Oh well the video was neat. I like the concept. But yeah way too many links.
News SpaceX heavy-lift vehicles: Launch Thread
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Oh well the video was neat. I like the concept. But yeah way too many links.
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That’s all right.
I don’t post a little every day with no home internet, so I sign in in the library or at work and do a week’s work at a time, so it can look like I’m hogging things.
I have this idea that maybe some folks with money who are slaving away at an aerospace problem might come here for fun, and see a link on how a problem they are working on is already solved.
Across the world, one person might have an answer to another’s problem and vice versa. Not enough cross-pollination. Not enough generalists.
Something I was thinking of as an alternative to Starship if problems end the program—or maybe something for Bezos.
I was looking at wet-stage workshops for spent shuttle External Tanks (ETs)
While I love the Buran as a concept, I thought about this idea...
A Columbia type orbiter has no payload bay, but has an oxidizer tank in its place.
It can be unmanned. The payload goes atop the ET, which is all liquid hydrogen (LH2), but has been made from the start to be a wet workshop. For greater payloads, just make the ET longer, and have the orbiter use more dense oxidants, longer strap-one, etc.
Complex yes, but it is easier than putting landing legs and heat-shields on a lot of tankage.
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It'll be a step backwards, and shuttle tech is a decade out and out of date. So is Buran - almost thirty. Actually, it is Thirty. You'll have to pull people off the USAF program to help and they're dealing with a drone, not a former Orbiter.
VTVL is the way we're probably going to go. Will we get SSTO? Maybe, maybe not, but I don't think they'll go back to VTHLs.
Do you think we'll ever see something like the space shuttle ever again?
Not from the United States. Well, now that I think about it, Starship is a space shuttle...The TSTO Boeing Space Freighter was closest to Musk’s HLLV in some ways.
In some ways, it seems more of a 1950’s throwback than shuttle or even the Saturns.
Imagine we had harvested half the ETs—-giant version of Holderman’s GEODE stations. David Brin did a story on the Space Island Group type deal.
Something like Skylon or Dream Chaser is as good as it is going to get, unless you consider Stratolaunch as an 0th stage spaceplane.
In some ways, it seems more of a 1950’s throwback than shuttle or even the Saturns.
Imagine we had harvested half the ETs—-giant version of Holderman’s GEODE stations. David Brin did a story on the Space Island Group type deal.
Something like Skylon or Dream Chaser is as good as it is going to get, unless you consider Stratolaunch as an 0th stage spaceplane.
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I think Skylon could happen, but if it doesn't I am still very happy with the way things are working out right now. STS I will will remain one of the most audacious tihngs every attempted successfully in space flight. Sure there will be bigger, more technically arduous things attempted. And some of them will succeeed. But the fact that people managed to make a heavy-lift vehicle with wings fly to space over 100 times, flying spacelab, spacehab, and building the space station, will be seen by far future generations as almost outrageous, the same way we look at images of SS Great Eastern laying town a transatlantic telegraph cable made of iron and gutta percha before the rules of electricity were barely even understood.
Skylon looks a bit ambitious
Regs and courts in the way.
Maybe Monday...
More on a similar Soviet version
http://astronautix.com/m/mtkva.html
http://buran.ru/htm/str124.htm
Maybe Monday...
More on a similar Soviet version
http://astronautix.com/m/mtkva.html
http://buran.ru/htm/str124.htm
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SpaceX attempted another starship launch but it sufferend a similar fate to the last one with an engine issue resulting in a RUD.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/science/spacex-starship-launch.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/science/spacex-starship-launch.html
I know it might seem like a crutch, but I would like to see Musk consider landing jets to save the airframe. Jets with small tanks to prevent slosh. The concept of the Air Turborocket with the Ram-Rocket might help with Earth-bound Starships.
From the Air Turborocket wiki:
The benefit of this setup is increased specific impulse over that of a rocket. For the same carried mass of propellant as a rocket motor, the overall output of the air turborocket is much higher. In addition, it provides thrust throughout a much wider speed range than a ramjet, yet is much cheaper and easier to control than a gas turbine engine.
Great images of SN-10 here
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=52924.360
Also of interest:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-augmented_rocket
Air-augmented rockets are similar to ramjets, but able to give useful thrust from zero speed, and is also able in some cases to operate outside the atmosphere, with fuel efficiency not worse than both a comparable ramjet or rocket at every point.
Starship could look even cooler--like a Colonial Viper, say?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-augmented_rocket#/media/File:GTX-5880trefny-f2.jpg
From the Air Turborocket wiki:
The benefit of this setup is increased specific impulse over that of a rocket. For the same carried mass of propellant as a rocket motor, the overall output of the air turborocket is much higher. In addition, it provides thrust throughout a much wider speed range than a ramjet, yet is much cheaper and easier to control than a gas turbine engine.
Great images of SN-10 here
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=52924.360
Also of interest:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-augmented_rocket
Air-augmented rockets are similar to ramjets, but able to give useful thrust from zero speed, and is also able in some cases to operate outside the atmosphere, with fuel efficiency not worse than both a comparable ramjet or rocket at every point.
Starship could look even cooler--like a Colonial Viper, say?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-augmented_rocket#/media/File:GTX-5880trefny-f2.jpg
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cuts heavily into mass fraction and would delay development by years, into that same nevernending death spiral, as Skylon. i think the reason SpaceX things have worked so well so far is their simplicity (apart from the landing algorhythms).. I.E.. the engines are based on Fastrac, the bodies are stainless steel friction stir welded hoops. It's far less high tech than Shuttle or even the VentureStar
