MKSheppard wrote:Broomstick wrote:Yes. With 1960's materials.
No, with 1970s materials.
Like they were OMG
that much better 
Believe it or not, there have been some advances made since 1975.
I was unaware the laws of physics changed in the last 35 years, making Δv = Ve * ln(Mb / Me) obsolete.
I was unaware that the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo solution was the only one that was conceivably possible and it is impossible to advance beyond it. It's a not change in the laws of physics, it's a change in building materials.
Scaled Composites is an actual aerospace company with actual engineers.
That was actually aimed more at SpaceX.
Fair enough
You're just pissy because they aren't going in the direction you (not an aerospace company, not an engineer) think they should go.
No, I'm pissy because they're setting themselves up for inevitable failure by riding the wave of "NeuSpace" by promising more than their checks can cash.
Funny, though - Rutan doesn't normally promise
anything, at least not publicly. He just either does it or doesn't do it. He's not promising X capability by Y date for Z price, unless it's to Branson, in which case it's between those two companies.
There's a strong movement of idiocy that wants to defund NASA and give the money to upstarts like SpaceX and Scaled/Virgin.
Scaled Composites takes no government money. If NASA is defunded and the cash goes elsewhere it almost certainly
will not go to Rutan or Virgin.
While I would prefer to see NASA expanded the manned space program not only is that not happening, it's not going to happen in the current economic environment. Just reality. So if they can't or won't do it I'd rather see someone
trying to do it. Unlike yourself, I don't presume to say this or that method can't be done because I
know I'm not an aerospace engineer. You and Saverok are the ones getting your panties in a bunch, and as far as I know neither of you has the sort of credentials to have an informed opinion about the matter, just a lot of masturbating to pictures of missles.
For one thing, Rutan has a 40 year history of designing aircraft that are more fuel efficient than other aerospace companies, and that have lower R&D costs.
So what's the heaviest and biggest aircraft he's designed?
Biggest in wingspan I think is the WhiteKnightTwo with a wingspan of 140 feet. WhiteKnightTwo has a maximum payload of 37,479 pounds, presumably take off weight is that plus the weight of the aircraft.
I would like to point out that the Mercury-Redstone rocket combination that NASA used for suborbital flight was 66,000 pounds at take-off. WhiteKnightOne + SpaceShipOne combined were significantly less than that, less than 2/3 as far as I can tell but I am somewhat hampered by a lack of on-line detail on specifications of those two air/spacecraft. Because the combined weight was
two-thirds or less of the Redstone/Mercury combination
significantly less fuel was required... which is simple physics that conform to the equation you so thoughtfully provided.
By the way, I did find some information on the cost of the Mercury program: $384 million, the equivalent of about $2.9 billion in 2010 dollars. I emphasize again, Rutan got to sub-orbital space for $25 million in 2010 dollars. Even if the second tier (to get to orbit) cost
ten times that he will STILL have done the job for less money than NASA did (in inflation adjusted dollars).
Maybe because the free market didn't have a use for Energia at that point in time - private satellite launches don't require a rocket that big, so why pay for one that big? Unless you have a need for that amount of lift capacity it doesn't make sense to purchase it.
100 Metric tons to LEO...that means you can put up Commercial Skylab and sell space on it to all sorts of space agencies and corporations.
Except no one in
private industry was building space stations at that time (for that matter, they still aren't). Private space industry was satellites, which didn't require the Energia. Private industry is interested in profit, not your masturbatory fantasies/
Imagine constructing the ISS in just four launches under contract to NASA.
Sure... and THEN what?
No one would have a use for the Energia after that. That's assuming you could even get the contract from the US government, which would have gone to the lowest bidder. Unless a company could acquire and fly Energia
at a profit and still gain the contract there would be zero interest.
In other words, bigger isn't always better.
Yet...the FREE MARKET did not pick up Energia, despite the dead Communist State of the Soviet Union paying for 99% of the sunk costs as a massive subsidy to whoever bought/worked with NPO Energia to keep the workers employed.
Uh-huh... just the detail of having to work in the former USSR, and the actual costs of the actual launches. Again, unless a company was convinced they could profit from the deal they just weren't going to do it. Not to mention the headache of culture clashes between the USSR and the US which definitely caused and still causes friction between the two groups. Not insurmountable, but just one more additional pain in the ass.
Space is expensive. Goddamned expensive.
Yes. We all know that.
The only people who have that kind of money to make genuine breakthroughs and the expensive as hell R&D to fund said breakthroughs, like developing a fully reusable TSTO system that places a useful payload into orbit, will be military customers.
Then it will
never be done because, frankly, the military would prefer that there NOT be a civilian presence in space. Even if they develop it, they won't release it to the civilian world. Why should they? It's so much easier if you don't have to deal with civilian hardware getting in the way.
Unless perhaps you think that commercial airlines will fund the $40-$50 billion for such a system?
Right now the commercial airlines are plunking down around $125 million
per airplane when purchasing the standard Boeing and Airbus models - more for the A380. How big are some of those fleets?
Remember, too - the airlines are NOT funding the R&D. If anything, they'd buy the developed, tested, and proven spaceships. Clearly, they won't be paying the entire R&D cost for each commercial spaceship put up for sale. At least not the average airline. Please note -
Virgin IS helping to fund the required R&D. So... apparently at least one airline company IS willing to pitch in.
Oh, I'm sure once the military develops this system, and it's been in service for about five years, commercial customers like Fed-Ex and the airlines will approach either Boeing or Lockheed for a civilianized derivative of the military orbital bomber.
Except neither Boeing or Lockheed, to the best of my knowledge, are working on any such thing. They could, of course, be working on it in secret but if that's the case neither you nor I would know about it. Even if that was the case, there is no obligation for the military to release the technology to the civilian world, any more than they've released stealth technology or a civilian version of the F14 or F16.
In fact, aerospace has been making progress...(snip)
Actually, everything you list is a result of the electronics industry enabling better engine monitoring than a third crewmember could do, better fluid modeling allowing quieter engines blah blah blah.
Even so, how is that NOT progress?
Nothing has fundamentally changed in the last couple of decades except for the black boxes being smaller, and less finnicky.
Untrue.
As just one example, in 1970 composite components on commercial aircraft were permitted only for non-structural components. Now, they are permitted for flight-critical structures and comprise more and more of the airframe. Really, Shep, you're displaying considerable ignorance on this matter. Perhaps you should educate yourself before sticking your foot in your mouth.
The military doesn't give a fuck about fuel burn for the most part
Fuel efficiency is not a parameter for space launch anyway, so I don't even know where the fuck you're going with this "more efficient" line.
Every gram of fuel carried into space requires fuel to launch it. Simple physics. Anything you can do to either reduce weight or burn fuel more efficiently will reduce the overall mass and as a consequence reduce the fuel required to hoist the payload into space.
As for the whole habitability tangent you tried to go off on (omg windows) that's a total fucking red herring regarding spaceflight and you know it.
Oh
really? Then why did the Mercury astronauts lobby for a window on their space capsules?
And, let's face it, if you're flying paying tourists you have to deal with some psychological issues, like
they want to SEE that they're in space. Not to mention that most human beings deal with being in a tight box better if they can see out of it.
It may be a red herring for
military spaceflight where people can be told to STFU up and suck it up, but we're not talking about military spaceflight we're talking about CIVILIAN spaceflight and yeah, you'll have to deal with touchy-feely stuff.
Simply making vehicles out of lighter materials will either reduce fuel required, or enable more stuff to be sent up.
Except the Rocket equation is logarithmic. Chopping a few thousand pounds off a rocket's dry mass won't magically make it into a super awesome rocket that makes space travel absurdly cheap.
Ah, but if you can get to orbit using a vehicle/payload combination of HALF the weight required previously it will make a difference. It won't make space
cheap, but it might be enough to make it
profitable, which is what is required for commercial, civilian spaceflight.
One of the reasons the shuttle launches are so damn expensive is that they're so fucking BIG.
No, it's because the entire complex was designed to support 40-50 launches a year.
Then the design failed, because it never did anything close to that. But we already knew that, didn't we? Interesting experiment, even if it didn't live up to expectations.
And of course, there's the enormous labor cost involved in refurbishing the shuttle after each launch -- from 1990-97, it took an average amount of 88 days for the Shuttle to go through the Orbiter Processing Facility. Stacking it at the VAB is relatively quick; about a week.
SpaceShipOne had a turn-around under two weeks. That was an improvement.
But hey, this is what happens when you fucking cut the money available for R&D by more than half, and then demand that your aerospacecraft have greater capability than the "full price" version.
On the other hand, if Rutan can't make SS2 work he just won't fly it. End of problem, right? And someone else can work on the problem.
It would have made more sense to have more than one size of vehicle, but whatever, that's not what was decided.
It would have made more sense to take the $174 billion the Shuttle program will have cost by 2011, and simply used it to buy Apollo 18 through 105 at two billion dollars per Saturn V-class launch from 1972 to 2010.
Hey, I agree, but hindsight is 20/20.
Personally, I think if we had stuck with the Saturn V/Apollo combo we would have made some improvements over 40 years, so maybe we'd have gotten even more launches for that price. It didn't happen that way, too bad.
Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know, the piper's calling you to join him
