SpaceShipOne Breaks the Sound Barrier

Scaled Composite Press Release ^ | December 17th, 2003

[Frank_Discussion]

As Reagan envisioned the station, and NASA along with him, it was to be a shipyard and orbital satellite repair depot. Reagan's diplomacy was to lead and show strength to the world, and Space Station Freedom was a diplomatic tool as a default to it's technical merit.

As Clinton/Gore envisioned it, the program became an international diplomatic tool, based on "diversity" and "inclusiveness", and hopefully it would retain some technical merit.

The good news is that ISS can be fairly easily reconfigured and expanded, and is engineered pretty well. It can handle it's SSF mission just fine, if called upon.

[Frank_Discussion]

Dang. I would've enjoyed that show.

"Sarcastically ..Burt commented that if you put a late 50's early 60's test pilot in a Joint Strike fighter..he would say you haven't achieved anything in 40 years."

Ah, the wonderful bluster of the old birds!

The JSF is a highly-reliable standard issue aircraft that is meant to service all of our air-combat branches with appropriate configurations, and to be produced very quickly. Yeah, it's not a mach 2.5 beast, but it's pretty tough and won't shred itself every few missions. Upgrades plug in and out, and training on said upgrades is integrated with their development. The program is meant to address the logistical and maintenance hurdles that have plagued combat aircraft since we started using them.

That said, raw performance hasn't changed all that much, that's true. The missile and bombs they carry, well, that's another matter... JDAM has transformed the battlefield.

[Frank_Discussion]

Please tell me you're joking. The Japanese module will provide complete isolation from long duration crystal growth and other microgravity-sensitive operations. If we need ultimate isolation, another option is to release a Wake Shield Facility flyer and pick it up for evaluation on orbit later.

As I've said before, Zubrin is a really smart guy, but you've gotta get you're nose out of his books and look around once in a while. NASA, warts and all, doesn't have all it's collective heads up a$$es - they've thought ahead on this issue.

[RightWhale]

Goddard was way beyond all that. He had an ion motor running inside a vacuum chamber while the NYT was telling him all that junk.

[RightWhale]

jostle the various microgravity experiments around and foul up those big fat crystals

It sure would be a great sorrow to lose micrograms of crystalline materials that could serve as subject of several Master's Projects while the honking big Mars ships are being built.

[Final Authority]

Check this out, http://wildcat.phys.nwu.edu/classes/2002Fall/Phyx135-2/Projects/Ion_Propulsion/ion_propulsion/history.htm . Interestingly, I worked for a company called Ion Optics for some time. The founder, Dr. A. John Gale, was a contributor and performed research into ion propulsion for NASA in the '70s. We designed ion guns for milling optics.

You may be mistaken in the fact that Goddard actually had a working ion device as he died in 1945. I searched the records and found no such info but in the URL above it does mention that he believed that ion propulsion was a possibility. Fact is again German trained scientists did much of the early work. BTW, A. John Gale was a partner in High Voltage Engineering, a company founded by Dr. Robert van de Graf, a European. This company was the force behind making semi-conductors uniform (hence cheap and plentiful) by doping the silicon using ion implanting. They were hired by Bell Labs for this effort.

[RightWhale]

Goddard had a vacuum chamber in his shop, a continuous circle of sched. 40 pipe or some such cheap thing IIRC, and was experimenting with ion motors. He had obtained the original patent.

[Final Authority]

Please cite your references. It would be a very interesting read I suspect. Thanks.

[RightWhale]

It would be a very interesting read

Yes, it was, 1/4 century ago when I was researching asteroid mining.

[bvw]

Speaking of Goddard, the BATF's thug boot stomping of the amateur and model rocketry will force the hobbyist and experimenter into the pulse engine technologies -- which require only some tubes, propane and a tweeter-like pulser with some special machineing. Gonna be pretty interesting, I'd bet!

[Final Authority]

It doesn't help me to understand your understanding of Goddard if you have no references however. If in the literature there is no mention of the things you claim Goddard to have actually performed then all I can deduce from that is that he never did. He may have spoke about such technology or theorized about such technology but nothing I can find has him experimenting with ions.

[RightWhale]

All I can find on the Internet:

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electric propulsion:

Stuhlinger immersed himself in electric propulsion theory. He found a copy of Oberth's book, "Possibilities of Space Flight." Published in 1939, Oberth devoted a chapter to the various problems of electric propulsion systems, envisioning one design that might carry a 150-ton payload. In studying the origins of interest in electric propulsion, Stuhlinger learned that the American rocket pioneer, Dr. Robert Goddard, had examined the subject as early as 1906. Goddard had mentioned the possibility of accelerating electrically charged particles to very high velocities without the need for high temperatures.

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Goddard had experimented with electric propulsion in his lab. Can't find a patent, but it would be surprising if he didn't apply since he was an inventor and applied for patents on a wide variety of devices.

[The KG9 Kid]

BREAKING NEWS:

Private company finally reaches sound barrier in quest for space!

[Frank_Discussion]

Glad you like the thread! LOL!

Good Morning!