On Tue, 2 Jul 2002, Randall Clague wrote:
> Henry, one caveat - the people who generated the numbers you're
> referencing had a lot more money than we do. We have a fair amount of
> computing power - in fact, this sounds like a good application for
> ERPS@Home - but not much money, so I suspect our drag numbers won't be
> as good as those from people who reduce drag for a living...
The guys who reduce drag for a living usually tend to end up with pretty
simple shapes, actually, except when other constraints get in the way.
A cylinder with a 15deg-half-angle cone on top is actually a very good
shape. You can shorten (and lighten) the cone by having a wide half-angle
at the nose and changing to a narrower one midway down (see, for example,
the nosecone for Apollo 5) -- a curved ogive shape like the ET nose is
better but not very much, and is harder to make. If the burning part :-)
doesn't fill the whole base, a bit of taper there might (or might not)
help further.
Unfortunately, that nice simple low-drag shape doesn't lend itself to
being reusable. I think *that*, rather than money, is more likely to be
the design constraint. VTVL SSTOs want to be squatty, and that's just not
very good for aerodynamics, especially at small sizes.
Henry Spencer
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