Space Forum / Space Flight / November 2003

is there someone who
can give me a list of upper stage engines
currently used in launch vehicles?
Thank you very much,

I'm trying to imgaine cheap space flight.  I'd also like to see it
sooner rather than later.  Given this I believe we are limited to
chemical rockets.
What's the cheapest cost to orbit a chemical rocket is likely to

I lay watching Mars the other night, and I thought about how we might
build a ship to take people there. In a lot of ways, we are like
ancient man right after he has built his first boat, yet we are trying
to cross oceans in our flimsy craft.

Liquid propellant rocket engines have the engine on a gimbals frame so
servo motors can move the exhaust a few degrees in the X and Y axis so
the rocket can be steered.
Would a plasma rocket engine have a similar mechanical frame work, or

I have a few dynamical questions, that I was hoping to get some "top
line" answers to:-
Suppose I want to propel a (hypothetical) 300-kg mass orbiter to
rendezvous with the Moon for lunar orbit capture, departing from a

Has anyone read this article?
In an exclusive story, Av Leak claims that Rutan has modified his
spacecraft to improve its stability.
Burt may still make Dec 17th 2003 truely historic with a first private

Just read an article on SpaceFlightNow.com about a new ion engine
being developped and tested with substantial improvements over older
designs, such as the one used in Deep Space 1 [1].
I was wondering how they're considering the attitude control

What's the current state of the art in ion engines?  How well
do they do, and when one adds solar panels (or some other energy source)
and such to the mix, what's the thrust/weight ratio?
Ion engines are the current winner in the very-low-acceleration game, right?

 There has been a lot of work done on Hohman and Bielliptic transfers,
but has there been anything on constant-thrust transfers? Of course, the
"optimum" in this case won't be lowest deltaV, but shortest time for a
given acceleration?

Take 2 Shuttle SRBs, possibly the 5 segment ones that were just
tested.  Hang a Delta 4 core between them (gonna look odd, but no
odder than a Titan 4).  Change the nozzles on the Delta 4 core for an
altitude start.  Possibly add a big 6m fairing for those ISS sized

Good news: inert metal compounds such as platinum coated
titanium rods are sometimes used as the anodes. They
do not corrode in marine environment, so they may
survive in the aft end of the spacecraft.

Can someone recommend me a UK satellite TV station/channel equivalent
to NASA TV which broadcasts space updates in real time?  Is there an
*exclusive* space channel like 'Sky digital' which relays space news
24 hours a day?

The advantage of a pressure fed rocket, as I understand it, is much
cheaper (and somewhat smaller and lighter) engines, but at the cost of
very heavy tanks that hold propellant at 250-300 psi, compared with the
20-30 psi tanks used in pump fed rockets.

Does anyone have access to particulars of Dr. Zubrin's proposed NSWR?
Particularly fuel flow, exhaust temperature and velocity (just the minor
stuff 8-) I think it was published in the Journal of the British
Interplanetary Society quite a while ago.

Firm offers hi-res satellite imagery of crime scenes
The site http://www.iig-associates.com/imagery.html
claims it can find you satellite license-plate photographs of crime scenes
in the past ten years.