WestAir

[quote name='kiwi1960']In an atmosphere, the shockwave would destroy the ship... either that or melt it.[/QUOTE] [quote name='fredinno']You mean Project Orion? [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29[/url] It's not really ridiculous, considering you can make interstellar missions with things like this, but firing the drive from the ground is a bad idea.[/QUOTE] Incidentally, the Orion Project is rumored to have been justified by a steel plate cap that was blasted skyward, by the Pascal-B nuclear test, at six times escape velocity. Still, using nuclear weapons as a form of launch propulsion is a horrible idea, which is why it's mentioned as a "Dumb spacecraft/rocket concept" I had as a kid. :P

When I was a kid I heard about the concept rocket that would propel itself through space using the shockwaves from nuclear bombs. Back then I somehow envisioned it taking off from a launchpad with a thermonuclear blast. To be fair, the explosion [I]should[/I] send some of the rocket on an escape trajectory.

After reading this and the previous thread that focused on the "how to save Columbia" theme, I'm also of the opinion that saving the crew was improbable. For those of you familiar with aviation disasters, I'd almost compare it to Alaska 261 where the crew operated an aircraft that was impossible to land. The only discussion about Columbia we could really have is if NASA was right in not investigating the tiles during the mission, and whether NASA was right in not allowing the crew to know that they were not making it home. Personally I would want as much heads us as viable if my flight was going to crash. I'd want to know so I could come to terms with it, instead of hearing cockpit alarms and freaking out. To the OP, if Columbia never happened I imagine we may still have an STS program. (Someone mentioned they were thinking of running them until 2020). I don't know what affect that would have on the private space industry but I am thinking that if the STS was still running and VSS Enterprise still crashed, critics of the private industry might have been a lot more influential this past year. It may have even given solid ground to the argument that the STS should remain funded longer.

[quote name='Laie']Well in that case, sorry for the distraction. Of course you can dock to the outer wheel. Strictly speaking, you can dock anywhere: all you need to do is match velocities. In this case, you need a craft that can easily go in circles. It will require a lot of fuel and presumably more RCS thrust than one usually brings along. Controlling it is bound to be exciting. So all things considered, the proposition makes for a good challenge. But possible? Absolutely.[/QUOTE] Sounds like material for a KSP challenge to me!

[quote name='fredinno']2 big to be practical, or even fit. A better idea are legumes, essential for Nitrogen production, starchy-potato-like crops (high calorie density) or algae (and its processing) to do next.[/QUOTE] Sorry, I should have included a smiley or something to show that I was just making a joke. It's really hard to tell via text.

Reminds me of that Naboo Royal cruiser from the first Star Wars movie. I'm really liking the chrome look. If someone can get a mirror-like shader into KSP without chewing through frames that would be amazing.

[quote name='Bill Phil']I think he meant the outer wheel...[/QUOTE] I did. [I]I edited my post because my initial response wasn't polite, and there's never a reason to be impolite.[/I]

[quote name='sojourner']SpaceX - founded in 2002.[/QUOTE] I said unheard of. It's right in the quote you included. Anyone off the street has heard about SpaceX.

Could you dock with the wheel of a rotating wheel space station?

Next up: Palm Tree's.

[quote name='Kryten']Buying a Boeing 747 as a personal transport is going to be just about as unfeasible, you're probably looking at not much better processing times than a normal flight. There are still no less than 12 of those, at something like 3* the price of this thing.[/QUOTE] That's an excellent point. I'd imagine most of those owners are UAE Royalty, but I guess that wouldn't make me any less wrong.

[quote name='llanthas']You're so cute. I'll just refer you to the movie Wolf of Wall Street, and remind you that the only unusual thing about the character is that he got caught.[/QUOTE] Your response to my statement is to tell me that a Terence Winter [I]Comedy[/I] is evidence that I am wrong, and that you can also generalize an entire group of people based only on their wealth? Surely you can't be serious.

[quote name='llanthas']We could probably adjust the definition of "automated" to change the answer from "never" to "already happening"... Much of the flight time in your average commercial flight is completely automated. The pilot does very little, other than to monitor systems and have a quick chat with passing ground control systems.[/QUOTE] I would compare this statement to suggesting that cruise control in your car is "fully automated driving" which it really isn't. The automation in a plane isn't going to fly you around hazardous weather that would destroy the aircraft and it's pretty archaic in its philosophy. Just because it's maintaining speed/pitch/roll/yaw doesn't mean it's doing the flying. The pilots are still flying. If you want to remove those pilots you're going to need more than what we have now.

[quote name='SargeRho']Yet, they already have at least 20 orders. The main incentive for business jets, as already said above, is to get around faster. Flexjet have placed a 2.4 billion dollar order for 20 of these, expecting delivery to begin in 2023. So, evidently, the incentive of a mach 1.2 plane is great enough to pay 120 million a piece.[/QUOTE] You're right. That's the exact reason I cannot (and did not) completely dismiss this project's future. Hopefully it works out for them and they overcome all of the economic and legal hurdles that make supersonic passenger flight so difficult to perform and sustain. I don't think they will, but I've been wrong [I]many[/I] times before.

Expensive lawn dart. I don't think I've ever seen an aircraft where less than two thirds the fuselage was actually dedicated to cabin space and useful loading. I'd tell you it'll never happen and that this article is a pipe dream, but I would have said the same thing about a bunch of entrepreneurs taking the Concorde out of a museum and flying it to airshows. I'm hesitant to put my foot in my mouth again, but if you're a betting man bet against this. It's economically unfeasible and one thing about rich people is that they didn't get rich by spending it unfeasibly. If this were from Boeing or Airbus with lots of media coverage and millions and advertisement already spent I might believe it - but not from an unheard from brand founded in 2002.

[quote name='A35K']The first 2, not happening anytime soon. I don't think there'll be a pilotless passenger aircraft until ALL cars and trains and buses are driverless.[/QUOTE] You're right, but not for reasons of capability. Most people won't step foot onto a plane driven by a computer until they're already used to having their lives in the hands of computers - and driverless cars will get people used to the concept. I have a pretty good idea on what would need to be automated versus what is already automated on a fixed wing and I'll tell you that the person above who said it's just a matter of automating takeoff/landing/cruise is far off the mark. The first drone airliner is going to be a brand new aircraft backed up by brand new ground equipment. We're not even halfway to where we need to be to automate passenger aviation. You can't just take a 747 and have it start itself, taxi itself, get from LA to Sydney, taxi to a gate, then shut down under every airline SOP, airport operation, nation-specific airspace rules, and unique aircraft configuration possible using the technology on the shelves today, and if you do then it's reinforced using ground based equipment that isn't always reliable and certainly isn't installed in more than 1% of the airports that are out there. That's just one plane, now you have to do it for all the others. As I said, it's probably a few decades away. I'd be surprised if we had it by 2040, and surprised if we didn't by 2115. By then someone, human or otherwise, would have figured out the kinks. Edit: As a side note, my buddies who operate little helicopters tell me it'll never ever ever ever be automated. I dunno if they're serious or just trying to protect their job, but since I've never been on a helicopter before I thought I'd throw that in.

I understand the OP just fine. Back to the OP, every record that has been beat can be beat again. All of them. Fastest speed, heaviest aircraft, largest aircraft, most passengers carried, longest range, highest cruising altitude, et al. I imagine we'll break every one of them within the next 40 years. New records will be, but won't be limited to: first commercial aircraft without a pilot, first all electric airliner, first SSTO commercial flight, etc.

They also have a Concorde.

Very true. My only question is why a crew would attempt a precision landing when already unstable due to speed. At that point, if you HAVE to approach at vref+100, why not just perform a shallow approach?

I doubt someone is going to vaporize us. The truth is it's fairly easy for a civilization sufficiently far away to ignore us. Ignoring us also doesn't invite our colony worlds to launch a relativistic killing missile at them in revenge.

PB666, That is hilarous. Thanks for the link.

Elthy, That's awesome! I assume you mean you want to design one to build as an RC aircraft? I'm obviously jumping to conclusions based on your vague statement, but if that's what you mean then best of luck to you. I've personally always intended to design and build my own little RC plane but due to time constraints (or laziness?) I've never found a good time to stop and give it a try. Picture a flying wing; A lifting body is the exact inverse of that. Interestingly both are equally challenging to design and build. That's a pretty expansive question. The cross section of an airfoil has everything to due with its purpose. You'll find most aircraft have wings cambered or curved on the top, and the rear wings (horizontal stabilizers) cambered on the bottom. The reason is because aircraft are generally designed to have the center of lift behind the center of mass. This creates a torque or pull that would generally send an aircraft into a nose-down spin - the negative lift from the stabilizers at the rear help cancel that out. (Though in my personal experience some companies design planes so that help is needed in that department. ~3 weeks ago a buddy of mine had to maintenance ferry an airplane from Tuscon AZ to Mesa AZ, and since the aircraft was empty of fuel bags and people it was so tail heavy they had to round up about 900 lbs of junk to throw in the front galley before they could legally fly. I guess they designed the AC to be nose heavy only when loaded) Back to your design, I personally would build a lifting body RC as a sort of very thin-width flying wing because it appears a lot easier to put flight controls on a wing than a fuselage, especially if you are in fact designing a small RC. It's also easier to see what orientation the aircraft is in from the ground when it's shaped more like an airfoil and less like a cylinder. I'd be extremely interested to see what you design. I find the most interesting (and difficult) part of designing any non traditional aircraft is the placement (or lack thereof) of stabilizers and flight controls. In a lifting body you'll want a way to stop the plane from rolling around and you'll certainly want a way to stop it from becoming a propeller driven missile. To this I'm wondering if you shouldn't look into a design more like a stubby Space Shuttle and less like the Fat Man atom bomb with engines. I'm not sure what this has to do with lifting bodies, but to be perfectly fair, this statement is only accurate under the assumption you're trying to perform a "standard" descent. My guess is that if your runway is long enough you could make a shallow approach and landing to a runway even if that runway were at 36,000 feet. A better pilot could keep it at 50 fpm until the mains touch. Depending on where you are in your cruise and how much you weigh, chances are you're already well pitched for a flare - ground effect from the runway will do the rest. I don't imagine such a landing would use flaps, and I don't imagine the gear would survive the roll speeds at the air pressures and temperatures involved, but as K^2 said, if it can't be done by the aircraft you're trying to use, someone could design one that could. Luckily for us the OP is in the designing stage.

Impwarhamer, The way I understand it is that each observer experiences time differently, but never less than 0. If you were the only bit if information in the Universe I assume it would be impossible to know how fast and in what direction you were traveling (and therefore how much time dilation you were experiencing), but I'm assuming physics still has a way of knowing because you will still have properties that describe your velocity and direction through spacetime. I also assume that means there is a method physics uses to determine which observer - Earth or the Rocket - will experience time dilation. I want to say it's the acceleration and high velocity through spacetime that is the key factor here, but I can't honestly admit to knowing enough to make that claim. Also, to Wedge, is there even such a thing as a static reference frame? I was under the impression that the Universe has no base reference frame, only reference frames relative from one to the next.

How much mass would a bottle rocket need to escape a bottle rocket that has enough Dv to orbit the Earth?

If differential airflow between the wings was the major factor contributing to the loss of Columbia and not the destructive heating of the interior wing components, as several commentators have suggested, then would intentionally damaging the other airfoil so that symmetry exists highten the chance of successfully controlling the aircraft in atmosphere? Personally, I'm about 99% sure the answer is no, but I've been surprised at the answerto stupid questions before.