Re: NASA formally unveils lunar exploration architecture

George Evans <georgee3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I think developing the ability to glide
>back to earth in a smooth and controlled way was the single greatest
>achievement of NASA this side of the moon. And this is the biggest weakness
>of the present plan.

And if you could come up with a way to provide that smooth, controlled
gliding return *without* a substantial penalty in mass and thus
payload, everyone would agree with you 100%.

All the usual suspects gave the usual bashing to Jeff Bell's
SpaceDaily piece on 1990s SSTO efforts.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-05zy.html
And as usual, it was mostly _ad hominem_, without engaging his central
points: that SSTO mass ratios are lousy to begin with, and even
lousier when you take into account the need to protect the whole
vehicle through re-entry rather than a small capsule.

Of course, in PournelleLand, it doesn't matter that the possibility of
payload (if any) is "down in the second decimal place." If Congress
had just ponied up for a full-scale Xcraft that might or might not
have reached orbit with zero payload, he's confident that designers
could then bore enough holes in it so that the second or third
iteration could have done one or the other, and the fourth or fifth
iteration might even have done both.

How could anyone resist a seductive pitch like that?







.

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