European Space Shuttle Prototype Lands Safely In Sweden

This Nick Is Taken writes "Yahoo! News reports the successful test of a German designed prototype of the European space shuttle, Phoenix , taking place in the north of Sweden, moving the first all European mission into space one step closer."

Comments

Why not just call up Rutan?

[l0ungeb0y]

From the article:

"... but project managers concede a full-size version won't be ready for more than a decade."

Considering they're already 20 years behind our shuttle,
why copy from our old tech? Personally, I'd think they'd be better to look at Burt Rutans X-prize project and asking themselves if their old school Arian/Shuttle vehicle approach is really the right way to go, especially if it's going to be a 30 year old solution by the time it launches (if ever).

Seems to me the ESA is missing a great opportunity to innovate and relying on "tried and proven" rather than pushing the envelope of space exploration.

Re:Why not just call up Rutan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering it's claimed to be "affordable" it doesn't sound like copying from old US tech. The US space shuttle costs half a billion dollars per launch...

Re:Why not just call up Rutan?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The big question is, why stick with the winged vehicle? Even on a scaled-down crew-only vehicle, the extra cost of maintaining wings and lofting their weight doesn't really seem to come back.

Re:Why not just call up Rutan?

[Long-EZ]

Burt already said that the X-Prize design from Scaled Composites would not be a good choice for an orbital vehicle. The design doesn't adapt well to high velocity reentry. The SpaceShipOne is optimized for the X-Prize suborbital mission with low velocity reentry.

However, I think it would be a GREAT idea to call Scaled Composites and ask Burt to design and build a reusable spacecraft with orbital capabilities. Scaled's reputation is unmatched in the aerospace industry. You want it, they build it. It's almost always a matter of faster, better, cheaper - pick any two. Scaled Composites has managed to consistently deliver all three at the same time.

From the zoomed out view, the US shuttle design is not a bad concept. However, in many areas, NASA's design-by-commitee approach engineered them into corners. They did a great job of surmounting the resulting nearly insurmountable technical problems. Of course, they spent enormous amounts of money and time overcoming problems that a simpler and more clever design would have avoided.

In aviation, simpler is usually lighter which allows more payload. More importantly, the reduced complexity results in less stuff to break and a design that's easier to fully test, so it's safer and more reliable.

I respect the hard working people at NASA, and they deserve credit for their accomplishments. But having a government bureaucracy running a space program is invariably the most expensive path to space. The shuttle cost about a billion dollars for each launch. That's WAY too much. And their "smaller-faster-cheaper" unmanned program in the 1990s resulted in a high failure rate that was regarded as a poor return on the investment. They're now back to fewer unmanned missions with more attention to detail on each. So far, the results seem very good, but it's not cheap.

It's past time for entrepreneurial access to space, both manned and unmanned. The X-Prize is an excellent first step. It'll be exciting to see the commercial space industry grow, just as our grandparents saw the aviation industry grow in the period from 1930 to 1970. If we projected the commercialization of space onto the commercial aviation timeline, we're around 1926.

Scaled will win the X-Prize this year, probably this summer. Stay tuned. This is going to be very cool.

Re:Why not just call up Rutan?

[tftp]

There are only a couple of problems with this theory:

1. Buran was never completed in design, and even if it were, it would be too expensive to just launch satellites.
2. The Buran program was killed by Andropov / Chernenko / Gorbachev, leaders of the old USSR.
3. Russian rockets were and are a competition in satellite launch business.
4. Russia is not relying on economic aid from the West for many years now.

In other words, a competitor would LOVE to force Russia to abandon its dirt cheap rockets and launch everything on Buran. The costs would definitely drive Russia out of satellite business.

Space Shuttle Prototype?

[BJZQ8]

I dunno if this is so much as a prototype as a test bed or demonstrator...I mean, if it was a prototype it would be something near the real thing...and this certainly isn't anywhere near their final product. Good that somebody's aiming high though...

Re:not that impresive

[Lispy]

Well, this in a very early state. I can remember that EADS has been planning on a reentry vehicle for years so this will turn into a shuttle sometime, it's a really big company and the project is funded by european governments. This test might not look too spectacular in itself but it shows that they are finally making reallife tests of their concept and probably they were just testing a small part of the shuttles tech. Most of the stuff you need for a shuttle can be tried and approved on the ground I assume. But the landing system should need some testflights and this is what you were seeing.

Eurofighter

[SuperGillies]

Call me a sceptic but...
The Phoenix will probably never happen.
Remember the Eurofighter plane that was supposed to be the most advanced plane ever but is now...how shall I put this...kind of old?
By the time the phoenix gets near to completion it will be cancelled due to lack of interest and funding.

Re:not that impresive

[hey!]

Correct me if I'm wrong, the only new thing they did was add the word "space" in front of allready existing technology (not that I have anything against that, marketing is very important for success); but I dont think this really deserves front page slashdot treatment.

The thing they did that was new was to meet a milestone in the quest to have the first reusable space vehicle of the twenty-first century.

How cool is that?

Re:bah

[Anonymous Coward]

There are still countries in the EU with good relations to the USA. Seems like your intense attempts at alienating the entire world hasn't worked to 100% yet. But who cares about facts, right? Also, why do you think we're trying to be like the US, just by trying to achieve manned space flight? As I recall, the Soviet Union were the first once to accomplish this. Were you trying to be like them? By your creative logic, apparently. Why not be happy about more space agencies trying to develop shuttles? Why are you so angry? It makes absolutely no sense. It's not like we're a threat or anything (unlike some people, we don't aim to be a threat.)

Re:bah

[bbc]

Don't worry, us Europeans will probably never master beginning a sentence with lower-case letters. That's an intellectual achievement that you folks will still be able to be proud of a hundred years from now.

Re:Troll? Flamebait? WTF!

[Daniel Dvorkin]

What are the mods smoking? How is my parent post a troll, or flamebait?

I was wondering that myself. My best guess is that they read the first sentence and assumed it was anti-European trash-talking -- you know, the stereotypical (and unfortunately, all too common) Ugly American "Europe can't do anything right U5 0wNz0Rz j00 if it wasn't for us you'd all be speaking German" crap that any /. story about any technological advance outside the US always seems to bring out -- and didn't bother to read the rest of the post carefully.

Next time I have mod points I'll mod you up. ;)

affordable

[dpilot]

As much as everyone likes to dis the US shuttle as being expensive, it's the most affordable reusable VTHL SSTO vehicle in the world. Obviously it's also the ONLY such vehicle, but IMHO that's a bad side-effect of Star Trek and Star Wars, where we begin to think the task of getting into orbit is *easy* and any unfettered entrepreneur could do it, and it's obviously NASA's jealousy stopping them through regulatory means.

Ain't so. Getting into orbit is HARD. From a kinetic energy standpoint, it's 25X harder than the X-Prize, which probably will finally get awarded this year. That 25X is over an order of magnitude, and by the time you take compounding difficulties, it's probably more like 2 orders of magnitude harder than the X-Prize.

After all, this IS rocket science.

Is there a justification proposed?

[jesterzog]

One of the more contriversial aspects of the US space shuttle is if there's really a proper justification for the manned spaceflight that it provides. (Very expensive, arguably most of what it does could be done without people, etc.)

I guess one of the differences is that NASA already has a lot of sunk costs in it's space shuttle programme. Whether it makes economic sense or not, part of the reason that NASA maintains it's manned space programme is probably because it already has one and doesn't want to lose it.

The ESA doesn't have one at the moment, which (to me) makes it very interesting that they're trying to start one. Is there a big economic justification that the ESA has for putting people in space?

Or alternatively, is it for the same contriversial and possibly political reasons that the US keeps people there? I'm not trying to imply that it's good or bad to have people in space, but I'm curious if it for some reason makes a lot of economic sense for the ESA to have a manned space programme moreso than NASA.

Can anyone comment?

Re:Wouldnt it be cheaper and simpler

[Anonymous Coward]

They're aiming to build something safe and modern, buying from a backward country like US is not an option.

Re:Where have we heard that name before?

[Impie]

*ROTFL*

Best comment so far on slashdot.

BTW. In risk of being redundant..

Is Phoenix a good name for a craft. Isn't that the name of a specific bird that burns up? ;-)