solution for t/Space's obstacle?

We can only hope. The primes have name recognition, after all. I wonder if it would make more sense to get some old Blue-Streal blurprints, pick over the bones of Ariane 4 and the Delta II--that looks to be phased out as a sacrificial lamb--and try to build funds showing investors that you have rockets also proven to work.

If you poached enough well-known talent at NASA and one or two primes, I'll bet you could do it.

Kistler is doing that. They have a lot of good engineers--but needed someone like Ekke to keep their books straight.

They are using N-1 engines for that--and I think those things are hexed. Not a single N-1 ever worked. Korolov got in a big fight and when Glushko refused to work on big kero engines for N-1--Korolov went to Kuznetsov instead.

Call me superstitious--but I wouldn't be surprised if Glushko put a curse on those NK-33/43s.

His later Zenit kerolox engines seem to be working just fine for Boeing and Lockmart.

Since I initiated this thread I mostly had no sufficient informations about and not analyued if the CXV would fit into the rule of 80% reuse.

In between this has changed. It is possible that the expendable booster costs around 10 million dollars. This is only 2.5 % of the 400 million dollars the CXV is said to cost - but it would be 50 % of the flight costs.

This moment I am not sure about if the rule means 80% of the total investment or 80 % of the flight costs or if it means 80% of hardware regardless of costs, money and the like.

But it may be that the CXV plus booster wouldn't fulfill the rules.



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

That is a safe bet. The 747 can only take so much aloft--and having landing gear on stilts will be a problem.

Your grasp of mathematics is quite formidable. Perhaps you could compare the current t/Space vehicle with a fictional rocket based on the AN-225's maximum payload, and see if that helps.

I thought over my doubts in between - taking into account that the focus of the ASP is on reusability.

The 80%-rule is meant to define one of the minimum requirements to be met for being called reusable. "Reusable" in turn refers to the vehicle.

So 80% will NOT mean 80% of the flight costs - it will mean 80% of the total investment or of the hardware.

So it looks to me as if t/Space still could fulfill the rules if they develop a CXV-derived vehicle completely financed privately.

...



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

Obviously there is success in the development of QuickReach: www.airlaunchllc.com/News.htm .

This added to the drop-tests Scaeld Composits has done regarding the CXV as well as the air-launch and to the chance that the increased WK2 for Virgin Galactic could carry the CXV with its fueled booster perhaps t/Space and their CXV might be a good competitor for the ASP.



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

A flight test with a real payload is what is needed before any kind of speculation.

Delta II and R-7 have such proven track records that it is possible to forget engineering for the moment and look at the launch vehicles in terms of their economic performance.

It is far too early to apply the Dismal Science to something we don;'t know can even fly yet.