Sounds like fun, but I, for one, would not be willing to fly around in a rocket I built myself!

<rant size="small" against="corporations">

I've been saying it! One of these days private corporations are going to rulethe world and the first step is space. Pack your bags people, Mars is our last refuge.

</rant>

where have you been? Private corporations already do rule the world...money wise that is..

pah. my idea was best. I've had the whole dam thing worked out since I was 11. Take a good solid airframe, executive jets are ideal, reinforce the airframe at the main stress points, replace the aluminium skin with heat resistant materials such as kevlar and titanium, put a dam big ramjet in the main fuselage (you've got plenty of space) and thats basically it. You only need to pressurise what's left of the cabin and you can take off as normal, get up to 35000 ft or so, boost up with your ramjet and go straight up, the ramjet cuts out when you've run out of atmosphere and there should be enough momentum to get you into a nice ballistic low orbit trajectory. Actually its getting down thats the problem not getting up, so you'd better hope your ablative shielding is all there! Assuming you get back into thick atmosphere in one piece with no damage to your control surfaces, landing should be p*ss easy.

taw, when you where 11 kevlar didnt exist, and ramjets where probably a twinkle in the eye of lockheeds chief engineer

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Pack your bags people, Mars is our last refuge.

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Surely you mean the first refuge?

I hear that the "X" prize is expected to be won within the next 2 years or so.

Its a prize for a challenge for private poeple (so nasa doesn't qualify) to build a "home made" craft that can launch, travel to 100km (into orbit) and land again to launch once more within a week. The prize is 10 million dollars i think, and has been standing for many many years. The craft has to travel on non commercial rocket fuel as far as i am aware - can't really remember, but the one i do know about is the Starchaser team - a UK based team, who have used Solid fuel, basically sugar and some other little things to make it fly. Their last testing rocket went several miles up - its very impressive stuff. They were funded by Silver spoon - which is unsuprising (sugar manufacturer)

did a thread about Starchaser last year, Chips. You can visit the engine test site, it's near Buxton which is about 3/4 hr from me on the A53. Cardy's even closer.

every day is like Sunday, every day is silent and grey..

Yeah, I don't think I'd ever fly in something home-made either. I'd stick with what the government gave me as transport.

It's an axe, I use it to...hack at people

You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap

junkyard wars were fun to watch. imagine scrapping together a rocket going 100 km into the sky.. built within 10 hours.. outta a scrapy yard..

@ff, Kevlar has been around for yonks. If it hadn't been invented when Taw was 11, then he must be at least 48 years old by now!!
It's really funky stuff if you'vee read about the chemistry behind it (It's so expensive because it's only soluble in highly concentrated strong acid, this makes it difficult to form the polymer).

thank you Rec. listen ff my lad I'll have you know Kevlar was well around when I was a lad, and ramjets were used during the war, what dyou think powered those doodlebugs that landed on your grandad's house in 1944?

er... Taw, IIRC the doodlebug ran on jet engines. Ramjets only work at supersonic speeds and I don't think any propelled craft had reached supersonic speeds before the end of the war. The doodlebug didn't need to be that advanced, all it needed to do was get across the channel and run out of fuel over London.

it was a simple ramjet, I promise you. Ramjets don't have to be per se supersonic. When I worked in the design section of the Feiseler FlugzeugenWerke in 1944.. (oops)

every day is like Sunday, every day is silent and grey..

Aren't turboprop engines ramjets as well?