[46360] in Cypherpunks
Re: Guerilla Internet Service Providers [NOISE]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (SINCLAIR DOUGLAS N)
Wed Jan 3 10:50:37 1996
From: SINCLAIR DOUGLAS N <sinclai@ecf.toronto.edu>
To: jimbell@pacifier.com (jim bell)
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 10:22:29 -0500
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: <m0tXNaA-0008zSC@pacifier.com> from "jim bell" at Jan 3, 96 02:25:22 am
> As I understand the physics, the whole process could be made FAR FAR FAR
> more efficient if the rocket was boosted to about 40000 feet with a subsonic
> airplane, a' la' X-15 and such. It's above 75% of the earth's atmosphere
> (dramatically reduced drag), is already going 600 mph in the correct
> direction, and is 8 miles closer to the ultimate goal 250 miles up). This
> might not sound like much of an advantage, but if you've ever worked out the
> mathematics of the Saturn V (or space shuttle, etc), the VAST majority of
> the fuel was used up in the first 20,000 feet, maybe even the first 5000
> feet. It would be even better if the first stage could be an air-breathing
> supersonic ramjet, but that's not my field of expertise.
Cypherpunks isn't the right place to discuss this in detail, but...
Efficiency != Cheap
Kerosene is cheap. Steel fuel tanks and rocket motors are quite cheap.
Making big dumb rockets is well understood. However, aircraft integration
is not. If you use an 'off-the-shelf' aircraft, it has a human in it.
That means the whole thing must be safe. If you don't, you have a drone
aircraft which isn't cheap at all. Remember, the cost of materials
scales linearly with size. The cost of a complex system scales as the
square of the parts count.
These arguments are hashed out (admittedly without consensus) regularly
in the sci.space newsgroups.
