With questions such as, "Can you go faster than light?", "Can you travel back in time?", "Can you predict/see the future?", the answer is usually "Probably, but.....".
Which may be a good thing, or the universe might have fallen apart already. I mean, what if that stuff were so easy it could happen almost randomly?
That being said, we can still wish that it weren't quite so f'ing hard.
You're probably talking about the transpiration cooling that Gary proposed for his Phoenix series of SSTOs. That would have worked even better than nitrogen gas cooling, given the extra heat soaked up by the water flashing to vapor. The transpiration cooling struck me as tricky because of the complex fabrication required (although much more do-able these days than in the '80s) and the need for high-purity coolant so that you don't get residue plugging the transpiration orifices (which were pretty small).
Gary has done some great work on integrated designs, and I'd love to see more tin bent to prove (or find and work out the problems with) the concepts. (Gary strikes me as something of the Preston Tucker of the space transportation biz.)
It had four distinct circuits, one for each phoneme ("C", "O", "FF" and "EE"), and a sequencer. You could vary the timing of the whole thing, and the individual frequencies of the phonemes. The "C" and "FF" sounds had a lot of white noise, with the "C" (well, "K") more plosive. The "O" and "EE" were purer waves, each a mix of two frequencies (which could be tweaked). Shorten the sequence timing and increase the frequency of that last "EE" phoneme and it sounded more like "KOFEEP?"
It wouldn't be too hard to reproduce the circuitry -- a handful of tunable oscillators, a couple of noise sources, and a sequencer -- but I think the questioner is more interested in an exact, not just functional, replica.
I remember that machine well -- I must have spent well over an hour on it. I just didn't remember where it was. (I'd thought I'd seen it at one of the World's Fairs, and more probably New York in '65 than Montreal in '67. But it's possible it was at the Science Center -- unless they exhibited elsewhere before that.)
Speech technology was becoming fairly self-contained by mid-70s, so I thought it was quite a bit earlier.
Steam turbines don't care what the source of heat to produce the steam is.
Yeah, actually, they do, because that will affect the temperature of the steam. The temperature (and thus pressure) of the steam affects the optimum design of the turbine. Nuke plants typically operate at a much lower steam temperature/pressure than coal plants, equivalent to or even slightly lower than the low pressure/temperature turbines (which use the steam already used to turn the high pressure turbines) in coal-fired plants.
ISS gets most of its consumables from unmanned Russian Progress capsules. Once the Shuttle stops flying, Progress will be ISS' only resupply.
Not quite. There's also the European ATV, the first of which, Jules Verne, flew in 2008. It has about three times the capacity of a Progress. Oh, and Progress is pressurized, being basically the hull of a Soyuz. It just doesn't have a full life-support system. You may be thinking of the replaced re-entry module, which on Soyuz is of course pressurized but on Progress contains fuel tankage (routed externally so that a leak will not contaminate station atmosphere).
Apollo was barely big enough for 3. Something only a "little" bigger is supposed to hold 7?
Back in Apollo's heyday, when there were a lot of follow-on projects being proposed based on Apollo hardware, there was a design for a six-seat Apollo module.
Do they sit on each other's laps?
More or less (grin). The design called for a second tier of three seats below the existing three (there was actually a fair bit of room back there). I think the result would still have given each astronaut a little more room than the Gemini capsule had, but not by much.
More like designing to a standard set of interfaces between launcher and spacecraft, which is indeed good. Just as Boeing's capsule can launch on Falcon 9 as well as Atlas V and Delta IV, then presumably SpaceX's Dragon capsule could be launched on an Atlas or Delta as well as a Falcon. If one component is ever grounded for an unforseen problem, you've got a fallback position.
It's not even that odd. Having a second source for a critical subsystem makes a lot of sense, and savvy customers tend to encourage their vendors in this direction.
What is going to couple the energy transfer from asteroid to atmosphere more effectively, one big rock or a bunch of little ones with the same net energy? The little ones, of course.
Now, the big rock will make a much bigger splash when it hits, creating quite the fireball -- which is a good thing, since heat radiates proportionally to the fourth power of the temperature difference, so a hot fireball will lose its energy to space a lot faster than a lot of smaller, cooler (but still hot!) ones. Yeah, the immediate vicinity is toast, but a lot of the energy is just, in effect, melting the ashes rather than heating up someplace else.
Or to put it another way (no, not a car analogy): would you rather have your whole body exposed to a temperature of say 400 degrees or one finger exposed to say 10,000? Hurts like hell either way, but the former kills you, the latter doesn't.
Yeah, you should, because if you use it once and it works, you know it will work again and again (see DC-X). If you build a new one, you won't know until you've flown it.
This of course assumes that the thing is designed to be flown and re-flown without a complete overhaul between each flight -- i.e. like airplanes not like current Shuttle technology. Or you build a new one for each flight, spend a fortune trying to inspect-in quality, and blow up one in thirty or so anyway. The latter is how missiles are designed, not a rational transportation system.
Examining old data has one value and one value alone - verifying that the claim made for the data matches up with the data. [...] Access to raw data for any other reason is pointless.
Hardly. One could analyse the raw data looking for something other than what the original researchers were looking for. There might even be some interesting signal buried in the data that original team, focusing on something else, disregarded as noise. Minute timing errors in, say, solar wind data returned from a spacecraft might turn up some oddity of orbital mechanics, for example. The researcher focusing on the sensor data rather than the timestamps will miss it, but it's all part of the raw data. How many biologists discarded moldy Petri dishes as ruined, without recording that, before Fleming thought to investigate why bacteria didn't grow near the mold?
Or it could prove what I've been saying all along, that Group B is chock full of mouth-breathing knuckle-walkers
That depends on whether or not Group C manages to reproduce A's results, or B's. In the latter case, it would tend to indicate that Group A contains the mouth-breathing knuckle-walkers.
Many of the pedophiles arrested had collections of child porn or erotica.
And 100% of them had, at some point in their life, taken dihydrogen monoxide. The more relevant question is how many of those who have erotica collections (or have drunk H2O, or whatever) have done something arrest-worthy? (Other than having the collection itself.)
Do you have any idea how many people read murder mysteries? Are there really that many potential murderers out there? (Of course there's a broad spectrum between reading Agatha Christie and watching snuff films, just as there is between reading Nabokov and collecting porn photos, but the point remains.)
A lot of authors (and I'm one) would agree with you on the pricing issue -- if not on the "right" to take it for free. Some of them will give it to you if you ask nicely (or visit their website) though.
Author J.A. Konrath has been blogging recently about how much he's been making ($4200 last month) off of his low priced ($1.99, $2.99) e-books on Kindle (books he's selling directly, vs others of his that his publisher is selling at higher prices). Unsurprisingly, lower priced books sell better than higher priced ones -- and in his and a few other authors' cases, they're selling pro-quality, professionally edited stories, not unreadable crud by a newbie author. His view is that the high prices publishers want to charge for e-books is a serious mistake, and in his next book deals he's not going to give e-rights to the publisher unless they fork over some serious (six-figure) cash for them, and a better percentage royalty.
This very much parallels what some bands are doing with distributing their music themselves rather than going through RIAA companies. Indeed the term "indie author" is catching on.
There still needs to be some vetting of an unknown author's work, either by traditional publishing or word of mouth and reviews from early readers, but the change is coming. I'm certainly considering making some of my own work (initially previously-published stuff to which I have e-rights) available that way. Even a little success that way gives a bit more leverage with a traditional publisher (which is still the most profitable route to go and will be for a few more years yet).
The protons in the LHC are a little closer together than those in interstellar space. Density in interstellar space is about 1 atom per cubic centimeter. I can't readily find a number for the cross-sectional area of the LHC beam, but it is surely less than 1 cm^2 and each ring has 2835 x 10^11 protons over its 27 km length -- or better than 10^8 protons per cubic centimeter.
So no, it's not quite like standing in front of the beam from the LHC, not by a factor of a hundred million.
Star Wars freely stole from^W^W paid homage to everybody. C-3PO is the Maria robot from Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Tattooine is, as you note, Arrakis (they even had what could pass for a sandworm skeleton when the two droids are wandering the desert before being captured by Jawas), Corscant as Trantor. Heck, even the Jedi bear a passing resemblence -- in mission, if not detail -- to Christopher Anvil's Interstellar Patrol (which used advanced tech rather than The Force, and were generally more competent than the Jedi). And that borrowed from Doc Smith's Lensman series. (Indeed, there are similarities between the Lens and The Force. Maybe midichlorians are a kind of micro-Lens.)
Actually I withdraw my correction in the first sentence. If Lucas was paying homage, he would have acknowledged it in some way. All he did was rip them off.
Just wait until the moviegoing public decides that Trantor was just a rip-off of Star Wars' Coruscant. Or more likely, that the whole Empire is a rip-off of Star Wars.
Just something else Lucas will have to answer for.
The Shuttle and frankly every aircraft that fly's must deal with a thrust load and a landing load "Every aircraft that flies" does not deal with a roughly 30-times empty weight longitudinal load (3 G acceleration at a rather optimistic 90% fuel fraction). Most aircraft (except fighters) don't have a thrust/weight ratio greater than one, let alone thirty.
(Most of the Shuttle's launch load is taken by the External Tank, not the Orbiter. That's a lously comparison.)
The X-33 empty would have been pretty light so the landing load penalty would be pretty small. Landing gear has to support multiples of the airframe weight because aircraft rarely touch down at a zero vertical speed. That's tough when you have to maintain flying speed too. (Which is why pilots spend so much time practising landings. I know, I am one.)
Also, the X-33 empty would be much heavier than a similar-payload VTVL configuration due to poorer surface-area/volume ratios and the associated heavier structure.
Far smaller than the landing fuel penalty that a VTOL SSTO would have.
No. The "landing fuel penalty" is no worse (and probably less) than the weight of the wings (or aerosurfaces if a lifting body) for a horizontal lander -- wings that are dead weight in a vertical ascent profile. (Worse than dead weight, they also add drag until you're beyond the atmosphere.)
Yes the V Shaped fuel tank would have been a challenge but not as bad of one as you imagine
The V-shaped tank was a challenge. The damn thing kept cracking at the joint. They had to add a lot of weight to reinforce it. And it still had the lousy surface-area to volume (= stucture weight to volume) issue.
An abort wouldn't have to mean the loss of the X-33. Depending on the failure mode the X-33 could transition to horizontal flight and dump fuel just like every airliner on the planet.
Good luck with that. It didn't have the lift for horizontal flight with more than a few percent of fuel load (by which time it's in space). Even if the airframe was intact. In one of the DC-X launches, a build-up of hydrogen gas near the vehicle detonated at launch, damaging the aeroshell to the point where pieces of it were dropping off as the rocket climbed out. The emergency abort was initiated, it stopped ascent, burned off some fuel, and landed perfectly. Try that with something that depends on its shape for lift -- or a safe reentry.
A VTOL SSTO actually has more total loss failure modes than the X-33 does.
Nope. See above. They have roughly similar total loss failure modes (engine explosion, heat shield failure, etc) but for other failures the margins are much broader for VTOL (eg the DC-X example).
Rockwell's Rocketdyne division ground-tested a large-scale linear aerospike years before the X-33 project started. (Also circular aerospikes.)
Other than that, I agree with you. I witnessed one of the DC-X flights. It is truly amazing to see a rocket throttle up its engines, soar to several hundred feet of altitude, and then just stop there and hover before translating sideways and descending, like some invisible giant moving the world's biggest chess piece.
Reusable SSTO does not appear to be technologically or economically viable at this time.
Well, we don't really know because we haven't really tried it yet. The X-33 was a mishmash of technology R&D projects that, realistically, nobody ever expected to fly. The design might have been appropriate for perhaps a third-generation SSTO, not first.
Consider: It had a vertical takeoff, horizontal landing (VTHL) flight profile. This meant two orthogonal load-bearing paths, greatly increasing structure weight. It meant that an aborted launch would result in loss-of-vehicle (compare DC-X's (VTVL) successful abort after an external explosion at launch), requiring that much extra in terms of fail-safe and redundant systems. The V-shaped fuel tank was a structural disaster waiting to happen, with a lousy structure-to-volume ratio and weird load paths at the intersection of the two cylindrical sections. Et bloody cetera.
Nobody has yet made a serious attempt to build the sort of SSTO that Phil Bono, Boeing, Chrysler (back when it was in the aerospace biz), McDonnell-Douglas, General Dynamics, Gary Hudson, Max Hunter, and a host of other rocket scientists and companies have been proposing since the 1960s: a vertical takeoff and landing, circular aerospike, more-or-less conical vehicle. Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin vehicles and a couple of Japanese vehicles come close, but all are so far sub-scale test vehicles and the first Blue Origin vehicle doesn't use an aerospike.
Slashdot Mirror
With questions such as, "Can you go faster than light?", "Can you travel back in time?", "Can you predict/see the future?", the answer is usually "Probably, but.....".
Which may be a good thing, or the universe might have fallen apart already. I mean, what if that stuff were so easy it could happen almost randomly?
That being said, we can still wish that it weren't quite so f'ing hard.
I'm really hoping I'll never be one of the people who are supposed to comprehend what's happening should we invent it.
Yeah, especially considering that the movie wasn't an advanced course, but only a ... wait for it ... Primer.
You're probably talking about the transpiration cooling that Gary proposed for his Phoenix series of SSTOs. That would have worked even better than nitrogen gas cooling, given the extra heat soaked up by the water flashing to vapor. The transpiration cooling struck me as tricky because of the complex fabrication required (although much more do-able these days than in the '80s) and the need for high-purity coolant so that you don't get residue plugging the transpiration orifices (which were pretty small).
Gary has done some great work on integrated designs, and I'd love to see more tin bent to prove (or find and work out the problems with) the concepts. (Gary strikes me as something of the Preston Tucker of the space transportation biz.)
No patent numbers? "Algorithm" in unreleased code? At least put up a token resistance and ask for details.
We need more responses like Blue Jean Cable's response to Monster when Monster Cable tried something similar.
Wouldn't that be the KAOSYPHER?
The iPhone has an app for that!
Thus making it an eyePhone.
It had four distinct circuits, one for each phoneme ("C", "O", "FF" and "EE"), and a sequencer. You could vary the timing of the whole thing, and the individual frequencies of the phonemes. The "C" and "FF" sounds had a lot of white noise, with the "C" (well, "K") more plosive. The "O" and "EE" were purer waves, each a mix of two frequencies (which could be tweaked). Shorten the sequence timing and increase the frequency of that last "EE" phoneme and it sounded more like "KOFEEP?"
It wouldn't be too hard to reproduce the circuitry -- a handful of tunable oscillators, a couple of noise sources, and a sequencer -- but I think the questioner is more interested in an exact, not just functional, replica.
I remember that machine well -- I must have spent well over an hour on it. I just didn't remember where it was. (I'd thought I'd seen it at one of the World's Fairs, and more probably New York in '65 than Montreal in '67. But it's possible it was at the Science Center -- unless they exhibited elsewhere before that.)
Speech technology was becoming fairly self-contained by mid-70s, so I thought it was quite a bit earlier.
Steam turbines don't care what the source of heat to produce the steam is.
Yeah, actually, they do, because that will affect the temperature of the steam. The temperature (and thus pressure) of the steam affects the optimum design of the turbine. Nuke plants typically operate at a much lower steam temperature/pressure than coal plants, equivalent to or even slightly lower than the low pressure/temperature turbines (which use the steam already used to turn the high pressure turbines) in coal-fired plants.
ISS gets most of its consumables from unmanned Russian Progress capsules. Once the Shuttle stops flying, Progress will be ISS' only resupply.
Not quite. There's also the European ATV, the first of which, Jules Verne, flew in 2008. It has about three times the capacity of a Progress. Oh, and Progress is pressurized, being basically the hull of a Soyuz. It just doesn't have a full life-support system. You may be thinking of the replaced re-entry module, which on Soyuz is of course pressurized but on Progress contains fuel tankage (routed externally so that a leak will not contaminate station atmosphere).
Apollo was barely big enough for 3. Something only a "little" bigger is supposed to hold 7?
Back in Apollo's heyday, when there were a lot of follow-on projects being proposed based on Apollo hardware, there was a design for a six-seat Apollo module.
Do they sit on each other's laps?
More or less (grin). The design called for a second tier of three seats below the existing three (there was actually a fair bit of room back there). I think the result would still have given each astronaut a little more room than the Gemini capsule had, but not by much.
More like designing to a standard set of interfaces between launcher and spacecraft, which is indeed good. Just as Boeing's capsule can launch on Falcon 9 as well as Atlas V and Delta IV, then presumably SpaceX's Dragon capsule could be launched on an Atlas or Delta as well as a Falcon. If one component is ever grounded for an unforseen problem, you've got a fallback position.
It's not even that odd. Having a second source for a critical subsystem makes a lot of sense, and savvy customers tend to encourage their vendors in this direction.
What is going to couple the energy transfer from asteroid to atmosphere more effectively, one big rock or a bunch of little ones with the same net energy? The little ones, of course.
Now, the big rock will make a much bigger splash when it hits, creating quite the fireball -- which is a good thing, since heat radiates proportionally to the fourth power of the temperature difference, so a hot fireball will lose its energy to space a lot faster than a lot of smaller, cooler (but still hot!) ones. Yeah, the immediate vicinity is toast, but a lot of the energy is just, in effect, melting the ashes rather than heating up someplace else.
Or to put it another way (no, not a car analogy): would you rather have your whole body exposed to a temperature of say 400 degrees or one finger exposed to say 10,000? Hurts like hell either way, but the former kills you, the latter doesn't.
1) You shouldn't reuse rockets.
Yeah, you should, because if you use it once and it works, you know it will work again and again (see DC-X). If you build a new one, you won't know until you've flown it.
This of course assumes that the thing is designed to be flown and re-flown without a complete overhaul between each flight -- i.e. like airplanes not like current Shuttle technology. Or you build a new one for each flight, spend a fortune trying to inspect-in quality, and blow up one in thirty or so anyway. The latter is how missiles are designed, not a rational transportation system.
Examining old data has one value and one value alone - verifying that the claim made for the data matches up with the data. [...] Access to raw data for any other reason is pointless.
Hardly. One could analyse the raw data looking for something other than what the original researchers were looking for. There might even be some interesting signal buried in the data that original team, focusing on something else, disregarded as noise. Minute timing errors in, say, solar wind data returned from a spacecraft might turn up some oddity of orbital mechanics, for example. The researcher focusing on the sensor data rather than the timestamps will miss it, but it's all part of the raw data. How many biologists discarded moldy Petri dishes as ruined, without recording that, before Fleming thought to investigate why bacteria didn't grow near the mold?
Or it could prove what I've been saying all along, that Group B is chock full of mouth-breathing knuckle-walkers
That depends on whether or not Group C manages to reproduce A's results, or B's. In the latter case, it would tend to indicate that Group A contains the mouth-breathing knuckle-walkers.
Many of the pedophiles arrested had collections of child porn or erotica.
And 100% of them had, at some point in their life, taken dihydrogen monoxide. The more relevant question is how many of those who have erotica collections (or have drunk H2O, or whatever) have done something arrest-worthy? (Other than having the collection itself.)
Do you have any idea how many people read murder mysteries? Are there really that many potential murderers out there? (Of course there's a broad spectrum between reading Agatha Christie and watching snuff films, just as there is between reading Nabokov and collecting porn photos, but the point remains.)
A lot of authors (and I'm one) would agree with you on the pricing issue -- if not on the "right" to take it for free. Some of them will give it to you if you ask nicely (or visit their website) though.
Author J.A. Konrath has been blogging recently about how much he's been making ($4200 last month) off of his low priced ($1.99, $2.99) e-books on Kindle (books he's selling directly, vs others of his that his publisher is selling at higher prices). Unsurprisingly, lower priced books sell better than higher priced ones -- and in his and a few other authors' cases, they're selling pro-quality, professionally edited stories, not unreadable crud by a newbie author. His view is that the high prices publishers want to charge for e-books is a serious mistake, and in his next book deals he's not going to give e-rights to the publisher unless they fork over some serious (six-figure) cash for them, and a better percentage royalty.
This very much parallels what some bands are doing with distributing their music themselves rather than going through RIAA companies. Indeed the term "indie author" is catching on.
There still needs to be some vetting of an unknown author's work, either by traditional publishing or word of mouth and reviews from early readers, but the change is coming. I'm certainly considering making some of my own work (initially previously-published stuff to which I have e-rights) available that way. Even a little success that way gives a bit more leverage with a traditional publisher (which is still the most profitable route to go and will be for a few more years yet).
don't forget most people still think computers run on magic.
Wait, what? You mean they don't?. Then explain this.
The protons in the LHC are a little closer together than those in interstellar space. Density in interstellar space is about 1 atom per cubic centimeter. I can't readily find a number for the cross-sectional area of the LHC beam, but it is surely less than 1 cm^2 and each ring has 2835 x 10^11 protons over its 27 km length -- or better than 10^8 protons per cubic centimeter.
So no, it's not quite like standing in front of the beam from the LHC, not by a factor of a hundred million.
Star Wars freely stole from^W^W paid homage to everybody. C-3PO is the Maria robot from Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Tattooine is, as you note, Arrakis (they even had what could pass for a sandworm skeleton when the two droids are wandering the desert before being captured by Jawas), Corscant as Trantor. Heck, even the Jedi bear a passing resemblence -- in mission, if not detail -- to Christopher Anvil's Interstellar Patrol (which used advanced tech rather than The Force, and were generally more competent than the Jedi). And that borrowed from Doc Smith's Lensman series. (Indeed, there are similarities between the Lens and The Force. Maybe midichlorians are a kind of micro-Lens.)
Actually I withdraw my correction in the first sentence. If Lucas was paying homage, he would have acknowledged it in some way. All he did was rip them off.
Just wait until the moviegoing public decides that Trantor was just a rip-off of Star Wars' Coruscant. Or more likely, that the whole Empire is a rip-off of Star Wars.
Just something else Lucas will have to answer for.
The Shuttle and frankly every aircraft that fly's must deal with a thrust load and a landing load
"Every aircraft that flies" does not deal with a roughly 30-times empty weight longitudinal load (3 G acceleration at a rather optimistic 90% fuel fraction). Most aircraft (except fighters) don't have a thrust/weight ratio greater than one, let alone thirty.
(Most of the Shuttle's launch load is taken by the External Tank, not the Orbiter. That's a lously comparison.)
The X-33 empty would have been pretty light so the landing load penalty would be pretty small.
Landing gear has to support multiples of the airframe weight because aircraft rarely touch down at a zero vertical speed. That's tough when you have to maintain flying speed too. (Which is why pilots spend so much time practising landings. I know, I am one.)
Also, the X-33 empty would be much heavier than a similar-payload VTVL configuration due to poorer surface-area/volume ratios and the associated heavier structure.
Far smaller than the landing fuel penalty that a VTOL SSTO would have.
No. The "landing fuel penalty" is no worse (and probably less) than the weight of the wings (or aerosurfaces if a lifting body) for a horizontal lander -- wings that are dead weight in a vertical ascent profile. (Worse than dead weight, they also add drag until you're beyond the atmosphere.)
Yes the V Shaped fuel tank would have been a challenge but not as bad of one as you imagine
The V-shaped tank was a challenge. The damn thing kept cracking at the joint. They had to add a lot of weight to reinforce it. And it still had the lousy surface-area to volume (= stucture weight to volume) issue.
An abort wouldn't have to mean the loss of the X-33. Depending on the failure mode the X-33 could transition to horizontal flight and dump fuel just like every airliner on the planet.
Good luck with that. It didn't have the lift for horizontal flight with more than a few percent of fuel load (by which time it's in space). Even if the airframe was intact. In one of the DC-X launches, a build-up of hydrogen gas near the vehicle detonated at launch, damaging the aeroshell to the point where pieces of it were dropping off as the rocket climbed out. The emergency abort was initiated, it stopped ascent, burned off some fuel, and landed perfectly. Try that with something that depends on its shape for lift -- or a safe reentry.
A VTOL SSTO actually has more total loss failure modes than the X-33 does.
Nope. See above. They have roughly similar total loss failure modes (engine explosion, heat shield failure, etc) but for other failures the margins are much broader for VTOL (eg the DC-X example).
Rockwell's Rocketdyne division ground-tested a large-scale linear aerospike years before the X-33 project started. (Also circular aerospikes.)
Other than that, I agree with you. I witnessed one of the DC-X flights. It is truly amazing to see a rocket throttle up its engines, soar to several hundred feet of altitude, and then just stop there and hover before translating sideways and descending, like some invisible giant moving the world's biggest chess piece.
Reusable SSTO does not appear to be technologically or economically viable at this time.
Well, we don't really know because we haven't really tried it yet. The X-33 was a mishmash of technology R&D projects that, realistically, nobody ever expected to fly. The design might have been appropriate for perhaps a third-generation SSTO, not first.
Consider: It had a vertical takeoff, horizontal landing (VTHL) flight profile. This meant two orthogonal load-bearing paths, greatly increasing structure weight. It meant that an aborted launch would result in loss-of-vehicle (compare DC-X's (VTVL) successful abort after an external explosion at launch), requiring that much extra in terms of fail-safe and redundant systems. The V-shaped fuel tank was a structural disaster waiting to happen, with a lousy structure-to-volume ratio and weird load paths at the intersection of the two cylindrical sections. Et bloody cetera.
Nobody has yet made a serious attempt to build the sort of SSTO that Phil Bono, Boeing, Chrysler (back when it was in the aerospace biz), McDonnell-Douglas, General Dynamics, Gary Hudson, Max Hunter, and a host of other rocket scientists and companies have been proposing since the 1960s: a vertical takeoff and landing, circular aerospike, more-or-less conical vehicle. Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin vehicles and a couple of Japanese vehicles come close, but all are so far sub-scale test vehicles and the first Blue Origin vehicle doesn't use an aerospike.