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.
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.
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.
> 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.
http://www.astronautix.com/i/ithacus.html
For people wanting a summary.
Cool! BTW, I think it was 100% real, if resolved issue with returning to base.
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.
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.
:)))
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.
> 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.
Look carefully, what you post. This is not accounted inflation and gdp change, which are much larger, than these numbers.
Can't find about icbm mail delivery. A link would be useful.
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.