Article View: sci.space.shuttle
Article #3773Re: Shuttle replacement
From: Henry Spencer
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 02:07
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 02:07
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In article <STEINLY.92Nov19174436@topaz.ucsc.edu> steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson) writes:
> The right question is: why should the DCs be much more complex than
> high-performance aircraft?
>
>Intrinsically I see no reason why an orbital launcher should be
>more complex than that - as a matter of practicality though there is the
>fact that you have a lot of energy to be controlled in a very short
>time...
The engines are the one part of the DC birds that really do have to be
built to much more severe specs than anything found in aircraft. But
this is a solved problem. The RL10 (which DC-X will use) has already
demonstrated a dozen (test-stand) firings in a row without maintenance.
Most mature liquid-fuel rocket engines are really quite reliable and
would not need a lot of maintenance. The SSME is not typical.
--
MS-DOS is the OS/360 of the 1980s. | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
-Hal W. Hardenbergh (1985)| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
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Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle,sci.space Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!utcsri!utzoo!henry From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Shuttle replacement Message-ID: <BxzsL6.8CA@zoo.toronto.edu> Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 02:07:51 GMT References: <1992Nov17.194901.16883@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> <1992Nov19.073340.27278@netcom.com> <1992Nov19.202302.5796@iti.org> <STEINLY.92Nov19135044@topaz.ucsc.edu> <BxzLMF.5J6@zoo.toronto.edu> <STEINLY.92Nov19174436@topaz.ucsc.edu> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 18