Notes on fabrication of spacecraft, Part V

Speculation alert still applies: Series continued from last post.

 A list of links that pulls together some ideas from recent posts.

•  Dragon inside X 33 ( Or Gemini for that matter. )
•  Project Timberwind article ---nuclear thermal rocket research during SDI "Star Wars" Era
•  Mea culpa A couple mistakes I made with my speculations.  At least the ones I think I know about.

With respect to the Dragon inside the X-33:  I really like the idea of a craft being able to land where you want it to for that fast turnaround.  ( This may not apply to the Gemini idea. ) If you can get that going for you, then the whole thing can be made to work more like the airline model.  One problem I've been thinking about is how to get certain kinds of cargo up there.  It may require a solution that involves throwing away fuel tanks, but I don't like that much.  At a certain point, it may require answering whether or not a fuel tank is worth saving.

As for Project Timberwind, there seemed to be some doubts that I recall reading about the claims that were made for it.  Thrust to weight ratios were questioned.  However, if you can reach the 1000 ISP numbers, the rest can be pretty much the same calculations as before.

If the claims can be made good, some mass savings can be generated.  That would be welcome news.  I did some calculations that showed that once you deploy from the 747, it will take 17 lbs to get pound of payload to orbit.  If you save 2000 lbs for example, that's 34k lbs of stuff that doesn't have to be launched.

So, there's is a chance for some optimization.  Frankly, if the whole thing can be made to work with masses indicated so far, it would be a real ass-kicker.

As for the last bulleted item, mistakes are inevitable.  That's why it requires a speculation alert.


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