Thats actually what I meant - if the aerospike doesn't help reduce drag at Mach 20+, retracting it on reentry won't help much. Also, if you're trying to cause the spike's main shockwave to miss the blunt front end of your vehicle (my assumption), it would need to be quite long at Mach 20+ speeds. It may survive with active cooling (or made of Rhenium) given the thin atmosphere, but retracting it for the denser atmosphere would help it survive. Failure modes for this would be bad ;-<
Dan In a message dated 8/12/02 3:10:53 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << > Now, this won't help you a bit on reentry, unless you turn the seats > around and return nose first. This also assumes that the spike is > effective at reducing drag at Mach 20+ speeds, so that you can > retract the spike and increase drag substantially. Also note that on reentry, a nice pointy low-drag nose is exactly what you do not want! You want a blunt surface, the blunter the better, to put as much energy as possible into the shock wave and the air, and as little as possible into the surface by friction. >> _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
