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"Rand Simberg" wrote in message ... Stuff and nonsense. Been reading your own posts, then. |
#522
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"Michael P. Walsh" wrote in message
news Personally I believe the big problem with Armadillo was attempting to their own engine development from scratch. Something they are still doing. It would not surprise me if their lack of high purity hydrogen peroxide, (regulatory reasons?), cost them a year. Switching to LOX earlier might have been another way around this. Buying in engines would have been quicker, but excepting the unforseen delays, not cheaper, I expect it would have also constrained them designwise. They can make and develop the less sophisticated type of engines they need much cheaper and faster than anyone else, including XCor. Personally I think they are doing it exactly right. This is the type of integrated incremental design and build typical of serious low cost development in other fields. The one off design mentality more typical in this industry has very high costs and achieves very low levels of refinement, though it is very appropriate within the fixed contract, waste everything but time context. Pete. |
#523
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"Rand Simberg" wrote in message ... On Tue, 17 May 2005 23:13:29 GMT, in a place far, far away, Chuck Stewart made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: On Tue, 17 May 2005 22:59:43 +0000, Alan Anderson wrote: So we "unreasonable" folk are increasingly frustrated at your inability to let go of the "EVA is hard, and expensive, and rare, and undesirable Because currently it is just that. But not because of any laws of physics--it's because of flawed decisions made in the past. And *not one person* has ever said otherwise. Another handwave on your part. What you apparently want Herb to do is speculate on the future. No, what we want Herb to do is to recognize that there were not just technological and physical forces driving that decision, but political ones, *None* of which changes the *fact* that no money is being spent on improve EVA capabilities, so *Herb is right* when he says it's poor design to design something that requires an EVA capability that *will not exist* because no effort is being spent on developing it. If you want to cross a chasm, don't blindfold yourself and start walking towards the cliff *hoping* that someone will build a bridge. You start walking when it looks like the bridge is almost finished. Because you're "special", Rand, I'll explain the analogy: "walking" is a euphemism for "designing a spaceship and/or spacestation", the "chasm" is the spaceship/space station being designed, and the "bridge" is EVA capability. "Building the bridge" is a euphemism for "designing improved EVA capability". No doubt you'll wave your hands again, instead of providing any real research. |
#524
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Pete Lynn wrote:
"Michael P. Walsh" wrote: Personally I believe the big problem with Armadillo was attempting to their own engine development from scratch. Something they are still doing. It would not surprise me if their lack of high purity hydrogen peroxide, (regulatory reasons?), cost them a year. Switching to LOX earlier might have been another way around this. If they had a sufficient supplier of high concentration peroxide, their monoprop engine work was plenty successful and would have gotten them to X-prize performance regimes. The supply failure was due to one vendor exiting the business and then the big one (FMC) refusing to sell to Armadillo, as I understand it, not due to legal / regulatory ones. The regulatory issues are unrelated to that. -george william herbert / |
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Michael P. Walsh wrote:
Rand committed: Armadillo was nowhere near flying any kind of manned vehicle by the time Scaled Composites won the X-Prize and had just suffered a failure that resulted in much lost time. Partly because they'd backed off on their rush to do so, because they knew that they wouldn't be able to get a site license for their vehicle. This is not backed up by anything I read on the Armadillo web site. Do you have a source for your claim, perhaps something I missed on the Armadillo test site? John has said stuff at Space Access conference presentations, private conversations, and in email lists and such which has more info on some topics than is on the website. I'm not sure how much of what details are ok for general public consumption, but Rand's summary is completely in line with all of what I recall having heard directly from John Carmack. The licensing issues with White Sands were the proximate cause of them giving up on the prize chase. -george william herbert |
#526
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Scott Hedrick wrote:
"Rand Simberg" committed: What evidence is there that Allen would have invested absent the prize? What evidence do you have that the prize was the sole or even primary reason for Allen's investment, considering that even the estimates were that the attempt would (and did) cost more than the prize? Statements by Rutan and Allen. They wanted the prestige of the prize, which was largely the point. Then why do you keep going on about money? ?? Because the money wouldn't have appeared without the prize, and without the money, the vehicle wouldn't have been developed. Except that *the prize money wasn't spent* on development, so the money came from somewhere *before* the prize money was awarded. Someone decided to spend money *before* receiving a prize, and the amount they spent was a multiple of the prize. So the money was available all along, *without* a prize. No; what we're saying is that the combination of the prize money and prize prestige causes people to be willing to spend money up to several times the actual prize value in order to win it. This has consistently been true in aviation and now the X-prize prize competitions. People will attempt projects that would not get funded absent the prize, even if the prize will not pay back the whole project costs. -george william herbert / |
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Herb Schaltegger wrote:
Rand committed: No, that's not the subject. That's the strawman that opponents of orbital assembly have proclaimed the subject. The subject is whether or not it's better to develop the techologies to make EVA routine, and then use it to save money in development costs for systems that can be assembled using minimal or zero EVA, or whether we should simply assume that EVA will always be hard and use that as a design assumption now and forever. Bull****. Bull****. And still more bull****. The subject was exactly what it was: a comment by me to Reed Snellenberger vis a vis EVA assembly for a present-day design CEV architecture. Herb, the subject has evolved considerably, and part of the ongoing argument now is over what the discussion is actually about. You and the rest of the ass-in-the-clouds dreamers seem incapable of grasping that certain things cannot be done now and planning for them to somehow happen in this context is absurd. I have spent more than my fair share of time tangled up in EVA hardware myself, though I can't claim any flight program direct experience. I am dissapointed by how this argument has driven you to the extremist position "cannot be done now". EVA is really hard, granted. Orbital assembly for deep space spacecraft is not proven, but is not necessarily, as a complete problem, as hard as EVA is. -george william herbert / |
#528
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Scott Hedrick wrote:
How does the promise of money offered as a prize for completion of a task mean that actual money is being allocated to accomplish that task? It is a reasonable and demonstrable historical observation that the promise offered by a prize has repeatedly and consistently generated sources of funding for actual money of projects to win the prize. -george william herbert / |
#529
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Rand Simberg wrote:
Yep. The problem is there's no money being allocated for improved EVA capabilities right now Not true. I think that one of the Millenium Challenge prizes is the development of a vastly improved high-pressure glove. As a point of information, as I recall it's on the list of things that that Brant Sponberg has stated he wants the prizes project to do, and was on the list of things that the advisory conference came up with, but hasn't moved from theoretical to actualized prize yet. Only the two prizes for tether related stuff, which NASA subcontracted to Spaceward to run, are in play at this time, as I understand it. -george william herbert / |
#530
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Rand Simberg wrote:
Tell that to Burt Rutan. Tell Burt to get back to us when he's designing an orbital-capable spacecraft with planned vacuum/micro-g EVA assembly, which is the topic you keep evading, Mr. Strawman. Actually, I'd be surprised if he isn't at least working on the former. I know of some working on the latter. Name them, and provide verifiable references. Why? To support your claims, of course. Oh, I just realized that you were perhaps referring to the second part of the statement. I'll let him speak for himself, but I was under the impression that George Herbert has an interest in that subject. I can't mention others due to confidentiality, but George has discussed this here in the past. Venturer Aerospace is working on orbital manned spacecraft, but micro-G EVA assembly is not on our short term requirements list. We're designing and getting ready to build test components for a manned orbital capsule, which is either free flying or a transfer vehicle to/from a station or another vehicle. I expect that once we are in business doing orbital operations we are going to want to develop micro-G EVA capability. But that's a long ways away right now. Several previous Retro Aerospace projects have involved EVA at some point in the cycle, but none of them is moving forwards actively right now. -george william herbert / |
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