[ExI] Launching Satellites from Airplanes DARPA

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Van
Sickle
Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2011 10:23 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] Launching Satellites from Airplanes DARPA

 

 

On Mon, Nov 07, 2011 at 06:20:54PM -0800, spike wrote:

>> My own experience with it is that the problem doesn't scale down very
well.
> Every design I have derived has the cost per kg to LEO increasing
> dramatically once the total payload goes much below 1000 kg.  I am
> cheering wildly for anyone who can get those costs down.

 

>Are you familiar with Jordin Kare's Mockingbird?

 

>http://www.quantumg.net/mockingbird.pdf

 

>-sjv

 

I am.  This and several other small SSTOs were the hot topic of conversation
at the Society of Allied Weight Engineers conferences back about 15 yrs ago.
Actually it is a good illustration of the original concept and my own
conviction from years of discussion on that: anything you can do with one
stage can be done better with two.

 

Kare's notion of an all-recoverable SSTO was never realized.  Note that this
pitch is 17 years old this month.  We still don't have anything like it.

 

spike

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20111108/a3ad09ab/attachment.html>