cavelamb himself wrote:
Jim Logajan wrote:
While searching for videos demonstrating composite construction on Youtube,
I came across this rather dated video of Burt Rutan and Mike Melvill
demonstrating the advantages of composites over aluminum:

That video was marketing, not an engineering analysis. Its the kind of
thing that you see at trade shows and on infomercials because it looks
cool and illustrates the claimed advantages of one thing over another.
Politicians use exactly the same marketing techniques in thier
campaign ads. Why? Two reasons. First, to give an exacting accurate
account of anything, be it an engineering analysis of alum vs. 'glass
or the voting records of the donkeys vs. the elephants, you need time
to cover all of the points. Second, most people get bored with minutia
and don't want to suffer through hours of something that sounds like a
doctorial thesis just to find out that this stuff is sometimes better
than that stuff and vice versa. They want at most a 5 minute
explination. 1 minute is better. 28 seconds is ideal.

Fact is that we've all debated the merits of various materials in this
group and determined that just about everything in use has some merit
and some disadvantages. And we've also all determined that until some
genus produces mass-quantities of cheap Idealtoniumunobtanium, there
will be no perfect material for constructing a flying machine. What we
all do with what we have, what we choose to buy, and what we can do
without is the stated puropse of this group. Go forth and experiment.

Harry Frey
Wright Brothers Enterprises
"worst design-type on RAH"