May I recommend the Lightcraft 'tour': http://lightcraft.meche.rpi.edu/Curriculum/TAVD/tour/
My gripe with Lightcraft is that it sounds like a fine idea at first, but after reading the details in the tour, it sounded more like he was trying to spec a UFO from eyewitness accounts rather than come up with a realistic launch system. For instance: maglev belts to levitate the crew from the lightcraft to the ground (sound a bit much like personal UFO abduction apparatus), similarly a separate maglev lander that deploys from the craft, take off accelerations so high that the ship effectively pop's out of existence from an observer's point of view, and passengers suspended in liquid vats (which reminds me of the very bad English Sci-Fi series "UFO"). To me, he's got the giggle factor turned up way too high on the project. I suppose I'm scornful because Lightcraft won't be feasible for several decades, which isn't going to help you or I get into space. Meanwhile CNN and Popular Science eat it up like it's the next big thing, which detracts from groups who use less glamorous/more conventional rocket technologies to feasibly put people into space in our lifetimes and who can't get funded. -----Original Message----- From: Ian Woollard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 4:07 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [ERPS] Pointy Protruberances Bill Clawson wrote: >If I were a full-time science fiction writer, I would really enjoy Dr. >Myrabo's lightcraft, but the truth is I am not much of a science fiction >writer, so I'm not that enamored. His stuff seems to require a lot of >unobtanium to work. > Usually. There is a reasonable paper on the web which I read a while back: http://lightcraft.meche.rpi.edu/Research/publications/AIAA97-0795.pdf which he cowrote for NASA, where he actually investigated the hypersonic behaviour in a windtunnel from mach 10-15. No obvious unobtainium involved in this case (which makes a nice change). _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
