Larry J described some historical flight tests and the need for flight tests. The trajectory that Larry described is called a "pile driver". NASA used pile driver flight tests for PAET, Fire I and II, and the early unmanned Apollo missions. Rumor has it that Sandia has done so many pile driver test flights that they have an entire floor of an office building filled with classified RVs connected with the tests (one of the few examples of a museum that requires a security clearance). AFE would have been an aerocapture flight test along the lines that Larry described. Again AFE got SNAFUed on Space Shuttle politics. After AFE SNAFUed there was a lengthy rain of excrement that resulted in some careers being ruined. If AFE is mentioned amongst thermal protection guys, there typically follows an embarrassed silence and then the subject is quickly changed. This is unfortunate because we really do need to have an aerocapture flight test experiment.
Gary
Space/Science » in reply to The concept may be old but the details are still challenging
Flight tests
The whole thread (30 posts)
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