Re: APR Extra: Moderately gigantic drawing of Sea Dragon

From: Henry Spencer (henry_at_spsystems.net)
Date: 03/18/05 

Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 18:49:51 GMT

In article <Xns961C9D1CE792Adamon161attbicom@216.196.97.131>,
Damon Hill <damon1six1@comcast.not> wrote:
>Why has the Big Dumb Booster never caught on? Seems like it could have
>been scaled down to EELV level... Beal did try to go that design route;
>SpaceX didn't.

Some of the philosophy *has* caught on, it's just not publicized very
much. The Ariane 5 designers had a conscious philosophy of addressing any
performance problems by just making the core stage bigger, rather than by
trying to squeeze more performance out of the engine etc.

The pure form of BDB -- large low-tech vehicles with very small payload
fractions -- hasn't been appealing enough to attract money. Even Beal was
using carbon-fiber tanks, not shipyard steel.

Remember that on most government programs -- and that's what the EELVs
were designed to be, even though in the end, the companies ended up paying
part of the development bill -- you get paid for effort, not results. The
rational thing to do in such a situation is to choose approaches which
maximize effort. 

-- 
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend."    |   Henry Spencer
                                -- George Herbert       | henry@spsystems.net

Relevant Pages

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