JohnJamesRambo 3 years ago

http://www.astronautix.com/i/ithacus.html

For people wanting a summary.

  • simne 3 years ago

    Cool! BTW, I think it was 100% real, if resolved issue with returning to base.

    • onychomys 3 years ago

      Pretty much the same problem the military has with their current sniffing around at Starship. Sure, you can deliver 100 tons of cargo to remote Syria in an hour, but then you basically just have to leave the ship there to be buried in the sand. Starships will be cheap, but they're not free.

      • simne 3 years ago

        When Musk made Falcon 9, Russians said "it is the same as Zenit, only with very old engines".

        But in reality revealed, that to make re-usability with reactive landing, need extremely wide engine throttling diapason, because starting with very big weight and need max power, and landing empty, so need very little power.

        Musk solves this with 9 engines, so only 3 used on landing. Russian Zenit is incapable to make so little power to make reactive landing on main engines.

      • simne 3 years ago

        No, Starship, or to be more strict, Musk proposal is very different. First, already existing hardware have much less energy dense. Second, it's engines use another fuel, also much simpler to handle.

        Once I hear idea, to make for S-5 additional "zero" stage with displacement feed engines, and this would be necessary simplification, to make subject idea viable, but it never happen.

simne 3 years ago

:)))

In 1960s defense industry tried to save money flow with such projects.

They had huge troubles, because after 1940s, military spending's constantly reduced, so defense industry have to cut workplaces, some firms just closed.

But there was unpredicted sequel. In 1990s, Russians spend few icbm's, to deliver few hundreds kilograms of mail to Canada. - They have made special container with parachutes and placed it instead of warhead. Then the rocket launched, and in some 20 minutes container got down to ocean about mile from Canada shore.

  • hansword 3 years ago

    > after 1940s, military spending's constantly reduced

    I think your information is incorrect. There was this thing called 'the cold war'. From 1948 on military spending constantly *increased*, when this report was written it was already 200% of the 1948 level.

    See https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Defense_spending.p... for a graphic.

    • simne 3 years ago

      Look carefully, what you post. This is not accounted inflation and gdp change, which are much larger, than these numbers.

  • zx8080 3 years ago

    Can't find about icbm mail delivery. A link would be useful.

    • simne 3 years ago

      Unfortunately, news agencies think this is just curious, so most ignore.

      And my own resources to store/index such things are very limited, looks like my local copy lost when my old hdd broken.

      So if I will find exact links and they alive, I will write. For now I could only say, I'm very serious, this is not fake or joke.