According to the Guiness Book of Whirled Records,
The vehicle that got the worst fuel economy was the first stage of the Saturn V rocket. It got the something like 5 1/2 inches per gallon at liftoff.
I'ld be willing to bet the CSM (command and service module) sitting atop this beast had one of the best fuel economies. After all it carried enough fuel to get from the moon back to earth, and it wasn't all that big.
You should not be using SAE (inch) wrenches with metric bolts or visa-versa. On an automobile, I can tell (not by looking) whether I should be using a 13 mm wrench or a 1/2 in wrench. Try using the metric first as most bolts on most cars are metric. If it doesn't fit right (feels slack), then try the SAE wrench.
(1/2 inch == 12.7mm) so the two wrenches are close in size, but not quite enough that you should use a 13 mm wrench on a 1/2 in bolt. A good 1/2 in. wrench will not fit on a 13mm bolt.
Re:First it is officially metre not meter
on
Our Friend, The Meter
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Suppose I do want to know how heavy a liter of petrol is. I look up the density of petrol in a book someplace, low and behold it's given in gm/cc. Now gm/cc is the same as kg/liter. I've got my answer.
Now how much would a gallon of the stuff weigh. Being that the density is given in reference using the metric units (gm/cc) I'll have do do a conversion. After about 10 minutes of thinking, and knowing a gallon of water (density 1 gm/cc) weighs about 8.3 pounds, I multiply the density by 8.3 to get the weight of a gallon of the substance. Not too bad, I guess, but not as straightforward as the metric system.
Hell, we could have pointed a DOD satellite at it for a look.
This was requested by the engineers on flight control. Some how the communications between NASA management and DOD got fouled up and the DOD people never got the request. So after nasa engineers requested the photos, their managers told them that DOD had denied their request. I'm not exactly on the details.
o-ring problem that was wilfully ignored by engineers, It actually was the managers that ignored the problem. The engineers at Thiokol had voiced objections to the launch.
The Columbia disaster was the result of the same managment mentality. -- 'It's worked before, no reason it shouldn't work again.' Even though the engineers had voiced concerns that the problem with the peeling insulation on the tank should be fixed.
I'ld have to seriously disagree. The key feature of Rutan's design that allows it to work is the 'feathering' it does as it reenters the atmosphere. This is truly a Rutan innovation. When SSO feathers, the whole back section of the wings fold upwards. (See pictures on their website, once its no longer slashdotted.) I really don't think the vehicles are shaped anywhere close at all, especially when you consider aerodynamics. The materials are completely different, aluminum alloy vs composite. The engines would have been different - hybrid vs liquid.
The navigation and control electronics is certainly different.
Nope No comparison between the two. SpaceShipOne is clearly the work of Rutan. Rutan may have gotten inspiration from other NASA work, but definitely not from the vehicle you list.
You're correct up to a point. You really do want to get to orbital velocity as quickly as possible, for the reasons you state. Once you have orbital velocity, you're free to accelerate as quickly or as slowly as you want. But you might as well accelerate quickly, you'll get to the destination faster.
You definitely do not want to sit around hoovering on your engines.
, once you are in space, without having to worry about air resistance, it's trivially easy to build up that extra velocity. Your post makes it sound like getting to Mach 3 is trivial and they need to put in eight times the work to reach LEO. This is simply not true.
No grandparent is probably closer to being correct.
At the top of the flight, SSO was about 100km above the earth with no radial velocity and essentially no tangential velocity. The escape velocity needed from this state is still more than the orbital velocty at 100 km. That is the additional energy needed to escape the gravitaional pull of the earth is still more than the additional energy to needed to get it into a circular orbit. Now maybe you could start from the top of that orbit, with an amout of fuel 4 to 8 times the amount required for this flight and get enough speed for orbiting. But wait a minuite, you've increased the mass that needs to be lofted to this heght by a factor of say 3 -6. That means you'ld need to have initially double that amount when you lauch from White Knight to get SS one up to that 100km height. In other words you're talking at least 7 or 8 times the fuel to begin with. The amount of fuel required to reach a given velocity grows exponentially (not linearly) with the velocity. (kind of sucks, doesn't it).
The amount of grants that were available 20 years ago was way more than it is today. Back then, grants would have paid pretty much your entire education if you were fairly smart and quite poor. Not so today. You'll be lucky if they pay 1/2 of what you need for college. You'll have to line up loans for the remainder. Your statements about grants are not relevant for the college situation today.
That reminds me back about 1980 when Xerox received the prestigeous Malcom Baldridge Quality award. They produced lots of documentation conerning their proceedures and quality. Their products at the time stunk like a skunk. Their copiers would constantly break down. If you saw you a Xerox copier somewhere, 80% of the time it would be broken, they were that bad. One of their printer models was so bad it couldn't even pull the paper through the printer without it jamming (pin feed paper) and it's print speed and capabilties were lower than anything I've seen before or since. Really, really bad equipment.
Do they make Tang(tm) anymore? For those unfamiliar, Sunny D tastes a lot like Tang.
Tang is/was a powder that you mixed with water and was at one time marketed as the drink that astronauts drank in space.
Okay, you've read this line of post's clear down to this level, but you haven't looked a the link. I guess I can let you in on the joke. The solid portion of the rocket fuel is a rubber compound. The oxidizing gas is nitrous oxide (laughing gas). Hence the subject of the main thread
Let me bounce this off of you...
And the line
You'll get a laugh out of this.
It's merely a scaling problem. More propellant = more delta-V.
Except for one problem, the delta-V does not scale linearly with the amount of propellant. You get less and less bang for your buck as the final velocity increases (due to having to overcome gravity). This is why you can't get into orbit from a stationary ground launch with a single stage rocket.
You'll be happy to know the Space Shuttles have been grounded for quite some time.
You're right though, they've never been economical. The nonreusable rockets that would replace the shuttle are much less costly to launch. The original estimates for amount of rework the shuttles would need between launches was grossly underestimated. I think they originally had plans for something like 1 or 2 launches per month. After the first few launches, the mistake of basing the future of America's manned space missions on the shuttle was pretty well recognized. NASA has been trying to make the best of a very bad decision for the last 20 years.
So you've looked at the article and know its not the powdered aluminum and amonium perchlorate used in the SRBs for the shuttle. You seem to be a bit sleepy, maybe a whiff of that rocket fuel will make you feel better.
Well its off to the dentist. Then I'll be stopping by the local junkyard to pick up some old tires.
Gonna build me a rocket.....
Did anyone else read the article about the type of rocket fuel that Space Ship One uses? It's a solid fueled rocket with a gas oxidizer. I'm sure you'll get a laugh out of it. Here's the link
When Pascal came out, it lacked a library of supporting functions, unlike the 'C' with the standard UNIX library. The proponents of Pascal were rather oblivious to the problem of using the language in a lot of practical applications.
With 'C' and the supporting libraries you had interprocess communication, serial I/O, and better control of file I/O. Remember also back in those days that you could not link 'C' and Pascal modules together.
When managers made plans to use Pascal on projects and the projects encountered major problems because of the limitations of the language, you can bet people were upset and bitter at those who had hawked the language as the best thing since sliced bread.
Certainly Delphi doesn't have those problems. I think Delphi is a great programming environment, but alas, like you, it's pretty much relegated for stuff I do for fun.
Since they included rexx, sh and bash on the chart, they could have included JCL and others as well. VAX -VMS had a good command line intrepreter. Other OS's
did as well. Maybe they left out JCL because it was the worst thing that ever happened to computers.
APL - Now there's a language that had a lot of influence on todays languages. You'll note that today's languages are pretty much the exact opposite of this one.
How many of you out there are familiar with the one line programs of APL, complete with the cryptic runes?
Slashdot Mirror
According to the Guiness Book of Whirled Records, The vehicle that got the worst fuel economy was the first stage of the Saturn V rocket. It got the something like 5 1/2 inches per gallon at liftoff. I'ld be willing to bet the CSM (command and service module) sitting atop this beast had one of the best fuel economies. After all it carried enough fuel to get from the moon back to earth, and it wasn't all that big.
You should not be using SAE (inch) wrenches with metric bolts or visa-versa. On an automobile, I can tell (not by looking) whether I should be using a 13 mm wrench or a 1/2 in wrench. Try using the metric first as most bolts on most cars are metric. If it doesn't fit right (feels slack), then try the SAE wrench.
(1/2 inch == 12.7mm) so the two wrenches are close in size, but not quite enough that you should use a 13 mm wrench on a 1/2 in bolt. A good 1/2 in. wrench will not fit on a 13mm bolt.
I live in N. Iowa 35 degrees is hot 25 degrees is nice 5 degrees is chilly -15 degrees is cold -25 degrees is frigid
Usually spelled "spelled" make it correct.
Suppose I do want to know how heavy a liter of petrol is. I look up the density of petrol in a book someplace, low and behold it's given in gm/cc. Now
gm/cc is the same as kg/liter. I've got my answer.
Now how much would a gallon of the stuff weigh. Being that the density is given in reference using the metric units (gm/cc) I'll have do do a conversion. After about 10 minutes of thinking, and knowing a gallon of water (density 1 gm/cc) weighs about 8.3 pounds, I multiply the density by 8.3 to get the weight of a gallon of the substance. Not too bad, I guess, but not as straightforward as the metric system.
Any landing you make on a runway is a superb landing. (even though it might be the wrong runway)
Hell, we could have pointed a DOD satellite at it for a look. This was requested by the engineers on flight control. Some how the communications between NASA management and DOD got fouled up and the DOD people never got the request. So after nasa engineers requested the photos, their managers told them that DOD had denied their request. I'm not exactly on the details.
o-ring problem that was wilfully ignored by engineers,
It actually was the managers that ignored the problem. The engineers at Thiokol had voiced objections to the launch.
The Columbia disaster was the result of the same managment mentality. -- 'It's worked before, no reason it shouldn't work again.' Even though the engineers had voiced concerns that the problem with the peeling insulation on the tank should be fixed.
I'ld have to seriously disagree. The key feature of Rutan's design that allows it to work is the 'feathering' it does as it reenters the atmosphere. This is truly a Rutan innovation. When SSO feathers, the whole back section of the wings fold upwards. (See pictures on their website, once its no longer slashdotted.) I really don't think the vehicles are shaped anywhere close at all, especially when you consider aerodynamics. The materials are completely different, aluminum alloy vs composite. The engines would have been different - hybrid vs liquid. The navigation and control electronics is certainly different. Nope No comparison between the two. SpaceShipOne is clearly the work of Rutan. Rutan may have gotten inspiration from other NASA work, but definitely not from the vehicle you list.
You definitely do not want to sit around hoovering on your engines.
No grandparent is probably closer to being correct.
At the top of the flight, SSO was about 100km above the earth with no radial velocity and essentially no tangential velocity. The escape velocity needed from this state is still more than the orbital velocty at 100 km. That is the additional energy needed to escape the gravitaional pull of the earth is still more than the additional energy to needed to get it into a circular orbit. Now maybe you could start from the top of that orbit, with an amout of fuel 4 to 8 times the amount required for this flight and get enough speed for orbiting. But wait a minuite, you've increased the mass that needs to be lofted to this heght by a factor of say 3 -6. That means you'ld need to have initially double that amount when you lauch from White Knight to get SS one up to that 100km height. In other words you're talking at least 7 or 8 times the fuel to begin with. The amount of fuel required to reach a given velocity grows exponentially (not linearly) with the velocity. (kind of sucks, doesn't it).
The amount of grants that were available 20 years ago was way more than it is today. Back then, grants would have paid pretty much your entire education if you were fairly smart and quite poor. Not so today. You'll be lucky if they pay 1/2 of what you need for college. You'll have to line up loans for the remainder. Your statements about grants are not relevant for the college situation today.
That reminds me back about 1980 when Xerox received the prestigeous Malcom Baldridge Quality award. They produced lots of documentation conerning their proceedures and quality. Their products at the time stunk like a skunk. Their copiers would constantly break down. If you saw you a Xerox copier somewhere, 80% of the time it would be broken, they were that bad. One of their printer models was so bad it couldn't even pull the paper through the printer without it jamming (pin feed paper) and it's print speed and capabilties were lower than anything I've seen before or since. Really, really bad equipment.
Do they make Tang(tm) anymore? For those unfamiliar, Sunny D tastes a lot like Tang. Tang is/was a powder that you mixed with water and was at one time marketed as the drink that astronauts drank in space.
Okay, you've read this line of post's clear down to this level, but you haven't looked a the link. I guess I can let you in on the joke. The solid portion of the rocket fuel is a rubber compound. The oxidizing gas is nitrous oxide (laughing gas). Hence the subject of the main thread
Let me bounce this off of you...
And the line
You'll get a laugh out of this.
Except for one problem, the delta-V does not scale linearly with the amount of propellant. You get less and less bang for your buck as the final velocity increases (due to having to overcome gravity). This is why you can't get into orbit from a stationary ground launch with a single stage rocket.
You're right though, they've never been economical. The nonreusable rockets that would replace the shuttle are much less costly to launch. The original estimates for amount of rework the shuttles would need between launches was grossly underestimated. I think they originally had plans for something like 1 or 2 launches per month. After the first few launches, the mistake of basing the future of America's manned space missions on the shuttle was pretty well recognized. NASA has been trying to make the best of a very bad decision for the last 20 years.
Well its off to the dentist. Then I'll be stopping by the local junkyard to pick up some old tires. Gonna build me a rocket.....
Did anyone else read the article about the type of
rocket fuel that Space Ship One uses? It's a solid fueled rocket with a gas oxidizer. I'm sure you'll get a laugh out of it.
Here's the link
I remember seeing this before. It's easier to read than O'Reilly's copy as well.
With 'C' and the supporting libraries you had interprocess communication, serial I/O, and better control of file I/O. Remember also back in those days that you could not link 'C' and Pascal modules together.
When managers made plans to use Pascal on projects and the projects encountered major problems because of the limitations of the language, you can bet people were upset and bitter at those who had hawked the language as the best thing since sliced bread.
Certainly Delphi doesn't have those problems. I think Delphi is a great programming environment, but alas, like you, it's pretty much relegated for stuff I do for fun.
I thought I saw PL/I squeeking in there somewhere. There was a branch off to PL/M as well. I took a course in PL/I once.
Actually, that's been true only for the last 25 years. Before then it was....
"but it worked when I ran it on the big mainframe."
Since they included rexx, sh and bash on the chart, they could have included JCL and others as well. VAX -VMS had a good command line intrepreter. Other OS's did as well. Maybe they left out JCL because it was the worst thing that ever happened to computers.
APL - Now there's a language that had a lot of influence on todays languages. You'll note that today's languages are pretty much the exact opposite of this one.
How many of you out there are familiar with the one line programs of APL, complete with the cryptic runes?