A copy of letters to my friends today

DC-X was a great project. It was a reusable, sub-sonic, sub-orbital
rocket. It was not very close to an orbital vehicle because it could
only reach very low speeds. The rocket equation tells us that the
energy needed is proportional to a quantity ***with the delta-v in the
exponent***, which is why sub-sonic is so much easier to do than
orbital.

By the way, Goddard built and launch sub-orbital rockets for far less
that $60 million before World War II, although they weren't reusable.

DC-X was heard of frequently. It was in Space News and many other media
outlets. Most people I know in the aerospace business know of it. It
is not, and never was, a secret.

Ravenart@... wrote:
>
> Guys,
>
> I was reading "Halfway to Anywhere". What I learn so far have moved me to
> write this letter to my friends and famly today and I decided to copy it in
> this post to you. You can forward it to other people if you want.
> ==================================>
> On 2001, we have witnessed a crime in the sky in September 11.
>
> Now I want to direct your attention to another, more meaningful and postive
> September 11 event, in 1993.
>
> On that day, a milestone was made on the sands of a unused runway at White
> Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. 11:12 am Mountain Time, a 39.66-foot rocket
> stand on the platform. It fired and rose to 300 feet. It stopped and
> hovered. There was no visual rocket flame, except for an orange flare once
> in a while. It floated sideway 350 feet southwest, did it by swiveing its
> gymballed rocket engines. The rocket was not louder than Boeing 737. It
> hovered again. It lowered its landing gear. It descended to a soft landing
> 3.5 feet to the right of its launching point. It lasted 66 seconds. That was
> the second test. Almost everything was done by on-board PC.
>
> It costed only $60 million. The building team were only 100 people who build
> the rocket in 21 months using old and off the shelf technology. 1960 Pratt &
> Whitney RL-10 rocket engines. McDonnell Douglas MD-11 airliner's autopilot
> and avionics. Honeywell Global Positioning System receiver and radar
> alitimeter, off the shelf. Software that made the rocket smart. Some
> hatch-closing springs and hinges came from Home Depot, Kmart, Trui-value,
> Wal-Mart, and others. The rest (titanium pressure spheres, etc.) came from
> aerospace junkyards on the West Coast. Flight Operations Control Center made
> up of commerical PCs and run by only 3 people inside 18 wheeler trailer.
>
> That rocket is the first true reuseable rocket without any throw-away parts.
> It's also a single stage to orbit rocket, meaning there are no throwaway cans
> such as you see on Space Shuttle. It's called McDonnell Dougalas Delta
> Clipper DC-X. For the first time, a true spaceship can be build with private
> money and be used again in the same day for commerical flights without a
> single tax dollar. With it, you can FedEx a packet from Japan to New York in
> just 43 mintues. It can be used to transport people to low earth orbit and
> for a lot less than $20 million a ticket.
>
> It's only one of many other models for true reusable spaceship. Others
> included actual rockets such as Roton which have blades like helicoptor that
> allow it to take off and land as a helicopter by using small rockets at the
> tip of the blades in either direction. The rocket will fire only once it
> reach upper air where the air get thin.
>
> So why haven't we heard about it? Actually it was carried, briefly, by CNN
> on that day and only then and now. After that, nobody noticed, even when the
> flights was continued until 1995. The reason why nobody really noticed
> (except for people at the White Sands) is that for a long long time we have
> this mindset that demands that we see the travel to space as billions of
> dollar's worth expensive project requiring government money. In this world
> only the states can afford this tickets. This work fine for the governments
> who want total monopoly over the space access and for the companies who like
> getting fat and happy feeding off your tax dollars without regards for
> anything that seems like productivity.
>
> Do you want your taxes be wasted like this? Do you want to get from New York
> to Japan in 40 mintues? Do you want that important product to be expressed
> to your office in time for that make or brake meeting that can mean millions
> in income for your business? Do you want to spend just $5,000 for a round
> trip to a hotel in low earth orbit?
>
> Then change your mindset, because on September 11, 1993, the new frontier is
> fast becoming more affordable every day. And demand that your government
> stop wasting your money and let the market improve your life with commerical
> space transportation.
>
> Carl Mullin
>

--
Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
aglobus@..., (650) 604-4404
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

The dinosaurs weren't spacefaring. We are. I don't think that's an
accident. Maybe we are life's taxi to the stars.