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Russia Unveils Space Shuttle for Tourists
joestump98 writes: "Yahoo! News is running a story about those crazy, cash strapped, Russians building a space shuttle for tourists. For under $100,000 you can take a one-hour flight that includes a mere 3 minutes of weightlessness. Apparently the flights are to start around 2004/2005." 21mhz adds a link to this press release from Russia's Myasishchev Design Bureau, writing: "On close examination, it turns out to be a downscaled version of Buran."
If you'd like to see a picture of the craft, it's on the BBC.
People,
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If you READ the article then you can see that you actually get more than just a one hour flight, from the press release
"At the peak of its parabolic trajectory, passengers will experience several minutes of weightlessness and see the Earth from space. Four days of space flight orientation including centrifuge, zero-gravity and high-altitude jet flight training, as well as safety and onboard system lessons are expected to be required."
Not so sure about the complexity of the craft with ejection of the motor at burnout and deployable aerodynamic control surfaces with a 'chute for final landing, for a contrast in design for the same problem take a look at http://www.bristolspaceplanes.com/projects/ascend
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
Seems that the C-21 is the Russian Entry to the X-Prize.
Also, they have built two of the M-55 carrier craft. They are a updated 'research' version of the M-17, which was the Russian version of America's U2 spy plane.
This page on HTOL TSTO (Horizontal take off & landing, two stage to orbit) has a few pictures of various launch systems. There is a nice picture of the M-17 in flight at the end of that page. (The M-55 in this picutre seems to have additional wing mounted engines.
According to the cutaway model, the cabin is relativly roomy, but there dosn't seem much room for fuel. Most of the equipment at the rear of the craft seems to be life support and other equipment, not presurised fuel tanks. Perhaps they are using solid rocket motors (aka Big Firework), but russians tend to prefer, and endeed excell, at liquid fueled rockets. Besides, this schematic seems to show a rather different type of spacecraft. (note the wings, and overall length) Therefore, I suspect that this is a plywood mockup, for the benifit of potential investors, in the tradition of most space enterprises over the past 5 years.
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
Having designed, built and flown a lot of conventional and unorthodox model aircraft (including flying wings, flying disks, canards, lifting-body craft, a flying lawnmower and a flying dog-house) in my time, I have to say that the craft looks decidedly unstable to me.
All that vertical surface at the wing-tips will produce a very significant dutch-rolling tendency.
While I'm sure that such instability could be compensated for using a fly-by-wire computer system, I can't see any aerodynamic benefit to having such a large amount of tip-fin area.
Tip-fins are usually used to reduce the size of vorticies produced when the high pressure air below the wing meets the low pressure air above it.
At high angles of attack, these vorticies create huge amounts of drag and reduce the wing's efficiency quite substantially.
You'll notice that some modern passenger jets use tip-fins as a method of reducing tip vorticies and they show quite significant improvements in fuel-efficiency as a result -- however, I believe that the 747 required extra vertical stabilizer area to compensate for the destabilizing effect of the tip-fins when they were added.
However, the fins on the Russian craft are much larger than would be necessary to obtain the required vortex-reducing effect and smack of being the work of a cartoonist rather than an aerodynamic engineer.
This mock-up looks more like just a marketing tool than a genuine attempt to produce an accurate facsimile of a workable design.
It makes sense really -- don't waste any money on design or testing until you've built a shuttle-like plywood mock-up to gauge the level of interest and maybe even collect a few booking deposits from wannabe travellers.
As a matter of fact, it is a lot cheaper. The same company offers Zero Gravity trips for $5400.
As this craft lacks a vertical stabaliser I would suggest it is for yaw stablility. For a comparison take a look at http://www.astronautix.com/craft/dynasoar.htm.
The X20 Dynasoar was a very similar shape.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
It is not a copy of X-20. The Soviets already designed AND flew a small space plane called the BOR-4 as a test vehicle for the Buran project. It made sub-orbital flights in 1982 and 1984. It seems that the new Russian "space plane" is based on the BOR-4, or at least the experience gained in the BOR-4 project.
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Astronaut wings.
The only way to get them is by going to a high enough altitude; 100 km is high enough. Incidently, it will also get the X-prize for the company if it is the first to pull this off (think of the monetary incentives for early aviation; the X-prize is the equivalent for putting regular people in space).
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