Subject:
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Re: We're here to go
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 23 Jun 2004 23:43:15 GMT
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Viewed:
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456 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.geek, Larry Pieniazek wrote:
> Now the X prize vehicle doesn't give you manrated orbit capability per se, it's
> a suborbital vehicle, at least at the 3 person payload that you needed to win
> the prize. But I'm assuming (big assumption) some stretchability with loss of
> payload so that instead of 3 people to suborbital, you stretch the vehicle a bit
> with what you learned and can get it to get one person in LEO instead.(1)
The above assumption is massively invalid, apparently. The velocity achieved by
SpaceShipOne is way way too low to be stretchable to LEO by leaving a few
passengers out. I hadn't done my homework when I posted this, and I'm perfectly
fine with admitting it.
Elsewhere in the thread I said I believed Rutan would make a profit on the prize
(meaning his cost was well under 10M). That's not true either, apparently,
although it wasn't a bad guess, he's not missing by orders of magnitude...
I'm still comfortable with my 12B figure though. Even if we don't still have
Saturn Vs around. :-)
(why did I find this post? because I had a few minutes and was digging for
tritium references. Didn't find any yet... ;-) )
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: We're here to go
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| (...) The prize does not pay for the cost of development. SS1 is not going to go into any kind of orbit. Both those are from a friend of mine who works on the project (I literally asked him those very questions a few weeks ago). -->Bruce<-- (20 years ago, 24-Jun-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
| | | Re: We're here to go
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| (...) It's not just the challenge of the order of magnitude increase in velocity that's required, but significant issues in handling rentry and hypersonic flight in general. I don't believe SS1 has a thermal protection system that's anywhere close (...) (20 years ago, 24-Jun-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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