Nice article. It sure would be fun to work with them.
nice article but really short on basic specs.
They are doing it right. First develop a good engine, then design your space plane around it.
Belfiore has been reporting accurately, fairly, and yet sympathetically on Newspace for years now. I’m always pleased with his work. I hadn’t quite realized how unique Lynx is until he pointed out that we’re the only horizontal takeoff rocket-only suborbital entry. Certainly it’s not a huge physics challenge to get to 100 km without assist (the first stages of almost all orbital systems do so easily), but as a system architecture choice we do seem unique.
I like our winged rocket takeoff because it has no black zones- we can survive a total propulsion failure at any time after engine light, either rejecting the takeoff if the abort is early, landing straight ahead if after rotation, turning to the crossing runway a few seconds later, or returning to the takeoff runway a bit after that. Since I’m going to be in the right seat on more than one flight, this seems important to me 🙂
66 total flights of the Ez-Rocket and X-Racer were quite informative. The Lynx will prepare us for designing an orbital system, and man will THAT be fun!
This morning I commented on a post at Selenian Boondocks on the DARPA XS-1 challenge, proposing a vertical takeoff with the rocket oriented horizontally, followed by a quick rotation to vertical, and with a similar landing sequence. It’s an odd architecture so I don’t know if the idea will gain any traction, but I suggested using upscaled XCOR engines attached along the sides of a Falcon 9 booster as a development step.
The XCOR blog has been alive the last two weeks with daily posts about Lynx. Check it out:
http://www.xcor.com/blog/
Brian is a doing a great job.
That’s a nice blog. I’ve got it bookmarked.
Nice article. It sure would be fun to work with them.
nice article but really short on basic specs.
They are doing it right. First develop a good engine, then design your space plane around it.
Belfiore has been reporting accurately, fairly, and yet sympathetically on Newspace for years now. I’m always pleased with his work. I hadn’t quite realized how unique Lynx is until he pointed out that we’re the only horizontal takeoff rocket-only suborbital entry. Certainly it’s not a huge physics challenge to get to 100 km without assist (the first stages of almost all orbital systems do so easily), but as a system architecture choice we do seem unique.
I like our winged rocket takeoff because it has no black zones- we can survive a total propulsion failure at any time after engine light, either rejecting the takeoff if the abort is early, landing straight ahead if after rotation, turning to the crossing runway a few seconds later, or returning to the takeoff runway a bit after that. Since I’m going to be in the right seat on more than one flight, this seems important to me 🙂
66 total flights of the Ez-Rocket and X-Racer were quite informative. The Lynx will prepare us for designing an orbital system, and man will THAT be fun!
This morning I commented on a post at Selenian Boondocks on the DARPA XS-1 challenge, proposing a vertical takeoff with the rocket oriented horizontally, followed by a quick rotation to vertical, and with a similar landing sequence. It’s an odd architecture so I don’t know if the idea will gain any traction, but I suggested using upscaled XCOR engines attached along the sides of a Falcon 9 booster as a development step.