Is it just me?

The life went out of the sci.space.* groups when Henry Spencer
decided it wasn't worth his time.

I miss Henry, but the one I _really_ miss is Rusty Barton with all his
great PDF links.

I'm going to get in a lot of trouble for this, but before Henry was in
favor of his "Brown Bess" basic booster, he was a proponent of the
"Black Horse" orbital spaceplane that was to be refueled via adding
hydrogen peroxide to it from an aircraft at high altitude to serve as
the oxidizer as it climbed into orbit, after taking off under turbojet
power and kerosene fuel.
The performance figures for "Black Horse" make no sense at all when one
looks at them, as the fuel/airframe weight mass fraction comes in way
too low for something that has a TPS on it for reentry, while the isp of
the kerosene/H2O2 engine on it comes in way too high for something using
that propellant combo.
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/im/magnus/bh/analog.html
Even the size of the payload the Black Horse is shown deploying into
orbit looks around an order of magnitude or more greater than what the
figures in the article show it can carry into orbit as far as weight goes.
Frankly, it throws into doubt this whole concept that Henry
supported...from a simple mathematical point of view...and makes one
wonder about the unimpeachable quality of his judgment in matters
regarding space booster design.

Pat

On 5/8/2010 3:11 AM, Pat Flannery wrote:

Frankly, it throws into doubt this whole concept that Henry
supported...from a simple mathematical point of view...and makes one
wonder about the unimpeachable quality of his judgment in matters
regarding space booster design.

As a follow-up to that, take a look at the internal propellant volume
that the Black Horse can carry in the cutaways in the article, and
realize that they have to carry it from under Mach 1 at around 50,000
feet altitude up to Mach 25 at around 150-200 miles altitude to reach orbit.
They'd be lucky to hit Mach 6 with it, especially considering that it
has a lot less streamlined airframe than the X-15, as well as a greatly
inferior proportion of fuselage volume devoted to propellant storage.
The whole thing is absurd from the get-go, like expecting a V-2 to hit
the Moon.
This ranks right up there to when I found out that the main designer of
the Delta Clipper concept was Jerry Pournelle...hell, we should have
gone to Larry Niven and made the thing out of Puppeteer hull metal to
cut down weight. :-D

Pat

Alan Erskine wrote:
"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" wrote in
message m...



They're mostly dead.

I can't recall the last post that has passed moderation in
sci.space.science and very few recently that have passed moderation
on sci.space.tech.


It's only because the mods are already sick and tired of it all. I've been
saying for over a year that it wouldn't work.

Ummm, Alan, I can speak for myself thank you very much. I just charged the
fee for the account I use to moderate the newsgroups to my personal credit
card. I am NOT sick and tired of it.

The problem isn't us being sick and tired of it, it's the absolute dirth of
articles.



--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

On May 8, 8:41�pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 5/8/2010 11:31 AM, Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:

The problem isn't us being sick and tired of it, it's the absolute dirth of
articles.

Make it a single moderated newsgroup that is all-space inclusive, and
you will get a lot more postings to it....as well as letting the posters
discuss things outside of the particular aspects of space that the
present set-up has fractured itself into.

Pat

a major issue is that face facts.......

end of shuttle program.

NASA and its loser idea constellation, now apparently cancelled

no new nasa program just ISS, which has nothing new unless something
breaks.

fortunately theres some private industry efforts but no big expensive
multi billion dollar taxpayer based ones

On 5/8/2010 11:31 AM, Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:

The problem isn't us being sick and tired of it, it's the absolute dirth of
articles.

Make it a single moderated newsgroup that is all-space inclusive, and
you will get a lot more postings to it....as well as letting the posters
discuss things outside of the particular aspects of space that the
present set-up has fractured itself into.

Pat

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
dakotatelephone...
On 5/7/2010 7:35 PM, Alan Erskine wrote:


Comrade Flannery... What have you got against a hard-working member of
our Great Nation? You have been reported to the Proletariat and you can
expect to spend many years serving our Master, along side all the Falun
Gong members.

Somehow I actually got on their mailing list around a year back, and used
to get weekly updates on what the evil things the Chinese goverment was
doing to Falun Gong were.
More recently, I got onto some sort of mailing list from a group of
whackos out of India regarding their take on combining evolution theory
with mystic Hindu concepts. ;-D

Weeee! What are they smokin' in Inja these days?

On 5/8/2010 5:27 PM, Alan Erskine wrote:

More recently, I got onto some sort of mailing list from a group of
whackos out of India regarding their take on combining evolution
theory with mystic Hindu concepts. ;-D

Weeee! What are they smokin' in Inja these days?

Here's that crew's newsletter:
http://www.bhaktiswarupadamodara.com...April_2010.pdf


Pat

On May 7, 11:03*pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
Or my killfiles...but is this newsgroup just about officially dead at
the moment?
Lurkers occasionally post something to it, but since they don't
regularly post, they leave it almost entirely to the nut-jobs and
Chinese shoe salesmen as the only consistent contributors.
If you enjoy reading the posts to it, you might want to consider writing
some to it also; otherwise, it's just going to croak and you won't even
be able to read it.

Pat

I mainly post as a way to say I am reading this newsgroup.
So I rate as a lurker more than a poster................Trig

On 5/7/2010 9:17 PM, Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
Pat Flannery wrote:

Or my killfiles...but is this newsgroup just about officially dead at
the moment?
Lurkers occasionally post something to it, but since they don't
regularly post, they leave it almost entirely to the nut-jobs and
Chinese shoe salesmen as the only consistent contributors.
If you enjoy reading the posts to it, you might want to consider
writing some to it also; otherwise, it's just going to croak and you
won't even be able to read it.


They're mostly dead.


The difference, of course, is that with "all dead" the most you
can do is to go through their clothes and look for loose change...;-)

Bob M.

On May 7, 8:17*pm, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:
Pat Flannery wrote:
Or my killfiles...but is this newsgroup just about officially dead at
the moment?
Lurkers occasionally post something to it, but since they don't
regularly post, they leave it almost entirely to the nut-jobs and
Chinese shoe salesmen as the only consistent contributors.
If you enjoy reading the posts to it, you might want to consider
writing some to it also; otherwise, it's just going to croak and you
won't even be able to read it.

They're mostly dead.

I can't recall the last post that has passed moderation in sci.space.science
and very few recently that have passed moderation on sci.space.tech.

Pat

--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

That's only because they'd moderate their own mothers to death.

~ BG