RE: starship-design: Cheap Access to Space

["L. Parker" <lparker@cacaphony.net>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: KellySt@aol.com [mailto:KellySt@aol.com]
> Sent: Sunday, November 10, 2002 2:14 PM
> To: lparker@cacaphony.net; starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu
> Subject: Re: starship-design: Cheap Access to Space
>
>
> >It was FLYING.
>
> But it was a long way from orbital ops.  And Boeing likely
> wouldn't sell.

It was part (actually, the first) of the DC series and was never meant to
actually reach orbit. Nevertheless, it was under budget, on time and showed
actual promise of becoming a real system someday. Its only problem was that
it wasn't sexy. OBTW, McDonnell Douglas was the contractor and not
surprisingly, it was managed by the Air Force at first.



> Actually it was closer to a thousanth those durring a shuttle
> flight.
>
> The estimates were a full production DC-X like SSTO would
> take 100 -200 man
> days of labor to turn around between flights.  Suttle takes
> over a thousand
> man years!!!

The DC-XA performed a 24 turn around between flights just before it was
cancelled. They must have pulled one heck of an all nighter!

Lee