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In article , Vincent
Cate wrote: What technology is new? You seen another airplane that bends in the middle so it is stable during atmospheric reentry? Well, there was an early Shuttle design which had the entire wing section slide forward ten or fifteen feet during entry... g Seen another nitrous-oxide/rubber hybrid engine with fiber optics wound into the casing to detect if the case is burning through and shut off the engine? I must admit, I hadn't heard of that; it is rather smart. Is this done on anything else made by similar methods? -- -Andrew Gray |
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In article ,
Vincent Cate wrote: *That* part is not particularly novel. The power wires to the solenoid valves of the shuttle RCS engines wrap around the combustion chambers, for the same reason. Because SS1 has a composite chamber they could put the fiber inside as they made the chamber and so detect when things were going bad before burning all the way through. Do the RCS ones trip before the chamber has burned all the way through? Nope, it has to be a complete burn-through. But in the case that mostly worried their designers -- combustion instability -- that happens very quickly, and there is no useful advance warning to be had by detecting a partial burn-through. That can also happen with hybrids, in slightly different ways; the casing of Amroc's first 250klb motor went from intact to massively ruptured in under 20 milliseconds, due to a hot-gas leak in the insulation. Also, is this the first time a nitrous-oxide/rubber engine of this size (or larger) has been used? Depends on what you mean by "used". Considerably bigger hybrids have been fired, although I think they may have all used LOX rather than N2O. I'm not aware of any previous use of hybrids to propel a manned aircraft, however. -- MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. | |
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jeff findley wrote in message ...
(Vincent Cate) writes: jeff findley What technology is new? You seen another airplane that bends in the middle so it is stable during atmospheric reentry? Such designs aren't completely new. The technology of large movable surfaces has been applied to boost/glide model rockets for decades. Model rockets are not doing reentry into the atmosphere. And the question was not about "completely new" just "new". Henry took this one, pointing out that the shuttle uses a very similar technology. Again I ask, what new *technology* is in Spaceship One? Just because there is something similar does not mean this is not new. Also, I think that having the fiber inside a composite rocket engine is new (I will defer to Henry of course). But inside lets you detect things before they burn all the way through, which seems new to me. The technology really isn't new. Rutan said something like he used the lowest tech that would work and not the highest tech. This is true. His design does not require amazing new materials, scramjets, etc. Rutan reminds me of Von Braun as far as being visionary in design without bleeding edge engineering. This is in sharp contrast to NASA, which is bleeding edge engineering without vision. -- Vince |
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"Paul F. Dietz" wrote in message ...
Scott Lowther wrote: Further discussion with you is clearly a waste of time. This means you've lost the argument. Don't let the door hit your sorry ass on the way out, ok? Actually, I did find the earlier parts of your arguments enlightening. My take on this is that we have some prototypes and a lot more good ideas. I think we are capable of building a lot of usable infrastructure, though the economic justification is pretty weak right now. Currently, we've got all the eggs in one basket and some long term limits to our growth. We have the capability to address that even if it takes a few decades or more. Karl Hallowell |
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Sander Vesik
Vince Incrementally advancing the state of the art is still advancing the state of the art, even when it is not particularly novel. Uhh... But "not particularily novel" = definitely not new technology. If in 2005 they can make larger capacity hard drives, faster CPUs, and bigger memory chips, you won't count that as new technology because it is "not particularly novel"? I think most computer guys count it as the "latest tech". If GE makes a new jet engine and it is 5% more efficient, you won't count it as "new technology" because it is not novel? The airlines would count it as new technology. To me it seems like most of technology advancement is incremental and not particularly novel. People even talk about the technology treadmill, in part because the progress is so steady and regular. I am beginning to wonder if many space people have this mindset that incremental tech advancement does not count. Have people bought into the NASA way of trying to leapfrog to some distant tech without incremental improvements? Could this help explain why launch technology has moved so slowly over the last 30 years? Did Apollo give space people the wrong idea about tech? These new space companies started by computer guys might not have this hangup. Might just be something to this... -- Vince |
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"Vincent Cate" wrote in message om... Sander Vesik Vince Incrementally advancing the state of the art is still advancing the state of the art, even when it is not particularly novel. Uhh... But "not particularily novel" = definitely not new technology. If in 2005 they can make larger capacity hard drives, faster CPUs, and bigger memory chips, you won't count that as new technology because it is "not particularly novel"? I think most computer guys count it as the "latest tech". If the larger HDD capacity comes from increased platter count, it aint new tech. If CPUs and and memory chips ramp up clock speeds or go through die shrinks it aint new tech. If you simply put a bigger data cache on chip it aint new tech. In a case of die shrink, you might be employing a new manufacturing tech to achieve smaller semiconductors, but the chip itself stays the same, although smaller. New algorithms on chip, new physical principles of inner workings of a chip, like copper interconnects, it might be called new tech. -kert |
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