Don't you just love "prototype" pictures like this?
It's such a drag when there's people in the photo to ruin the perspective of the camera angle, revealing it as a 1/4 scale RC model. I much prefer this kind, which keeps the fantasy alive.
I presume Greg intentionally wrote his title to say something about the article. I would have thought it insane anyway; the economics can't possibly make sense for any sort of cargo or passenger service. Even "just" supersonic probably entails a 3x fuel penalty, so hypersonic will incur possibly 75x fuel penalty.
although Elon (or Elon-touters) was musing that BFR (or starship booster as it is now, I think) could do point-to-point trips across the globe. Possibly only practical for freight, and possibly military freight at that).
Also Hyper sonic would be probably be at sub-orbital altitudes where drag is a smaller problem (and finding enough oxygen is a much bigger problem).
another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?
Hard to imagine any freight, military or otherwise, that would be needed in 45 minute flight time that wouldn't also be needed in bulk quantities. What ever it is needs to justify spending a few million dollars
TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
I can see military liking an immediate response ... remember the Falklands (and the admiral saying "no" to Maggie, twice !). The issue I can see is landing in unprepared "fields" ... oh, and having a rocket ready to go.
another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?
I can see military liking an immediate response ... remember the Falklands (and the admiral saying "no" to Maggie, twice !). The issue I can see is landing in unprepared "fields" ... oh, and having a rocket ready to go.
I'm not sure that's not just rewarding crappy logistical planning, since that presumes that we continually forget to pack the mission critical components for in-field replacement when we deploy, and they break immediately. It took months to deploy for the first Irag war, because it wasn't just a question of getting troops in place, but also supplies, repair equipment, repair depots, etc. Moreover, trying to get a hypersonic vehicle to land like a plane is going to require a runway, ground support, etc. The relatively tiny Chinese hypersonic payload flown last year required a Redstone-class booster, so it's not something that that you can set up lickety-split; erecting the booster, fueling, etc., all require time overhead.
TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
My thoughts for marketing a supersonic or a hypersonic transport was make it a limited volume / high prestige purchase, because outside of missiles it just doesn't make fiscal sense. 50 Units would probably be sufficiently large to prevent anyone else entering the market, given your pool of buyers is about 2,208 (billionaires in the world). Buying a Gen 1 airframe (first 10 units) gets you the right to return it & upgrade to a Gen 2 air-frame when they get built, etc etc.
Landing a hypersonic vehicle anywhere you want is easy - pack a parachute. If it can work on Mars it can work on Earth.
Getting it to fly out again - that's a different problem.
No need to wait - fuel them up at the start of the effort. It worked for Minuteman. Or go solid fuel booster.
Even so, technical problems or no, it's not clear that a single turn-the-tide item will exist.
Best use would be a billionaire needing a donor heart and lungs and liver, all at the same time. And then the ethics of magically finding a match are in play because that would be too large a coincidence.
The minimum travel time you could get, realistically, is ~90 minutes (ballistic trajectory). You don't need a fancy hypersonic propulsion vehicle, just a (used) ICBM and a ton or so of plywood sheeting for a heat shield...and a parachute if your package is "delicate".
