Atmospheric Flight to Orbit

On Sat, 10 Mar 2007 21:14:02 GMT, in a place far, far away, Craig Fink
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

Running the numbers for two scenarios is fine, I've run many a trade study
or optimization study myself and I understand that sometimes intuition can
be wrong. I've always thought of these as opportunities, to learn something
new about the subject and gain a better understanding.

Rockets are at a highly developed and optimized stage.

For performace, perhaps. They're a long way from it for cost or
operability.

Craig Fink wrote:

:Running the numbers for two scenarios is fine, I've run many a trade study
r optimization study myself and I understand that sometimes intuition can
:be wrong. I've always thought of these as opportunities, to learn something
:new about the subject and gain a better understanding.

You should run the numbers. See what 'assumptions' you have to make
to get the air-breathing case to win.

:Rockets are at a highly developed and optimized stage. While an Atmospheric
:Flight to Orbit vehicle has yet to be built, and yet to be optimized.

And there is a REALLY good reason for that, apparently.

:... IMO ...

:I still think ...

All very nice, but hardly reason for any of the folks who have spent a
lot of time looking at the problem to change their opinions.

--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw

"Craig Fink" wrote in message
ink.net...
Running the numbers for two scenarios is fine, I've run many a trade study
or optimization study myself and I understand that sometimes intuition can
be wrong. I've always thought of these as opportunities, to learn
something
new about the subject and gain a better understanding.

Rockets are at a highly developed and optimized stage. While an
Atmospheric
Flight to Orbit vehicle has yet to be built, and yet to be optimized.

Rockets are not highly developed at this time. They are in a similar
position as gunpowder weapons in 1850 with half a millenium of
development.

From the Preface "Mechanics and Thermodynamics of Propulsion" Second
Edition
by Philip Hill and Carl Peterson,

"The basic premise of this book is that a few fundamental physical
principles, rightly applied, can...good first paragraph

Right under rightly applied are the words -deep understanding.

It would not do, of course to stress fundamental principles exclusively;
only in application do the basic ideas really come alive to stimulate both
analysis and invention..."

There has been little or no "application" of these principles, only the
study of the principles through simulation and analysis of the Atmospheric
Flight to Orbit. It's missing, unlike rockets, where "application" has
occurred many times and has come alive and has stimulated a much better
understanding of them.

To compare the two will also lead to false conclusions. Like trying to
compare the pictures of two puzzles. One fully completed, the other only a
third of the way done. An unsolved puzzle, that when solved and then
optimized will IMO outperform ascent to Orbit with Rockets.

Airbreathing systems are close to completion, not fully completed,
and rockets are probably far less than a third of the way.
It is necessary to compare systems that have the same application.
And as you point out yourself, rockets at less than a third done,
win against airbreathing systems that are near completion.
Investment should go to systems that have profit potential.

As far as I know there has been only a few unsuccessful and one successful
experiment in the Walking stage of this problem. That being NASA Hyper-X.
What I found most interesting from it was that 10% of the thrust came from
the Rocket motor that boosted it up to speed. I'd don't know if that was
planned or optimized into it, or if it was just that they need to keep
things from melting in the engine, which I suspect. A couple of pieces
come
together, atmospheric flight provides an avenue to get greater energy than
the fuel alone can provide. It still needs to be optimized to go further
and faster.

Scramjets are not feasable for space applications. Anyone capable of
proper study on them that solicits funds on the spaceflight side should
be investigated for fraud. There are people doing multiple life sentences
in prison for stealing a tiny fraction of what the scrammers have.

I still think it's the "Golden Age of Chemical Rockets", and it will come
to
an end with a Sonic Boom.

The Golden age ended with a sonic boom as you say in June 2004, and
has been moving forward since.

The people on this group are travelers with destinations in the same general
direction. We are not a team, but we do help each other from time to time
in the journey. There are a few things that are good ideas for walking here
even if they are not actual rules.

Your medium length top posting without direct connection to others points
comes across as a short lecture. Many of us will read lectures if they are
from someone we respect on a subject of interest. You have not gained
the respect from most here. We are not interested in yet more lectures
on things that have been studied and discussed to death. That is part of
the resistance you see. This subject comes up about once or twice a year.

One of my books is Combustion and Propulsion--Fourth Agard
Colloquium. High Mach Number Air-Breathing Engines.
It is a collection of papers on the subject from a meeting in Milan
Italy. Meeting date-April 4-8, 1960. And others more recent
like High-Speed Flight Propulsion Systems edited by Murthy
and Curran. Scads of papers in The Journal of Propulsion and
Power. We are bored with this repeatedly discredited field.

Don't bore us or lecture us and we will be more inclined to discuss
things of mutual interest. A good third of my posts have been wrong.
That is not a problem with people that forgive and guide me. If I
didn't listen, I would have been killfiled long ago. You appear to
not listen well, and strike out at people that disagree, like Len and
Henry.

I think you have some good ideas and ability to reason. This is not
one of those ideas.

"Craig Fink" wrote in message
ink.net...
Running the numbers for two scenarios is fine, I've run many a trade study
or optimization study myself and I understand that sometimes intuition can
be wrong. I've always thought of these as opportunities, to learn
something
new about the subject and gain a better understanding.

Rockets are at a highly developed and optimized stage. While an
Atmospheric
Flight to Orbit vehicle has yet to be built, and yet to be optimized.

snip

I still think it's the "Golden Age of Chemical Rockets", and it will come
to
an end with a Sonic Boom.

Wishful thinking and hand waving arguments are no substitute for sound
engineering analysis. If you're not going to do the engineering analysis,
you might as well wish for warp drive.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

john hare wrote:


"Craig Fink" wrote in message
ink.net...
Running the numbers for two scenarios is fine, I've run many a trade
study or optimization study myself and I understand that sometimes
intuition can be wrong. I've always thought of these as opportunities, to
learn something
new about the subject and gain a better understanding.

Rockets are at a highly developed and optimized stage. While an
Atmospheric
Flight to Orbit vehicle has yet to be built, and yet to be optimized.

Rockets are not highly developed at this time. They are in a similar
position as gunpowder weapons in 1850 with half a millenium of
development.

From the Preface "Mechanics and Thermodynamics of Propulsion" Second
Edition
by Philip Hill and Carl Peterson,

"The basic premise of this book is that a few fundamental physical
principles, rightly applied, can...good first paragraph

Right under rightly applied are the words -deep understanding.

It would not do, of course to stress fundamental principles exclusively;
only in application do the basic ideas really come alive to stimulate
both analysis and invention..."

There has been little or no "application" of these principles, only the
study of the principles through simulation and analysis of the
Atmospheric Flight to Orbit. It's missing, unlike rockets, where
"application" has occurred many times and has come alive and has
stimulated a much better understanding of them.

To compare the two will also lead to false conclusions. Like trying to
compare the pictures of two puzzles. One fully completed, the other only
a third of the way done. An unsolved puzzle, that when solved and then
optimized will IMO outperform ascent to Orbit with Rockets.

Airbreathing systems are close to completion, not fully completed,
and rockets are probably far less than a third of the way.
It is necessary to compare systems that have the same application.
And as you point out yourself, rockets at less than a third done,
win against airbreathing systems that are near completion.
Investment should go to systems that have profit potential.

As far as I know there has been only a few unsuccessful and one
successful experiment in the Walking stage of this problem. That being
NASA Hyper-X. What I found most interesting from it was that 10% of the
thrust came from the Rocket motor that boosted it up to speed. I'd don't
know if that was planned or optimized into it, or if it was just that
they need to keep things from melting in the engine, which I suspect. A
couple of pieces come
together, atmospheric flight provides an avenue to get greater energy
than the fuel alone can provide. It still needs to be optimized to go
further and faster.

Scramjets are not feasable for space applications. Anyone capable of
proper study on them that solicits funds on the spaceflight side should
be investigated for fraud. There are people doing multiple life sentences
in prison for stealing a tiny fraction of what the scrammers have.

I still think it's the "Golden Age of Chemical Rockets", and it will come
to
an end with a Sonic Boom.

The Golden age ended with a sonic boom as you say in June 2004, and
has been moving forward since.

The people on this group are travelers with destinations in the same
general direction. We are not a team, but we do help each other from time
to time in the journey. There are a few things that are good ideas for
walking here even if they are not actual rules.

Your medium length top posting without direct connection to others points
comes across as a short lecture. Many of us will read lectures if they are
from someone we respect on a subject of interest. You have not gained
the respect from most here. We are not interested in yet more lectures
on things that have been studied and discussed to death. That is part of
the resistance you see. This subject comes up about once or twice a year.

One of my books is Combustion and Propulsion--Fourth Agard
Colloquium. High Mach Number Air-Breathing Engines.
It is a collection of papers on the subject from a meeting in Milan
Italy. Meeting date-April 4-8, 1960. And others more recent
like High-Speed Flight Propulsion Systems edited by Murthy
and Curran. Scads of papers in The Journal of Propulsion and
Power. We are bored with this repeatedly discredited field.

Don't bore us or lecture us and we will be more inclined to discuss
things of mutual interest.

lol, if it looks like a lecture, smell like a lecture, tastes like a
lecture, must be a lecture. Even if it comes at the top, bottom, intermixed
or in the margins. Quit yaking during the lecture, or I'll throw you out of
the room. And if your bored the lecture, your in the wrong room. ;-)

A good third of my posts have been wrong.
That is not a problem with people that forgive and guide me. If I
didn't listen, I would have been killfiled long ago. You appear to
not listen well, and strike out at people that disagree, like Len and
Henry.

I think you have some good ideas and ability to reason. This is not
one of those ideas.

Although I have never met Henry, I would not have spent several days and
several revisions of the post to Henry if I did not like the guy. I just
would not have bothered. I am a slow reader, and can't write very well. I
don't expect you to understand my reasons, logic, ... nor wish to explain
it to you at this time. Nor, my posting style, which changes often and is
still evolving. Nor my spelling...

What I see in you is a creative person who had an idea, a good idea, who was
led down some path that concluded with you... But, still confident that if
you keep looking you can find purpose... Your need to fit in seems to be
overwhelming your creativity, if you continue it ... If you want to read
some highly creative postings go read some of Brad Guth's. Hi Brad. I
particularly like the Life on Venus one, it really does fit with Cosmology
when the Sun was much cooler, when it was in the Habitable Zone, which will
be centered about Mars some day. Fun to think about anyway. What to look
for? Probably some refined metal?

Each and every day as we encounter many different people and interact with
them. In each interaction there is an exchange... Ah, what the heck looks
around, gees, I'm lecturing in the wrong room today ... I read your post
and do take it into consideration, you seemed to be more concerned with
Henry and Len than a technical discussion on your idea. Otherwise, you
would have posted to a different subthread.

Now that you must be total ****ed, I'll take part of this quickly diverging
subthread over here---


--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @

---Here

So, what did you find on variable fluid intakes, that turned your jet into a
rocket ever so slowly as it accelerates?

Thanks for the Milan and Murthy references. I think a trip to the library
might be in order.

I'm still interested in what your thoughts were and are?

--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @
--

john hare wrote:

One of my books is Combustion and Propulsion--Fourth Agard
Colloquium. High Mach Number Air-Breathing Engines.
It is a collection of papers on the subject from a meeting in Milan
Italy. Meeting date-April 4-8, 1960. And others more recent
like High-Speed Flight Propulsion Systems edited by Murthy
and Curran. Scads of papers in The Journal of Propulsion and
Power. We are bored with this repeatedly discredited field.

Craig Fink wrote:

Hi John,

Thanks for the nice comparison post, I'm going to have to think about it a
for a bit.

If you had a couple of thoughts about variable fluid intakes yesterday,
you must have at least four by now.

Most Precoolers are physical heat exchangers. A variable fluid intake is
not. The fluid (liquid/gas) is added in the intake, supersonic region.

Example, if an intake were designed for Mach 3, there is an optimal area
ratio that between the area of the front of the intake and the throat.
It's fixed. To go faster, the size of the intake area must be increased,
or the throat decreased to keep the throat at Mach 1. Instead of moving
something, open a valve and add a fluid like LOX. The additional fluid
decreases the apparent throat area as far a the incoming air is concerned.
All kinds of good things happen, LOX cools the flow, becomes a gas
constricting the throat area to the proper size, enriching the air with
Oxygen, reduces intake heating, reduces intake structure and complexity.

Also, there are other interesting things that can be done. Preheat the LOX
(in a precooler or just use the stators), turning it into a high pressure
warm gas. A little Oxygen thruster, to dynamically close the area of the
throat. This would reduce the LOX usage.

At the same time it's probably a good idea to increase the fuel flow, even
go from a lean fuel mixture to the other side of the temperature curve, a
super rich fuel mixture. Spin that turbine and compressor up, while
maintaining a good turbine inlet temperature.

Then dump that fuel rich turbine exhaust into the bi-pass air. Really
giving it a final boost of acceleration before separation of the Crawl
Stage.

There are at least a dozen other interesting things to do with with a
variable fluid intake, especially when taking about ramjet, scramjets, and
turboscramjetrockets. And it's not limited to just the intake.
Manipulating one fluid with another.

What were your thoughts? I'm interested.

"Craig Fink" wrote in message
link.net...
---Here

So, what did you find on variable fluid intakes, that turned your jet into
a
rocket ever so slowly as it accelerates?

The intake concepts of interest to me do not turn a rocket into
a jet or vice versa. The intake is simply a way of getting more
mach range from a standard jet derived engine. One oddball
thing is the possibility of using a spike of air instead of a physical
moving one at the very leading edge of the intake system.
Connecting the intake compressed air to the leading edge pipe
such that the relative compression of various machs creates
a near contious shock on lip. Not researched, have no idea
if it will really work. No moving parts.

The other is a series of backflow tubes inside the physical
ramps such that the higher pressure air behind each series
of shocks is routed forward to reenergize the boundery
layers to keep them from detaching under the adverse
pressure gradient. There is some background on this
somewhere in my references.

The trades put mach three plus airbreathing as very bad.
The thermal and trajectory problems created in addition
to the intake recovery situation make it a losing proposition
without seriously improved systems beyond reasonable
economy.

My interest in the air breathing engines is driven by the local
investment environment and flight test requirements by the
investors. We need the ability to cruise a few miles offshore
before doing rude noisy things. That is if we ever get going again.

One report we got for an airframe concept came back as a poor
idea, but included a superior alternative. It is dated 10 September
2001. Bad timing.

Thanks for the Milan and Murthy references. I think a trip to the library
might be in order.

There are three Murthy and Curran books on various aspects of high
and higher speed flight. You might also take a look at ISABE,
International Society for Air Breathing Engines. The symposium
papers on disk are quite reasonable for purchase through AIAA.

I'm still interested in what your thoughts were and are?

Air breathing engines can be usefull if properly applied. It must
not be confused as superior to rockets in areas that they are
not. The more effectively self delusion can be avoided, the more
focus is available for things that do work. It can't be avoided,
just mitigated somewhat.

It is crucial to put the numbers to the competing concepts.
It is cheaper to ride a bicycle than drive a car except that
your time and safety have value, not to mention passenger
seating and a place for the groceries.

Precooling the air seems to do nice things like double the T/W
of an engine and such. The problem with most of the concepts
I have seen is that they put a patch on a box on the side of a
kludge to barely achieve things a rocket can do without effort.
Most papers on the subject call for advances in their field
but none by the competition. Abundant wishtonium.


--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @
--

On Mar 13, 6:57 am, Craig Fink wrote:
john hare wrote:

What I see in you is a creative person who had an idea, a good idea, who was
led down some path that concluded with you... But, still confident that if
you keep looking you can find purpose... Your need to fit in seems to be
overwhelming your creativity, if you continue it ... If you want to read
some highly creative postings go read some ofBradGuth's. HiBrad. I
particularly like the Life on Venus one, it really does fit with Cosmology
when the Sun was much cooler, when it was in the Habitable Zone, which will
be centered about Mars some day. Fun to think about anyway. What to look
for? Probably some refined metal?

Venus is technically doable as is, where is. It's merely geothermally
cooking from the inside out, and that's only because it's much less
old than Earth, whereas our icy to the core Mars is simply much older
than Earth, as well as having been much less salty.

ETs or possibly as evolved local Venusians are within a degree of
biological spec, of what we should expect to discover, that is
whenever we're not so deep into the process of summarily pillaging,
raping and polluting mother Earth for all she's worth, and then some.

A far better question is; What's not to be found on Venus?
-
Brad Guth

Yes Brad, it may be doable, but it's in the wrong direction. It would only
be to expand an intelligent being's presence, another planet for growing
room. It would require a constant high level of diligence and maintenance
to keep it livable. Lacking that at any point, it would most likely revert.

Intelligent Venusians would have realized this too and prepared the next
logical planet in the sequence for a self sustaining system in the moving
Habitable Zone. That would have been Earth, which may have required a few
things like Mars currently does.

They might have taken their Moon, and slammed it into Earth, then fine tuned
it with a bombardment from the Kuiper belt and/or Oort cloud to get the
mechanics and mixture ratios right for a self sustaining system.

We should really consider taking this particular thread back to your Life on
Venus one, but not really sure which one or where it would belong as many
of your threads have been bombarded with... My vote for something
like, "The Venusian handbook, How to make Earth Habitable"

Just some food for thought.

--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @
--

wrote:

On Mar 13, 6:57 am, Craig Fink wrote:

What I see in you is a creative person who had an idea, a good idea, who
was led down some path that concluded with you... But, still confident
that if you keep looking you can find purpose... Your need to fit in
seems to be overwhelming your creativity, if you continue it ... If you
want to read some highly creative postings go read some ofBradGuth's.
HiBrad. I particularly like the Life on Venus one, it really does fit
with Cosmology when the Sun was much cooler, when it was in the Habitable
Zone, which will be centered about Mars some day. Fun to think about
anyway. What to look for? Probably some refined metal?

Venus is technically doable as is, where is. It's merely geothermally
cooking from the inside out, and that's only because it's much less
old than Earth, whereas our icy to the core Mars is simply much older
than Earth, as well as having been much less salty.

ETs or possibly as evolved local Venusians are within a degree of
biological spec, of what we should expect to discover, that is
whenever we're not so deep into the process of summarily pillaging,
raping and polluting mother Earth for all she's worth, and then some.

A far better question is; What's not to be found on Venus?