I'll speculate that Jim posted this as a demo that 'amateur' rocketry can reach orbit. If you read the article, you'll find it does nothing of the kind. This is suborbital - in fact, the rocket goes almost 350km straight up and down (they're testing scramjet configurations during re-entry). The highest speed reached on the way up is 8300km/hr, which is about 2.3 km/sec. The shuttle at 300 km (a typical height) is going 7.73 km/sec, over 3 times as fast. This sounding rocket goes a little higher, but it can't stay there, and is nowhere near being in orbit. As to range safety, it's worth noting that the Israelis have launched at least one satellite. They were so worried about the reaction of their neighbours that they launched it over the Mediterranean into a retrograde orbit. That way, a launch phase failure would be more likely to hit water, and the contries overflown were less likely to be interprete the launch as an attack. When the Norwegians unexpectedly launched a small rocket over Russia a few years ago, it got to the point of Yeltsin having his 'football' open, with keys inserted ready to send the retaliation command before it was determined to be harmless. Peter

---------- From: Jim Choate[SMTP:ravage@einstein.ssz.com] Reply To: Jim Choate Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 5:59 PM To: hell@einstein.ssz.com; cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com; rpv-uav@einstein.ssz.com; sci-tech@einstein.ssz.com Subject: Centre for Hypersonics - HyShot Scramjet Test Programme

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