On Thu, 29 May 2003 23:03:27 -0700, Pierce Nichols <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> When I think of appropriate emergency dump mechanisms, I think of >blow-out panels in the tanks that open a hole with a cross section of a >significant portion of a square meter in the side of the tank. The >assumption is that if you have to do that, it is because you cannot get the >engines lit and the ground is approaching rapidly. OK, I'm going to try one more time, and if it doesn't work I'm going to abandon the effort as a lost cause. You put blowout panels in your tanks. You need a mechanism to blow them out in an emergency. But you need to be damn sure they don't blow out at any other time, or it will BE an emergency. The damn-sure-they-don't has to have many times the reliability of the damn-sure-they-do, since hopefully you have few emergencies where you have to use the blowout panels. So you have to put a lot of reliability in the vehicle somewhere - why not in the engines? Which you will use every time you fly, in contrast to the blowout panels which hopefully you will never use. Eh? -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
