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.

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.

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.

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.

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[McGiraf]

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eh eh they think they have everything ...

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: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)