Space Forum / Space Policy / August 2007

Hard landings on Mars are easy; soft landings are very hard indeed.
I've been doing some scaling estimations for Martian descent models, and it
looks like the maximum risk benefit against descent failure comes with the
lowest-mass vehicles.  This matches only roughly aginst the ...

    This week's Carnival of Space is up:
http://www.universetoday.com/
    Ken Murphy has done a great job of gathering
lots of links about getting into space.

I did some calculations on current ion engines, and it's rather ugly.
Why would anyone say ion engines are weak? In that custom calculation
the engine had 7 tonnes of thrust. Yes it's freaking tonnes. Add to
that 4000 s ISP, and space warships are realizable with current

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/27/spaceport.blast/index.html
Part of the above article:
  According to Rutan, the blast occurred during a test
  involving nitrous oxide flowing through fuel injectors.

To get off earth's surface & achieve orbit, a rocket must first get
above the atmosphere. I've heard this takes about 2 km/sec and is known
as the gravity penalty.
I would guess a ship leaving the surface of Mars would also need to get

That was a Poltergeist that attacked that Shuttle,happened on the
ground,just before take off. It was not Ice it was brimstone,quiet a
large chunk,had a porous dark surface.
Its some old hallucinated Vietnam

We have discovered the earths psychological infrastructure has been
breached by evil.
We have a network of beings attempting to rectify the
problem.

Hello Everybody. Can I talk about my newly launched website in this
group?
My website is for entrepreneurs, investors and participants to evolve
innovative ideas in a competitive environment.

Greenhelm Engineering is looking for volunteers who wish to make a
difference by applying their engineering skills. To get involved in
the Greenhelm projects or to learn more about the organization, please
visit www.greenhelm.com .

Some people are really going to be whining about this.
23 August 2007
Missile Launch to Support Boost Phase Data Collection Experiment
Successfully Completed

The article at:
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckS
cript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blo
g%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3ad7e9abf2-d398-4127-9ce3-75b0c79ce
86e
includes the following ...

Sheesh, can't NASA come up with some kind of detachable, desposable cloak or
shield for the shuttle to protect it from frozen "foam" ice from hitting
during launch?
-- Ken from Chicago

http://spacex.com/updates.php#Falcon9Update081507
Many pictures and much eye candy; nice video of a Merlin
test firing with an interesting startup--green flame from
the TEA/TEB? igniter, and intriguing startup and shutdown

From NASA Watch:
  Editor's note: The following was posted by Rand Simberg
  on his "Transterrestrial Musings" blog. Yes, I guess it
  is still funny for some sickos to make jokes about more

in my humble opinion and pardon my grammar ,
a) the fact that Senator Lieberman and other neocons in DC insist that
Pratt& Whitney be the sole provider of high power turbofan engines for
the new F-35 as well as F-22,etc.,its not only troublesome and