MaverickSawyer

Re: Dyson sphere/swarm: Solar sails. Sure, you'll need somewhere to vent heat and gasses from, and you'd need to have some fast-acting actuators on the sails to keep them hovering properly, but both of those are trivial problems in the scale we're talking about.

Re: turtle vs. tortoise: Turtles live near or in water. Tortoises live exclusively on land.

Okay, vacation time was approved! We are GO for a vacation! Serious question: What's the best spot to watch launches out of SLC-2? Everything I've found is for either SLC-3 or -4, which are much further down the coast from SLC-2...

Agreed. On at least one of the Zond missions. No thanks. I have a healthy respect for the amount of energy those deliver. I've been zapped by broken ones... Not always accidentally, I might add. >.>

There's a significant difference between "friable" and "orbiting gravel piles". You'd need water present in some form, as that's the activator for cyanoacrylate-family glues, iirc.

Kinda. More of a beat-down. It wasn't squashed, but it certainly didn't take off again afterwards. That said, I usually prefer to tase wasps. Harbor Freight sells electric fly swatters for cheap, and they work perfectly fine.

That only works if the asteroid is solid enough for the piton to set. What if the asteroid isn't that solid, or even little more than a floating gravel pile?

And yet, I hit a wasp with my hat in midair today, and it didn't get back up. o.O

I've always kept an eye on a polymer-backed ceramic tile array for superior armor protection. Think of composite armor on a tank, but on a smaller scale. Three layers of tesselated hexagonal tiles, staggered in a triangular pattern, with each layer separated/bound/encased by a kevlar-impregnated rubber, backed by a kevlar spall layer. I'm not sure how much more effective it'd be than existing AR-500 steel plates backed by kevlar, or if it'd be lighter, but it'd possibly be more flexible than the steel plate setup. Not sure if it'd be worth the tradeoff of possibly reduced protection. And the major downside of the ceramic tile concept compared to the steel plate system would be a noticeable reduction in protection if hit on the same tile as a previous shot, though.

Well, it'd be early morning, so the fog might be manageable. I'll plan on several viewing points, to account for different weather... If it's clear, down on the coast, to be sure. If it's foggy, I'll head to the hills to try and get clear of the fog and watch the later part of the ascent.

Depends on what size and speed of bullet you're trying to stop.

I suspect asteroid exploration will be one of the big uses for such systems... After all, the gravity is so low, yo can't walk, but rather than moving the entire ship to put a target of interest in reach of a manipulator arm, you just jet over and do what needs doing, then jet on back.

Gonna try to make it down to Vandenberg for that launch...

Agreed. Besides, the engines are also going into uncharted territory. I don't think anyone's ever done a full-flow staged combustion engine of any sort, even in the laboratory, let alone at this scale and at these pressures. Re: BE-4: I find it interesting that they've not hit full power yet during their test runs...

SpaceX won't be flying BFR in five years, let alone going to Mars. People seem to keep underestimating just how many issues still need to be worked out for BFR, especially the engines. Just because they've run subscale engines doesn't mean that scaling up to full size is going to be simple. There's a lot of things that will change in unexpected and unpleasant ways.

Because the compressor requires a source of energy to function, which then turns the engine into a turbine engine with a ram intake. As for why they use axial flow compressors, they're more efficient and have a smaller frontal cross section, reducing drag. Yes, ramjet's are seemingly simple, due to the only moving parts being the fuel pump, but, as others have mentioned, there is a minimum airspeed you have to reach to function, and even then, they're not terribly efficient until somewhere above Mach 1.5. And most aircraft don't spend a lot of time going that fast. Missiles, however, do, and there's been a lot of work done on that front. Check out the BrahMos cruise missile, or the MBDA Meteor air-to-air missile. Both use ramjets or variants of same.

Okay, first things first, there's a lot of confusion here about basic turbine engine operation. Turbine engine compressors are somewhat mislabeled. They're actually accelerating the air as it passes through each stage of rotors, and then using the stators to straighten out the airflow. This gets up to a pretty good head of speed before hitting the diffusor, just before the combustion chamber, where the air is decelerated and, according to Bernoulli's Principle, it gains pressure. Centrifugal compressors (aka impellers), though lacking the stators, still use the same basic principle, albeit much more dramatically. (Typical compression ratio across a single axial flow stage is ~1.2:1. Centrifugal is ~20:1.) As for the "turboramjet", yes, the SR-71 had what amounted to one, albeit not as just the J58 engine alone. The complete intake/engine/exhaust system did function as a hybrid of a turbine engine and a ramjet. The intakes did ~80% of the compression work when at cruise, in a manner similar to that of a ramjet. However, this compressed air was then fed into the J58 turbojet engine, which then functioned largely as normal, albeit at very high temperatures. Some, but not most, of the air did indeed bypass the J58, but this was used mostly for cooling the outside of the engine and providing cooling air to the afterburner section, not to provide additional oxygen to support combustion. Re: Blackbird and it's fuel... JP-7 was quite expensive, as it was only produced in small quantities for the Blackbirds. Most aircraft couldn't even run on the stuff, as it was exceptionally stable, even for kerosene derivatives. Much of this was to prevent the fuel from boiling at cruise, and so that it could be used as a hydraulic fluid for the engine. It was NOT circulated throughout the entire airframe as a coolant, though it was used to cool important parts of the engine and as the first stage of the bleed air cooling system. Also, the Blackbirds did stretch some in flight, though not a meter. That'd be about 3% of the length of the aircraft, which is far too much to align with the thermal expansion coefficient of titanium alloys similar to those that could be expected to be used under such conditions. A few centimeters would be more realistic. That said, yes, it could get quite hot in the cockpits if it weren't for the air conditioning they used. There is a story of an RSO whose AC failed for the cockpit, and the cockpit temperature was over 300*F, enough to curl the pages of his checklists and melt the grease pencil marks off them. And turbofans... Yes, most of the thrust is provided by the fan air bypassing around the engine core. Much of the core flow energy is extracted by multi-stage turbines to drive both the compressor section(s) and the fan. Modern designs can achieve bypass ratios in excess of 20:1, i.e. for every pound of air that flows through the core, 20 flows through the fan bypass. Modern military aircraft engines for fighters are low-bypass, usually less than 4:1, or even less than even. (The F404 engine on the legacy F/A-18 Hornets had a bypass ratio of ~0.75:1, and were often described as "leaky turbojets".) Lemme know if there's any other questions you have. I'd be happy to answer them.

One: The TR-3B never existed outside of studies and models. Two: The proposed system is complete and utter handwavium BS. Three: I'm trying not to headdesk REALLY hard right now, because this is at LEAST the second time you've come on this board with a bunch of BS. (Yes, I remember your whole "hollow earth" nonsense.)

Mock-up... though I have had the honor of seeing flight hardware as well. I know I posted pics of that on this thread before... Lemme see if I can dig that up rq. EDIT: Looks like it was in the old thread that's now MIA... So another gratuitous shot, this time of the first propulsion module: Again, dorky grin wearing me is 6'2"/188 cm for scale.

Okay, as promised... For scaling purposes, I'm 6'2"/188 cm tall, so yeah, those windows are HUGE.

The seats are suitably comfy, as befits their requirement to protect their occupants against possible 16 G accelerations. Also, cabin interior is ~6 feet tall, so taller folks may need to duck. Yes, I have sat in them. I'm at school right now, so I don't have the pics to prove it, but I DID get to see the mockup up close and personal.

Oooh, Rocheworld fan, eh? Statites are cool and all, but you have to be fairly far out from the parent body for them to actually work.

Remote, restricted to polar/sun synchronous orbits, and I'm not sure you'd be able to reliably schedule a launch from there in the winter. But, it'd probably be cheaper to build and run a facility there, as there's basically no one else there on a regular basis. If I were making the call, I'd say LC-2 at Wallops, LC-3 (if needed) at Kodiak.

Same. It'd open up semi-inclined orbits, but without the hassle of the Cape.

I suspect that this test was more for an edge case reentry from significantly higher than normal. I.E., if it survives this, it'll survive any expected reentry.