From the YT description:
Launch to orbit in real time Fuel Burn and Staging of the
1) Saturn V
2) Space Shuttle
3) Falcon Heavy
4) Space Launch System (SLS)
Launching from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39

Red = Kerosene RP-1
Orange = Liquid Hydrogen LH2
Blue = Liquid Oxygen LOX

Aint nothing I like more on a hot day than a coool glass of liquid hydrogen.

AlON is fine. I guess my point was that transparent compounds of metals aren't exactly uncommon, and neither is compounds having quite different characteristics to the elements from which they are composed. So it just seems silly to act like they've invented some amazing transparent metal.

Do you call rust iron? "Look at this chassis, its COVERED in iron! It's practically all iron all the way through!" :P

I'm just guessing, but I'm fairly sure the fuel is a relatively small part of the cost of any space vehicle. Isn't it just liquid hydrogen and oxygen? They wouldn't be using solid fuel for landing, which these days is often some treated rubber or aluminum oxide, so also fairly cheap...

...cheap that is, when compared to just tossing the pressure tanks, pumps, high pressure-high temperature lines, multiple moveable nozzles, mixing/reaction chambers, computers to run it all, redundant safety features, guidance, frame, skin, etc. that make up the fragile vehicle that can't be dropped by parachute or other passive means and still be reusable.

Most of those scientific equipment doesn't have list prices on web stores. I would guess $200k+ for new (some are over $1M), depending on the scannable area and resolution. There have been "desktop" models released recently, but no idea how much they cost (still likely more than $50k)

Plus most home users probably would be difficult to get liquid nitrogen and liquid hydrogen delivered (there's a certification process).

"At high speeds this precooler cools the hot, ram compressed air leading to an unusually high pressure ratio within the engine. The compressed air is subsequently fed into the rocket combustion chamber where it is ignited with stored liquid hydrogen. The high pressure ratio allows the engine to continue to provide high thrust at very high speeds and altitudes. The low temperature of the air permits light alloy construction to be employed which gives a very lightweight engine — essential for reaching orbit." —WikiPedia

>> ^deathcow:

They must be talking about using space to get from Europe to Australia, as friction is a real bitch otherwise.

Possibly, although I think its somewhat more likely they'd just be flying at very high altitudes where the atmosphere is very thin.


From what I read on wiki it seems the engine is basically rocket/turbine hybrid. They use liquid hydrogen as fuel but instead of storing oxygen they suck it out of the air. The problem the cooling fixes seems to be related to supersonic airflow. Turbine engines need subsonic airflow to work properly so they use a ram, a cone on the front of the turbine, to slow the airflow before it enters the engine. This heats the air entering the engine up a lot, hot air takes up more space and so its difficult to get enough oxygen to the hydrogen fuel. Cooling the air after it passes over the ram lowers the air pressure and allows more air to pass through the engine. Scramjets approach this problem a different way in that they can operate with supersonic airflow, although they have the limitation of not working subsonic.

Anyway. Its quite fascinating. I don't think we'll be seeing commercial aircraft using this technology anytime soon though. I'd be pretty nervous about flying on something that is basically rocket powered. Space tourism maybe? If it can fly to high altitudes with the turbine and then switch seamlessly to using onboard oxygen it could be a much more efficient way of getting into space without using onboard oxygen the whole way up.

Oh, and RIP Concorde. I used to go to school under their flightpath out of Heathrow. 11am on Wednesdays they used to rattle the windows passing over.

On a side note. It could of been much much much worse. The tanker was an empty Liquid Hydrogen tanker heading back to get another load.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RL-10

I have googled it for you

From other sources

"The Common Extensible Cryogenic Engine, or CECE, is a deep-throttling engine, which means it has the flexibility to reduce thrust from 100 percent down to 10 percent -- allowing a spacecraft to gently land on the lunar surface. The 13,800-pound thrust engine uses extremely cold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen as propellants."