[AR] Re: OT laser propulsion and power satellites
- From: Ian Woollard <ian.woollard@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 23:08:18 +0100
No, not viewgraphs. They went beyond those about 2001.
Actually Skylon's engines, SABRE, do have lab-level working hardware now;
they're about TRL 4-5 on those engines.
And it's not twice as good effective exhaust velocity, it's designed to
give about 6 times (~2,500 seconds or so) up to about 1500 m/s.
Skylon, the airframe itself, is about TRL 3-4; overall nearer 3 perhaps.
But even that's had sub-scale hypersonic wind tunnel testing.
On 21 October 2013 22:02, John Stoffel <john@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Keith> It would take an awful big sea dragon to lift 15,000 tons.
>
> If skylon doesn't have to lift it all in one go, why does Sea Dragon?
>
> Keith> The air breathing phase of a Skylon flight has more than twice
> Keith> the effective propulsion efficiency than the part on rocket,
> Keith> it's even better than the laser heated hydrogen phase.
>
> Note, it is *estimated* to have twice to efficiency. It hasn't flown
> yet or demonstrated anything close to working hardware. View graph
> dreams so far. Any laser propulsion is also dreaming from what I
> read.
>
> Keith> The propulsion laser in GEO shines more or less at right angles
> Keith> to the direction of flight. Takes close to 4000 km to reach
> Keith> orbit. See the picture of a Skylon under laser propulsion.
>
> Laser sounds neat, but I always wonder what happens when it loses lock
> and illuminates something else by accident...
>
>
>
--
-Ian Woollard
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