Re: National Space Intelligence Center proposed

tomcat wrote:
This is where multi-stages come in. They kept throwing away the weight
-- millions and millions of dollars worth of brand new rocket motors,
tanks, skin, computers, etc.

Obviously your SSTO "Fat Albert" isn't going to accomplish any Apollo
mission at 120:1, much less 60:1 and, forget all about any 30:1 unless
you've become God with a few spare LRBs hidden much like all of those
stealth WMDs, as having been stuffed up your SSTO butt.

"Fat Albert" is going to weigh 200 million pounds. The dry weight is
estimated at 4 million pounds, which is quite good. That works out to
about 2% dry weight and this includes the 1 million pound orbital
payload. Remember that rockets and waveriders are apples and oranges.
What is required for one is not necessairly required for the other.

Try 28% being the inert liftoff mass of the Saturn V.

Even your do-everything and highly composite spaceplane that's
supposedly making use of the very most efficient of rocket engines,
taking the fullest advantage of our atmosphere for the most energy
demanding part of the launch phase, and by way of using the maximum
available ISP worth of fuel (though not being very volumetric nor
density efficient) is at best offering a 40:1 ratio of getting it's
inert self at 4 million pounds plus that million pound payload into
LEO, and since it'll take at the very least 2.6 times that ratio amount
in order to get that same amount of tonnage to the moon in 6 days (if
not a bit longer), thus greater than 100:1 being the case if all goes
exactly according to plan (actually it'll take considerably more of a
ratio since you're planning on returning to Earth along with a good
amount of payload and the spaceplane itself that's 100% reusable, thus
I'd be rather surprised if a 1000:1 ratio is even doable if to be
including your VTOL task of having to get that big sucker to/from the
lunar surface):

Other than by way of infomercial-rocket-science and/or via our
perpetrated cold-war of hocus-pocus smoke and mirrors, how do you
explain the absolutely massive inert worth of such a heavy method of
rocket infrastructure plus having multiple tonnes worth of other
internal inert dead-weight issues (such as ice loading and unusable
fuel) associated with the Saturn V that supposedly accomplished the
their NASA/Apollo task without being the least bit composite and of
having made such happen at the impressive 60:1 ratio with fuel and
payload to spare, and in roughly half the time as compared to the
tomcat spaceplane?

That Saturn V inert mass at lift-off was actually worth nearly 850
tonnes.

Doesn't that excessive inert/dry mass plus a little extra unusable mass
that's obviously not dry or otherwise expendable except for
vent/dumping such loads, and especially of the much greater Saturn V
velocity factor alone impose any applied energy and thus applied
rocket/payload ratio impact upon accomplishing that sort of task?

What I mean is that your slower spaceplane, that which supposedly
hardly weighs anything, should be demanding of far less applied energy
for getting all of that tonnage away from Earth and safely past LL-1
along with obviously having all of those necessary spare tonnes worth
of essential retrothrust fuel to burn seems somewhat unlikely, if not
physics/rocket-science impossible at 100:1, and that's without even
doing an actual moon landing with that big thing.

What you'll need to do is the math, and then scale that payload back
from a million pounds to 100,000 lbs at most. The Saturn-5 is not a
good rocket for doing our moon, at least not as pertaining to
accomplishing any 50t deployment (try 25t and it might be just fine and
dandy).
-
Brad Guth

.

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