Re: Russia's Clipper

"Jorge R. Frank" <jrfrank@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>In my opinion, it's simply not possible to achieve those kinds of flight
>rates with expendable systems. Near-total reusability is a requirement.
>The other aspects of system design (number of stages, HTHL vs VTVL vs
>VTHL, wings vs no wings, etc) are important only to the extent that they
>affect flight rate.

Nit: I'd phrase that as 'flight rate per individual vehicle'. It's
quite possible to have a pipeline with a high flight rate, but hideous
total costs because of the large number of vehicles and man hours
required. (It was the potential for exactly this scenario, the most
optimistic predictions of the Lunar and Apollo Applications programs,
that really put the spurs to the development of the Shuttle.)

>How to get there from here? We have vehicles that can fly at those flight
>rates, though they fall far short of orbital performance (barely
>suborbital, actually).

Nit: We really don't have any such vehicles in operation. SS1 style
vehicle have the potential, but it remains unproven. A proven
capability for burst operation of a nonfunctional (from the POV of
passenger/cargo operations) prototype is a long, long way from an
operational and debugged 'pipeline'.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
.

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