Slashdot Mirror
ESA Completes Important Step Toward Vega Launcher
Sven-Erik writes "ESA is reporting that 'An important step forward has just been made in the development of ESA's Vega launcher. After several months' work at the Guiana Propellant Plant at Europe's Spaceport the inert casting of the main Vega motor has been successfully carried out.' The 30-meter tall Vega launcher will be capable of placing a 1.5 ton payload into polar orbit, and it is scheduled for its first launch in 2006 from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, where the Ariane 1 launch facilities are being adapted for its use. It will be a perfect complement to ESA's large Ariane 5 and the medium-classed Soyuz."
Could someone...enlighten us to some details of the 'vega launcher' and why its special ?
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Apearently, the Vega is the answer for economically lanching small payloads. Wouldn't it be more economical to lauch many small payloads at once using a large rocket, e.g. Ariane 5. It can't be that hard to mount some kind of multi-payload carrier on the latter also...
assignment != equality != identity
Vega is a LEO (Low Earth Orbit) launcher. There isn't a commercial market for low earth orbit satellites. Commercial satellites want GEO (geosynchronous orbit). The US military is not going to outsource to ESA (they aren't Indian). So I dont see the point of Vega. If I was doing research and needed a LEO for taking pictures or whatever, I would go with the cheaper reliable Chinese launcher.
ESO need to concentrate on improving Ariane 5 reliability and cost.
Or yeah, and ESO needs to build the OWL!! This earth based telescope should be able to image some planets better than space probes that visited them up and saw them up close.
http://www.eso.org/projects/owl/
The Soyuz design is a good one because it is proven, and very very simple. No fiddly bits. You could probably launch in a hurricane if you absolutely had to: little short of a thunderstorm over the pad will stop the launch. This is no space shuttle, and weather-related scrubs are almost unheard of here.
On the other hand, the Arianes have fiddly bits and can't launch in bad weather. So where does this thing fall, somewhere in between? Even more fiddly than Ariane? Less complex than Soyuz?
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Is anyone researching fuel free launches?
...or possibly using a HUGE rubber band to send a capsule flying into space.
I mean things like shooting the payload from a cannon or something...
As long as we need 100*X pounds of fuel to launch X pounds into space, space travel will remain uneconomical for most purposes.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
Vega is a solid-fueled launcher based on the Ariane V boosters. Solid-fueled launchers are great for the military since they can launch at a moments notice, but other than that they are a big PITA.
Since they arrive at the launch complex fully fueled, they are a major safety risk. There have been numerous accidents with solid-fueled boosters. The last major accident was in brazil, and it killed several people and completely destroyed the launch complex.
The solid fueled boosters of the shuttle make assembly much more difficult, and if a shuttle SRB were to accidentally go off while in the assembly building, it would probably kill hundreds of people. That is why NASA tries to limit the number of people working on the shuttle while the SRB are attached, which of course increases the cost and the processing time.
For a really modern and cheap small launcher, take a look at the falcon.
--
Private property is the central institution of a free society (David Friedman)
hummmm. Braun comes to mind which had IIRC, more than saturn (150) vs. something around 175 . However, Braun was never fully luanched, so not really fair comparision.
The truely sad part of the Saturn is that we develop it, but have lost most of the engineers from those days. I suspect that it will take much longer to develop something similar these days.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The Space Shuttle's delta wing design was based on a requirement from the military that it be capable of polar orbit. But they've never used it for that. If they'd just told the military to get lost, they could have used a better design. Sigh.
Chinese can lauch multiple satellites too, you know. However, once a rocket bites the dust, several satellites go with it instead of one.
While indeed that no *small* chinese launchers can do this, there are really not such a big market for satellites small enough that several fit into a Vega.
Can't argue with the military aspects, though. I don't think EU trusts the US pushing military satelites into space either these days...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
First of all, I really have a hard time believing that your random slashdotter would have sufficient knowledge to make any intelligent observations about the projects involved (posting as AC doesn't certainly help); furthermore, even if they would have (I've seen people claim working for NASA here), ESA press relases are (naturally) very thin on technical details. After all, you wouldn't want the whole world to know all of your research, right?
OK, so there have been failed ESA projects (NASA/Russians have also failed more than once if I'm not mistaken), Beagle 2 being the latest (however it is often forgotten here that Mars Express was the real purpose of the mission). So yeah, they might be wasting my tax Euros. I wish they'd waste more! IMHO more research put into space programs ultimately helps everybody, it certainly isn't "useless".
Not true. Russian Energia can lift considerably more than Saturn. (175 tons to LEO in the maximum configuration, although only lighter configurations have actually flown). There just hasn't been much demand for this sort of capability, so the last Energia sits mothballed in a hangar...
--
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, where does the road paved with evil intentions lead to?
i know you are kidding, but there are fuel free research. some almost exact replicas of Verne's canon. Of course, since you have to travel through dense atmosphere for a _long_time_, 7.9km/s is not nearly enough.
And the payload would go through something like 10,000G through the acceleration phase. I think they are suggesting that electronics can generally handle this, which is surprising to me.
AND the payload would burn through about five inches of ablative.
I think the current technical problem they are facing is to get the huge acceleration out of the canon - because chemical charges can not ever get you the muzzle velocity, probably ever. So now you are in the realm of railguns. don't expect to see payloads shot up this way for a few years. =)
but, like i said, there are ideas floating around about it.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
when Vegans everywhere can be lunched into space.
Sorry, I meant 'launched.'
In fact, there's a glut
Where? Primarly in the US. I'm sorry, but I don't think EU would like to financially help Lockeed-Martin. Yes, there are some LEO/low-cost vectors actually developed in China, Brazil and India, but the same reasoning applies.
You can save space. Or you can save time. Don't ever count on saving both at once. -- First Law of Algorithmic Analisys
Make a modern space-plane like the shuttle, and strap it to the back of a modified large commercial jet-aircraft like a 747, as seen here. Then use the concept used by Scaled Composits for SpaceShipOne, to bring the space plane up to a high altitude and release it there. It then continues into orbit using rocket power.
:)
The trick is that because the shuttle is attached to the TOP of the 747, and not underneath, you have to do a roll and fly upside down for a bit when releasing the shuttle. But that's no problem. Planes can do that; even 747s
If you had enough money, you could buy an Energia launch from RSC Energia - but not a Saturn launch from NASA. (Well, maybe you could with really enough money...)
--
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, where does the road paved with evil intentions lead to?
A 50-100 ton lifter. The Russians where building one just before the collapse. To bad. We could have built something cool in orbit.
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
Won't work. SpaceShipOne is able to be small enough to be carried by an airliner because it doesn't go all that high - so it needs little fuel, and almost no reentry shielding. Manned truly orbital vehicles need to be much more heavily constructed - the 35,000ft in altitude and 600mph in velocity you gain by piggy-backing your orbital vehicle on a 747 is not a very significant percentage of the journey in to orbit, and whilst a 747 can indeed carry a shuttle, it would not be able to carry the drop tank & boosters as well.
That said, for very small (a few kilos) unmanned satellites, the US military has used this approach courtesy of the B-52 and the Pegasus rocket.
Property is a central economic institution of any society, and private property is the central institution of a free society.
That is not true. The RD-170 engines for the boosters are still in production for the zenit sea launch vehicles. And the first stage of the zenit vehicle was used as the booster rockets of the energia. So the only thing you would have to do would be to resume production of the core stage.
The problem is that there is no demand for such large payloads. But if you gave the russians a few billion USD they could certainly reactivate the energia.
--
Private property is the central institution of a free society (David Friedman)
Forgive me for being the bearer of bad news, but didn't the Ariane-5 die a horrible death moments after launch...
I was told it was the result of an overlow error. Apprarantly no one bothered to check if the Ariane-4s code hadnled as many points of percision...
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
Customers are actually pushing the envelope on the other end. Maybe a 25 ton launcher...
There is actually not much demand for vehicles as large as described above. The growth in communications satellite mass has levelled off given technical issues with the latest series of large satellites (notably the Boeing 702), as well as overcapacity in the satellite communications market in general. (In fact, there is a small but profitable niche market for small communications satellites, like Orbital's STAR series.)
The article "The myth of heavy lift" offers some strong arguments against the development of heavy-lift vehicles, particular those that could only serve NASA's exploration programs. ("The cost of medium lift" offers a counterpoint.)
They will be hard-pressed to compete with the Chinese and Indians.
There you have it. Proof that at least this /. poster doesn't have the technical expertise to discuss rockets.
To all moon hoax "experts" I have a simple question. Thousands of people directly watched the launches of the 363 foot tall, 6 million ton rockets. What was the point of creating and launching a vehicle capable of reaching the moon if they didn't actually go there?
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Do they really have enough EU projects to make this worthwhile?
You are assuming a lack of technical and marketing skills from one of the largest space agencies of the world. Space agency that, currently, has a large market for commercial launchers. So, if ESA says that there's enough space for competition, I'd tend to trust them and not Joe Random Slashdotter.
You can save space. Or you can save time. Don't ever count on saving both at once. -- First Law of Algorithmic Analisys
You are comparing apples to oranges. Energia can have multiple configurations, just like Arian 5. On the other hand, Saturn V had only different stage combinations and definitely didn't need any boosters.
My point was the 20 ton launchers could use some competition, whereas this rocket is competing with very low-cost programs from Russia, China, and India.
As far as the satellite size is concerned, I don't see any reason why they wouldn't grow larger - most of the current problems are manufacturing glitches and surmountable technical problems. Size has considerable benefits in the GEO comsat market - larger satellites can transmit at higher power and use more focused antennae.
It is one thing for a 747 to carry an empty shuttle, and quite another for it to carry one with enough rocket fuel to get from FL100 to orbit, plus its payload and crew.
The takeoff mass of the shuttle is about 2,000 metric tonnes, and the landing mass is only 100 tonnes. (Source: wikipedia). That's a big difference! 1900 tonnes, or 95% of the mass is burnt or otherwise used in getting up there. This is pretty typical of orbital systems: the higher you want to go, the more of your mass you need to burn to get there, and therefore the larger the system needs to be to carry a useful payload. Starting above sea level would help, but you'd still need hundreds of tonnes of fuel.
The shuttle currently needs the external fuel tank and rocket boosters, which are not transported on the 747 and would get in the way of mounting it. Maybe you could do without the boosters if you started from FL100. But I think the shuttle doesn't have much onboard fuel, so you still need the big tank.
The maximum payload of a 747-400 is only 150 tonnes, and that's a more modern plane than the 747-100 currently used as a shuttle carrier. That number is calculated without the extra drag of a whole other aircraft sitting on the back, so I think carrying even an empty shuttle must be close to the limit. Carrying one with even half the required fuel would be impractical. Even if you put the shuttle on a superjumbo, the amount of fuel to drag a shuttle up to launch altitude would be enormous.
While a 747 may be able to fly inverted I don't know if it would be able to do so with a shuttle strapped on the back. Could the shuttle detach and roll upright, while fully loaded with fuel? It's not designed to be the most manueverable aircraft, even when empty. I would suspect it would drop like a stone when fully fuelled.
I think the reason the SpaceShipOne is feasible is that it's a much smaller craft and they don't go all the way to orbit.
I prefer to compare apples to apples -- there were studies for heavier Saturn V configurations.
I'm pretty sure heavier configuration Energia hardware does not exist.