There’s a nice long piece at Air & Space about Mojave. I’m still reading it, so I may have comments later.
4 thoughts on “The Launch Lab”
Comments are closed.
There’s a nice long piece at Air & Space about Mojave. I’m still reading it, so I may have comments later.
Comments are closed.
New guys get assigned to fuel loading
Kind of reminds me of the quote in that Bruce Lee biopic about , “not a Chinaman’s chance.”
Still reading myself.
helium pressure
I assume this is to keep the fuel tanks from collapsing? I’ve been speculating about collapsible fuel bags gravity feeding a typical fuel tank which may then pump feed an engine. Would that work or would it strangle the engine?
Collapsing or just causing backpressure that stops fuel flow.
I had trouble getting past the opening of Stephen Joiner’s article “The Mojave Launch Lab”.
I’m surprised and disappointed that a magazine of A&S’s stature with a long record of promoting the true grit of America’s aeronautical and aerospace entrepreneurs and their achievements would find amusement, even apparent enjoyment, in bashing the Roton.
What happened to the celebrations and cheers of what my current employer calls “confidence in nonsense”? Burt Rutan has always maintained that if you’re going to realize breakthroughs in the engineering arena you have to position yourself, in that precarious void, where the fearful and faint of heart have to be dragged over the finish line.
I don’t recall similar, deriding comments being written about Lockheed Martin’s, $1.3B, X-33 effort that produced some eye-watering launch facilites out by Edwards Air Force Base and a busted composite LOX tank. The Roton, though, was designed, built and flown for less than $8M. The remainder of the company’s $30M budget went into the propulsion side of the house which never saw the light of day. If Rotary Rocket was a “failure” it was not because of the Roton.
Museums across this great country are filled with hardware that stretched the thinking of their time. They are not there because they were financially successful or had large production runs and certainly not to be ridiculed. They are there to stimulate fresh and unfettered ideas and to hopefully reach out to young minds and say there’s still a lot to be tried.
We don’t know all that’s under the sun.