Joseph L. Brown Wrote:
> The Delta-Clipper would be far superior to the Aero-Space Plane concepts in
two
> respects - it lands in its launch position, so needs (at least a LITTLE) less

> support infrastructure,

Not by much. Besides any decent Spaceplane should be able to land at pretty
much any airport that can handle a 747. Also HTOL spaceplanes if designed well
should even be able to use current airports (of course they'll probably need
different fuel).

> AND it would be usable on the moon and other airless / thin atmosphere bodies

> (I know, leaving the Van Allen belts complicates things, but still...)
instead
> of being limited to LEO operations only.

I have given some thought to this. Not neccessarly going to the moon in a
Delta Clipper but bringing a few along to the moon in much the same way the
Apollo landers were bought to the moon, probably with engines burning easier to
store fuels. They'd have a lot of payload capacity if blasting off the moon or
mars which may be useful, particulary when we need to put down large items.

Leaving the Van Allen belts doesn't complicate things all that much. It just
means you don't want to use it during a solar storm. A layer of Polyethene
would help reduce cosmic ray exposure and solar flare risk so it should be
included in anything that's going to go above the Van Allen belts (and also
anything that goes through the SAA if possible). As for going through the Van
Allen belts. As long as you do it fast enough you shouldn't have to much of a
problem but the polyethene would help reduce exposure.

The advantage which most people miss about VTOL over HTOL is that VTOL has no
wings. With a vertical take-off horizontal landing like the space shuttle the
wings are dead weight during the launch. With Horizontal take off and landing
the wings aren't dead weight but they are also a terrible shape for holding
fuel. To hold fuel you want something which low surface area for volume like a
sphere or a cylinder. Something like a wing has a very high surface area for
volume so making the strucutal mass quite large. This means that right from
the start the mass at take-off of the HTOL craft will be more then the VTOL
craft with the same fuel mass. Whether HTOL can compensate for that with the
wings remains to be seen (when someone builds them) but does seem to be
unlikely.

panamabob Wrote:
> Heck ICBM which are being retired (some of the fuels are a bit more toxic
than
> i would like)could provide some relief here instead of being cut up for scrap

> metal.

Most ICBM's get about 99% the way to orbit so it shouldn't be that hard to get
them all the way. Whether you'd want to put humans on them is a different
matter.

As for the fuels. Yes a lot of them, particulary the Titans use some rather
nasty chemicals (Hydrazine and Dinitrogen tetroxide) to propel the rocket and
you really wouldn't want to breath either in if the rocket blew up.

>any decent Spaceplane should be able to land at pretty
>much any airport that can handle a 747. Also HTOL >spaceplanes if designed
>well should even be able to use >current airports (of course they'll
>probably need >different fuel).

>From some stuff I've seen on the Web, fuel is one of the big deals at
airports. FAA regs prohibit aircraft fueled by either LOX or LH2 (I can't
recall which, maybe both) at civil airports. One TSTO proposal I've seen on
the Net gets around that, by proposing a plane with jetfuel/air takeoff, a
mid-air refueling with LOX and LH2, then a rocket-powered
acceleration/ascent using these fuels to very high altitute and velocity,
from which the boosted orbital payload is then launched. The guy even went
so far as to look at which airspace this activity might be allowed in by FAA
regs, and decided on a takeoff in southern California, a refuel while
turning off the coast of Washington, a southward acceleration such that the
2nd stage would be launched in airspace designated for military testing off
California, so that no commerical traffic would have to be rerouted. With
this plan you don't have to carry your entire fuel load from takeoff,
presumably you could reuse the same fuel tanks that the jet fuel was in,
saving space, you can take off and land at any airport with a long enough
runway, no special FAA clearances are required, and the boosted orbital
payload was still fairly respectable in size. If your first stage plane
lands at the same airport you could launch a couple of times a day--no messy
heat tiles to repair, no throwaway external tank. I wish I could still find
that website.

>I have given some thought to this. Not neccessarly going to the moon in a
>Delta Clipper but bringing a few along to the moon in much the same way the
>Apollo landers were bought to the moon, probably with engines burning
>easier to
>store fuels. They'd have a lot of payload capacity if blasting off the
>moon or
>mars which may be useful, particulary when we need to put down large items.

I have to say I think Zubrin caused a revolution in space planning by
putting together a practical scheme for in situ fuel and oxygen generation.
It opens the field up to plans for fueled craft on Mars and elsewhere.

Dad astra

http://www.hotmail.com

Note that airplanes are much more heavily used than helicopters,
suggesting that for many applications HTOL win. For space, all vehicles
are vertical take-off and all, except shuttle, are vertical landing --
although the vertical landers are not reusable. The shuttle solves the
fuel problem by not carrying much in the orbiter.

On Tuesday, June 4, 2002, at 02:06 AM, Ryan Healey wrote:

> This means that right from
> the start the mass at take-off of the HTOL craft will be more then the
> VTOL
> craft with the same fuel mass. Whether HTOL can compensate for that
> with the
> wings remains to be seen (when someone builds them) but does seem to be
> unlikely.
>

The dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid because they weren't
space-faring. It's almost as if Gaia then thought "Well, dinosaurs
worked pretty well, but space-faring is necessary. Maybe I'll should
try mammals this time." Humanity is now developing systems to detect and
deflect asteroids, and could build orbital space colonies to spread
beyond Earth to insure life would survive a planetary catastrophe.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Brad Welsh Wrote:
> From some stuff I've seen on the Web, fuel is one of the big deals at
airports.
> FAA regs prohibit aircraft fueled by either LOX or LH2 (I can't recall which,

> maybe both) at civil airports.

The regulations could be changed if neccessary. Of course it should be noted
that you could always use a different fuel mixture that isn't banned like RP-1
if H2(l) is banned.

Al Globus Wrote:
> Note that airplanes are much more heavily used than helicopters, suggesting
> that for many applications HTOL win.

It depends on what you're going to do with it. For going between cities on the
earth HTOL wins easily but for going from the earth's surface to space it could
very easily be VTOL due to not having the dead weight of the wings (which for
an airliner aren't dead weight).

We'll have to wait for them to actually be built before we find out.

--- In spacesettlers@y..., Ryan Healey wrote:
> Joseph L. Brown Wrote:
> > The Delta-Clipper would be far superior to the Aero-Space Plane
concepts in
> two
> > respects - it lands in its launch position, so needs (at least a
LITTLE) less
>
> > support infrastructure,
>
> Not by much. Besides any decent Spaceplane should be able to land
at pretty
> much any airport that can handle a 747. Also HTOL spaceplanes if
designed well
> should even be able to use current airports (of course they'll
probably need
> different fuel).

Here's a spaceplane design which can take off and land from any
airport with an elevation over 10000 ft:

http://www.kellyspace.com

:) ed

So lets see, Quito Equador, Denver Co. Katmandu, some airport in
Colombia...help me out here :-)

10,000 ft is pretty restrictive, isn't it? Most populated areas are at sea
level (coastal ports) Of course global warming and rising oceans could
change that !

Why not just come down to our tropical island, take in a few rays at the
beach, take a Buran hop, then relax for a few days floating your bod around
the warm, womb-like tropical lagoon meditating on the orbital experience,
the meaning of the Cosmo's, micr-gravity navel lint action, beer carbonation
activity in space, etc.

:-)

bob
SLF

Ok so we have shown that space elevator's as far as present day materials
go, is a wasteful bit of musing. Although I was talking about having it
anchored at geo location, we have also taken a look at LEO distances and how
it just wont work, yes?

So , back to convenience store sales of Space Seats lottery tickets and
contracting with a Ruskie Buran orbiter.

We agreed that USA expensive tech is useful and mostly advantages but also
agreed that Ruskies tech is serviceable, and although we don't all agree as
to its safety, we do agree that folks have been willing to strap a ruskie
rocket on their back and pay for a chance to add their body molecules to the
ether....yes?

At this point, to repeat, its the only game in town for at least the
foreseeable future. Its doubtful that the Niponese , Chinese, French,
Indians or other groups will come up with an alternative to "controlled
explosions" to reach near Space, yes? So there is no advantage to waiting
around a few years to see what they alternatively develop.

So lets pursue what we DO have :-)

Like my father use to say (who was an auto mechanic in early years and who's
advice I ignored when I purchased a jaguar for myself and lived toregret it
in shop fees ;-) ...at the end of the day when everything was said and done,
a lot more was said than done....:-)

onward and upward tovarich!

bob
SLF

I don't remember the exact figures, but I'm pretty sure the Soviet
manned vehicles are roughly as safe (or unsafe) as the US shuttle.

On Saturday, June 8, 2002, at 05:19 AM, panamabob wrote:

> We agreed that USA expensive tech is useful and mostly advantages but
> also
> agreed that Ruskies tech is serviceable, and although we don't all
> agree as
> to its safety,

The dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid because they weren't
space-faring. It's almost as if Gaia then thought "Well, dinosaurs
worked pretty well, but space-faring is necessary. Maybe I'll should
try mammals this time." Humanity is now developing systems to detect and
deflect asteroids, and could build orbital space colonies to spread
beyond Earth to insure life would survive a planetary catastrophe.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

ya'll driving me nuts here :-)

Ruskie technology, without the big bucks to spend on exotic,
state-of-the-art alloys / material, etc. and with no "space pens" of their
own (apparently borrowing the USA's office stock) are now conceded to be
"roughly as safe" as their USA premium, top-shelf, counter part?

So if this is the feeling, then whats holding us up from contracting with
Buran appointment-makers and start designing relatively cheap 50 pax
modules and market seats through convenience store lotteries? OK so we add
a couple of Science Museums ticket locations as well for image sake....
maybe a couple of vending machines in JPL and Kennedy (you know the techies
there would like a turn on the "roman candle" ride ) what else do we need?
Why wait till possibly 2005 for some oother commercial,venture to beat us to
the punch. First group in the market has the best chance to dominate it,
yes?

forget space elevator, launches using hundreds of thousands of whippit
canesters, ballons to toposphere etc...

whos gonna get out their graphics program and design neato tickets and Point
of purchase displays and window posters to get the ball rolling? Perhaps we
need to start saving our nickles to afford band space for a web site...i'm
sure there will be thousand s of hits. We can get plenty of free publicity
from CNN, the networks, SCIFI mags, techy mags etc.

???

bob
SLF

From: "Al Globus"
To:
Sent: Monday, June 10, 2002 11:57 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: [spacesettlers] Re: SSTO Comments

You are under the entirely false impression that the Russian space
program is low tech. This is not true. The Russians are very good at
space, developed excellent technology, and brought it into very
effective operations. They do things differently (duh), sometimes
better and sometimes worse.

On Monday, June 10, 2002, at 12:01 PM, panamabob wrote:

> Ruskie technology, without the big bucks to spend on exotic,
> state-of-the-art alloys / material, etc. and with no "space pens" of
> their
> own (apparently borrowing the USA's office stock) are now conceded to
> be
> "roughly as safe" as their USA premium, top-shelf, counter part?
>

The materials in one asteroid (the largest ) are sufficient to make
orbital space colonies with ~500 times the surface area of the Earth in
usable real estate. See http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSettlement/
for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Seems to me the weakest part of your plan is still the Russian Space
Agency's revitalization of the Buran program. I read the article where the
official said they're going to revive the Buran. But especially with an
agency with as little transparency as the RSA, a statement like that is a
long way from accomplished fact.
Plan and design, yes; but keep a sharp eye out for other signs of progress
at Baikonur before you hang out a shingle and make a fool of yourself.

Meanwhile you might take a stab at a market study for lottery tickets and
other routes of selling seats. One thing that many Americans overlook is
that, as powerful as the free market V-8 engine is, it is not a trivial task
to hang it on engine mounts, tune it, and make it perform like you want.
Like golf, engineering and playing the violin, the people we usually see
driving that capitalist race car are the ones who do it flawlessly, and they
make it look simple. Deceptively so. If you haven't done some homework on
your market segments, appropriate ticket prices, promotion, costs, etc., you
can easily over-commit or under-commit yourself right out of the market.
I'm not talking about the difference between a profitable year or a
break-even year; I'm talking about the business equivalent of life or
suicide. As in driving your powerful new sports car off a cliff because you
can't control it.

I'm not saying don't do it--I'm hopeful and even enthusiastic. But whatever
you do, absolutely don't be another space geek turning public opinion even
further away from supporting space travel with some amateurish attempt that
falls flat. Go rent the movie "Tucker" and watch it, and at least don't
make the same mistakes he made. Your project needs to inspire confidence by
a competent and professionally run campaign, and I'm not just talking about
the advertising. Or else it needs to fly below the radar of public opinion
until it succeeds the first time. The latter is a lot easier to do, but it
limits the number of tickets you can sell.

>So whats holding us up from contracting with
>Buran appointment-makers and start designing relatively cheap 50 pax
>modules and market seats through convenience store lotteries? OK so we add
>a couple of Science Museums ticket locations as well for image sake....
>maybe a couple of vending machines in JPL and Kennedy (you know the techies
>there would like a turn on the "roman candle" ride ) what else do we need?
>Why wait till possibly 2005 for some oother commercial,venture to beat us
>to
>the punch. First group in the market has the best chance to dominate it,
>yes?
>
>forget space elevator, launches using hundreds of thousands of whippit
>canesters, ballons to toposphere etc...
>
>whos gonna get out their graphics program and design neato tickets and
>Point
>of purchase displays and window posters to get the ball rolling? Perhaps
>we
>need to start saving our nickles to afford band space for a web site...i'm
>sure there will be thousand s of hits. We can get plenty of free publicity
>from CNN, the networks, SCIFI mags, techy mags etc.
>
>???
>
>bob
>SLF
>
>From: "Al Globus"
>To:
>Sent: Monday, June 10, 2002 11:57 AM
>Subject: Re: Fw: [spacesettlers] Re: SSTO Comments
>
> > I don't remember the exact figures, but I'm pretty sure the Soviet
> > manned vehicles are roughly as safe (or unsafe) as the US shuttle.
> >
> > On Saturday, June 8, 2002, at 05:19 AM, panamabob wrote:
> >
> > > We agreed that USA expensive tech is useful and mostly advantages but
> > > also
> > > agreed that Ruskies tech is serviceable, and although we don't all
> > > agree as
> > > to its safety,
> >
>-------------------
> > The dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid because they weren't
> > space-faring. It's almost as if Gaia then thought "Well, dinosaurs
> > worked pretty well, but space-faring is necessary. Maybe I'll should
> > try mammals this time." Humanity is now developing systems to detect and
> > deflect asteroids, and could build orbital space colonies to spread
> > beyond Earth to insure life would survive a planetary catastrophe.
> >
> > Al Globus
> > CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
> > http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html
> >

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