Quote:
Originally Posted by Bear Islander
I'm not taking the space shuttle. You are comparing apples and elephants.
Spaceship One used 594 pounds of fuel (solid rubber). That is the same weight as 99 gallons of gasoline. I don't think they have released all the specs on Spaceship Two yet, but the weight is about 3 times as much so figure 297 gallons of gasoline. The Nor-Tech's have 300, 360 or 400 gallon tanks.
I will ride just once, my share of the fuel is about the same weight as 37 gallons of gas.
Now go figure the fuel for a family of 4 to fly to Disney World.
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BI,
You really need to read up a little and know what it is your talking about before you start making comparisons between a boat and a spaceship. while I do think your a pretty smart guy, your share of the fuel to required get your passenger flight into space aboard Spaceship Two is alot more than 37 gallons of Nitrous Oxide and Rubber! You originally divided by 8 (the total number of people Spaceship Two can carry aloft, but there are only 6 Passengers, so you should divide by 6 instead of 8 for your calculations)
What you fail to mention is that Spaceship Two is carried aloft to approx 50000 Feet altitude by the mothership White Knight Two. White Knight Two is powered by 4 Pratt & Whitney PW308A turbofans, producing 6900lbs of thrust (@takeoff) each for a total of 27,600lbs of thrust. The equation to convert thrust to horsepower is at best complicated. Here is a link that explains it in detail. But needless to say its WAY more than that 1700 hp Nortech!
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question...on/q0195.shtml
Its a safe bet that White Knight Two with its 4 jet engines burns a considerable amout of high polluting JET A fuel during taxiing & takeoff (when the jets are least effecient) and during the climb out to launch @ 50,000 feet. Certainly your 1/6 share of this is WAY more than that Nortech could burn in a weekend... and ALOT more polluting too!
You are right on one thing.. comparing the Space Shuttle an orbital spacecraft, to Spaceship Two a sub-orbital spacecraft is apples to elephants!
Back to our regularly scheduled thread...
Woodsy