in- atmosphere ion engines

Please ask JP Aerospace after that - but I think that they will have heard of it. Like everyone here.

At 42 km altitude air resistance is very much less than down here at the surface - no airplane is able to fly there because the air is much to thin. And in this section of the message board also it has been said explicitly several times that ramjets, scram jets and airbreathing engines do have their problems at those higher altitudes because of the thinness of the air there.

And the ATO will go up from the Dark Sky Station by using buoyancy first and use ion engines after achieving higher altitude than that where the Dark Sky Station is (or will be).

May be that the ion engine will be used to push to altitude a little bit while using other engines for horizontal movement - but I have problems to imagine that at those high altitudes in that thin air.

Why don't you have a look into their .pdf, into the animation of the ATO, at thier homepage? And why don't you ask and talk to jpowell in their General JP Aerospace Forum?



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Remember that these people are *PLANNING* on taking two or three days to get from Dark Sky to orbit. We're not talking about a launch in the conventional sense of the word here -- "slide" might be a bit more accurate. They're going to be using the absolute minimum engine that they can.

Of course I am aware of it - the .pdf explicitly is speaking of seven days or a week.

But Vendigo seems to consider it to be impossible to achieve the orbit the way JP Aerospace is trying it. He seems to have false informations or a false inage of there approach compared to what they are saying at their homepage, in that .pdf or by the ATO animation.

That the ATO will need a week to achieve the orbit me too causes thoughts and questions.

I revitalized the thread only because they say that they will use an ion engine in the atmosphere - it shows that TerraMrs's idea wasn't that silly but will be tried really . He wasn't off the reality and should invest further work into his thought if he finds it interesting yet.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

It's not my job to seek out the details. You brought the subject up, you present the facts, Ekkehard.

There's buoyancy, and yet no air resistance? Perhaps 1 = 0 for the rest of the concept as well.

That is a good point.

Hello, Vendigo,

the details already are presented under www.jpaerospace.com - a well-known web-adress at this board - and there are www.jpaerospace.com/atohandout.pdf about the ATO program (pages 2 and 6 especially) and www.jpaerospace.com/video/ATO_Animation.wmv .

There is not a single reason why I had to repeat the contents here - it's sufficient to say that these sources exist and that I refer to them. I didn't say that you should or must seek out the details because I already know them since long - I said that you should or must have a look into these documents to check what I said if you don't believe me. To check my issues really is your job.

Not I am the one who present the facts but JP Aerospce is. And the thread has been initiated by TerraMrs and not by me and TerraMrs' idea seems to fit into JP Aerospace's plans - check that out if you doubt it: that really is your job and not the job of anyone else because they are your doubts.

Nobody has said that there is no air resistance - I myself only said that there is less air resistance at those high altitudes than down in low altitudes. Do you identify "less" with "no"? You seem to consider it an analog to "1 = 0" - is there nothing between 1 and 0? Are thinking in blck and white?

Buoyancy decreases with density of air and density of air decreases with altitude and so JP Aersopace will use very very large wings at the ATO. With density of air decreasing resistance of air decreases too. All that is the reason too why SSO can fly like an airplane in lower regions of the atmosphere only - regions much lower than 42 km altitude - the altitude at which the Dark Sky Station will be placed and from where the ATO will go up.

YOU are the one who has to check by the documents I have been mentioning if you want to get objective and logical arguments speaking against JP Aerospace or TerraMrs or me. YOU are seeking arguments against it and so it's YOUR job to seek them out of the documents.



publiusr,

you seem to have simply ignored the posts after Vendigo's post you are responding to. - and it's NOT a good point - JP Aerospace seems to have a design, published the results is discussing them at this message board and so will have done calculations.

You ignored recent posts - and so you are not uptodate sufficiently.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)