🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BzFK5F.Dwn.1@cs.cmu.edu> MUNIZB%RWTMS2.decnet@consrt.rockwell.com ("RWTMS2::MUNIZB") writes:
>If lack of *flight-test* data is seen as the long pole in the tent 
>(holding things up), why isn't it being flown on the admittedly 
>experimental DC-X (and DC-Y)? 

Because DC-X and DC-Y are *not* experimental in that sense.  They are
proof-of-concept vehicles for single-stage-to-orbit launchers.  They're
trying very hard *not* to be an experiment in any other way; in particular,
they are *not* in the business of advancing engine technology if they can
avoid it.

It would be a fine thing to do with a DC-Y after its main test program
has concluded, but first things first.

>"requirement for large cross range (1500 nautical miles with crew and 
>cargo) and through it, the ability the ability to launch and land in one 
>earth orbit."
>
>I seem to recall this as an Air Force driven requirement, and that the 
>original NASA requirement was less stringent.  The paper states the 
>original requirement as a return to a preselected [launch?] site every 24 
>hours (approximately 15 orbits), rather than one orbit.  Any idea what 
>the requirement will be for DC-Y (and DC-1)?

Depends on who's writing the specs.  I think McDD's lifting-body DC-Y
design is capable of doing the one-orbit mission.  There were people who
opposed trying for such production-oriented capabilities on the first
prototype, as an unnecessary distraction that would interfere with the
proof-of-concept mission.

Substantial cross-range is indeed primarily a military requirement,
driven by the one-orbit mission, whose basic rationale is deploying a
spy satellite -- or doing any of a number of other things -- in wartime
conditions where coming around again in a predictable orbit is likely
to result in being shot at.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry