t/Space Demonstrates New Air-Launch Method

FleaPlus writes "Last month t/Space, an organization with plans for constructing a simple, low-cost successor to the Space Shuttle, was mentioned on Slashdot. Recently t/Space used a portion of the concept study funds it had been awarded by NASA to also build and test actual hardware. They performed three weeks of drop tests of a 23%-scale model from a Scaled Composites Proteus carrier aircraft to demonstrate the feasibility of a new air launch method they had devised, dubbed 'Trapeze-Lanyard Air Drop.' The new method eliminates the need for wings on air-launched rockets, potentially leading to improved safety and cost-effectiveness. Last month at a space conference they also displayed a full-scale model of their vehicle. Unfortunately, with the recent selection of Boeing/Northrop-Grumman and Lockheed-Martin as the two competing teams for the contract to build the Shuttle's successor, t/Space's future path is somewhat uncertain."

Comments

'Trapeze-Lanyard Air Drop.'

[ShaniaTwain]

..dubbed 'Trapeze-Lanyard Air Drop.'

..I'm pretty sure I saw this on Jackass..

Re:'Trapeze-Lanyard Air Drop.'

[Rei]

And the abort mode for a stuck cable or bad chute is....? :)

Not that it's not an interesting deployment concept, mind you. There are lots of interesting airbreathing assisted methods, although none of them scale up to very large orbital craft. In addition to this and standard belly-dropped rockets, there's also wing-dropped (doesn't usually need a custom aircraft, but is geometrically constrained and offbalances the craft), roof-launched (the whole "tail" thing tends to get in the way unless you have a custom craft, but you can handle almost any geometry), tow-launch (you pay a penalty in carrying heavy landing gear, but the modifications to the towing craft are minimal), unfuelled tow launch (you fuel midair from lines attached to the craft at liftoff), docking and fuelling (taking off with just enough fuel to get to altitude - allows for multiple reentries and possibly powered landing), and carrying the craft inside the carrier, launching with a drogue chute (very geometrically constraining, but almost no modifications to the carrier needed).

The problem with scaling up is that airplanes get tougher to scale up beyond a point. It's really only realistic for small satellites and humans to LEO.

Re:'Trapeze-Lanyard Air Drop.'

[MichaelSmith]

tow-launch (you pay a penalty in carrying heavy landing gear, but the modifications to the towing craft are minimal)

The spacecraft does need some kind of landing gear, unless a disposable sled is used for takeoff. Consider a cart strapped to the vehicle and dropped at liftoff

But the real problem is that the spacecraft has to fly from the word go, and (unless we assume your next option) needs to do so fully fuled.

This works surprisingly well for sailplanes but spacraft have the opposite problem. They are much heavier than the carrier vehicle.

How about a "sandwich" design: Towed spacecraft with disposable launch cart and wings. At altitude the system splits into three parts with the wings being (possibly) recovered by parachute.

Down with combustion!

[mister_llah]

If we could just get rid of combustion and the need for incredibly expensive fuels... we'd be set.

Elecromagnetism? Superheated water / water reclamation?

===

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/backgrou nd/facts/vcd.html

Uncertain future.. but not in space tourism..

[guyfromindia]

t/Space's future path is somewhat uncertain."
Given the possible boom in space tourism, I dont see t/Space going out of business anytime, especially if they have a viable technology.

Re:Uncertain future.. but not in space tourism..

[fermion]

There is enough money around for space tourism to be at least a short term fad, leading to some significant technical developments. It does seem thar bigelow will launch something by the end of the year. It also seems that Virgin air has has several million dollars in sales for it sub orbital flights. The Hilton people have some far fetched plan to build space hotels in the next decade.

What Rutan did was admirable, but it was really less than the soviets did 44 years ago,about equal to what the US did a month later. What is going to be interesting is see who can actually reach a real orbit with real people that could concivable be used to deliver the customers to the product.

The market for people going up and down is small. Basically a 100K or so to buy astronaut wings. Io would do it if I had the money. But I would much rather pay multiples of that to spend a few days in space. If I had then money.

Re:Uncertain future.. but not in space tourism..

[Warlok]

Remember that PC's started as very VERY expensive and very VERY weak pieces of hardware with not much software that retailed for lots of money. Now I've got more computing power in my handheld than I could have had in a desktop machine 20 years ago.

More on topic, how about air travel in the 40's and 50's? Look at the cost and technology at the time, and compare it to modern jet technology. Sure, it started as an affluent method of travel for the "jet-setters", but now, anyone can travel by air from LA to NYC for less than $500.

Give commercial space travel it's start, and see where it leads us in the next 20-50 years. For something of this scope, nature, and magnitude, you have to have patience.

Re:Uncertain future.. but not in space tourism..

[Rei]

Computers have been halving in cost for the same power every 3 years for most of the past century. Rockets have hardly dropped in price since the 1960s, *despite* the increased amount of private industry development. Despite the satellite boom of the 1990s. Etc.

PCs kept dropping in price because simpler (and higher power) manufacturing techniques kept being developed - and there was a clear path layed out for the next decade at almost all times, with research laying clear foundations for the every-three-year doublings of the next several decades. Nothing even close to this exists for rocketry. The only major thing that can do an order-of-magnitude reduction in prices are huge materials leaps forward (we'll get incremental improvements, of course - there's some nice ones due soon).

How about air travel in the 40's and 50's?

Driven almost entirely by people who needed to travel, paying the equivalent of several thousand dollars per ticket (not several hundred thousand), and getting to a destination that they had a strong need to arrive at. Very little of it was "joy riding", even if travelling places by plane was somewhat of a status symbol.

Give commercial space travel it's start

Private industry developed almost everything NASA ever built. Private companies like SeaLaunch and Orbital successfully built their own privately funded rockets; there was no leap forward, just incremental improvements. Several dozen companies outrght failed. It's not a "private industry" thing; it's a "technology thing". And no, a rocket that goes a tiny fraction of orbital velocity isn't a step forward; it's a big leap backwards. If you're going to hawk a "private enterprise" technology with promise, you should be hawking SpaceX or whatnot. The "100km straight up and then down" companies are as close to real space travel as a person who makes a go-cart out of a lawnmower engine is to making a car to race in the Indy 500. Seriously. The ISPs are awful, the payload fractions are awful (because of the low ISP engines and high tank/structural masses), they don't deal with much TPS if any, etc. I.e., they don't deal with the real engineering problems of spaceflight, and thus aren't advancing anything. Cheer for those who are actually advancing technology.

And no, before you state it, let me head it off: they're not helping parts be "mass produced" and thus cheaper. The materials that they use are generally all wrong (far more in common with aircraft) and the low performance engine designs share little to nothing in common with real rocket engines, which are more like jet engines. And of course, since they don't need much of any TPS, they don't advance TPS research/costs (most of which are labor, anyways)

No future ?

[McGiraf]

If NASA will not fund it , they can find private investors and start the private space industry ...

Oops wrong link.. check this...

[mister_llah]

Damn it, Beautrice... that's something different :)

http://www.eng.titech.ac.jp/jyosei/t_yabe.pdf

That is more along the lines of what I meant!

Although...

[TheKidWho]

Although Boeing-Northrop-Lockheed are the big boys right now, I dont see why one of thsoe teams wouldnt be capable of choosing t/space for crew-space transfer =) Then again Boeing-Northrop probablly wouldnt since Northrop is only involved in spiral 1, but Lockheed might.

Also, Griffin has made it quite clear that he wouldnt probablly fund t/space, BUT if they do get a vehicle built and it is cheap, he will gladly use it for crew and cargo transfers to the ISS.

Re:Mmm war

[TheKidWho]

Nor do I =)

Which is why the dark part of me WISHES for a war with China, in SPACE!!

Of course its just a foolish thought, but wouldnt it be awesome, I mean after all the death and destruction, just think of all the new technological advancements that would come! Heck, even a Cold War would be good. Very few die, and we still get the good tech!!!

What you saw was a weather balloon!

[Dasher42]

Whatever happened to launching from lighter-than-air platforms? With conventional rockets, so much weight goes into fuel to move the fuel you'll burn later to move the fuel that comes even later. Surely someone's doing something with a straightforward idea like this?

Re:What you saw was a weather balloon!

[FleaPlus]

Whatever happened to launching from lighter-than-air platforms? With conventional rockets, so much weight goes into fuel to move the fuel you'll burn later to move the fuel that comes even later. Surely someone's doing something with a straightforward idea like this?

That's pretty much what JP Aerospace is doing, "airship to orbit." RLV News has some additional info and news items on them.

Re:What you saw was a weather balloon!

[DerekLyons]

Whatever happened to launching from lighter-than-air platforms? With conventional rockets, so much weight goes into fuel to move the fuel you'll burn later to move the fuel that comes even later. Surely someone's doing something with a straightforward idea like this?

It's one of those ideas that seems straightforward... Until you do the actual math.

It turns out that it only takes about 5% of the fuel (or less) to get to the altitude that a typical airship flies - and that a reasonable size payload requires an airship twice the size of the Hindenburg to carry it. Given that a) fuel costs are down in the noise and b) the (extremely fragile) airship costs hundreds to thousands of times more than is saved in the costs of tankage - it suddenly seems like a much less nifty idea.

Anyhow, the main problem in getting to orbit isn't about altitude, it's about speed.

Re:What you saw was a weather balloon!

[radtea]

It turns out that it only takes about 5% of the fuel (or less) to get to the altitude that a typical airship flies - and that a reasonable size payload requires an airship twice the size of the Hindenburg to carry it.

But reducing fuel mass by 5% allows you to increase your payload mass by at least a factor of two for many launch vehicles. I'm not sure balloon-launch is the way to go, because as you say speed is the issue, but rockets are so enormously inefficient that relatively small percentage savings in fuel mass translates into very substantial increases in payload mass.

article

[Anonymous Coward]

If I read the article correctly, tspace and scaled composites are after the crew transport vehicle portion of the new nasa vision. That is, the capsule to get to the crew exploration vehicle or the iss space station. The sole purpose of the ctv is to get people in low earth orbit from an in atmosphere launch using a pre-existing capsule design.

I think the contracts for cev were awarded to northrop/grumman and boeing for a 2 party competition. That is, the crew exploration vehicle which resides in space.

Though, nasa might fund them $400m for a alternate/creative role in the process. Who knows, now wouldn't be funny if they could pull it off with the limited funding? That would prod the bigger companies which would be good.

The beauty is if they can get rid of shuttle the savings will pay to get to the moon. The moon has its own resources which could be used to create launches/refueling from the moon and not earth.

rockoons

[nounderscores]

http://www.hobbyspace.com/NearSpace/index.html#Roc koons

I think you're thinking of these. They do work, it's just that you have to deal with the time and danger involved with a baloon ride before firing the rocket, while going up in a powered aircraft like a plane gives you more control.

A blimp like thing (lighter than air, powered and with a lifting body profile) that might be nice. That's a whole nother aerospace engineering project in itself.

Takes much less energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Both of which would require the same amount of energy as just burning the fossile fuels to begin with. From where would you get that energy? A power plant that burns fossil fuels?

The overwhelming majority of fuel used to launch spacecraft is spent accelerating the rest of the fuel. If you don't carry the fuel with you, it will take much less energy to reach orbit. Consider the European Union's Hopper which will accelerate spacecraft on magnetic rails. They already have a prototype.

Google Add

[McGiraf]

Google Add on top of page:
________________
Space Ship
Save on new and used items. Search for space ship now!
www.ebay.com
_________________

eh eh they think they have everything ...

Other Uses for Air Launch

[roughapprox]

"Unfortunately, with the recent selection of Boeing/Northrop-Grumman and Lockheed-Martin as the two competing teams for the contract to build the Shuttle's successor, t/Space's future path is somewhat uncertain."

That's baloney. The US military loves the air launch thing. Back in the '70s there was a pathfinder-type mission that air launched a Minuteman. And the MDA is heavily invested in air launched targets for the various interceptor programs. There was the LRALT program and a newer target launched by Orbital Sciences. And, of course, there's also Orbital's Pegasus space launch vehicle.

The benefit of the type of air launch method that t/Space is showing is that the LRALT and MRT programs require the extremely heavy sleds that they sit on and that they are limited by the cargo capacity of a C-17. And Pegasus has to carry that enormous wing and tail structure (not to mention its failures, such as the first X-43A flight).

I think if t/Space can show superiority over the existing air launch methods (which doesn't seem to be difficult), they will definitely fill a demand in both the small space launch and targets markets.

Re:Other Uses for Air Launch

[mpapet]

Spoken like someone who has -never- tried to land a gov't contract.

In the usual scenario, innovation gets purchased, but not without the Northrop-Grumman getting a big, no -giant-, chunk of the contract.

If you only had the slightest idea exactly how RFP's and RFQ's get written you would understand the powerball-lottery-like odds of the entrepreneur landing the big contract.

Don't B.S. me about company X or Y who did it either. They had to make a big deal with the bigger guy to be a small part of the project. (which has it's advantages) Either that or they paid the lobbyists like the big guys do and were there writing the RFP with the agency issuing it -and- simultaneously buying off the big contractors one way or another. Net gain is about equal in either case.

Winning contracts is no-holds-barred, no trick too dirty kind of business. My hat is off to the guys/girls who are good at it.

23% scale model

[blckwidow]

now if they could only design some 23% scale modeled astronauts t/Space would be in business.

Gary, Burt and a long way from here...

[J05H]

Gary Hudson, the chief scientist at t/Space, has been trying to spark the spaceflight revolution for 30 years. He had a rocket called Conestoga in the 80s that ran into the infamous "brother-in-law problem" at NASA. He was also the driving force behind another Mojave airport first: the Roton demonstrator. Now he's back with the world's most famous aircraft designer and a bunch of other people from the space activist community.

Burt needs no introduction: he's da man. Burt builds the coolest planes in the world and has finally started building spaceships.

So, t/space has been doing droptests, excellent! They have a great capsule demo and seem to be trying to stretch their funding as far as possible. I'm pretty sure they said that the "CXV" was proposed specifically outside the CEV RFP, because they refuse to fill out that much extra paperwork. You can see what Mr. Hudson was working on in the early 00's here: http://hmx.com/ The pdf is his proposal for a capsule (manned/cargo) for the old Alternative Access to Station program, gives a good idea of where the CXV's heritage is.

t/space is an amazing team. If they can keep the funding coming, they will deliver on this craft.

Josh

Re:No wings...

[rufty_tufty]

Not always needed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting_body
I like the idea of not having these things strapped to the side that can break off, they always looked flimsy - maybe it'll save weight.
My! This armchair is comfy!

Myrabo

[krysith]

I'm sure you are already familiar with the work of Leik Myrabo , but in case you aren't, you ought to check out his stuff. He is the big pioneer in this area (ref. 3 on your correct link).

You are right that huge savings can be had by separating the power source from the vehicle - Myrabo was writing about this 20 years ago. Most of the energy used by a rocket is used to elevate the fuel to the altitude at which it is burned. If the energy is supplied to energize a propellant (such as vaporized water as suggested in your link), the amount of propellant can be much less than the amount of burning fuel would be. Unfortunately, Myrabo has focused his more recent efforts on rather weak air propelled engines which haven't had much punch.

Because the real limit in terms of how much propellant is needed depends upon the specific energy (and thus the temperature) to which the propellant is energized, it is best if the propellant is heated to a very high temperature. For these purposes, an concentrated ultraviolet light source would work as well as a laser, and would likely be much cheaper than a fairly efficient laser of high power. Also, if a laser is used, the best case scenario would be if the photon energy corresponded to a particular energy jump in the target propellant, similar to the way an excimer laser is used. In the case of simply heating the propellant, material considerations will limit the amount you can heat the material (i.e. at some point, your water vapor will melt the nozzle). However, in the case of the excimer laser, a solid propellant could be used which would not suffer from heat transfer from the solid/gas interface, which means really high specific energies could be used.

Re:Missiles

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Er, no.

Yes, there are ballistics involved, but Missile technology is a helluva a lot more complicated because you are accellerating a mass that is constantly shrinking through an atmosphere that is constantly thinning to a speed that is so fast that the "bullet" enters a state of perpetually falling.

New branches of mathematics and numerical analysis have been fleshed out just to describe the problem properly. You know all those Differential equations you High School math teacher told you were impossible to solve. Well, that's not true. And while I'm at it, electrical engineers regularly work with sqrt(-1).

Saying a missile is just a guided long range bullet is like saying biology is just chemistry on a nanotech level.