[FT] Oz Shoestring Space Program

> >Quote from http://www.spacedaily.com re Hypersonic Ramjet tested
events.
> When's the next launch?

As soon as we find out why the farnarckling Very Costly (actually quite
cheap, just costly relative to the rest) US-made rocket that carried it
failed. Initial low-reliability reports state that it didn't make it
past 100 km, so it could be that the Terrier stage worked, but the Orion stage
didn't. Either that or the attitude adjustment went badly
skew-whiff, with the thing corkscrewing up at Mach 7+ and god knows how
many gees.

One good thing: the payload made it through Max Dynamic Pressure,
nose-cone separated etc. It just didn't go up high enough, so didn't
come down fast enough. This time.

Could you shoot me that article site again? I seemed to have missed it
:o)

Randy

Well of course Australia can have a shoestring space program. They don't have
to pay $1E6 US to develop the pen, the technology is already in production.
They are being subsidized by the US. <BG>

Actually, it's nice seeing other countries attempting to utilize space cost
affectively. NASA got set on the "Do it with bleeding edge technology" so long
ago they forget an engineers real job is doing better than the other guy for
less cost than the other guy.