SSTO built 2

There are various ways of adjusting for that, increase the ratio of the
thrust chamber for one. The ruskies don't strike me as being super high
tech jockies...rather they seem to find simpler albeit not as glamourous
solutions, perhaps with a few more restrictions but still doable. Don't they
have a work horse launch pad in kazatslan (sp) that is nothing more than a
simple gantry on a pivot? And has had more than 400 successful launches from
it? So in my eyes super alloys etc are not necessarily the answer for the
stress challenges.

Heck folks and ground crew swarm right up to the space vehicle, giving an
impression that a chicken or pig might be handed up as a going away present
ala' country cuzins :-)

Very informal.

Yes, they have had their share of exploding rockets and deaths, but how
many more than the USA? (of course if *I* were climbing on the top of a
"roman candlestick" I would want more rather than less safety checks :-) ,
but we have some 50,000 deaths a year from car crashes (or so my driver ed
teacher told me a few years ago ; ok ok no dates alright, hehe).

If memory still serves, some guy out in the midwest/ west USA is building
his own rocket. Granted, he is just going for a high altitude look-see,
again not orbit... but basically a garage built vehicle.

The off the shelf concept intrigues me to no end. Cost cutting to the max,
and the first step to mass produced rocket components. 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. How
many missles are out there capable of 20,000 mph speeds? Heck the logistics
of bundling a bunch of them together to get the gross lift required would
probably be nite mare-ish, but theres gotta be at least some 10,000
boosters, yes?

bob
SLF

I keep remebering the old joke about americans inventing a new "space pen"
to write with in micro gravity and the supposed millions spent; the Ruskies
just used a pencil instead :-) "their" high tech solution to the problem.