--- Randall Clague <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 14:15:22 -0700 (PDT), Adrian > Tymes > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >Personally, I'd rather not stage at all. But > that's > >another argument, and academic until one has at > least > >an X Prize class vehicle (whether or not one > actually > >goes for the X Prize) that could in theory be > staged > >to get a better operational range. > > Well, if you really want to get to orbit, you're > going to have to > stage. I'm nearly convinced that SSTO is possible. > But ERPS doesn't > have the financial resources to do SSTO as a > volunteer organization,
ERPS doesn't presently have the financial resources to do xSTO, for any value of x. It is not likely to acquire such until it is ready to start working on xSTO, since ERPS has nearer-term projects to do first. Resolving this question now would require a lot of speculation about data we don't have yet, but which people have strong - and sometimes conflicting - suspicions about. > and if you try to do it as a for-profit, the > business case will make > you stage. Depends. If you think that, at the reduced per-flight price an SSTO could let you offer, you could get enough business to pay off the increased development costs of SSTO, that's a business case for not staging. But this depends on a lot of hard to predict variables. > >Wouldn't it be cheaper, and about as effective at > >testing that, just to drop it from an airplane at > 10k > >feet? > > Better yet, from a helicopter. Then put it on a > rocket. The > separation and hazmat issues make me think that > carrying POGO in, and > then throwing it out of, a manned airplane is not a > good idea. A drone helicopter would make hazmat a lot easier to deal with, although building one would defeat the cost savings if you can't buy a RC model off the shelf powerful enough to lift the rocket. Separation could be handled with a simple claw grip, no? (Maybe two or three, if you're worried about the rocket wobbling about the grip.) _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
