellent karma within about three weeks (and probably
fewer than 5 posts . . .)

--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
Reformed Aerospace Engineer
Columbia Loss FAQ:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

In article ,
(Derek Lyons) wrote:

Joe Strout wrote:

Nonsense -- it's already advanced the state of the art. Just a few of
the new technologies developed and demonstrated:

If you use the marketroid meaning of the word technology... I.E. so
watered down as to be essentially meaningless.

I use the conventional meaning of the word technology, as I use it in my
job as an engineer and as it's used in such publications as "MIT
Technology Review." I notice you didn't bother to actually respond to
any of the examples posted.

If Scaled's accomplishment doesn't impress you, then nothing in the real
world will. Fortunately, your opinion doesn't matter. Suborbital
tourism will be routine in five years, orbital tourism in probably 15,
all tracing back to this month's event for reasons which many reasonable
people have clearly explained to you, and you'll still be either denying
that the most economically productive space industry has anything to do
with space, or denying that it has anything to do with the first
low-cost reusable commercial suborbital spacecraft.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

In article , derekl1963
@nospamyahoo.com says...
I really wish more
the clued in regulars here would join in [on Slashdot]..
Stuffie has more
common sense and intelligence than they collectively do.)

This is supposed to make us want to contribute to that morass?
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

Imagine that, a FROG ON-OFF switch, hardly the work
for test pilots. -- Mike Collins

In article ,
"Mike Walsh" writes:

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...


Derek Lyons wrote:

ROTFL. I *love* how everytime someone points out the low performance
of the SS1 as compared to the X-15, or how it only spends a couple of
minutes in 'space' as compared to the Russian 'tourist' flights....
Someone else always parrots the 'its cheaper though! and privately
built! and carries people!" as though that changes things.


It's good at what it's intended to do; but the thing's overall impact on
spaceflight is going to be about as important as the GeeBee racer's
impact on fighter design.

Interesting. I don't know about the specific impact of the
GeeBee racer, but it was my understanding that racer design
and development did have an impact on fighter design.

Most of the GeeBee's impact was with the ground. This wasn;t entirely
the fault of teh various airplanes - Pilot experience and, more
importantly, Pilot background was a much bigger factor. Delmar
Benjamin (The builder/owner/pilot of the R model replica that's been
flying the Airshow Circuit the past few years) has more GeeBee time
than had ever been accumulated by all other pilots before. But he
also had the advantage of 3,000 Hrs of Pitts Special time before he
climbed in, and a much more mature approach to flying the airplane
than any other GeeBee pilot except Jimmy Doolittle. (Who was not only
an experienced Military Test Pilot, but an Aeronautical Engineer).

Most 1930's air racers were built to a very simple, not innovative
formula - get the biggest engine that you can, and build the smallest
airframe possible around it. Structure was simple - welded steel tube
fuselages, and wooden single-spar wings, with fabric covering. This
happened for two reasone - Most air racers were built by small
operations hand-building airplanes in a garage or hangar, with no more
design work than a chalk outline on the floor, with a shoestring
budget, by technically unsophistocated designers. There was some
support from engine manufacturers, notably Pratt & Whitney and
Menasco, but that was confined more to getting the latest Military
protptype engine released for use, than anything else.

The mission of an air racer was to fly very fast at low altitude
around a short course, and be cheap enough to build that you didn't
go broke in the attempt, if you lived through it. Military aircraft
have much different requirements, having to actually go somewhere,
carry a useful payload of guns, bombs, and ammunition to perform its
mission, and have the performance and controllability to be able to
succeeed, with the structural lifespan to do it again, and again.

The one attempt to build a fighter by a manufacturer of racers, teh
Weddell-Williams XP-34, was a dismal failure.

In terms of raw performance, as well as the other requirements noted
above, military fighter types began exceeding teh dedicated racers in
the late 1930s. From 1937 until teh race was suspended during WW 2, ,
the Bendix Trophy was securely held by one of several Seversky SEV-2s,
which were civilian models of the P-35 fighter.The MacRobertson
U.K.-Australia race was narrowly won by a specially constructed
DeHavilland, but the Number 2 and 3 spots went to stock U.S. built
airliners. (AN unmodified DC-2, flown by KLM, and running a commercial
doute, which came in second, (And would have come in first if it
hadn't returned to Djakarta to pick up a passenger who missed the
flight, and a Boeing 247 with slight modifications - extra fuel tanks.

Even in the earlier days, when, say, the Schneider Cup races were
financed by various National Governments (Notably the U.S., Great
Britain, and Italy), very little of what was used to build the winning
contenders went into service aircraft. FOr example, the
surface-cooled radiators used on the liquid-ccooled competitors were
far too vulnerable to be used in service aircraft, and, in fact, were
too much of a maintenance nightmare for the pampered racers.

The fact is, the State of teh Art in aviation in teh 1930s ws advanced
far more by the efforts of the NACA, Cranfield, thw
ReichsLuftMinitrie, and the Italian AIr Ministry than by any air
racers.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster