[AR] Re: 3 no 4 no 5 legs.
- From: "John Dom" <johndom@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2016 14:15:54 +0100
George Herbert wrote on 210116:
Dawn or New Horizons (Ceres/Pluto) are several orders of magnitude
more sophisticated and enlightening for humanity than anything SpaceX
ever accomplished.
I don't know what you are basing your assessment of the sophistication of
New Horizons on... does not appear to bear scrutiny.
The providing us with pictures of Ceres and Pluto up close require none of
your "scrutiny". For many, not only astronomers, it was a revelation. I for
instance had been wondering about those pictures for years.
It was not a simple mission, but of necessity (time, power, mass) it was a
relatively simple spacecraft. What cost was time and its one-off nature, of
both instruments and flight systems.
It was the idea and the making it happen to go where no one has been before.
Next take pictures of those unknown worlds. What could be more
sophisticated? Not so much in the hardware but in the purpose: exploration.
And yes, not to be naive, I guess only 1 % of the people cared about those
pictures.
I suspect any generation of the Merlin engine was more sophisticated all
told.
To my amateur mind, the fairly small Merlin 1D may be ingenious and
reliable. But requiring nine of them for a Falcon launch is NOT. Going for
too tiny motors and clustering them for larger payloads is typically the
result of haste and/or lack of funds.
Reminds me of the USSR N1 design haste. It had the then sophisticated NK-15s
aboard but required THIRTY of them in the first stage. Ended badly.
As to the much larger Merlin 2 of the future, I could not find test status.
jd
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