[AR] Re: Ozone layer was Re: Removing Coking Deposits
- From: Henry Vanderbilt <hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2016 10:48:16 -0700
On 9/27/2016 10:16 AM, Henry Spencer wrote:
On Tue, 27 Sep 2016, Henry Vanderbilt wrote:
... the main reason [SSTO] has never been done is that nobody has
ever been able to get adequate funding to *try*.
I would amend that last statement to "nobody *competent* has ever been
able to get adequate funding to try", in light of X-33.
Well, but X-33 wasn't an SSTO, just a tech demo for the hypothetical
VentureStar SSTO... which it was coming to resemble less and less as
time went on. And VentureStar most definitely didn't get funded.
(Granted, the money sunk into X-33 could probably have produced an SSTO
if it had been given to the right people, but it wasn't.)
You're quibbling, citing what X-33 ended up as and ignoring the original
intent. But then, you're conceding my "nobody competent" with "if it
had been given to the right people, but it wasn't", so let's just look
at whether X-33 was a "try".
X-33 started out as a DC-X follow-on program to further prove reusable
SSTO rockets practical via high-performance (near-orbital)
reusable-rocket flight demonstrators. It only became a
single-stage-to-parts-storage dead end after Lockmart edged out the
proven-competent MacDac team and likely-IMO-competent Rockwell team,
then (with much MSFC help) botched it far beyond our worst nightmares.
Had X-33 been competently executed, an operational SSTO program was
intended to - would very likely have (nothing's ever certain, of course)
followed.
Henry
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