[AR] Re: big rockets
- From: Derek Lyons <fairwater@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2021 08:59:19 -0700
On Tue, Oct 5, 2021 at 10:22 PM J Farmer <jfarmer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
As Henry pointed out in an earlier thread about dealing with atmospheric
& water leaks, with reliable lift schedules, just lift enough to
replenish for several cycles while fixing the problem. What changes in
your planning when that supply run can be 50 or 100 tons of air or water?
What happens? You learn to make a daily prayer "Oh, $DIETY, please
don't let the supply pipeline get gummed up or stop. Amen." (Insert
standard warning about monocultures.) And hopefully you don't get in
the bad habit of simply tossing spare tanks of whatever into the trunk
rather than fixing the problem. (Or you end up in the middle of the
North Atlantic watching the level in your reserve hydraulic tanks and
nervously comparing that to the calendar.)
I mean, I get it... Orders of magnitude relaxation of the weight and
cost is practically orgasmic to contemplate... But it's not magic.
It just means you have to learn the rules for a new game, not that
rules and limits have ceased to exist. On submarines we tracked the
weight of fixed equipment to a resolution of a few pounds or so, but
still we tracked. (Towards the end of the Cold War, one class of SSN
was literally out of reserve weight - the Navy was offering cash
bonuses for suggestions to claw some of that back.) We didn't think
in terms of cubic cm, but we did think in terms of cubic feet because
there were only so many available inside the hull. Every alteration
to fixed equipment came with an "Environmental Impact Statement" - an
annex that outlined the impact of the change on weight, volume, CG,
etc... (Even if the blocks were marked "minimal" because we were only
swapping a gasket of 'x' material for one of 'y' material.)
D.
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