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X-43 Scramjet Rollout
PenguinRadio writes: "The Washington Post is reporting that NASA is readying the X-43 space plane for a 10 second test flight, after which is will plunge into the ocean and not be recovered. The X-43 is an unmanned aircraft (there are three of them) that is used as a testing bed for hypersonic aircraft and may lead to a commercial version in about 20 years or so. Anybody got an extra wet suit?" See also the Reuters article on the same subject, and our previous story about an Australian version.
I'll bite:
"A space plane like the space shuttle costs the same amount of money in terms of fuel as a jumbo jet from London to New York does."
How do you figure that? Mile-per-mile? Did you not notice the external fuel tank needed to get the Shuttle to orbit? Do you think LOX and LH are so much less expensive than jet fuel? The External Tank alone uses 526,000 gallons of fuel in the 8.5 minutes before it's jettisoned (That's 1031 gallons per second (g/s). A 747 on the other hand, has a maximum fuel capacity of 57,285 gallons, which it sips at 1.06 g/s.
Jet fuel currently costs about 77 cents/gallon, while LH costs about 75 cents and LOX costs about 35 cents, but that kind of logic is like saying it would be more economically efficient to walk to the moon.
"Wall Street would be the new mission control, and you can bet that the analysts of that city would make space trave as cheap as boarding a jumbo jet - there is no reason why it should not be."
I'd suggest you take a look at this economic analysis of the $/lb costs for the Space Shuttle under various scenarios, including daily launches. It'll never get beneath $640/lb, which is significantly more expensive than boarding a jumbo jet, unless you're a mouse. but then, mice fly free...
It would be more accurate to say that Wall Street would be able to raise enough money in an IPO to send the company's founders into space, but Wall Street itself doesn't have as much to do with the creation of economical solutions as they do the speculation of profitability of said systems.
Kevin Fox
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Kevin Fox
I hear they're moving the 'Taco Bell' sign
that MIR missed into the area where this
is supposed to land. If it hits it, everyone
at NASA gets a free Chalupa....
Check out these cool photos!
I'd like one in my bathroom =)
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
See also the Reuters article on the same subject, and our previous story about an Australian version.
Or, see the exact same previous story from the last week.
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Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
I hate to play devil's advocate on this, but you stated that 'Scramjets are wasteful, and in the wrong direction' then.. do not go anywhere near that topic in the body of your message. Any particular reason you made this omission?
As for the government retarding space exploration, of course they have. You see how corperations act on planet Earth, right? Imagine that up in space, where things like a misplaced bolt traveling at orbital speeds can take out satellites. NASA tends to be very exacting about how and when they do things. Corperations go for the bottom line. Does it make them profit? If so, they don't care about the little details like debris. Can you imagine the difficulty we'd face in even getting out of the atmosphere if our entire LEO sphere was a mass of garbage and debris left from satallite leavings? (well, at least til they managed to drift back to the atmosphere)
I've been following this project for years since I heard it announced. While I'm not the utmost on what they're current plans are, there are reasons for doing things this way. The more disposable pieces they take to orbit (fuel tanks on the shuttle), the more explosive bolts they fire, the more garbage there is. If they can make a SSTO craft (Single Stage to Orbit for those that need it explained), then they cut down on the ammount of crap left in space.
Problem number one is getting the speed involved to reach orbit without booster rockets. Scramjets are the answer to this. They operate at high speeds only (well into the Mach range) and are ideal for use in situations where you don't need the compression of turbo fan blades in other jet engines. Read: A Scramjet is a ramjet only for use at higher speeds.
Problem number two is that, if they really want to make a SSTO craft, they have to carry Everything they need within that craft, all fuel to break escape velocity, everything. The current shuttles carry just enough fuel for maneuvering in space, and dropping back to earth. They do not and cannot (without external fuel tanks) have the reserves within to break out of the atmosphere. The only reason why this new space plane will be able to do it is because it will carry only half it's fuel. The other half (the bulk of the oxygen needed) will be gathered from the atmosphere itself as it flies.
Now, saying this is wasteful is frankly trolling and misinformation unless you can prove that it is wasteful. This plane will be lighter than it must be if it were to burn LOX and Liquid Hydrogen, and will therefor require less power to get the speed necessary to reach orbit. How is this more wasteful than before? What other methods would you use to get to space? A space elevator? Linear accelerator based on the ground? (Check out your Sci Fi book stores for what I mean by these). These ideas are nice and far more efficient, but are a little out of our league at the moment.
Until we can manage to build some of these things and overcome the technical hurdles involved in their creation and use, we still have to use rockets and jets to reach orbit. I'm all for a SSTO craft. They are more cost effective, they are more easily maintanable (The shuttle takes months on the ground for refits of lost tiles, damage from orbital debris, and other maintenance). If they can do this right, they can make this space plane more usefull by making it able to fly more often. Get a small fleet of them, and you could have daily flights to orbit. Tourism anyone?
Oh, and as for why NASA only bought 6 shuttles, several month downtimes, and single missions to orbit. At the moment, I doubt you'll see several shuttles in orbit at the same time. With all the monitoring tools they have, I don't think Nasa has the manpower to handle 2 or 3 in orbit at once. With those factors in mind, and a price tag in the billions (IIRC), they don't need more, they can't handle more, they're certainly not going to spend that much money on something they can't utilize effectively. Would you?
My prediction: the scramjet will successfully accelerate to Mach 5, plowing into a Chinese observation plane and obliterating it. The flaming wreckage will fall from the sky and land on a Japanese pleasure cruiser, sinking it.
George Bush will blame the Russians.