Re: Rocket Racing League



Henry Spencer wrote:



LOX fueling would take skilled personal...



Not really. Those aren't rocket scientists refilling the LOX tanks at
hospitals and such.


Still, the stuff is cryogenic, and it would take more care than topping up the alcohol tank.
It's also something that a lot of civilian airport personal wouldn't have experience with, or the equipment to handle.



and in the event of some unexpected aircraft arriving and needing to use your intended landing runway you would have had almost no loiter time.



Gliders already deal with this. (In fact, you would *be* a glider by
landing time.) For one thing, if memory serves, they have right of way over powered aircraft except in real emergencies.

But the gliders have a lot lower landing speed and a lot more ability to stay airborne than a Me-163 replica would.
this would be more like doing a dead stick landing in a conventional plane than bringing a Schweitzer glider down.
For one thing, the retractable landing gear means that drag will go up after it's lowered, so at that point you are pretty well committed to landing.
The real Me-163B suffered from another landing problem- once it reached low altitude, it had a severe problem with floating in ground effect which made a precision touchdown difficult (pilots were killed or injured by having the aircraft float past its intended landing point onto rough ground - retractable underwing spoilers helped, but it was still tricky to land)
Since XCOR's replica would share the same aerodynamics as the Me-163, this problem could manifest itself also. I don't know what happens in regard to going into ground effect with the gear lowered, but I suspect it ends in a stall at very low altitude.



There's also the option of retaining enough fuel -- since XCOR's engines
are restartable -- for a go-around. Which would be a sensible thing to
do anyway.



That would make sense, yes.



This would have been something for airshows, although you could have made a fortune giving people rides in a two seat version.



Alas, paying passengers are not something you can do with an experimental.



Which is too bad, because yours truly would pay good money to fly in a rocket plane; especially if I can dress as Hermann Goering while I do it (cut to image of ME-163S* replica racing up and down runway at full throttle, unable to get airborne due to weight of "Dicke Pat" in the back seat).



It would have been smarter to figure out a way to stick some hidden intakes on it and install a small jet engine.



Perhaps, but I bet it would be a lot more complicated. (Jets are heavy,
and quite fussy about airflow quality.)



Considering the airframe will be pretty light weight, something along the lines of the Microturbo engine used in the BD-5J should be powerful enough to get it airborne. I've seen one of those things, and they move like a raped ape- although it can reach 320 mph, its small size makes it look like it's traveling a near-sonic velocity.
The motor doesn't weigh much (84.88 pounds), and on the BD-5J is fed by a pair of small unobtrusive side-mounted NACA scoops: http://www.bd-micro.com/FLS5J.HTM
You'd probably need a bigger engine for the Me-163, but still it would be doable.

* The original Me-163S two-seater was unpowered: http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/593/me163s6cd.jpg

Pat
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