Started looking for providers of the following: Screws, tubes, welding equipment and CNC machines. This will help me put together some cost estimates and also get a grip on the reality behind several challenges.
Abstract planning and work on theoretical model is cute, but it will always miss the 10% that will represent 90% of the difficulties.
Sometimes running out of a critical piece can ruin an entire project, just as a loose screw in a liquid hydrogen turbopump can blow up the engine, and at 100,000 rpm that puppy becomes a fragmentary grenade which will slice through the thin walls of the vessel with aplomb.
Russian designs are very good models for reliability and idiot-proofness. Most of their ICBM are made to be used by not exactly motivated 19 year old conscripts subjected to less than luxurious living conditions and poor maintenance.
The elements need to be lightweight but not suicidally so.
As far as permitting a spaceship goes... the FFA has pretty simple rules which I analyzed when trying to do the CATS project, which are that *anything* is allowed to fly granted it won't fly over population centers and it is equipped with something to blow it up would it veer off course.
That last part always itched astronauts. Ain't it fun to be disposable if your ship changes course?
The issue with my project here is also I can go for straight up HELICOPTER or VTOL vehicle licensing. After all the Firefly can takeoff vertically and although it is a spaceship it can also not be its primary goal given it can have an empty oxygen gas tank and just use Hydrogen to feed its air breathing engines and always stay in the athmopshere... in turn becoming a heavy lift vehicle matching the biggest and baddest helicopters out there.
Which gave me another incredible idea which can reinforce the practicality of the Firefly as the perfect transporter: How about I make the Oxygen and Hydrogen tanks... to the same specs, and able to transfer fluids to rebalance.
BAD IDEA if we have Liquid H2 and Liquid O2 in each... but perfect if I need to use the VTOL for straight up helicopter operations, in which case I will need to have an equal quantity of fuel in each tank to maintain my center of gravity.
So... in effect the 2 tanks can be the same, interchangeable, and use the same parts. Another coup for off the shelving and simplicity!!!
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