| | That's Mach 5, kids
|
check out the article here
I think escape velocity is like Mach 15. But things get different in the upper atmosphere. And at least we are getting this thing on!! I have watched scramjets since I was in college, watched the day the X-34 fell into the Pacific, and I know what a struggle it has been figuring out this technology. I'm not gonna lie, I am excited about this. If they can hybridize the propulsion and get these suckers into orbit, we have ourselves a new technological epoch in spaceflight.
I think it would be sweet to have a ton of low orbit scramjets. You could go to Moscow in 20 minutes. I mean, you won't, but Air Force guys could. You could ferry up a ton of small payloads (and I think small payloads are the immediate future of spaceflight), or place in orbit a bunch of separate ones that could autonomously link to form bigger platforms (Voltron).
I guess I have always been a little anti-Space Shuttle, because it is really big. It's like a big old fairing for massive payloads, which I thought was odd (even as a kid) because the payloads weren't coming back. I guess you could use it to bring stuff down from space, and we did that a couple times.
Main thing: it relies on the external boosters and the big red guppy fuel tank to get anywhere. If they had a small crew module spaceplane I could get behind that, that's not what we went with. I mean, it was the most sophisticated machine ever built, and that is a good exercise, but I didn't see the point of making it plane-like when it had no internal propulsion. I'm rambling. I guess I am posting this because now the shuttle fleet is going to Jay's Garage, and it is timely that we have a fast little spaceplane waiting off stage right, nearly ready to go.
And it looks like a really cool shark
More later, especially John's "Theory of Small-Payload Efficiency and Responsiveness" |
| | Spit In The Proverbial Bucket | |
|
|
|
|  |
|
|
| |
