From: bondage@frontiernet.net   
      
   H MURDOCH wrote:   
      
      
   > Re other methods of landing - having watched a few sucessful DC-X landings   
   > using rocket power at White Sands, I would nonetheless feel more comfortable   
   as   
   > a passenger gliding down to a runway, than anxiously waiting till the last   
   few   
   > seconds before becoming part of a crater in the ground for the rocket engines   
   > to throttle up.   
      
      Your point's taken, however, pre-shuttle crews took normal parachute   
   deployment for granted (despite Soyuz-1), and aircraft passengers seem   
   to take normal landing gear extension for granted. (That failure is what   
   destroyed DC-X in the end) Given time, and enough successful, routine   
   altitude start of engines, people will get used to it.   
      
      And if there's to be comercial Lunar flight, well, they simply must.   
      
      
   > Granted, there are a lot of tradeoffs that can be argued for or against all   
   the   
   > schemes for getting to and back from space.  But I tend to agree that no one   
   > architecture has yet shown itself to be the *one* best way to go.   
      
     Agreed here, though. Even hypersonic air-breathers to orbit will have   
   a place but, I suspect it will be a specialized, mostly military niche.   
   Not the way most of us will get to LEO.   
      
   > But the fact that a civilian in a privately funded craft got into space I   
   think   
   > will in the long run matter far more than whether his vehicle had wings or   
   > parachutes or airbags or rotors.   
   >   
   > Hank M.   
      
      
   --   
      
      You know what to remove, to reply....   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)