So the notion of an asteroid encounter mission has been raised... it occurs to me that in such a situation, a case could be made for a "hybrid" reusable/expendable profile... if you're not doing a sample return, but just trying to radio back some high-resolution images of the item against the star field, then it might be reasonable to use a reusable suborbital booster with a single-use upper stage. (In the upper stage, design for economical manufacture, instead of economical reuse of a single vehicle...) Lower stage could be VTVL reusable, but wouldn't need to apply full mission delta-V.
(What would typical mission delta-V from earth surface be for a flyby of a nearby asteroid?) -dave w _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
