On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 02:54:14 +0100, Ian Woollard
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Please remember that our goal was not to develop an ideal engine, just
>> design and build one that worked as designed.
>
>It didn't really though.
I'm not sure it didn't. Dave, the flow between the ablator and the
liner, did you design the engine to prevent that? If not, then the
engine worked as designed, and it was the design that did not work as
specified (I assume an implicit spec that exhaust gases will go where
they are supposed to). Hardly surprising for the third article of the
type. Keep on pluggin'. (Oh, wait. It's not a plug nozzle. :-)
>Still, it flew, and you made progress, and it's certainly not a total
>loss; it's just that you very probably would have done better if you'd
>have done more unit testing- no project development is ever optimal; but
>some projects are more optimal than others.
Dave makes the case that his team is not trying to optimize for
reliability; they are trying to optimize for educational value. This
pretty much requires at least one flight per semester as a final
test/demo. I think Dave succeeds in making his case and the team
succeeds in optimizing for education.
-R
--
"SEAL training is just like Ranger training, except
it's three weeks longer. It takes that long to teach
them how to balance the balls on their noses."
-- Doug Jones
_______________________________________________
ERPS-list mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
