[AR] Re: Skylon and related (was Re: SSTO)
- From: Norman Yarvin <yarvin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 20:34:42 -0500
On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 06:26:15PM -0500, Henry Spencer wrote:
Skylon might be the next EZ-Rocket, or it might be the next B-58 or HiMAT.
(The B-58 was the aircraft whose costs and dispatch (un)reliability were
too much even for SAC, and HiMAT's "MTBF was shorter than the preflight".)
I don't think either of those examples fully captures the glory of an
aircraft whose essential centerpiece would be a super-high-performance,
super-delicate heat exchanger filled with hydrogen and exposed to
incoming airflow.
There is no such thing as the Takata Prize for Deliberate Indifference
to the Real World, but if there were, Skylon would be a strong
contender.
(Takata, for those not following the news, is the company that thought
they could field millions of airbags in cars without moisture getting
in and messing with their ammonium nitrate-based propellant. Their
reward has been bankruptcy.)
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