Recent content by maglifter

Cronxeh, let's settle this once and for all by making a tiny little LPG powered tourist blimp together. What do you say?

Cronxeh, you really have to make your LPG powered airplane first, before you give advice to anyone else. That was the deal, remember? :biggrin:

Thanks a lot for your input, seadog Like most contemporary airships, this one would be of the non-rigid kind though. I don't see the problem, there are plenty of very good 5-15 HP electric motors out there, which weigh only a few kilos. To my own calculations, the blimp we're talking about...

Sure, new blimp concepts can land anywhere. For those who're interested, this company seems to be on the brink of delivering. Check them out, they're really cool: http://www.worldskycat.com/ They claim to be significantly cheaper than heavy lift helicopters. Also check their...

We're hearing all those reports about the difficulties of getting stuff to the disaster strucken areas in Aceh. -They need helicopters because the roads are damaged -The main runway for airplanes was closed yesterday because of an accident, making the logistical nightmare even bigger...

One more thing about the fly by wire stuff: -this could well be conceived as being a very "localized", static system, not a universal fly by wire thing -a scanning system would simply map out the terrain around the tourist spot (say in a radius of about 50miles around the spot), and this...

Thanks for your input. I do understand your concerns, but let me add this: the blimp would really fall in the category of leisure things like sports-kiting, parawings, ultra-lights and so on. Gschjetne, you are from Norway. If I am correct, there are a lot of cruises in the fjords, aren't...

Hey thanks for your input, but the idea is more to use this blimp in very well circumscribed environments, basically tourist spots (deserts, grand canyons, rainforests, small islands etc...). These places see no other airtraffic, so that won't be a problem. Moreover, the blimp would have a very...

Drag, I think economically a maglauncher makes sense. As you know, there has been some serious scenario writing on commercial suborbital space tourism (with Space Ship One as the prototypical launch situation), and in virtually *all* scenario's, the "rocket" stage is seen as very high risk...

Thanks for your informed opinion, Kenneth.

Russ, you seem to know quite a bit about this. I don't. Could you help me with this? Suppose you want to launch 3 people from a maglev track up to 100km altitude (merely a parabola with a top of 100km) (the X-prize criteria). -how long should such a track be? -would it make any...

Lots of confusing messages I think some concepts are being confused here: 1. a maglauncher is a simple maglev track, a few miles long (2 - 3 miles) from which a spaceplane is launched, horizontally. We're talking 1 g here. Nothing big. Nasa is building it. (see this interesting presentation...

I didn't know Israel was called Canuckistan. But anyway, the maglauncher is not as crazy as you think, since it will be a practical means to get rid of the first stage of ordinary rockets. ESA and NASA are working on it. Their maglauncher will be 2.4 miles long, just to get rid of the first...

I've always wondered why it wouldn't be possible to use a hypersonic scramjet with maglev launch assist. You build a long maglev tube, make a vacuum of it, and then launch the scramjet. At the end of the tunnel, when the jet has reached mach 5 or 6, you open a diaphragma, and POP, the...

Forget space elevators and pipelines to space, the tramway is far more realistic. A big 1500 mile tube suspended with superconducting cables, floating in the air, reaching 70000ft, containing a maglev track. http://www.startram.com/main.html "StarTram - Ultra Low-Cost To Orbit The...