Can be launched on an existing expendable launch vehicle (Delta IV, Atlas 5 or Ariane 5) or a 2nd generation Reusable Launch Vehicle once that system becomes available
The proposed Orbital Space Plane design is approximately 37 feet long, and it has a wing span of 34.5 feet.
The Orbital Space Plane (OSP) is one of the elements Orbital is studying for NASA's next generation space transportation system as part of the space agency's Space Launch Initiative (SLI). By separating crew and cargo, and only flying crewmembers when needed, an OSP architecture will permit significant reductions in the cost of taking payloads to orbit.
Orbital's proposed Space Plane is an improved version of the HL-20 Lifting Body that was studied by NASA during the early 1990s. Initially, the vehicle can be used to satisfy Crew Return Vehicle functions, serving as a "life boat" for astronauts on board the International Space Station. Later, it could also carry crewmembers to and from the station as a multi-function Crew Transfer Rescue Vehicle.
Configuration
The vehicle can comfortably accommodate 5 crewmembers for a total of 20 crew-days; a typical crew would consist of a Commander, a Pilot, and 3 ISS expedition crewmembers. The vehicle can also carry approximately 20 middeck lockers for small payloads, experiment samples, or flight crew equipment.
During reentry and landing, the OSP will be configured with recumbent seating for the returning ISS crewmembers. NASA medical experts believe that deconditioned crewmembers require this type of seating to avoid experiencing problems during reentry accelerations.
To significantly increase crew safety the incorporation of a Crew Escape System will allow an abort to be performed throughout the ascent phase of flight. Depending on vehicle energy at the time of abort initiation, the vehicle can either execute a Return-to-Launch-Site abort and land on the runway, or make use of Apollo-style parachutes and flotation bags to permit a water recovery.
I think the ultimate advance in space flight technology is a complete abandonment in current ideologies.
Who the hell cares about space missions? I don't. We send a bunch of astronauts into orbit to study the proper technique of jello consumption. The right time for spending on space is when we have a power supply capable of taking us out of the solar system quickly and cheaply.
Yeah but we need to experiment in space before coming out with new technologies. We can use some technologies that do not involve chemical propellant and can push a vessel at high speeds (a maximum of 12% speed of light) but they need to be worked on. And they haven't beed experimented with because there is a huge stigma attached to nuclear propulsion. there is also some technologies that can be improved on like Ion engines, and forced induction Ion engines, they have a low specific impulse, but with the properadjustments can be viable for long distance travel.
The main thing keeping us from long journeys is not the rate of travel though. It's the exposure of humans to the rigors of space living, namely the almost complete lack of gravity. But even then there are methods to overcome this (centrifugal artificial gravity).
I think a lot of money is wasted on sending "planes" into space. Someone told me that a typical shuttle mission cost $500 million. How much dirt could we haul back from Mars for that amount? Maybe it's time to get back to real science?
<strong>I think the ultimate advance in space flight technology is a complete abandonment in current ideologies.
Who the hell cares about space missions? I don't. We send a bunch of astronauts into orbit to study the proper technique of jello consumption. The right time for spending on space is when we have a power supply capable of taking us out of the solar system quickly and cheaply.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I agree completely.
When ever this is brought up to a NASA scientist, the best they can come up with is ...
Velcro and Tang <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[oyvey]" />
It has been a very expensive bunch of toys for a select few to play with. They are no different from the Pharaceutical companys saying "Just give us a few million more and we can cure [ fill in the blank ]."
It is quite obvious that they aren't serious about really having a space station. Because they could have launched very large sections into orbit without the Shuttle and only use it for transporting teams for assembly. Instead they simply found an excluse of needing to make lots of trips to justify their multi-billion dollar toys.
so i guess you don't use or need GPS when you fly or sail or want to drop JDAMS bombs
or look at the pretty weather satellite pictures before you plan trips to hurricane regions
or cook with pyrex or teflon or...
not cook because of Nomex fireproof suits
carbon fibre skis, golf clubs, car parts, etc aren't for you either... an old Iron man! oh wait... metallurgical progress owes a debt to whom? those titanium flying space folks?
no pacemaker or ekg or remote diagnostic tools for you (no protein crystallography or its offshoots either)
sunglasses with UV coatings? not for you
solar heating solutions to energy problems? no thanks to those space folk who pioneered it
just the first few "byproducts" of space research that you seem to think ends with TANG
(although even the army's MRE owe a debt to the space program's work on freeze-dried sustenance)
and i suppose there's really no use in knowing about the atmosphere on Titan, Europa, or Mars, since only dreamers and the curious look up and long to explore
what's the use of knowing the moon formed from the earth and asteroids can kill dinosaurs anyway... </sarcasm>
not to mention development in the computer field (including hardened systems built from the lessons learned by Galileo, Pioneer, Voyager)... remote upgrade of even the OS in ten year old technology from millions of miles away
and certainly few humans have been inspired by the views of creation provided by the Hubble... although it does deliver great wallpaper.
ask around about Apollo 8's "Big Blue Marble" image of the Earth, and you'll find it had dramatic impact on the environmental movement, made borders dissolve and the fragility of our sphere self-evident for almost all who saw it
before then, remember the cheesy globe from the intro of movies from Universal... progress?
just because space seems empty from where you sit doesn't mean it contains no value
<strong>so i guess you don't use or need GPS when you fly or sail or want to drop JDAMS bombs
or look at the pretty weather satellite pictures before you plan trips to hurricane regions
or cook with pyrex or teflon or...
not cook because of Nomex fireproof suits
carbon fibre skis, golf clubs, car parts, etc aren't for you either... an old Iron man! oh wait... metallurgical progress owes a debt to whom? those titanium flying space folks?
no pacemaker or ekg or remote diagnostic tools for you (no protein crystallography or its offshoots either)
sunglasses with UV coatings? not for you
solar heating solutions to energy problems? no thanks to those space folk who pioneered it
just the first few "byproducts" of space research that you seem to think ends with TANG
(although even the army's MRE owe a debt to the space program's work on freeze-dried sustenance)
and i suppose there's really no use in knowing about the atmosphere on Titan, Europa, or Mars, since only dreamers and the curious look up and long to explore
what's the use of knowing the moon formed from the earth and asteroids can kill dinosaurs anyway... </sarcasm>
not to mention development in the computer field (including hardened systems built from the lessons learned by Galileo, Pioneer, Voyager)... remote upgrade of even the OS in ten year old technology from millions of miles away
and certainly few humans have been inspired by the views of creation provided by the Hubble... although it does deliver great wallpaper.
ask around about Apollo 8's "Big Blue Marble" image of the Earth, and you'll find it had dramatic impact on the environmental movement, made borders dissolve and the fragility of our sphere self-evident for almost all who saw it
before then, remember the cheesy globe from the intro of movies from Universal... progress?
just because space seems empty from where you sit doesn't mean it contains no value
even as a tourist destination, space beckons</strong><hr></blockquote>
Still don't need a shuttle for all that. The shuttle is the SUV of space flight!
I think what Scott is getting at is (and correct me if I'm wrong) is permanent vessels in space (that don't decend on Earth) and we get to them with light modernized ground to space ships, like the one pictured above. Remember the smaller the payload, the cheaper it is to get things up.
The shuttle was the best design that 70's engineering and 60's technology could offer. At *the time* it was amazing... still is, if only because it's amazing that the fleet (rated for 10 years) has lasted this long.
We *definitely* need something better. In my mind the only question is whether the current fleet can be made to last long enough for a replacement to be created through the minefield of politics, protests, and egos.
I just think a lot of money gets wasted on the shuttle. It really is a shitty way to get a large payload into space. It's good at bring things back but ... there's got to be a cheaper way.
Also it sucks up so much money that real science takes it on the chin. Better space research too. Maybe a new better cheaper shuttle is out there. But I want to see a ton of soil come back from Mars and the shuttle's budget could pay for that.
I once read somewhere one persons' view of the entire space program...
Once they put a person on the moon there was no innovation from Nasa. It became a corporation whose sole goal was to justify sending people to the moon...
The American public became jaded to o... (viewership down for the launch and other telecasts)
Now, I know that there was innovation which led to the building of Columbia and the Space Station. Innovation that utilized a lot of the discoveries your (alluded) 'pointless missions' researched.
The space program requires the experimentation and longevity of close orbit space programs. There has been a lot of money made from the space industries. Sattelites go up, channels are sold, weather is tracked, communications are extended, discoveries are made, and patents sold. Without the shuttle missions,
Almost everything which was invented and re-engineered for the space missions has found other uses. One company uses the same concepts of the heat tiles to make barbecues safe which are safe for balconies. Ballard has used concepts developed at Nasa to create the new Hydrogen cells.
And we would still be squinting at the galaxy if we didn't have the hubble telescope.
If anything, there should be two arms to Nasa (if there aren't already) One which comes up with ways to use inventions from NIST and another which comes up with markets for those inventions.
<strong>so i guess you don't use or need GPS when you fly or sail or want to drop JDAMS bombs
or look at the pretty weather satellite pictures before you plan trips to hurricane regions
or cook with pyrex or teflon or...
not cook because of Nomex fireproof suits
carbon fibre skis, golf clubs, car parts, etc aren't for you either... an old Iron man! oh wait... metallurgical progress owes a debt to whom? those titanium flying space folks?
no pacemaker or ekg or remote diagnostic tools for you (no protein crystallography or its offshoots either)
sunglasses with UV coatings? not for you
solar heating solutions to energy problems? no thanks to those space folk who pioneered it
just the first few "byproducts" of space research that you seem to think ends with TANG
(although even the army's MRE owe a debt to the space program's work on freeze-dried sustenance)
and i suppose there's really no use in knowing about the atmosphere on Titan, Europa, or Mars, since only dreamers and the curious look up and long to explore
what's the use of knowing the moon formed from the earth and asteroids can kill dinosaurs anyway... </sarcasm>
not to mention development in the computer field (including hardened systems built from the lessons learned by Galileo, Pioneer, Voyager)... remote upgrade of even the OS in ten year old technology from millions of miles away
and certainly few humans have been inspired by the views of creation provided by the Hubble... although it does deliver great wallpaper.
ask around about Apollo 8's "Big Blue Marble" image of the Earth, and you'll find it had dramatic impact on the environmental movement, made borders dissolve and the fragility of our sphere self-evident for almost all who saw it
before then, remember the cheesy globe from the intro of movies from Universal... progress?
just because space seems empty from where you sit doesn't mean it contains no value
even as a tourist destination, space beckons</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well since there is so much BS I only will address a few.
We have the Department of Defense to thank for the GPS satellites, they started the effort around 1973. The first GPS satellite, a Block I developmental model, was launched in February 1978. NASA certainly doesn't deserve all of the credit just because they launched the satellites.
Pyrex was developed in 1915 long before anyone ever even thought of going to the Moon.
Oh it's pointless to continue, you won't believe it anyway. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[oyvey]" />
If you are wondering where I get some of this, I just recently picked a book out of a pile in the closet called "Firestar", written in 1997...
It includes the phrase "the elevation of politics over engineering is what destroyed the Challenger"... Felt very strange to read that two or three days after it happened...
The book is all about rekindling the space race outside of government control, through the use of privately invented and funded 'planks', or vessels devoted to getting things to orbit only...
The idea is you need to start with a plank to build a ship... Somehow fits, don't it.
The Space Shuttle is our Plank for the time being.
(book was written by Michael Flynn, if you were wondering.)
This third-generation RLV takes off like a plane, mostly likely on a rail system, and is powered by air-breathing rockets and ramjets. Improved thermal tiles and coatings require little maintenance and are not affected by weather conditions such as rain.
Like a commercial airliner, the Spaceliner 100 operates from a "spaceport" where it picks up passengers and cargo, is maintained, launched and readied for another flight within hours of landing.
NASA's goal is to reduce launch costs to $100 per pound, making it a tempting choice for business travelers and ...
The Space Plane has a huge number of problems with it. The design calls for new, composite hydrogen tanks that have a long ways to go before they are perfected. One failed during testing and needed to be replaced.....it took 18 months to make a new one.
The problem is that it is a design that requires lots of bleeding edge technology to be integrated together. And everything has a zero margin for error.
When the Shuttle was being developed, they used lots of established technologies and integrated them together in innovative ways. Staying within the margin of error was far, far easier and slowly bringing in new methods and devices wasn't nearly as difficult as it is with the Space Plane.
The worst thing about all of this, is they had a much better design floating around, but canned it because it basically eliminated the need for all the ground support that is a mult-billion dollar industry.
[quote]NASA's shuttle suffers from the venerable rocket tradition of delivering a payload of ammunition - the vehicle goes someplace, explodes, and never returns. Thus, although the shuttle was bravely intended to be reuseable, in actual operation none of its equipment can be employed as is after a flight: The huge fuel tanks disintegrate in re-entry; the rocket boosters, jettisoned during launch, require extensive reconstruction after retrieval; and the shuttle craft itself needs months of work after each mission. No wonder that each mission requires a ground crew of more than 10,000 people and costs as much as a billion dollars.
In contrast, the Delta Clipper is completely and almost immediately reusable. Taking advantage of recent material and design improvements, and of a transportation rather than a weapons logic, the Clipper can be launched with a handful of ground support personnel at a cost of about $5 million. Like the train, the automobile, and the airplane before it, this new lightweight rocket is designed to bring people and cargo from place to place, back and forth - in space and on Earth - with only fuel and seven days of prepping per flight. <hr></blockquote>
The low costs and quick prep times were actually proven to be possible, as opposed to being pie-in-the-sky figures, as with the shuttle.
[quote]The flight vehicle was tested at White Sands during the summer of 1996, and demonstrated a 26-hour turnaround between its second and third flights, a first for any rocket. After the fourth flight, however, the DC-XA suffered severe damage and the program ended due to lack of funding. <hr></blockquote>
The space plane is a money pit. A dangerous money pit.
The Delta Clipper was, and could still be the future. However, the folks in the industry still want to press ahead with the Space Plane as opposed to the Clipper.
<strong>I think the ultimate advance in space flight technology is a complete abandonment in current ideologies.
Who the hell cares about space missions? I don't. We send a bunch of astronauts into orbit to study the proper technique of jello consumption. The right time for spending on space is when we have a power supply capable of taking us out of the solar system quickly and cheaply.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Uh, we need to learn how to get there first. That's what these missions are about. Plus there's a lot to see in our solar system first. Things that will benifit us here right now.
Comments
Can be launched on an existing expendable launch vehicle (Delta IV, Atlas 5 or Ariane 5) or a 2nd generation Reusable Launch Vehicle once that system becomes available
The proposed Orbital Space Plane design is approximately 37 feet long, and it has a wing span of 34.5 feet.
The Orbital Space Plane (OSP) is one of the elements Orbital is studying for NASA's next generation space transportation system as part of the space agency's Space Launch Initiative (SLI). By separating crew and cargo, and only flying crewmembers when needed, an OSP architecture will permit significant reductions in the cost of taking payloads to orbit.
Orbital's proposed Space Plane is an improved version of the HL-20 Lifting Body that was studied by NASA during the early 1990s. Initially, the vehicle can be used to satisfy Crew Return Vehicle functions, serving as a "life boat" for astronauts on board the International Space Station. Later, it could also carry crewmembers to and from the station as a multi-function Crew Transfer Rescue Vehicle.
Configuration
The vehicle can comfortably accommodate 5 crewmembers for a total of 20 crew-days; a typical crew would consist of a Commander, a Pilot, and 3 ISS expedition crewmembers. The vehicle can also carry approximately 20 middeck lockers for small payloads, experiment samples, or flight crew equipment.
During reentry and landing, the OSP will be configured with recumbent seating for the returning ISS crewmembers. NASA medical experts believe that deconditioned crewmembers require this type of seating to avoid experiencing problems during reentry accelerations.
To significantly increase crew safety the incorporation of a Crew Escape System will allow an abort to be performed throughout the ascent phase of flight. Depending on vehicle energy at the time of abort initiation, the vehicle can either execute a Return-to-Launch-Site abort and land on the runway, or make use of Apollo-style parachutes and flotation bags to permit a water recovery.
Who the hell cares about space missions? I don't. We send a bunch of astronauts into orbit to study the proper technique of jello consumption. The right time for spending on space is when we have a power supply capable of taking us out of the solar system quickly and cheaply.
Nosey.
[ 02-05-2003: Message edited by: nosey ]</p>
The main thing keeping us from long journeys is not the rate of travel though. It's the exposure of humans to the rigors of space living, namely the almost complete lack of gravity. But even then there are methods to overcome this (centrifugal artificial gravity).
<a href="http://technology.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ppb/ppb_index.html"; target="_blank">http://technology.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ppb/ppb_index.html</a>;
<a href="http://archive.abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/beammeup1210/"; target="_blank">...and the research looks promising...</a>
<strong>I think the ultimate advance in space flight technology is a complete abandonment in current ideologies.
Who the hell cares about space missions? I don't. We send a bunch of astronauts into orbit to study the proper technique of jello consumption. The right time for spending on space is when we have a power supply capable of taking us out of the solar system quickly and cheaply.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I agree completely.
When ever this is brought up to a NASA scientist, the best they can come up with is ...
Velcro and Tang <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[oyvey]" />
It has been a very expensive bunch of toys for a select few to play with. They are no different from the Pharaceutical companys saying "Just give us a few million more and we can cure [ fill in the blank ]."
It is quite obvious that they aren't serious about really having a space station. Because they could have launched very large sections into orbit without the Shuttle and only use it for transporting teams for assembly. Instead they simply found an excluse of needing to make lots of trips to justify their multi-billion dollar toys.
or look at the pretty weather satellite pictures before you plan trips to hurricane regions
or cook with pyrex or teflon or...
not cook because of Nomex fireproof suits
carbon fibre skis, golf clubs, car parts, etc aren't for you either... an old Iron man! oh wait... metallurgical progress owes a debt to whom? those titanium flying space folks?
no pacemaker or ekg or remote diagnostic tools for you (no protein crystallography or its offshoots either)
sunglasses with UV coatings? not for you
solar heating solutions to energy problems? no thanks to those space folk who pioneered it
just the first few "byproducts" of space research that you seem to think ends with TANG
(although even the army's MRE owe a debt to the space program's work on freeze-dried sustenance)
and i suppose there's really no use in knowing about the atmosphere on Titan, Europa, or Mars, since only dreamers and the curious look up and long to explore
what's the use of knowing the moon formed from the earth and asteroids can kill dinosaurs anyway... </sarcasm>
not to mention development in the computer field (including hardened systems built from the lessons learned by Galileo, Pioneer, Voyager)... remote upgrade of even the OS in ten year old technology from millions of miles away
and certainly few humans have been inspired by the views of creation provided by the Hubble... although it does deliver great wallpaper.
ask around about Apollo 8's "Big Blue Marble" image of the Earth, and you'll find it had dramatic impact on the environmental movement, made borders dissolve and the fragility of our sphere self-evident for almost all who saw it
before then, remember the cheesy globe from the intro of movies from Universal... progress?
just because space seems empty from where you sit doesn't mean it contains no value
even as a tourist destination, space beckons
<strong>so i guess you don't use or need GPS when you fly or sail or want to drop JDAMS bombs
or look at the pretty weather satellite pictures before you plan trips to hurricane regions
or cook with pyrex or teflon or...
not cook because of Nomex fireproof suits
carbon fibre skis, golf clubs, car parts, etc aren't for you either... an old Iron man! oh wait... metallurgical progress owes a debt to whom? those titanium flying space folks?
no pacemaker or ekg or remote diagnostic tools for you (no protein crystallography or its offshoots either)
sunglasses with UV coatings? not for you
solar heating solutions to energy problems? no thanks to those space folk who pioneered it
just the first few "byproducts" of space research that you seem to think ends with TANG
(although even the army's MRE owe a debt to the space program's work on freeze-dried sustenance)
and i suppose there's really no use in knowing about the atmosphere on Titan, Europa, or Mars, since only dreamers and the curious look up and long to explore
what's the use of knowing the moon formed from the earth and asteroids can kill dinosaurs anyway... </sarcasm>
not to mention development in the computer field (including hardened systems built from the lessons learned by Galileo, Pioneer, Voyager)... remote upgrade of even the OS in ten year old technology from millions of miles away
and certainly few humans have been inspired by the views of creation provided by the Hubble... although it does deliver great wallpaper.
ask around about Apollo 8's "Big Blue Marble" image of the Earth, and you'll find it had dramatic impact on the environmental movement, made borders dissolve and the fragility of our sphere self-evident for almost all who saw it
before then, remember the cheesy globe from the intro of movies from Universal... progress?
just because space seems empty from where you sit doesn't mean it contains no value
even as a tourist destination, space beckons</strong><hr></blockquote>
Still don't need a shuttle for all that. The shuttle is the SUV of space flight!
[ 02-05-2003: Message edited by: Outsider ]</p>
We *definitely* need something better. In my mind the only question is whether the current fleet can be made to last long enough for a replacement to be created through the minefield of politics, protests, and egos.
Also it sucks up so much money that real science takes it on the chin. Better space research too. Maybe a new better cheaper shuttle is out there. But I want to see a ton of soil come back from Mars and the shuttle's budget could pay for that.
Once they put a person on the moon there was no innovation from Nasa. It became a corporation whose sole goal was to justify sending people to the moon...
The American public became jaded to o... (viewership down for the launch and other telecasts)
Now, I know that there was innovation which led to the building of Columbia and the Space Station. Innovation that utilized a lot of the discoveries your (alluded) 'pointless missions' researched.
The space program requires the experimentation and longevity of close orbit space programs. There has been a lot of money made from the space industries. Sattelites go up, channels are sold, weather is tracked, communications are extended, discoveries are made, and patents sold. Without the shuttle missions,
Almost everything which was invented and re-engineered for the space missions has found other uses. One company uses the same concepts of the heat tiles to make barbecues safe which are safe for balconies. Ballard has used concepts developed at Nasa to create the new Hydrogen cells.
And we would still be squinting at the galaxy if we didn't have the hubble telescope.
If anything, there should be two arms to Nasa (if there aren't already) One which comes up with ways to use inventions from NIST and another which comes up with markets for those inventions.
<strong>so i guess you don't use or need GPS when you fly or sail or want to drop JDAMS bombs
or look at the pretty weather satellite pictures before you plan trips to hurricane regions
or cook with pyrex or teflon or...
not cook because of Nomex fireproof suits
carbon fibre skis, golf clubs, car parts, etc aren't for you either... an old Iron man! oh wait... metallurgical progress owes a debt to whom? those titanium flying space folks?
no pacemaker or ekg or remote diagnostic tools for you (no protein crystallography or its offshoots either)
sunglasses with UV coatings? not for you
solar heating solutions to energy problems? no thanks to those space folk who pioneered it
just the first few "byproducts" of space research that you seem to think ends with TANG
(although even the army's MRE owe a debt to the space program's work on freeze-dried sustenance)
and i suppose there's really no use in knowing about the atmosphere on Titan, Europa, or Mars, since only dreamers and the curious look up and long to explore
what's the use of knowing the moon formed from the earth and asteroids can kill dinosaurs anyway... </sarcasm>
not to mention development in the computer field (including hardened systems built from the lessons learned by Galileo, Pioneer, Voyager)... remote upgrade of even the OS in ten year old technology from millions of miles away
and certainly few humans have been inspired by the views of creation provided by the Hubble... although it does deliver great wallpaper.
ask around about Apollo 8's "Big Blue Marble" image of the Earth, and you'll find it had dramatic impact on the environmental movement, made borders dissolve and the fragility of our sphere self-evident for almost all who saw it
before then, remember the cheesy globe from the intro of movies from Universal... progress?
just because space seems empty from where you sit doesn't mean it contains no value
even as a tourist destination, space beckons</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well since there is so much BS I only will address a few.
We have the Department of Defense to thank for the GPS satellites, they started the effort around 1973. The first GPS satellite, a Block I developmental model, was launched in February 1978. NASA certainly doesn't deserve all of the credit just because they launched the satellites.
Pyrex was developed in 1915 long before anyone ever even thought of going to the Moon.
Oh it's pointless to continue, you won't believe it anyway. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[oyvey]" />
It includes the phrase "the elevation of politics over engineering is what destroyed the Challenger"... Felt very strange to read that two or three days after it happened...
The book is all about rekindling the space race outside of government control, through the use of privately invented and funded 'planks', or vessels devoted to getting things to orbit only...
The idea is you need to start with a plank to build a ship... Somehow fits, don't it.
The Space Shuttle is our Plank for the time being.
(book was written by Michael Flynn, if you were wondering.)
The SpaceLiner
This third-generation RLV takes off like a plane, mostly likely on a rail system, and is powered by air-breathing rockets and ramjets. Improved thermal tiles and coatings require little maintenance and are not affected by weather conditions such as rain.
Like a commercial airliner, the Spaceliner 100 operates from a "spaceport" where it picks up passengers and cargo, is maintained, launched and readied for another flight within hours of landing.
NASA's goal is to reduce launch costs to $100 per pound, making it a tempting choice for business travelers and ...
The problem is that it is a design that requires lots of bleeding edge technology to be integrated together. And everything has a zero margin for error.
When the Shuttle was being developed, they used lots of established technologies and integrated them together in innovative ways. Staying within the margin of error was far, far easier and slowly bringing in new methods and devices wasn't nearly as difficult as it is with the Space Plane.
The worst thing about all of this, is they had a much better design floating around, but canned it because it basically eliminated the need for all the ground support that is a mult-billion dollar industry.
From an ancient WIRED <a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.02/idees.fortes3.html"; target="_blank">article</a>:
[quote]NASA's shuttle suffers from the venerable rocket tradition of delivering a payload of ammunition - the vehicle goes someplace, explodes, and never returns. Thus, although the shuttle was bravely intended to be reuseable, in actual operation none of its equipment can be employed as is after a flight: The huge fuel tanks disintegrate in re-entry; the rocket boosters, jettisoned during launch, require extensive reconstruction after retrieval; and the shuttle craft itself needs months of work after each mission. No wonder that each mission requires a ground crew of more than 10,000 people and costs as much as a billion dollars.
In contrast, the Delta Clipper is completely and almost immediately reusable. Taking advantage of recent material and design improvements, and of a transportation rather than a weapons logic, the Clipper can be launched with a handful of ground support personnel at a cost of about $5 million. Like the train, the automobile, and the airplane before it, this new lightweight rocket is designed to bring people and cargo from place to place, back and forth - in space and on Earth - with only fuel and seven days of prepping per flight. <hr></blockquote>
The low costs and quick prep times were actually proven to be possible, as opposed to being pie-in-the-sky figures, as with the shuttle.
From the offical <a href="http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/x-33/dc-xa.htm"; target="_blank">NASA archive</a>:
[quote]The flight vehicle was tested at White Sands during the summer of 1996, and demonstrated a 26-hour turnaround between its second and third flights, a first for any rocket. After the fourth flight, however, the DC-XA suffered severe damage and the program ended due to lack of funding. <hr></blockquote>
The space plane is a money pit. A dangerous money pit.
The Delta Clipper was, and could still be the future. However, the folks in the industry still want to press ahead with the Space Plane as opposed to the Clipper.
The Delta Clipper
<strong>I think the ultimate advance in space flight technology is a complete abandonment in current ideologies.
Who the hell cares about space missions? I don't. We send a bunch of astronauts into orbit to study the proper technique of jello consumption. The right time for spending on space is when we have a power supply capable of taking us out of the solar system quickly and cheaply.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Uh, we need to learn how to get there first. That's what these missions are about. Plus there's a lot to see in our solar system first. Things that will benifit us here right now.