DC-X Anniversary -- 20 on the 18th

On Tuesday, August 20, 2013 2:26:13 AM UTC-4, Fred J. McCall wrote:
wrote:





A few decades ago I mentioned the possibility of creating a soda can sized rocket vehicle.





The whole square/cubed thing appears to have escaped you.





--

"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar

territory."

--G. Behn

Leave it to Fred to say exactly the most misleading of things and believe it to be the Gospel truth! lol.

Actually I heat the 'square cubed thing' on the head. If Fred had actually read anything about scaling laws of engines written in the propulsion literature published by the AIAA over the past fifteen years he would know that as I do, the weight of an engine scales with the cube (the volume of material composing it) and the thrust of an engine scales with the square (the area of the exhaust jet) - so thrust to weight increases as size decreases. That is why (and why I mentioned) that the thrust to weight of a vehicle powered by MEMS engine array is 1000 to 1, while a more conventionally sized engine (today) has a thrust to weight of 80 to 1, and smaller conventional engines have thrust to weight of 120 to 1.

http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/news-cms/ne...7&template=226