Eyes Turned Skywards

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nixonshead

Morning all - and thanks Brainbin and e of pi for reminding everyone about the Superlatives!
So this week saw the TTL triumph of a major OTL 'What-if', the legendary lifting-body RLV. Unlike IOTL, ITTL the X-33 got a chance to show what she could do in the air, from her first powered launch...

x33_launch.jpg
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Ive often wondered if the x33 couldnt have been reworked into something useful.

Two possibilities: add boosters to help it get to orbit, or use it as a first stage with a kick engine on the payload to get the payload into orbit.

Ive got to say that the amount of money NASA spends on what end up being abandoned technology demonstrators, is offensive iotl.
 

e of pi

Dathi THorfinnsson said:
Ive often wondered if the x33 couldnt have been reworked into something useful.

Two possibilities: add boosters to help it get to orbit, or use it as a first stage with a kick engine on the payload to get the payload into orbit.
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It certainly could have been. However, the dominance of the concept that SSTO is the only way to make an economically viable RLV was very strong at the time--and to be fair, they all came in theory about a hair's width from closing on a design level. Theory just didn't meet practice. X-33 IOTL "proved" that the concept wouldn't work, and it's taken about 15 years for the spaceflight community to come to the two-stage RLV or partially-reusable concepts, which is arguably a lot longer than it should have. We'll see where that goes ITTL...
 

brovane

Looking forward to hopefully the landing this week.

Maybe they will find Pete Conrad's Car Keys when they search the Apollo 12 site?

Anyway the other thing they could retrieve would be the Apollo 12 Color Film Magazine. During the 2nd EVA Al and Pete left a Color Film Magazine accidentally outside the Lunar Module. So it is still resting on the surface of the moon. Not sure how how much protection the film magazine would have for the film inside against the radiation it would have been left in for 3-decades. Might be a interesting item for the landing team to retrieve.

http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum29/HTML/000889.html
 
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Dathi THorfinnsson

Pipcard said:
Yes, I know that Japan had economic problems (Lost Decade), and I know that this is pretty much a pipe dream, but here's a Japanese capsule SSTO concept from 1993: the "Kankoh Maru". Designed for 50-passenger orbital space tourism.

T18kzpV.jpg


Mass production, and a very high flight rate would have brought the price of a flight down to $20,000 per person.
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Mass production and a very high flight rate was supposed to make the Shuttle cheap, too.

SSTOs are HARD and miniscule mass overages prevent them from even reaching orbit. And re-entry and landing is tough, too. Paper spacecraft always perform better and cost less than real ones.

I would have LOVED to have seen eg the DCY developed, even if it were only used as a first stage.
 

brovane

e of pi said:
It certainly could have been. However, the dominance of the concept that SSTO is the only way to make an economically viable RLV was very strong at the time--and to be fair, they all came in theory about a hair's width from closing on a design level. Theory just didn't meet practice. X-33 IOTL "proved" that the concept wouldn't work, and it's taken about 15 years for the spaceflight community to come to the two-stage RLV or partially-reusable concepts, which is arguably a lot longer than it should have. We'll see where that goes ITTL...
Click to expand...

It could also be that a high ISP rocket engine and a atmosphere just don't work real well together to make things efficient. It is almost better to design a vehicle using Solid's to get you off the ground (that can be recovered) and then maybe go with Air Ignition of your rocket engines. The key isn't so much from what I have seen is really having SSTO. Realistically how well will SSTO work if you have to take all the engines apart after every flight and basically re-furbish them? Imagine after every plane flight if the Airlines had to overhaul the Aircraft engines. You need engines that can be easily re-used and a heat shield that can be easily re-used without much in the way of inspections or maintenance.
 

Tetsurō

Question, off current topic as it is, but this thought occurred to me, did 'Hanz' and 'Franz' get a Green face lift when Gore took office?
 

e of pi

Tetsurō said:
Question, off current topic as it is, but this thought occurred to me, did 'Hanz' and 'Franz' get a Green face lift when Gore took office?
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Nope. The crawlers are powered by a pair of nearly-3,000 HP diesel engines for motion, plus another pair of 1,000 HP for onboard power, jacking, and such. It'd be very hard to convert them to anything green without a total rebuild, and really...what can you replace that with? It'd be a lot of batteries.
 
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Tetsurō

e of pi said:
Nope. The crawlers are powered by a pair of nearly-3,000 HP diesel engines for motion, plus another pair of 1,000 HP for onboard power, jacking, and such. It'd be very hard to convert them to anything green without a total rebuild, and really...what can you replace that with? It'd be a lot of batteries.
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A solar farm built in cooperation with Disney World?:p That's the sort of thing that's right up the Mouse's alley, but seriously, it was a question that popped into my head one day.
 
Michel Van

Michel Van

e of pi said:
Nope. The crawlers are powered by a pair of nearly-3,000 HP diesel engines for motion, plus another pair of 1,000 HP for onboard power, jacking, and such. It'd be very hard to convert them to anything green without a total rebuild, and really...what can you replace that with? It'd be a lot of batteries.
Click to expand...

The only way to make this "Green" is Biodiesel fuel or Vegetable oil fuel, produce by local farmers
A gigantic solar farm on Kennedy space center was propose in 1970s, for production of Hydrogen and oxygen fuel for Solar Power Satellite booster.

those two would be Perfect figurehead for President Gore Green energy politics...
 
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