Rocket Revival

[selenite0]

It's been nearly ten years since the Delta Clipper Experimental vertical take-off and landing rocket was destroyed in a crash. Now Blue Origins has flown a successor to it. Here's hoping they have many more successful flights.

Comments

[not-secure.livejournal.com]

I was a strong proponent of Delta Clipper. I really think they blew it with the choices they made in the SSTO fiasco. I had seen that a launch was imminent but hadn't had a chance to check my usual space haunts. Thanks for the quick article.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Sure. randsimberg is my main source for alt-space news.

[not-secure.livejournal.com]

I will have to check that out. I usually just head over to http://www.nasawatch.com/ and find things there. I see Blue Origin showed up there now. I just hadn't been there in a couple of days.

Welcome aboard

[tmc4242.livejournal.com]

Slightly off topic -

Did you see this ?

http://www.teamvisioninc.com/downloads/AIAA-2006-7517-146.pdf

I haven't done enough real rocket calculations to check the details, but it sure looks better to me than the path NASA is blindly forging ahead on.

The whole "Let's keep BOTH parts of the shuttle system that have killed crews and use them to make the new 'safer' rocket" concept just doesn't quite make sense to me.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Read a chunk, skimmed some more, don't think it addresses the real issue. Right now NASA's budget is driven by delivering pork to key congressional districts, with national prestige and science trailing behind as motivations. Any discussion of what to do which doesn't address WHY we're doing this is just very sophisticated masturbation. Keeping the shuttle parts and workforce is the key to doing job #1, delivering pork on schedule. Stop doing that and the votes to approve the project go away. NASA isn't forging blindly ahead--it's looking at the vote counts in the appropriations committees.