Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "" video.

Aerospace engineer here: There's actually something in this that is a give-away that they are THINKING CLEARLY and its a lesson for anyone doing a tech start-up. I am super impressed by what this one thing tells me. About 5 minutes in Scott mentions the J85 engines. A few years ago I did a proposal to the Australian Space Agency for a program based around air launching small cube sat capable rockets using a variation of the Scaled Composites White Knight 1 which was used for Spaceship 1 and a couple of NASA programs. WK 1 also uses the J85. The main reasons was it can operate at higher altitudes (>50,000ft), it was available and it was maintainable. Part of the reason I picked the WK-1 was because of the engine. The main reason was that WK-1 worked and we just would not need to do anything but buy one. PLUS - we could get a second hand ex-USAF T38 for a chase plane (same engine). We could get an early model Learjet (23, 24, 25, 28) as a air launch platform for smaller rockets (<1.2t) as its engine is from the civilian variation of the J85. THE MAIN REASON for thinking like that is it saves a massive amount on maintenance costs because all your jet engines are from the same family. Which means the parts you have to carry and having mechanics available is massively easier than many other engines or just as bad having a variety of engines. PLUS the J85 and its civilian variants, although out of production, are so widely used that the parts needed to maintain them are still available. Because the USAF still has the T38 they need spare parts so the spare parts are still in production even though the engines are not. I have worked on development projects many times and one of the things you look to do is select things YOU KNOW WILL WORK so you can concentrate on other things. This is fundamental to project management. This is called project risk reduction and so many companies get it wrong which is why so many development projects fail. Just that one thing has completely changed my mind that these guys are both sensible and practical rather than being another money pit operating on fantasy land whim.
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@beenaplumber8379 Actually Concorde flew with almost 100% capacity on every flight. That was just one of the myths about it NOT being economical. Sorry if this takes explaining but its important people know what happened. There was a superb BBC documentary done on Concorde after they cancelled it and it told a far different story than common because for a change they asked the pilots and it was the pilots who ran the Concorde Division of British Airways. Way back at the start after a very shaky start the executives told everyone they were going to stop Concorde because it was losing money. The pilots called them out saying it should not be losing money as it was operating at 100% capacity. The execs called their bluff and challenged them that if they could make money they could run the division. In a stroke of genius they realised that there was this odd group of people who'd use Concorde 2-3 times a week. Sometimes they fly across the Atlantic and then straight back on the next flight. So they went to those people to find out who they were. The answer - lawyers and bankers and as part of their work they'd fly across the Atlantic get some papers (contracts) signed and fly back. These people loved Concorde because it saved them so much time. The pilots asked them what they thought the VALUE of a ticket was and were shocked to find it was several multiples ABOVE what was being charged. These lawyers and bankers actually had no idea what a ticket cost because it was their secretaries who bought them. So the pilots raised the ticket prices to where Concorde could make money and stuck to those couple of routes the lawyers and bankers wanted. For 20+ years Concorde them became British Airways most profitable division. Even when all the other divisions lost money Concorde still made money because of its core business. What actually killed Concorde was Osama Bin Laden. On 9/11 around 100 of the top users of Concorde died in the towers. So there was a sudden a dramatic loss of their key market. They never recovered.
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@beenaplumber8379 Yeah I had never heard that story until I saw that documentary and that documentary included interviews with the pilots. The first time I saw it was on TV and I think it might be on YouTube. Its an odd length like 40 minutes or an hour 10 minutes. Its not the standard 25 or 50 minutes for TV.
3
Aerospace engineer here - CORRECT. There's actually something in this that is a give-away that they are THINKING CLEARLY. I am super impressed by what this one thing tells me. About 5 minutes in Scott mentions the J85 engines. A few years ago I did a proposal to the Australian Space Agency for a program based around air launching small cube sat capable rockets using a variation of the Scaled Composites White Knight 1 which was used for Spaceship 1 and a couple of NASA programs. WK 1 also uses the J85. The main reasons was it can operate at higher altitudes (>50,000ft), it was available and it was maintainable. Part of the reason I picked the WK-1 was because of the engine. We could get a second hand ex-USAF T38 for a chase plane (same engine). We could get an early model Learjet (23, 24, 25, 28) as a air launch platform for smaller rockets (<1.2t) as its engine is from the civilian variation of the J85. THE MAIN REASON for thinking like that is it saves a massive amount on maintenance costs because all your jet engines are from the same family. Which means the parts you have to carry and having mechanics available is massively easier than many other engines or just as bad having a variety of engines. PLUS the J85 and its civilian variants, although out of production, are so widely used that the parts needed to maintain them are still available. Because the USAF still has the T38 they need spare parts so the spare parts are still in production even though the engines are not. I have worked on development projects many times and one of the things you look to do is select things YOU KNOW WILL WORK so you can concentrate on other things. This is fundamental to project management. This is called project risk reduction and so many companies get it wrong which is why so many development projects fail. Just that one thing has completely changed my mind that these guys are both sensible and practical rather than being another money pit operating on fantasy land whim.
1
@Xylos144 The Oceangate reference isn't to pressure its to cutting corners and these guys are NOT behaving that way.
1