[AR] Re: Spin.
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2021 13:36:10 -0500 (EST)
On Thu, 11 Nov 2021, Ross Borden wrote:
"...one-third scale." Something tells me that building one three times
larger is going to be 100 times harder.
And the point of it all is... to make the tanks smaller?!?
A goodly number of years ago, when such schemes came up for discussion
here, John Carmack (then of Armadillo Aerospace) observed:
"I went through a phase where I spent a lot of time thinking about launch
assist, and it really comes down to the simple question of "can I replace
a rocket stage with something else". Since we can demonstrably do a TSTO,
launch assist only makes any sense if you are assisting a SSTO vehicle.
[Merely] improving performance by some fraction by adding some capital and
complexity intensive additional system is almost certainly a losing
proposition."
My take on it was less polite:
"1. Determine cost of propellant (negligible).
2. Determine cost of making tanks larger (usually minimal).
3. Count number of digits in price of electromagnetic catapult (a bunch).
4. Conclude that there is no way it will ever make things cheaper (obvious).
5. Look for ulterior motives of those proposing it..."
Henry
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