Andrew Case wrote:
Very probably. However, note that water cooling is probably initially more expensive to design and manufacture, so it's not a slam-dunk.Water cooling seems to me the way to go.
Also, there are some things that need to be done that nobody has mentioned yet. I think you would want to inspect the reentry system very carefully for micrometeorite impacts; after each landing; and possibly check it out for correct functioning, nice even flow, blocked holes etc.
You'll be fueling anyway, so the same guy who hooks up the Fuel and Ox lines can do the TPS water. The water will take a lot less time, it can be completed in the slack time while the fuel/Ox handler is waiting for the tanks to fill. You'd also want containerized payload so the payload swap would be a simple matter of pulling the old pallet and installing the new one. It seems to me the four man hours of on-pad effort is possible, but once you take into account the time to install the payload on the pallet and time in the hanger for periodic maintenance, a total of four man hours per flight seems out of reach, especially if you have a pilot (which I think is a good idea for various reasons).Not sure whether a pilot is a good idea, remote piloting is fairly reasonable, and having one is very costly. It's arguably true that a pilot is a historical artifact from aeroplanes; sort of like the way that the early cars had reigns to make them more like horse and carts. I mean sure, if you have lots of crossrange, then a pilot would be desirable, but most vehicles are unlikely to have this, and quite a lot of new aeroplanes are starting to be unpiloted, or capable of being flown that way anyway right now.
With both the Shuttle and Rotary we had the argument that making a vehicle manned makes it safer. I'm not sure that there is very much evidence of that with the Shuttle. I fail to see how aeroplane experience directly translates into rocketry experience, but I'm not going to debate this (EZ-Rocket clearly does better with a pilot, I'm not taking a pot shot at anyone).
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