SSTO to LEO, 80,000 pound payload or Bust. [was Bigelow launch vehicle mistake]

David M. Palmer wrote:
In article .com,
H2-PV NOW wrote:

We learned that an air-launched vehicle carried by a B-52 can do
orbital insertion and can carry useful payload. We learned that stubby
wings are adequate to give useful lift for fuel conservation to
altitudes where the air is appreciably thin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_rocket

That's funny, I read the same link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_rocket

It said: "Payload: 443 kg (1.18 m diameter, 2.13 m length)"

I guess we have different definitions of "useful payload". Mine
resembles the cargo container commonly transported by trailer of an
18-wheeler, 8'x8'x40' with 80,000 pounds, that can go on ships, trains
or highway trucks. That fits in the cargo bay of the Spaceplane and
delivers it to ISS or equivilent.

Yes, I guess we do have different definitions of "useful payload".

If anything less than 10x the payload capacity of a DC3 is useless,
then space will not be useful at a reasonable price for a very long
time.

ISS is just 220 miles away. If you refuse to fly payloads the 75 miles where air can partially help carry the
load, then you have a problem. The exact same Newtonian physics apply to winged lift as to rocket thrust. In
the rocket case you are spitting out molecules in the reverse direction you want to go. In the plane case you
are ricocheting molecules off the lifting undersurfaces of wings. It is equal and opposite reaction in both
cases. One obviously takes more fuel, which penalizes the payload.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon
SKYLON is designed to fly to space. Whether it gets there depends on the success of the air-loading of
oxidizer at high altitude.

Skylon Statistics:
* Length: 82 m
* Fuselage diameter: 6.25 m
* Wingspan: 25 m
* Unladen mass: 41,000 kg
* Fuel mass: 220,000 kg
* Maximum payload mass: 12,000 kg
* ISP: 2000 to 2800 s (20 to 27 kN·s/kg) atmospheric, 450 s (4.4 kN·s/kg) exoatmospheric
* SABRE engine thrust/weight ratio: 10

Most of the concepts are sound. It's the technological implimentation of them which is in question. Certain
machinery must work perfectly at mach 5 at 100,000 feet.

As you yourself pointed out, space launch from high altitude firing of rockets is proven by Pegasus and
others. Flying to launch altitude (the mother ship) is also obviously proven. Combining the concepts in one
SSTO is what has not been proven, but Pegasus + B-52 = LEO has been proven.

Getting airborne with a heavy load is proven:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-5_Galaxy

Specifications (C-5M)
# Wing area: 6,200 ft² (576 m²)
# Empty weight: 337,937 lb (153,285 kg)
# Loaded weight: 769,000 lb (348,810 kg)
Performance
* Maximum speed: 570 mph (917 km/h)
* Range: 3,749 mi (6,033 km)
* Service ceiling: 34,000 ft (10.36 km)

Getting to high altitude on low power is proven:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/n...-068-DFRC.html
In 2001, the Helios Prototype achieved the first of the two goals by reaching an unofficial world-record
altitude of 96,863 feet and sustaining flight above 96,000 feet for more than 40 minutes during a test flight
near Hawaii. ...

Aircraft Description
The Helios Prototype is an ultra-lightweight flying wing aircraft with a wingspan of 247 feet, longer than the
wingspans of the U.S. Air Force C-5 military transport (222 feet) or the Boeing 747 commercial jetliner (195 or
215 feet, depending on the model), the two largest operational aircraft in the United States. ... The wing
area is 1,976 sq. ft., which gives the craft a maximum wing loading of only 0.81 lb./sq. ft. when flying at a
gross weight of 1,600 lb.

The wingloading on the C-5 is 124 pounds per square foot of wing. The wingloading on the Helios was 13
ounces per ft^2 of wing.

The wingloading on the 747-400 is 141 pounds/ft^2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747

The wingloading on the Concorde was
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde 105.9 pounds/ft^2

As you can see heavy loads can get airborne, fly somewhat high, somewhat fast with quite long ranges
exceeding 220 miles.

The SR-71 Blackbird flew both high, far and fast...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR-71_Blackbird
Wing area: 1,800 ft² (170 m²), Maximum gross takeoff weight: 172,000 lb (78,000 kg), Maximum speed: Mach
3.35 (1,906 knots, 2,193 mph, 3,530 km/h) at 80,000 ft (24,285 m), Maximum altitude: 100,000 ft (30,500 m).
The wingloading on the SR-71 was 95.5 pounds per ft^2.

The plastic Helios flew at the maximum altitude of the SR-71, using propellers, powered by 28 horsepower of
electric motor fuels by solar cells glued on the wings.

The blackbird had a rate of climb of 60 ft/sec, almost double the pull of gravity, meaning some design
changes and it could keep on climbing. That same sustained rate of climb for a little over 5 hours would put
it at ISS doorstep.

The Blackbird, as it was could not carry the fuel for five hours of thrust expendature. Plus it didn't carry it's
oxidizer, being an air breather. Plus, it's wings were not big enough as the air thinned further to ricochet off
air particles to sustain climb.

What all this makes clear is spaceplanes need to have much larger wings so that air does a lot of the lifting
work where air can help.

http://www.sprucegoose.org/aircraft_...its_cont1.html
The Spruce Goose had the largest wing area ever made, 11,430 square feet, and it's wingloading was a
modest 35 pounds/ft^2.

The point being that more wings means lower wingloading, which means less fuel consumption to fly high.
The Skylon has too little wings, although the wing area cannot really be figured from the webpages I have
looked at. Deficiency in wings means faster fuel consumption to stay at peak altitude for air-breathers, and
that cuts the the available time to onload oxidizer at high altitude.

Oxygen is 16 atomic weight units. Hydrogen is one. LH2/LOX rockets burn a rich mixture of 4H2 per O2.
That means 8 atomic weights of Hydrogen mass per 32 atomic weights of Oxygen. The ratio is 1:4 fuel
oxidizer by weight. Slush-LH2/LOX rockets burns 3H2 per O2 or 3:16 ratio by weight. The oxidizer is 3 to 4
times the weight of the fuel.

SKYLON's strategy is to load that heavy O2 and chill it to LOX by using the coolth of LH2 fuel. The problem
they will have is they don't have enough time to complete the manoeuver because their small wings cost
them too much fuel to dawdle at that altitude.

The biggest problem is air is 80% Nitrogen and only 20% Oxygen, by weight. N2=28, O2=32 atomic weight.
Too much N2 will be adsorbing heat and need to be dumped overboard. They cannot linger at this altitude.
In order to hurry the operation they will be accelorating to Mach 5. The disposal of the weighty and useless
N2 has to be accomplished pell mell. Equipment subjected to cryogenic temperatures and enormous
airspeeds must work flawlessly, efficiently and rapidly in a mach 5 hurricane force winds.

When all this is said and done, their payload will only be 26,455 pounds to minimum LEO orbit, less payload
if going to higher orbit. If they succeed.

Larger wings means more fuel can be economically carried up to 100,000 feet. Larger wings means that you
have more low-fuel consumption gliding time at 100,000 feet. Remember, this was the same altitude that
Helios flew with nothing more than solar powered 28 horsepower motors. Larger wings means more payload
can be lofted this high on lots less fuel. At 100,000 feet the air density is very much less than 1/10th of sea
level. That means that your wingloading must be fairly low for aerodynamics to sustain lift because there are
far fewer particles of air ricocheting off your lifting undersurfaces. Either your wingloading must be small or
you have to be going very fast to keep from sinking.

You can get to LEO with little or no wings, but it has tremendous fuel consumption penalties, and you will
pay twice on re-entry. LEO is not some abstract goal to achieve. There's no point in going in the first place if
you can't deliver hefty amounts of supplies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_S..._External_Tank
The disposable External Tank of the Space Shuttle has the following dimensions:
The ET is the largest element of the space shuttle, and when loaded, it is also the heaviest. It is 153.8 feet
(47 m) long and has a diameter of 27.6 feet (8.4 m) and has three major components:
* the forward liquid oxygen tank
* an unpressurized intertank that contains most of the electrical components
* the aft liquid hydrogen tank; this is the largest part, but it is relatively light.

From the above I compute that the tank has the surface area of roughly 13,266 ft^2. That is slightly larger
than the wing area on the Spruce Goose. The surface area of the two Solid Rocket Boosters combined is
approximately 11,889 square feet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_S...Rocket_Booster

There is more than enough material between these two to make wings large enough to give a low
wingloading to a very heavy vehicle with the weight distributed.

Heretofore there has not been conformable cryogenic fuel supply tanks. Since LH2/LOX tanks were required
to be cylindrical, they could not be shaped into wings or fusilage to assist aerodynamics, and to make them
fully recoverable and reusable.

That is no longer true.

What is true is spheres hold more volume per skin area than cylinders, and cylinders hold more volume per
skin area than other shapes, but they they don't hold that much more, approximately 10% or so.

Since the conformal tanks add structural strength to the wings, and overall spaceplane fusulage, less
material needs to be used duplicating those sturctures when tanks and orbital vehicle are two or more
pieces. Whatever extra mass is used to increase the volume because it is not the least skin-to-volume shape
possible is saved ten times over by not having the spaceship strengtheners duplicated twice on both tanks
and spacecraft.



SO. We have established that vehicles can achieve LEO from ground launch Gross Weight at Liftoff of 4.5
million pounds. The Shuttle empty weight is 151,205 lb, and the max payload is: 55,250 lb.

157,143 pounds of the 1.1 million pounds of contents in the External Tank is Hydrogen, and 942,857
pounds is Oxygen.

The SRBs drop off at 150,000 feet. Their job is to provide 71% of the total thrust to get that high. A large
part of that job is carrying their own weight (2.6 million pounds at launch) and the excess weight of oxidizer
through the thickest part of the atmosphere. Instead of getting any help from the atmosphere, they fight it
every foot of the way.

You can get rid of the SRBs, saving 2.6 million pounds. The SR-71 weighed in at Maximum gross takeoff
weight: 172,000 lb (78,000 kg) versus Shuttle empty weight is 151,205 lb. The SR-71 needed more fuel to
keep thrusting, and it needed oxidizer if it was going to keep rising. Either one of them needs more wings to
take-off with 80,000 pound payload. With wings as tankage for LH2, the SRBs are not needed to loft their
own 2.6 million pounds weight and nearly 1 million pounds of LOX of the External Tank.

66,000 pounds of external tank isn't going to become 66,000 pounds of winged tanks because the bulk of
the stresses are the high speeds through the thickest air. Flying at low speeds to thin air saves lots of fuel
and reduces the stresses, so the strength can be shrunk accordingly, which reduces the weight required for
the ultimate strength. An unknown, because it cannot be computed yet, weight savings is incurred by not
carry so much LOX required by the SSMEs helping the SRBs lift 8 million pounds through the thickest soup
of the atmosphere.

At least two million pounds of fuel is expended by the Shuttle cluster to get up to the altitude that Helios got
on 28 horsepower with light wingloading. Assuming the SSMEs are consuming fuel at a constant rate from
launch to separation of the ET, the shuttle has consumed 235,711 pounds of oxidizer getting to Helios cruise
altitude where SKYLON is expecting to load up on the oxidizer. It also means that about 707,135 pounds of
oxidizer are required from here to get to LEO pushing the non-aerodynamic Shuttle Cluster. The SRBs drop
off 50,000 feet higher and the ET drops off just below the last of the atmospheric effects, 362,243 ft.

There is atmospheric effects detected at about 75 miles high on re-entry. This means there is enough air that
friction heating is occurring beginning ar this point. What it also means is air particles are ricocheting off the
spacecraft due to it's motion. These ricochets are the principle of lift in winged flight. Because there is
insufficient wings going or coming back, there is not enough surface to glide on these particles.

The ENTIRE Shuttle cluster rocket thrust occurs inside atmospheric effects. The shuttle coasts the last few
miles out of the atmosphere, and keeps on coasting to it's final orbit using a small amount of onboard fuel for
final flight adjustments.

By not having good enough wing design they struggled up and then, coming back they cannot slow the
descent on those little wings. It takes longer coming back on wings, meaning a bit longer in the hot part, but
not as hot because the speed of friction is lower, and down below is is a frigid air layer that will soon enough
cool off the vehicle if it has enough wings to fly in that layer for a bit. Active cooling requires some
cryogenic gases be retained in the craft for the ride home, another benefit of having a large payload
capacity, so that return is fully controllable fueled landing at airport of choice.

"H2-PV" wrote in message
...

ISS is just 220 miles away. If you refuse to fly payloads the 75 miles
where air can partially help carry the
load, then you have a problem.

Altitude isn't the hard part, it's the velocity you need at 220 miles up to
stay in orbit that's the hard part. Wings don't help much for either
problem since to get into LEO with a reasonable trajectory and thermal
environment, you really need to do most of your accellerating outside the
atmosphere.

Aircraft Description
The Helios Prototype is an ultra-lightweight flying wing aircraft with a
wingspan of 247 feet, longer than the
wingspans of the U.S. Air Force C-5 military transport (222 feet) or the
Boeing 747 commercial jetliner (195 or
215 feet, depending on the model), the two largest operational aircraft in
the United States. ... The wing
area is 1,976 sq. ft., which gives the craft a maximum wing loading of
only 0.81 lb./sq. ft. when flying at a
gross weight of 1,600 lb.

The wingloading on the C-5 is 124 pounds per square foot of wing. The
wingloading on the Helios was 13
ounces per ft^2 of wing.

The wingloading on the 747-400 is 141 pounds/ft^2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747

The wingloading on the Concorde was
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde 105.9 pounds/ft^2

As you can see heavy loads can get airborne, fly somewhat high, somewhat
fast with quite long ranges
exceeding 220 miles.

The SR-71 Blackbird flew both high, far and fast...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR-71_Blackbird
Wing area: 1,800 ft² (170 m²), Maximum gross takeoff weight: 172,000 lb
(78,000 kg), Maximum speed: Mach
3.35 (1,906 knots, 2,193 mph, 3,530 km/h) at 80,000 ft (24,285 m), Maximum
altitude: 100,000 ft (30,500 m).
The wingloading on the SR-71 was 95.5 pounds per ft^2.

The plastic Helios flew at the maximum altitude of the SR-71, using
propellers, powered by 28 horsepower of
electric motor fuels by solar cells glued on the wings.

The blackbird had a rate of climb of 60 ft/sec, almost double the pull of
gravity, meaning some design
changes and it could keep on climbing. That same sustained rate of climb
for a little over 5 hours would put
it at ISS doorstep.

The Blackbird, as it was could not carry the fuel for five hours of thrust
expendature. Plus it didn't carry it's
oxidizer, being an air breather. Plus, it's wings were not big enough as
the air thinned further to ricochet off
air particles to sustain climb.

What all this makes clear is spaceplanes need to have much larger wings so
that air does a lot of the lifting
work where air can help.

All this makes clear is that you have a very poor understanding of both
physics and aerodynamics. You can't combine the supersonic performance of
an SR-71 with the gossamer like wings of Helios and the payload capacity of
a Boeing 747. This would be like trying to make a solar powered automobile
with the acceleration of a Formula 1 car and the payload of a semi-truck.

157,143 pounds of the 1.1 million pounds of contents in the External Tank
is Hydrogen, and 942,857
pounds is Oxygen.

And at current LOX prices (literally pennies per pound if you make it on
site), LOX makes up far less than 1% of the total launch costs of the
shuttle. You could replace all the oxidizer in the SRB's with lox (i.e.
LOX/kerosene engines) and still the cost of LOX wouldn't make up 1% of the
total cost of a shuttle launch.

Try again fanboy.

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

"H2-PV NOW" wrote in message
oups.com...

Jeff Findley wrote:
"H2-PV" wrote in message
...

ISS is just 220 miles away. If you refuse to fly payloads the 75 miles
where air can partially help carry the
load, then you have a problem.

Altitude isn't the hard part, it's the velocity you need at 220 miles up
to
stay in orbit that's the hard part. Wings don't help much for either
problem since to get into LEO with a reasonable trajectory and thermal
environment, you really need to do most of your accellerating outside
the
atmosphere.

Accelorating outside the atmosphere means that you don't experience air
drag. Wings don't hurt when there is no air drag, but they help a lot
going up and coming down.

They hurt on the way up since they are only useful (during launch) when
you're in the atmosphere. To reduce gravity losses and losses due to air
drag, you want to leave the atmosphere a.s.a.p. If you've ever run the
simulations (I have in college since I've got an Aerospace Engineering
degree), you'll find that if you want to reduce these losses, your
trajectory is very vertical at first (to get you out of the atmosphere).
Once clear of the atmosphere, you pitch over and use the majority of the
thrust to gain the velocity needed (i.e. orbital velocity).

In other words, you need to stop hand waving and do some simulations.

Going up wingsy help with the lift on far less fuel. The Shuttle
cluster (one Orbiter, two SRBs and one ET) use up 2,000,000 pounds of
fuel to get the first 100,000 feet of altitude. A lot of that fuel was
used lifting Oxygen through Oxygen. 6 parts out of 7 of weight is
oxygen of the LOX/LH2 burned in the SSMEs. 71% of the lift is from the
SRBs, which burn out only 50,000 feet higher.

Who cares? LOX is cheap, cheap, cheap! When fuel costs are far less than
1% of overall costs, your goal shouldn't be to minimize the mass of the
cheapest part of the fuel/oxidizer mixture. This is especially true when
you're essentially proposing using exotic, expensive, not yet existant
hypersonic air breathing engines to replace an existing technology (rocket
engines) that really aren't all that hard to design and build. If they were
that hard to design and build, the current startups wouldn't be designing
and building their own rocket engines.

One quarter of the total mass of the Shuttle cluster is burned going up
100,000 feet, which is only the first 18.5 miles, out of 220 to ISS.
The ET burns full on up to 350,000 feet and than drops off, and the
Orbiter coasts most of the rest of the way, with small obit-correction
burns. 100,000/350,000ths = 29% of the ET fuel. Of that 29%, 6 parts
out of 7 are LOX by weight. 24.7% of the total ET fuel mass is burned
getting to 100,000 feet. That 24.7% of oxidizer was present in the
atmosphere all the way up to 100,000 feet and didn't need to be
carried.

SKYLON proposes to fly air-breathing to 100,000 feet and load up on
oxidizer after 95% of the thickest atmospheric mass is below them.
That's not a bad plan, but THEIR PLAN is not the best plan for lots of
reasons already stated above in thread.

SKYLON is a paper design that has never flown based on engine technology
that has not been fully developed. In other words, it's not off the shelf
technology.

Sonics is dependent on three things:
(1) the composition of the fluid travelled through,
(2) the temperature of the fluid, and
(3) the density of particles in the fluid.

Hypersonics is not definable except through each different strata the
craft navigates. These strata alter according to the sunny side or
shaded side of the planet. Mach numbers are not useful at near-space
altitudes.

Your "knowledge" of supersonic and hypersonic aerodynamics is underwhelming.


All this makes clear is that you have a very poor understanding of both
physics and aerodynamics. You can't combine the supersonic performance
of
an SR-71 with the gossamer like wings of Helios and the payload capacity
of
a Boeing 747. This would be like trying to make a solar powered
automobile
with the acceleration of a Formula 1 car and the payload of a
semi-truck.

Never suggested such a thing. The lesson to take home from these data
points is low wingloading is good, high wingloading is bad, for
altitude achievement and for fuel consumption.

Low wing loading can only come from huge wings. High wing loading comes
from small wings. When you look at the design of the SR-71, there is a
*reason* the wings are small compared to a jumbo jet. If you knew anything
about supersonic aerodynamics, you'd know why. If you can't calculate the
max speed of the SR-71 based on the sweep of the wings, you don't know
enough about supersonic aerodynamics to know what you're talking about.

One selects from the materials and methods inventory those materials
and methods which will perform the job under every force likely to ever
be present. We are long past the X-15 raw data acquisition phase, and
we ought to have some good idea what forces and conditions would be
faced by different designs, and what materials and methods are best
suited for those circumstances.

A spaceplane will never be supersonic in atmosphere. That much should
be obvious. Which is no great loss since no purpose is served by going
supersonic in atmosphere when yo can rise above it, go hypersonic, and
return lower at subsonic speeds. In order to lift heavy cargos, large
wings will be required, but in order to get to high altitudes even
larger wings will be required.

So you're proposing building an aircraft that's orders of magnitude bigger
than any ever built so that it can fly like Helios (at subsonic speeds at
great altitudes) and launch a second stage (a rocket) into LEO? Good luck
with that, considering the lack of payload of Helios and the great
difficulties encountered with such a large, fragile aircraft.

And at current LOX prices (literally pennies per pound if you make it on
site), LOX makes up far less than 1% of the total launch costs of the
shuttle. You could replace all the oxidizer in the SRB's with lox (i.e.
LOX/kerosene engines) and still the cost of LOX wouldn't make up 1% of
the
total cost of a shuttle launch.

LOX is delivered to KSC from Mississippi in 4,000 gallon trucks. Just
the delivery costs alone make it $1 per gallon, which is NOT $1 per
kilogram and NOT $1 per pound. That's just the delivery costs. You
know, Shuttle costs (program total divided by launches) is
$1,200,000,000 per launch. Some claim as low as $55,000,000 per launch,
others (most others) say $500,000,000 per launch. If the LH2/LOX is not
over $3 million per launch for 1.1 million pounds of fuel I would be
mighty surprised. NASA themselves says it costs $10,000 per pound of
payload to orbit. Just a 100 pound steel canister of pressurized
replacement air for the ISS costs $1,000,000 to orbit at those prices.

If LOX costs weren't a pitifully small part of the shuttle's overall launch
costs, NASA would invest in on site production of LOX, which would bring the
cost down to literally pennies per pound. You're trying to arugue that LOX
is what makes launches expensive, but that is clearly not the case.
Furthermore, your proposed solution, creating the biggest aircraft ever
envisioned to carry your rockets up to extremely high altitudes at subsonic
speeds is, at the very least, a research project which could easily consume
billions of dollars without producing any results, let alone any reduction
in launch costs.

Better to stick with known technologies and focus on reducing launch costs
instead of focusing on performance as defined by reducing the dry mass of
your stages.

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

Jeff Findley wrote:
"H2-PV NOW" wrote in message
oups.com...

Jeff Findley wrote:
"H2-PV" wrote in message
...

ISS is just 220 miles away. If you refuse to fly payloads the 75 miles
where air can partially help carry the
load, then you have a problem.

Altitude isn't the hard part, it's the velocity you need at 220 miles up
to
stay in orbit that's the hard part. Wings don't help much for either
problem since to get into LEO with a reasonable trajectory and thermal
environment, you really need to do most of your accellerating outside
the
atmosphere.

Accelorating outside the atmosphere means that you don't experience air
drag. Wings don't hurt when there is no air drag, but they help a lot
going up and coming down.

They hurt on the way up since they are only useful (during launch) when
you're in the atmosphere. To reduce gravity losses and losses due to air
drag, you want to leave the atmosphere a.s.a.p.

NO YOU DON'T. What a stupid statement. Air lift greater than air drag
defeats Gravity Drag on the whole skies full of airplanes. That's
exactly how they fly.

The noise of every airplanne you hear, if you listen closely, is saying
"Jeff Findley is a liar". Every airplane ever flown has been proof that
you lie. Gravity drag is the thing that makes you come down faster than
you go up. As long as you are rising, gravity drag is defeated. Get
used to it.

You want to rise up in the atmosphere gracefully and slowly to reduce
fuel consumption, thereby reducing overall fuel takeoff weight. You
want wings, which slide over air molecules as if it was a ramp, which
reduces the thrust required to go up high over most of the atmosphere.

You would build a pyramid by tossing the blocks of stone up to the top
instead of building a ramp to slide them up to the top. No pyramid ever
got built your way.

No SSTO will ever reach LEO or ISS your way.


If you've ever run the
simulations (I have in college since I've got an Aerospace Engineering
degree), you'll find that if you want to reduce these losses, your
trajectory is very vertical at first (to get you out of the atmosphere).

You can program computers on any set of assumptions. They will only
deliver results based on the constants and formulas you programmed into
them.

Computers simply do not care if you never build a SSTO to reach LEO or
ISS.

Program them to calculate what certain sets of wings will do for you
and you will get very different answers.


Once clear of the atmosphere, you pitch over and use the majority of the
thrust to gain the velocity needed (i.e. orbital velocity).

The "top of the atmosphere" is about 75 miles high, or 8 miles higher
than where the shuttle drops that last big tank. You know this because
air friction effects are observed at 75 miles high on re-entry, telling
you that air molecules are present in significant enough density to
cause friction, even if you can't see them.


The ramp needed to slide over air molecules is much thinner, but not
negligable all the way up past where the SSMEs quit.

You have never programmed a simulation with a big Delta Wing of 10,000
square feet, with wingloading of 20 pounds per ft^2. or less, so you
have nothing to say on the subject. Even with wingloading of 50 pounds
per ft^2, with sufficient thrust you will make it right to the LEO ISS
altitude with enough speed to match orbit and dock.

At 10,000 ft^2 it is only three times the size of the 747 wing area,
and the 747 could hanger under the tail section of the Hindenberg
Zeppelin. The Space Shuttle ditches enough material on the two SRBs and
the ET to make 13,000 ft^2 of wings on a totally reusable SSTO. You
drag deadweight through atmosphere and think you are smart. I think
that is pretty dumb.

So you trained a computer to be as dumb as you are -- big deal. I
wouldn't expect any computer to be programmed to give smarter answers
than the programmer's dumb assumptions built into it.

In other words, you need to stop hand waving and do some simulations.

Going up wings help with the lift on far less fuel. The Shuttle
cluster (one Orbiter, two SRBs and one ET) use up 2,000,000 pounds of
fuel to get the first 100,000 feet of altitude. A lot of that fuel was
used lifting Oxygen through Oxygen. 6 parts out of 7 of weight is
oxygen of the LOX/LH2 burned in the SSMEs. 71% of the lift is from the
SRBs, which burn out only 50,000 feet higher.

Who cares? LOX is cheap, cheap, cheap!

LOX is heavy, heavy, heavy. You use 24.7 % of the ET tank LOX to go the
first 100,000 feet, plus use 66% of the fuel in two SRBs to get up the
first 100,000 feet. You haul 2,000,000 extra pounds the first 18 miles
out of 220, at a cost of $500,000,000 per mission, and you can't figure
out that the cost penalty of weight is higher than the cost penalty of
fuel in dollars.

The weight is what prevents it from being an SSTO instead of a
four-object-cluster, of which the Shuttle Orbiter is the smallest of
the four objects.

Instead of throwing the shuttle into space you have to slide it on a
ramp made of invisible gas molecules right into orbit.

Too bad the atmosphere is invisible or you might have put it in your
computer assumptions for your simulations.

When fuel costs are far less than
1% of overall costs, your goal shouldn't be to minimize the mass of the
cheapest part of the fuel/oxidizer mixture.

FUEL WEIGHT is not 1% of the costs, it is 90% of the launch costs in
terms of lifting fuel, and less than 10% of the weight costs are actual
payload and spacecraft.


This is especially true when
you're essentially proposing using exotic, expensive, not yet existant
hypersonic air breathing engines to replace an existing technology (rocket
engines) that really aren't all that hard to design and build.

SHOW ME where I ever said hypersonic air-breating?? I don't believe in
that. I don't believe in going any faster than the particular segment
of the launch calls for.

As I said elsewhere, "hypersonic" has no fixed definition. The speed of
sound constantly changes. The definitition of the speed of sound has
four essential parts:
(1) The fluid medium must be defined in molecular composition,
(2) The temperature of the fluid medium must be defined,
(3) The density of particles of the fluid medium must be defined,
(4) The speed must be defined relative to a stationary observer on the
surface.

You might as well throw out the word "hypersonic" for purposes of
describing each particular phase of flight characteristics in a SSTO
launch to LEO.

In space no one can hear you scream, because there is no speed of sound
at all. The transition from Sea Level speed of sound to no sound
whatsoever involves at least 6 distinct atmospheric composition,
density, and temperature regimes. It varies depending on night side to
day side of the planet.

People who carelessly use the term hypersonic are exposing themselves
as ignorant of the fundamental units which are absolutely required to
design spacecraft to fly in or through these six different atmospheric
regimes.

Air-breathing can only occur in two of these six regimes. It works very
well in the lowest, and requires careful considerations in the higher.
It cannot operate at all in the greatest band the craft must navigate.

Low speed is preferable in the lowest band. High speed is required in
the higher extreme of air-breathing portion of the flight. Since low
speed will not provide the density of oxidizer at the rate required by
airflow through the lowest atmosphere, some LOX is required at launch,
but not enough to get to orbit, and not enough to weigh down the craft
excessively at takeoff.

Oxidizer is on-loaded at altitude, where air drag is minimized and the
same fuel expendatures builds up respectable speed. Then the airflow is
sufficient to begin capturing O2 for launch oxidizer, and stowing it.

This is SKYLON's proposal. Their insufficient wings means they have to
possess equipment operating at windspeeds 30 times more fierce than
Hurricane Katrina at it's worst. They have to fly too fast because they
don't have big enough wings to sustain lift in thin air at lower
speeds. They locked themselves into that trap by not thinking big
enough.



If they were
that hard to design and build, the current startups wouldn't be designing
and building their own rocket engines.

People are designing and building, but not reaching SSTO to LEO and
ISS. The 2-stage-to-orbit SpaceShipOne only got to where the Shuttle
drops off it's External Tank, and it ran out of oomph and fell back to
Earth. It too tried to "throw" itself into space, instead of sliding
there over a ramp of invisible air molecules.



One quarter of the total mass of the Shuttle cluster is burned going up
100,000 feet, which is only the first 18.5 miles, out of 220 to ISS.
The ET burns full on up to 350,000 feet and than drops off, and the
Orbiter coasts most of the rest of the way, with small obit-correction
burns. 100,000/350,000ths = 29% of the ET fuel. Of that 29%, 6 parts
out of 7 are LOX by weight. 24.7% of the total ET fuel mass is burned
getting to 100,000 feet. That 24.7% of oxidizer was present in the
atmosphere all the way up to 100,000 feet and didn't need to be
carried.

SKYLON proposes to fly air-breathing to 100,000 feet and load up on
oxidizer after 95% of the thickest atmospheric mass is below them.
That's not a bad plan, but THEIR PLAN is not the best plan for lots of
reasons already stated above in thread.

SKYLON is a paper design that has never flown based on engine technology
that has not been fully developed. In other words, it's not off the shelf
technology.

So? You just bragged about people designing and building (but not
succeeding) and now you are badmouthing one set of those designers and
builders.

THERE IS NO OFF-THE-SHELF TECHNOLOGY. No vehicle has ever achieved SSTO
to LEO, ever, anywhere.


Sonics is dependent on three things:
(1) the composition of the fluid travelled through,
(2) the temperature of the fluid, and
(3) the density of particles in the fluid.

Hypersonics is not definable except through each different strata the
craft navigates. These strata alter according to the sunny side or
shaded side of the planet. Mach numbers are not useful at near-space
altitudes.

Your "knowledge" of supersonic and hypersonic aerodynamics is underwhelming.

Your reckless disregard for the definitions which make up the parts of
a scientific term is worse.

All this makes clear is that you have a very poor understanding of both
physics and aerodynamics. You can't combine the supersonic performance
of
an SR-71 with the gossamer like wings of Helios and the payload capacity
of
a Boeing 747. This would be like trying to make a solar powered
automobile
with the acceleration of a Formula 1 car and the payload of a
semi-truck.

Never suggested such a thing. The lesson to take home from these data
points is low wingloading is good, high wingloading is bad, for
altitude achievement and for fuel consumption.

Low wing loading can only come from huge wings.

That is what I have been saying all along. You finally got one thing
right.



High wing loading comes
from small wings. When you look at the design of the SR-71, there is a
*reason* the wings are small compared to a jumbo jet.

That reason would be high speed in low altitude atmospheric regimes,
which is directly opposite of what is required for SSTO to LEO.

Also, the SR-71 had negligable payload. The 747 is used for cargo
planes as well as mass passenger transport. The SR-71 carried no
passengers or significant payload.




If you knew anything
about supersonic aerodynamics, you'd know why.

I couldn't care less "why". Things that do not achieve SSTO to LEO
include dogs, whales, SR-71s, 747s, weather balloons, houses, bicycles.
I can't be distracted by all the myriads of designs which are not
correct to achieve SSTO to LEO. If the goal is SSTO to LEO, than only
the things that facilitate that goal are worthy of further pondering.


If you can't calculate the
max speed of the SR-71 based on the sweep of the wings, you don't know
enough about supersonic aerodynamics to know what you're talking about.

I am not interested in air-breathing supersonics. By the time the craft
goes supersonic it has closed down it's intake vents and is operating
off of stored fuel and oxidizer. It never goes "supersonic" until the
air density is so thin that supersonics means something very different
than your careless use of the term. As long as there is enough air at
all to slide over on a ramp using Newton's laws, you just keep pushing
uphill below destructive air pressures which would trouble the
structures as designed.

As the air gets thinner the drag gets less and the size of the wings
diminishes in importance as far as air-pressure effects. The thrust is
less opposed and the speed increases. Steady thrust will obtain orbital
speed, and it's not required that that thrust occur where arir effects
are significant. There's 220 miles to go, and air disappears at 75
miles high -- by 67 miles high the Shuttle External Tank is jettisoned,
meaning they coast the rest of the way. Thrusting at this altitude give
pure gain without any air drag.

First they go up too hard, then they come down too hard. They don't
have enough wings coming down either. They have to fall too fast
through thin air giving high friction and excessive heat. They have no
active cooling in the craft to mitigate the heat so they have to plunge
fast. Slower descent means lower friction, less heat and more radiative
surfaces to dispose of the excessive heat. Not far away is a damn cold
stratosphere which can drain off the heat buildup if you can glide in
it for a while.

They need heavier heat shielding to compensate for too little wings.
That extra heat shielding is the most problematic part of the entire
craft. It weighs more than is useful going up and it weighs more than
is optimal coming down. It costs extra fuel to get it to orbit.
Everything comes back to wrong aerodynamics design.

First they throw the stones to the top of the pyramid instead of
sliding them on a ram, then they drop like a stone from the top instead
of sliding on a ram.

The design has killed 14 people in Columbia and Challenger already, by
having too little wings and having detachable fuel tanks. It was those
detachable tanks that killed both crews. Those killer tanks are
required by a killer space philosophy of "throwing" objects to space,
instead of flying them up a ramp made of invisible molecules. You need
wings for safe SSTO to LEO, and you need to understand why before you
kill more people.

If general aviation had the safety record of the shuttle there would be
two jumbo jet crashes per day at Kennedy airport.


One selects from the materials and methods inventory those materials
and methods which will perform the job under every force likely to ever
be present. We are long past the X-15 raw data acquisition phase, and
we ought to have some good idea what forces and conditions would be
faced by different designs, and what materials and methods are best
suited for those circumstances.

A spaceplane will never be supersonic in atmosphere. That much should
be obvious. Which is no great loss since no purpose is served by going
supersonic in atmosphere when yo can rise above it, go hypersonic, and
return lower at subsonic speeds. In order to lift heavy cargos, large
wings will be required, but in order to get to high altitudes even
larger wings will be required.

So you're proposing building an aircraft that's orders of magnitude bigger
than any ever built so that it can fly like Helios (at subsonic speeds at
great altitudes) and launch a second stage (a rocket) into LEO?

Probably not. Evidently SSTO means something dfferent in your lexicon.

The title of the message you replied to was "SSTO to LEO, 80,000 pound
payload or Bust."

There hasn't been any reason pop up it's ugly head why a spaceplane
needs to have wings as large as the Spruce Goose (albeit, made of much
stronger, much lighter material). The Spruce Goose is probably safe as
the record-holder for largest Wing Area ever built. The Hindenberg
airship could serve to shelter the spruce Goose, and it's reputation is
probably secure as well.

10,000 ft^2 of wings is twice the B2-stealth wing area and triple the
747-400's wing area. Surely that is adequate for a spaceplane. Final
computations will be determined by materials, cargo, engines, fuels and
general design features. There's still a long way to go in that
process. Provisionally I am looking at 10,000 ft^2, but will go larger
or smaller if that's what is required.

The materials cost for wings that size (if you make them yourself) is
about the price of a Piper Cub airplane.


Good luck
with that, considering the lack of payload of Helios and the great
difficulties encountered with such a large, fragile aircraft.

Bad design, I agree. A scaled up "Gossamer Albatross".

People talk about "off the shelf" as if that was all that was
available. Helios was made from "off-the-shelf" parts, and it broke. I
would never use carbon tubes when I could use octet trusses instead.
You can buy carbon tubes, but you have to have octet truses made for
you. And while you are at it, why pure carbon, which did not perform on
the Helios, when you can specify the fibers in the yarns: 3000 Carbon,
1000 kevlar, 340 S-Glass, 225 PVA, etc...

Then you can specify with great exactitude the materials performance
under each of 6 atmospheric regimes going up and coming down. There are
other composite elements which can be further engineered in exacting
details, rather than trying to make do with "off-the-shelf".

Since nothing is shed going up or coming down, other than fuel exhaust,
the spacecraft has to be built to carry all of the weight of the fuel
tanks to LEO and back again. It has to return manufactured cargos which
weight the same mass as the raw materials previously lifted up there.
In short, it has to be able to land with a lot of the weight it had on
takeoff.

Such a craft them is useful as a slow-speed air cargo carrier for air
mail or UPS or FedEx. It proves itself as an airplane under heavy load
long before it proves itself as a spacecraft under just as heavy a
load.

And the same craft is useful as an aerospaceplane which flies slowly to
high altitudes, travels quickly up in near space, and descends without
ever orbiting.

That's the design challenge that was never before solvable because the
problem of conformable fuel tanks was not solved and materials
engineering was not ready yet.

Anybody trying to design with "off-the-shelf" parts will never succeed,
because there are no parts for SSTO spaceplanes on the shelf. You will
always be working with second best or worse, general utility parts not
meant for every condition and set of forces that a SSTO to LEO will
have to deal with.




And at current LOX prices (literally pennies per pound if you make it on
site), LOX makes up far less than 1% of the total launch costs of the
shuttle. You could replace all the oxidizer in the SRB's with lox (i.e.
LOX/kerosene engines) and still the cost of LOX wouldn't make up 1% of
the
total cost of a shuttle launch.

LOX is delivered to KSC from Mississippi in 4,000 gallon trucks. Just
the delivery costs alone make it $1 per gallon, which is NOT $1 per
kilogram and NOT $1 per pound. That's just the delivery costs. You
know, Shuttle costs (program total divided by launches) is
$1,200,000,000 per launch. Some claim as low as $55,000,000 per launch,
others (most others) say $500,000,000 per launch. If the LH2/LOX is not
over $3 million per launch for 1.1 million pounds of fuel I would be
mighty surprised. NASA themselves says it costs $10,000 per pound of
payload to orbit. Just a 100 pound steel canister of pressurized
replacement air for the ISS costs $1,000,000 to orbit at those prices.

If LOX costs weren't a pitifully small part of the shuttle's overall launch
costs, NASA would invest in on site production of LOX, which would bring the
cost down to literally pennies per pound.

THE WEIGHT COST of launching LOX is the problem. It takes 2,000,000
pounds of fuel from three huge tanks to get the first 100,000 feet,
18.5 miles. It takes almost 8 million pounds of fuel and tankage to get
the shuttle up to 67 miles.


You're trying to arugue that LOX
is what makes launches expensive, but that is clearly not the case.

What is clearly the case is 2,000,000 pounds of fuel to lift the
spacecraft the first 18.5 miles. The weight of the oxidizer, passing
through oxygen, has to be lifted by burning fuel, which itself has to
be carried in tanks which need to be lifted. The tanks are not
aerodynamic so they create lots of wind drag.


Furthermore, your proposed solution, creating the biggest aircraft ever
envisioned ...

The Spruce Goose has that record. The Hindenberg has a bigger record,
for something similar.

YOU are the one who keeps projecting "biggest aircraft ever", while I
am just proposing one big enough to meet the requirements of physics.
Until physics are satisfied, no SSTO to LEO will ever happen. I don't
care about "size" as a relative thing ("biggest ever", nearly the
biggest ever"). The exterior surfaces of the ET and SRBs is 25,000
square feet, and all those surfaces don't bother you at all. The Space
Shuttle cluster has about the same surfaces as a successful SSTO to
LEO, because that's what aerospace physics demands. The Space Shuttle
cluster is four stages, not ONE. And it costs $10,000 per pound of
payload reachhing orbit.



... to carry your rockets up to extremely high altitudes at subsonic
speeds is, at the very least, a research project which could easily consume
billions of dollars without producing any results, let alone any reduction
in launch costs.

How I spend my money is none of your business. It's not your money and
its not the taxpayer's. There's 30 countries who would buy spaceplanes
sold at the price of 747s or lower.

Subsonic rocketplanes are nothing new. such things have flown the skies
since before WWII. LH2/LOX engine technology is very well understood by
hundreds of thousands worldwide. Rocket plane races are a scheduled
spectator sport event starting next year.


Better to stick with known technologies and focus on reducing launch costs
instead of focusing on performance as defined by reducing the dry mass of
your stages.

Known technologies HAVE FAILED. A definition of insanity is doing the
same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

You know A LOT abou how not to get a SSTO to LEO. Keep doing the same
old thing and you will become the world's expert on HOW NOT TO GET TO
LEO ON A SSTO.

I'm sure there are plenty of job opportunities for people to go to work
in space programs where their chief qualification is that they don't
know how to do an SSTO to LEO. NASA hires people like that by the
thousands. You'll have lots of mirror reflections to give you feedback
about how doing the same old thing will give a different result next
time.

"H2-PV NOW" wrote in message
oups.com...
Jeff Findley wrote:
Good luck
with that, considering the lack of payload of Helios and the great
difficulties encountered with such a large, fragile aircraft.

Bad design, I agree. A scaled up "Gossamer Albatross".

Actually, considering the extremely high altitudes it was designed to
operate in, it's a practical design. It attained nearly 97,000 feet in
altitude, which is about 18 miles. It's maximum wing loading is reported to
be 0.81 lb./sq. ft.

The U-2's altitude record is lower than that. From what I can find, it's
ceiling is about 12.5 miles or 70,000 feet, depending on the source. It's
wing loading is reported on Wikipedia as 4 lb./sq. ft.

You're proposing using a vehicle with a wing loading of 20 lb./sq. ft. What
altitude do you expect this thing to fly? I'm doubtful that a craft with
such a high (compared to the U-2) would be able to reach the altutides of
the U-2.

Presumably using air breathing propulsion, but what kind? You're short on
details here.

People talk about "off the shelf" as if that was all that was
available. Helios was made from "off-the-shelf" parts, and it broke. I
would never use carbon tubes when I could use octet trusses instead.
You can buy carbon tubes, but you have to have octet truses made for
you. And while you are at it, why pure carbon, which did not perform on
the Helios, when you can specify the fibers in the yarns: 3000 Carbon,
1000 kevlar, 340 S-Glass, 225 PVA, etc...

Then you can specify with great exactitude the materials performance
under each of 6 atmospheric regimes going up and coming down. There are
other composite elements which can be further engineered in exacting
details, rather than trying to make do with "off-the-shelf".

Since nothing is shed going up or coming down, other than fuel exhaust,
the spacecraft has to be built to carry all of the weight of the fuel
tanks to LEO and back again. It has to return manufactured cargos which
weight the same mass as the raw materials previously lifted up there.
In short, it has to be able to land with a lot of the weight it had on
takeoff.

Such a craft them is useful as a slow-speed air cargo carrier for air
mail or UPS or FedEx. It proves itself as an airplane under heavy load
long before it proves itself as a spacecraft under just as heavy a
load.

And the same craft is useful as an aerospaceplane which flies slowly to
high altitudes, travels quickly up in near space, and descends without
ever orbiting.

That's the design challenge that was never before solvable because the
problem of conformable fuel tanks was not solved and materials
engineering was not ready yet.

Anybody trying to design with "off-the-shelf" parts will never succeed,
because there are no parts for SSTO spaceplanes on the shelf. You will
always be working with second best or worse, general utility parts not
meant for every condition and set of forces that a SSTO to LEO will
have to deal with.

You ought to estimate the mass of the landing gear needed for takeoff. It's
not insignificant with a fully loaded aircraft. This is why Black Horse was
intended to be (partially) fueled in the air. Do you propose something
similar?

THE WEIGHT COST of launching LOX is the problem. It takes 2,000,000
pounds of fuel from three huge tanks to get the first 100,000 feet,
18.5 miles. It takes almost 8 million pounds of fuel and tankage to get
the shuttle up to 67 miles.

What do you mean by weight cost? The cost of an entire ET isn't a whole
lot, compared to the cost of a shuttle launch. I don't have current
numbers, but I recall it being in the tens of millions of dollars, which is
still far less than the total $500 million to launch a shuttle. That's for
a completely throw away tank. Presumably a sane vehicle will be reusable,
so that you're not paying that cost for each flight.

You propose to replace simple LOX tankage with far more complex wings,
airbreathing engines, landing gear, and etc. Somehow I think that even for
a reusable vehicle, extra tankage is cheaper than what you propose. DC-X/XA
proved that VTVL is possible. Why are you dismissing that takeoff and
landing mode? Also, why are you dismissing reusable two stage VTVL vehicles
out of hand?

You're trying to arugue that LOX
is what makes launches expensive, but that is clearly not the case.

What is clearly the case is 2,000,000 pounds of fuel to lift the
spacecraft the first 18.5 miles. The weight of the oxidizer, passing
through oxygen, has to be lifted by burning fuel, which itself has to
be carried in tanks which need to be lifted. The tanks are not
aerodynamic so they create lots of wind drag.

You've clearly been bitten by the wet mass to payload bug. Maximizing
payload to LEO for a given wet mass of your launch vehicle is not the same
as maximizing payload to LEO for a given cost per launch (i.e. $ per lb to
LEO). You're trying to optimize the wrong problem and are handwaving away
all of the additional costs.

YOU are the one who keeps projecting "biggest aircraft ever", while I
am just proposing one big enough to meet the requirements of physics.

I don't think you are. At the altitudes the U-2 flies, it's stall speed
isn't much less than the speed of sound. The only way to keep flying higher
is by using bigger wings (i.e. less wing loading). You keep talking about
wing loadings of 20 lb./sq. ft. What's the stall speed of your big delta
winged vehicle going to be at 100,000 ft?

Here's a bit of trivia about the U-2:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lockheed_U-2

Perhaps the discussion of its critical mach and its stall speed will make
you rethink things. In other words, you seem to lack a basic understanding
of subsonic aerodnamics. In order to make your design work, you'll need to
be flying at supersonic speeds at those altitudes, which makes it more
complex and expensive than the far simpler U-2. It means that you're
talking about a supersonic aircraft with performance more like the SR-71:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sr-71#Performance

Note that it's maximum altitude is 100,000 feet, which is more than the U-2
and more than Helios.

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

In article .com,
says...

Jeff Findley wrote:
"H2-PV NOW" wrote in message
oups.com...
Jeff Findley wrote:
Good luck
with that, considering the lack of payload of Helios and the great
difficulties encountered with such a large, fragile aircraft.

Bad design, I agree. A scaled up "Gossamer Albatross".

Actually, considering the extremely high altitudes it was designed to
operate in, it's a practical design. It attained nearly 97,000 feet in
altitude, which is about 18 miles. It's maximum wing loading is reported=
to
be 0.81 lb./sq. ft.

The U-2's altitude record is lower than that. From what I can find, it's
ceiling is about 12.5 miles or 70,000 feet, depending on the source. It's
wing loading is reported on Wikipedia as 4 lb./sq. ft.

You're proposing using a vehicle with a wing loading of 20 lb./sq. ft. W=
hat
altitude do you expect this thing to fly? I'm doubtful that a craft with
such a high (compared to the U-2) would be able to reach the altutides of
the U-2.

As I understand it, sufficient thrust makes even fat pigs like the
Galaxy-C5 fly. The C5 has a wingloading over 400 pounds per ft^2. Even
fat pigs like the Space Shuttle flies high with enough thrust. Plenty
of X-planes flew with much higher wingloading to equivilent heights,
but not very long because of limited fuel.

I'm trying to find the sweet spot between 13 ounces per ft^2 of the
fragile Helios and something too heavy to carry enough fuel to reach
LEO with 80,000 pounds.

The air-breathing part has to be completed at 100,000 feet and the
plane has to glide there for long enough to take on sufficient load of
O2 for oxidiser. It is a dynamic problem in that the spaceplane
probably ought to stay with one engine-type for all aerospace flight
propulsion demands.

It's really amazing to me how ignorant you are of aeronautical engineering
and science, yet, you insist upon displaying your massive confusion for all
to see. There are so many basic errors in this latest rambling that one must
conclude that you are either a complete idiot or a bright teenager. I hope
it's the latter, as you might then be able channel your efforts toward
obtaining some education such that you could actually do something with your
brain power. Otherwise, there is no hope for you.

--
Eric Swanson --- E-mail address: e_swanson(at)skybest.com :-)
--------------------------------------------------------------

In article .com,
says...


Eric Swanson wrote:


It's really amazing to me how ignorant you are of aeronautical engineering
and science, yet, you insist upon displaying your massive confusion for all
to see. There are so many basic errors in this latest rambling that one
must
conclude that you are either a complete idiot or a bright teenager. I hope
it's the latter, as you might then be able channel your efforts toward
obtaining some education such that you could actually do something with your
brain power. Otherwise, there is no hope for you.


Funny. For all your pomposity you were unable to cite a single defect
in the statements, merely that they conflict with your
(mis)understandings of the Laws of Nature.

Funny, you've not discussed any of the objections which were previously given,
such as your comparison between the HELIOS and the C-5A, your incorrect
description of the functioning of a wing, etc. I'm not employeed to be your
teacher and I see no reason that I should provide a critique of your delusions.

--
Eric Swanson --- E-mail address: e_swanson(at)skybest.com :-)
--------------------------------------------------------------

Eric Swanson wrote:
In article .com,
says...


Eric Swanson wrote:


It's really amazing to me how ignorant you are of aeronautical engineering
and science, yet, you insist upon displaying your massive confusion for all
to see. There are so many basic errors in this latest rambling that one
must
conclude that you are either a complete idiot or a bright teenager. I hope
it's the latter, as you might then be able channel your efforts toward
obtaining some education such that you could actually do something with your
brain power. Otherwise, there is no hope for you.


Funny. For all your pomposity you were unable to cite a single defect
in the statements, merely that they conflict with your
(mis)understandings of the Laws of Nature.

Funny, you've not discussed any of the objections which were previously given,
such as your comparison between the HELIOS and the C-5A, your incorrect
description of the functioning of a wing, etc. I'm not employeed to be your
teacher and I see no reason that I should provide a critique of your delusions.

You are not qualified to be a teacher, and as we all know: "Those who
can't do, teach". You can't do, and you can't teach.

You made an insulting smear statement without a work of support.

NOBODY compared C-5A and Helios Prototype. Not me. I put down facts
about both and several other very different aircraft (SR-71, Concorde,
Boeing 747-400, Piper Cub) in the same message, not to show they are
similar or the same, but to illustrate the wide variety of flight
principles to select from those which combines the specific principles
needed to assemble a spaceplane which can reach LEO to ISS with 80,000
pounds of cargo payload.

The helios calls everyone a liar who claims massive power is needed to
reach 100,000 feet. Low-wingloading and low air drag got it to 100,000
feet on 28 horsepower of propellers from electric motors fueled by
sunlight from the solar cells glued on its plastic wings.

The C-5A calls everone liar who says that heavy payloads can't lift
from the launch area without spending a million pounds of fuel to get
the first 30,000 feet.

The SR-71 calls everyne a liar who claims that rising 60 meters per
second on winged craft is unachievable. 60 m/s will get you to Low
Earth Orbit in 98 minutes, if you have the fuel, have the thrust and
your aero-design is right.

I'm calling YOU A LIAR for misrepresenting what I said without posting
anything which demonstrates any kind of support for YOUR STATEMENTS.

In article .com, says...


Eric Swanson wrote:
says...
Eric Swanson wrote:


It's really amazing to me how ignorant you are of aeronautical engineering
and science, yet, you insist upon displaying your massive confusion for all
to see. There are so many basic errors in this latest rambling that one
must
conclude that you are either a complete idiot or a bright teenager. I hope
it's the latter, as you might then be able channel your efforts toward
obtaining some education such that you could actually do something with your
brain power. Otherwise, there is no hope for you.


Funny. For all your pomposity you were unable to cite a single defect
in the statements, merely that they conflict with your
(mis)understandings of the Laws of Nature.

Funny, you've not discussed any of the objections which were previously given,
such as your comparison between the HELIOS and the C-5A, your incorrect
description of the functioning of a wing, etc. I'm not employeed to be your
teacher and I see no reason that I should provide a critique of your delusions.

You are not qualified to be a teacher, and as we all know: "Those who
can't do, teach". You can't do, and you can't teach.

You made an insulting smear statement without a work of support.

NOBODY compared C-5A and Helios Prototype. Not me. I put down facts
about both and several other very different aircraft (SR-71, Concorde,
Boeing 747-400, Piper Cub) in the same message, not to show they are
similar or the same, but to illustrate the wide variety of flight
principles to select from those which combines the specific principles
needed to assemble a spaceplane which can reach LEO to ISS with 80,000
pounds of cargo payload.

The 747 was derived from Boeing's proposal on the C-5 contract.
It's essentially a C-5, which they developed further for the civilian market.

The helios calls everyone a liar who claims massive power is needed to
reach 100,000 feet. Low-wingloading and low air drag got it to 100,000
feet on 28 horsepower of propellers from electric motors fueled by
sunlight from the solar cells glued on its plastic wings.

While true, this has absolutely nothing to do with putting a large mass
of man-rated machinery into LEO.

The C-5A calls everone liar who says that heavy payloads can't lift
from the launch area without spending a million pounds of fuel to get
the first 30,000 feet.

No, it doesn't. The C-5A can not operate above 50,000 feet, nor can
it fly supersonic.

The SR-71 calls everyne a liar who claims that rising 60 meters per
second on winged craft is unachievable. 60 m/s will get you to Low
Earth Orbit in 98 minutes, if you have the fuel, have the thrust and
your aero-design is right.

The SR-71 (and the X-15 before) never made it onto orbit. The SR-71 had a
maximum speed of Mach 3.3 at an altitude of 85,000. That's around 2,200 mph,
or 3,540 km/h or about 1 m/s. The minimum orbital speed is about 8 m/s and
that's after one reaches a minimal orbital altitude of about 100 km. And,
the SR-71 did not take off fully fueled, being fueled after climbing above the
dense surface atmosphere. I'm sure one with your level of knowledge can
easily explain why this was necessary.

I'm calling YOU A LIAR for misrepresenting what I said without posting
anything which demonstrates any kind of support for YOUR STATEMENTS.

Call me what you will, you still have not shown any understanding of
aeronautical or astronautical engineering realities. You have chosen to
ignore Jeff Findley's comments as well as mine. By your own words, you
have proven, yet again, that you are an idiot.

Now, run along and finish your homework.

--
Eric Swanson --- E-mail address: e_swanson(at)skybest.com :-)
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In article , says...


Any bets that the kid can catch the typo in that last post?

--
Eric Swanson --- E-mail address: e_swanson(at)skybest.com :-)
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