Category Archives: RLV:s

Airbags, parachutes, Rogallo wings and all that

Posted on Sun, 2010-10-17 by gravityloss

NASA of the sixties reminds me of the Armadillo Aerospace of today. Drop tests, I think an F-111 model and various parachute, parawing and Rogallo wing things. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDyGMPHFteE] Airbags, landing rockets, landing gears (Dyna-Soar like rig) [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ia5iWRg4wE&feature=related] Thank you NASA … Continue reading →

Posted in Design, NASA, RLV:s, Spacecraft | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Random video blogging

Posted on Sat, 2010-10-16 by gravityloss

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA0Vwausybg] Modern manufacturing technologies enable strange shapes and could produce unconventional pumps. What is good for small scale rockets if turbines and centrifugal pumps have too much tip losses? [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdBr-dkLf4s] Rotary engines have vastly better power to weight ratios and … Continue reading →

Posted in airplane, engines, Motivation, RLV:s, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Spaceshiptwo – First Glide

Posted on Mon, 2010-10-11 by gravityloss

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDUVe3a496Y&feature=player_embedded] Watch in high res at youtube. White Knight Two doesn’t look so large span after all. Spaceship Two is pretty wide with its outset elevons and the WK2 outer wings need to have the engines so there’s not much … Continue reading →

Posted in Motivation, RLV:s, Suborbital | Leave a comment

Parawings and Rogallo wings, again

Posted on Thu, 2010-10-07 by gravityloss

Inspired by Michel Van (not Scott Lowther as mentioned earlier) at Secret Projects, who ran into the Gemini inflatable Rogallo wing test videos that are now available (not embeddable so linked only). There are parafoil systems for airdropping stuff, though … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Design, industry, RLV:s, Spacecraft, Suborbital | 2 Comments

The Turn-Boost-Glide-Back approach for first stages

Posted on Sun, 2010-09-26 by gravityloss

In a patent by the famous Barnaby Wainfan. EDIT: corrected the link. This patent was filed in 2006 and granted in 2008.

Posted in airplane, Architecture, Art, Design, engines, industry, Launchers, RLV:s, Suborbital | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Rockwell X-33 Pictures!

Posted on Thu, 2010-09-23 by gravityloss

From NASA Langley – they did wind tunnel tests on a model. Lots more pictures of various aerospace projects there too, some of them are quite weird. Thanks to Secret Projects forum for the info! Naturally since Rockwell built the … Continue reading →

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Automotive X-Prize Winners

Posted on Sat, 2010-09-18 by gravityloss

Huh, it always takes a long time to find anything on web pages that are so cluttered up. Here. No idea what the MPGe or miles per gallon equivalent is. EDIT: Here’s ERA’s video (they didn’t win, although they were … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Art, Climate, Design, Energy, engines, Homebuilt, industry, RLV:s | Leave a comment

On Pressure Fed Rockets and Scaling

Posted on Sat, 2010-09-18 by gravityloss

Well, scaling seems to be my pet issue. I recently wrote something not entirely well reasoned in a comment at Paul Breed’s. (For some reason Chrome complains about blogrolling.com malware there so continue if you’re sure you’re safe.) So let’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Design, engines, Launchers, RLV:s, Spacecraft, Suborbital, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Humans Fast, Machines Slow

Posted on Thu, 2010-09-09 by gravityloss

Detach a small capsule with the humans that goes directly to the surface (with only days of life support) and leave the untended craft to do multi-pass aerobraking Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Colonization, Depot, engines, ESA, Global, industry, ISRU, JAXA, Lunar, Models, Motivation, NASA, RLV:s, Science Links, Spacecraft, Transportation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

There's No Such Thing As A Reasonable Price Launch

Posted on Tue, 2010-08-31 by gravityloss

All these people had to get paid. Even when there wasn’t a launch. Well, to be exact: until the money was spent and there weren’t gonna be any more launches, which was a few years from this photo. From the … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Demotivation, industry, Launchers, NASA, RLV:s | 4 Comments