At 06:20 PM 8/12/02 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>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 ;-<
Well, coming in nose first on a VTVL is not a terribly worthwhile
thing to do unless you have some other design factor that makes the greater
cross range possible with a simple biconic upper body shape is a design
goal. For the stereotypical VTVL form, with base-first re-entry, the
aerodynamic spike on top is in the wake during re-entry.
-p
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