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comment by ThurberMingus

On second thought, you could totally do this by hiring engineers to each 'own' some small component and yelling at them if they look at anything else or the system as a whole.





kleinbl00  ·  832 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I dunno, man. The compartmentalization on this is gonna run into serious issues no matter how small you chop it.

- We need a kinetic object to do 2200m/s in a 250m radius in a vacuum and then release

- We need a 250m radius of vacuum

- we need a 2200m/s release

- we need 450rpm out of a 250m radius

I mean, the Air Force kinda noped out of launching at hypersonic speeds. Of their two attempts, one was a near disaster and the other was a catastrophe. And that was at 80,000 feet where all they had to do was let go. Yeah, you've got stages on rockets but up until recently, doctrine was "throw the bottom one away." I'd have a hard time writing an RFQ for any part of this project, no matter how compartmentalized. Each aspect has some gonzo shit in it like "I need a stadium's worth of hard vacuum" or "I need to release thirteen oil tankers' worth of mass".

ThurberMingus  ·  832 days ago  ·  link  ·  

...Quit worrying about the large scale system, that's not your job. Just parcel out the 33m demo system...

kleinbl00  ·  832 days ago  ·  link  ·  

thermos to 1000 ft