On Thu, 29 May 2003 18:39:31 +0000, "Jonathan Andrew Goff" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Only way to land without wasting too much fuel >> is to be really aggressive. Operationally, this >> requires a full up burn above abort altitude to >> make sure the engines work, and that pre-landing >> burn wastes fuel and introduces new failure modes. > >If the system is designed as a capsule with a >launch escape system (say if you wanted to make >it the upper stage of a TSTO), you can have the >hypergolically fueled LES act as a backup to >the normal rockets. Would that help? Some. Will it help more than it hurts? Hard to say. You're hauling the LES all the way to orbit and back, to use it as a backup landing system. I would say not. If the probability of needing the LES was high enough to justify hauling it to orbit, you'd either use it as the primary, or redesign your vehicle. -R -- "We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true." -- Robert Wilensky, UC Berkeley _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
