[AR] Re: SSTO
- From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2018 08:07:28 -0800
Norman Yarvin <yarvin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
snip
Of course this is still just a paper engine, so it could easily change
before getting built. But if they add enough stuff to really shield
the heat exchanger, they might lose the light weight that they need to
make orbit.
It's true that there is a lot of work left to do on the engine.
However, they have built and tested the heat exchanger which is the
only new part. The rest of it is turbomachinery of the sort we have
been building since WW II. (Though I must admit that 84 bar is a lot
of compression.)
I actually know these guys. In early 2016 they had me fly over to the
UK and give a two-hour talk to whole engineering department (about 50
people at the time) on power satellites. (Power satellites are the
only currently known market for that kind of transport volume.) After
bringing them up to date on the conceptual state of the art for power
satellites, the last 45 minutes was a roundtable discussion on how
fast production could be expanded if someone actually wanted to build
them.
But let's think of the operational exposure to birds. Skylons have to
take off within a few hundred km of the equator. (They fly to the
equator while climbing to altitude and turn East to line up with the
equator before going into rocket mode.)
Any power satellite project that could actually solve the carbon and
energy problems takes several runways, all of them launching at
minimum headway. If retractable bird screens on the engines are
needed but not an option, then big ground-based lasers to zap the
birds in the path should deal with the problem.
Keith
PS. Henry Vanderbilt's Space Access is how I met Roget Longstaff who
was with REL at the time (he is now editor of JBIS) and through him
the rest of the Reaction Engines crew. Much thanks, Henry.
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