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Scarlett and Ironclad wrote:Campermon,...a middle aged, middle class, Guardian reading, dad of four, knackered hippy, woolly jumper wearing wino and science teacher.
Ironclad wrote:This was manned, I gather
Made of Stars wrote:They were using a much more powerful solid rocket fuel this time, apparently.
On Sept. 27, 1956, Apt became the first person to fly faster than three times the speed of sound. The engine burned slightly longer than expected and Apt flew a near perfect flight profile, allowing him to reach a speed of 2,094 mph (Mach 3.196). Elation was short lived. For some reason, Apt initiated a sharp turn back toward Edwards. This resulted in a control divergence known as inertial coupling. The X-2 began to tumble uncontrollably. Apt jettisoned the escape capsule, but was unable to extract himself before it struck the ground. Apt's death cast a shadow over the most spectacular achievement of the program.
MarkS wrote:Thoughts are with their families. But it's an important cause. Perhaps the most important.
Macdoc wrote:I wonder if they ever considered making it effectively a three stage with JATO style solid fuel rockets on the space plane that would fall away ( ala the shuttle ) and then the main plane engine would kick in as the "third" stage.
Seems to me it's a lot to ask of a small airframe to accelerate from jet speeds to orbital speed on fuel within it.
I mean the military has had a lot of experience with the small rocket planes and never got them to orbit ( that we know of ).
Macdoc wrote:You'd still be riding donkey's if it wasn't for the early adopters paying for "thrill rides" in new fangled machines and even faster horses.
Macdoc wrote:You'd still be riding donkey's if it wasn't for the early adopters paying for "thrill rides" in new fangled machines and even faster horses.
Now it is clear that anyone working with rocket fuels is outstandingly mad. I don't mean garden-variety crazy or a merely raving lunatic. I mean a record-shattering exponent of far-out insanity.
There are, after all, some chemicals that explode shatteringly, some that flame ravenously, some that corrode hellishly, some that poison sneakily, and some that stink stenchily. As far as I know, only liquid rocket fuels have all these delightful properties combined into one delectable whole.
Well, John Clark worked with these miserable concoctions, and survived all in one piece. What's more, he ran a laboratory for seventeen years, that played footsie with these liquids from hell, and never had a time-lost accident.
VK-machine wrote:Macdoc wrote:You'd still be riding donkey's if it wasn't for the early adopters paying for "thrill rides" in new fangled machines and even faster horses.
I can't think of any example where that is true.
Military applications have often been important. Of course, the same is true for boring commercial applications.
Take the example of (modern) rocketry. First tinkerers play around with it, then comes massive military funding perfecting the technology, then commercial satellites and their routine launches, and finally you have stuff like this.
This "space ship" is supposed to reach over 100km for a few seconds with a few passengers. Wheeee!
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