Re: Genesis Auger - End of Manned Capsule Worship?

From: Edward Wright (edwright2000_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 09/28/04 

Date: 28 Sep 2004 11:05:54 -0700

"redneckj" <redneckj@tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message news:<DM96d.58499$uN5.32182@tornado.tampabay.rr.com>...

> We more or less agreed on another forum that the definition you are
> comfortable with is ~"spacecraft reenter and land under control, while
> capsules are people/cargo containers without much real control".
> Regardless of external shapes and modes. The real comparison being
> spaceships vs pods=capsules.

I would modify that slightly to "controllable and intact." ICBM
warheads reenter and land under control, but they don't land intact.
Capsules are better than warheads in that regard, but they have
relatively poor control during the final phase of landing. They are
generally not completely intact after landing, partly by design (they
are not intended for reuse) and partly due to the roughness of the
landing mode. A spacecraft, on the other hand, should be immediately
reuseable, which means landing intact and (under normal circumstances)
in the right location, so that it does not require recovery.
 
> For the spaceship side of the arguement, just how good does the
> aero surface/body integration/landing gear have to get to match
> VL? I am refering to good enough to be clear to all, not to people
> like myself that already prefer HL.

I think first you need to quantify that preference for HL. If
"horizontal landing" correlates with better L/D and cross range, you
might expect an HL vehicle to have less chance of having to make a
remote landing, incurring recovery costs and flight delays. If you
could estimate such effects, you could then define how much extra
weight you're willing to accept to avoid them.
 
> The question of exactly how much mass penalty is important. If a
> decent capsule design can fly soon on Falcon, while the HL spacecraft
> must use legacy disposable totem poles or start from scratch,
> the near term could be capsules beating ships.

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