Rutan's RASCAL

(Henry Spencer) wrote in message ...
In article ,
Jim Kingdon wrote:
And I don't
know if Pegasus had a specific dollar target, but it was seen as a way
to put a small payload in orbit for a small amount of money.

And it is... for moderately hefty values of "small". It *has* gotten
substantially more expensive than originally advertised, although the
customer demand is also far less than expected, which just might have
something to do with that.

I recently asked a friend of mine at OSC about this. He said the price
increase for Pegasus launches was largely due to lots of extra-cost work
associated with meeting NASA requirements. It seems that the original
Pegasus design and launch-preparation approach was rather less expensive;
back then, NASA was not a major customer, and other customers were more or
less happy with that approach. NASA is now the primary customer for Pegasus,
and they very much want things done their way...the main driver for this
undoubtedly being NASA's unusually strong aversion to risk. (cf. Henry's
past .sig, "When failure is not an option, success can be expensive.")

- Kieran A. Carroll

Derek Lyons wrote:


Pat; Take anything claiming the Soviets had such-andsuch with a
massive grain a salt. It's a growing cottage industry to produce
massive glowing accounts of Great Soviet Terror Machines that were
never built... And sell them to a gullible and drooling public.


Well, Tupolev brought a model of their spaceplane/Mach 6 bomber to the
Paris Airshow one year....

Pat

In article ,
(Henry Spencer) writes:
In article ,
Peter Stickney wrote:
...Considering the RASCAL is smaller and the manned first
stage gives a more significant portion of the energy, the whole
expendable should be about 3 tons, most of which is the
non-explosive hybrid stage. (Ok, still wouldn't want to be
hit by that.) And it's flying more predictably, outside the atmosphere
to start with.

Yoou're still going to have to track it, and the lauanch airplane, on
the way up.

That's a question of policy, not a law of nature. The US launch ranges
traditionally insist on having continuous tracking data, but not everyone
is so fussy, even in the big-launcher world. The H-II has only the most
limited ground tracking, with flight control after it goes over the
horizon relying mostly on relayed telemetry. Proton isn't tracked at all;
the flight-termination system is entirely autonomous and there is *no*
command uplink to the first three stages.

That it's policy only is just my point. For the U.S., launching from
highly safe locations with wide safety margins and full monitoring to
prevent annoying the neighbors too much _has_ been the policy for all
launches, both Civil adn Military. (The exception, I suppose, would
be ICBM launches Northwards-ish from operational silos. But, then, if
they're launching _those_, they're anticipating people having other
things to do rather than complain, and an upcoming dearth of Liability
Lawyers. (I understand they taste good with kechup.)

Policies can be changed.

Indeed they can. But so far, for the U.S., they haven't. Thuis brings
up a couple of questions, wrt RASCAL - Why would be poilicy be
different for RASCAL? What would it take to allow a more flexible
policy.

Soviet/Russian exerience is all well and good, but there's a severe
dearth of Liability Lawyers in Siberia, so they operate under a
different criterion. (Although, from the way that I've heard things
are going in Moscow, that may change - the Lawer population of
Siberia, that is.)

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

l (Peter Stickney) wrote in message ...
In article ,
Pat Flannery writes:
Peter Stickney wrote:


have made
that inherent flexibility moot.


It's going to use _Soundless Rocket Engines_?!
Oh, excuse me...I thought you wrote "Mook" for a second there. ;-)

Careful there, Pat, them's Fightin' Words!


No fight needed. Pat is merely repeating misinformation about me.
This pack of lies arises from comments I made about the the
suitability of microengine arrays (propulsive skins) for a wide
variety of purposes. I pointed out that such engine arrays could be
very quiet - quiet enough to be used for the purposes I mentioned.

For the record ...

Of course anyone who is a fan of Uncle Scroogw will remember Gyro
Gearloose invented the first Soundless Rocket Engine. the CP8;

http://www.cbarks.dk/Digital/opf195718a.jpg

And though totally fictional, is a hero of my youth!

NASA's working on real noiseless engines;

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.01/plasma_pr.html

And the USPTO recognizes a classification of noiseless rocket;

F42B 29 /00 * Noiseless, smokeless, or flashless missiles launched by
their own explosive propellant

As I said, noiseless doesn't mean totally silent, only quiet enough to
be useful in the roles I outlined for them.

This whole line of argumentation against me failed when I indicated
that Myrabo's laser rocket was relatively quiet in operation.

http://www.rpi.edu/dept/NewsComm/Mag...enss_soe2.html

Of course people like Pat recall things in a way that suggests my
thoughts are bizzarre in some fashion - along the lines of Gyro
Gearloose. I don't know why this is so, my commentary is pretty fully
documented. Of course I'm also attacked needlessly because I provide
documentation of my views when possible. And I'm attacked when I
provide no documentation. So, you see why I don't post here much
anymore.

Cheers

william mook wrote:


No fight needed. Pat is merely repeating misinformation about me.
This pack of lies arises from comments I made about the the
suitability of microengine arrays (propulsive skins) for a wide
variety of purposes. I pointed out that such engine arrays could be
very quiet - quiet enough to be used for the purposes I mentioned.

For the record ...


I'll believe it when I see it...and don't hear it.

NASA's working on real noiseless engines;

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.01/plasma_pr.html


That's a plasma engine, it's a a whole other ball of wax from what you
were proposing, which was a motor capable of lifting something off the
Earth's surface while making almost no noise.


And the USPTO recognizes a classification of noiseless rocket;

F42B 29 /00 * Noiseless, smokeless, or flashless missiles launched by
their own explosive propellant


They also have a slew of patents on flying saucer designs.


As I said, noiseless doesn't mean totally silent, only quiet enough to
be useful in the roles I outlined for them.

This whole line of argumentation against me failed when I indicated
that Myrabo's laser rocket was relatively quiet in operation.

http://www.rpi.edu/dept/NewsComm/Mag...enss_soe2.html


Myrabo's design isn't a rocket, it's a laser driven jet if it's
anything, as it doesn't presently carry any fuel, and relies on the
atmosphere for its propulsion; if it does carry fuel at some future
point, it will make a noise of some sort when the fuel is detonated by
laser...I've seen films of it being flown, and it makes a
"whacka-whacka" noise when the beam hits it and the air gets heated up;
using this as an analogy is like saying that a Estes model rocket is
comparatively noiseless compared to a Space Shuttle.
In fact, in Myrabo's and Ing's book "The Future Of Flight" (I assume you
have a autographed first edition of this sitting on a satin pillow in a
shrine of some sort) it describes what a full-sized device like this
would sound like in the following terms:
"When those shock waves are whacking the underside of the hull, the
whole craft will probably generate a sound like a huge loudspeaker. The
sound will be a tone, probably at a pitch somewhere between middle C and
high C depending on the frequency of the shocks (A frequency of 264
cycles per second is middle C and the frequency doubles every time the
pitch rises one octave.) How many decibels? Let's just say this event
could be mistaken for the the blast of Gabriel, and would permanently
deafen anyone nearby." (page 105)
They later state that they can moderate the noise somewhat by continuous
laser bombardment of the underbelly as long as all you have in mind is
hovering the vehicle; but the model they tested uses the pulsed blast
wave technique to climb.


Of course people like Pat recall things in a way that suggests my
thoughts are bizzarre in some fashion - along the lines of Gyro
Gearloose.


More like Rube Goldberg in my opinion. I get the idea that if you had
designed the automobile, it would move around on mechanical feet rather
than wheels.

I don't know why this is so, my commentary is pretty fully
documented.


Oh, yeah the math is all there- it's the basic ideas that are screwy.
Laser powered flying car? Hell! Forget that thing, it's time to
resurrect this contraption:
http://home.att.net/~dannysoar2/Whirlygig.htm
This could probably be made to work; but since the helicopter already
exists there is no real reason to build it.
I have a feeling that this wouldn't slow you down one iota though...

Of course I'm also attacked needlessly because I provide
documentation of my views when possible.


Then there's something awry with your documentation. Like the plasma
rocket being similar to the quiet rocket engine.

And I'm attacked when I
provide no documentation. So, you see why I don't post here much
anymore.


Oh, please keep posting- the ideas you come up with are endlessly
fascinating in a peculiar way, like Professor Fate's devices in "The
Great Race". :-D


Cheers


Toodles, professor.

william mook wrote:


This whole line of argumentation against me failed when I indicated
that Myrabo's laser rocket was relatively quiet in operation.


Except, of course, that it's not. That very low-thrust little engine
sounds like a fricken' machine gun going off... and for good reason,
too. It's only quiet if you're deef.

Derek Lyons wrote:


Comrade! Behold mighty M-67 LK-M stealth aircraft:
http://www.ussr-airspace.com/catalog...8/12155757.jpg
http://www.ussr-airspace.com/catalog...8/12155808.jpg
http://www.ussr-airspace.com/catalog...8/12155821.jpg
Is triumph of Russian aerodynamic genius!


Given the number of other design convergences, in aircraft as well as
other fields. One shouldn't be surprised.


That's a recon plane, BTW.


Given that the site you cite is a drooling fanboy site which features
a repainted Orion
(http://www.ussr-airspace.com/catalog...ucts_id=18 56)
and a repainted U2
(http://www.ussr-airspace.com/catalog...ucts_id=15 10)


The Soviets DID try to reverse engineer the U2. Almost got the plane in
the sky when the program was cancelled.

Scott Lowther wrote:



Except, of course, that it's not. That very low-thrust little engine
sounds like a fricken' machine gun going off... and for good reason,
too. It's only quiet if you're deef.


You just _know_ that he has a copy of "The Future Of Flight", don't you?
Giving him that book was about as smart as handing a chimpanzee a live
hand grenade....sooner or later it's going to figure out how to get that
pin out- and then there'll be hell to pay.
I was just browsing through my copy which I hadn't looked at in around
ten years- when I bought it, I thought it was brilliant; in retrospect
it reads like a flight to Cloud Cuckoo Land.
"Giant-supersonic-space-laser-powered-dirigible-flying-thingy-riding-on-a-sheet-of-plasma-and-interacting-with-the-Earth's-magnetic-field-widget".

Patent # 39850236906, issued to Dr. Emilio Lizardo.
Pat

Scott Lowther wrote:



That's a recon plane, BTW.

Has anybody figured out what's in that bump on the back of the thing?
Camera equipment?



The Soviets DID try to reverse engineer the U2. Almost got the plane
in the sky when the program was cancelled.


But Lockheed STOLE Soviet plans to build clumsy knock-off of superior
Soviet reconnaissance aircraft design, comrade! ;-)
I'm really annoyed that the English versions of the entries on this page
don't seem to work; as they also apparently copied the D-12 drone:
http://www.sergib.agava.ru/russia/tupolev/
It would be fun to know more about the Tu-130:
http://www.sergib.agava.ru/russia/tupolev/130/130.htm
Apparently it's a boost-glide missile.

Pat

Scott Lowther wrote:


See! Right there! You PROVED Mook right! As soon as he gets his
millions and billions of SPS-laser powered flying cars, flying
mailboxes and flying lunchboxes zipping around, everyone in the world
will be rendered immediately and permanently DEAF. Bleeding out the
ears, eyeballs popping *deef*. Then, these rockets will be silent.
Yessir...


Then they well accidentally step into one of laser drive beams and be
permanently blinded also.
Think of it! A whole world full of Pinball Wizards!
If nothing else, his ideas do not lack grandeur- common sense and
rationality, maybe- but not grandeur. :-)

Pat