Canadian Company Developing New Space Shuttle

Archimboldo writes "CNN is carrying an article on the development of a new space shuttle design by Ontario's PlanetSpace called the Silver Dart, which is based on the U.S. Air Force's Flight Dynamics Laboratory-7 (FDL-7) program. Advantages over the aging Shuttle design include an all metal exterior for all-weather re-entry, twice the shuttle's lift coefficient at sub-sonic speeds, a lighter inner body, and newer electronics." The company has high hopes of snagging some of the space tourism market along with grabbing some of the resupply missions to the ISS.

Comments

OT free day pass.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, the ads servers supposed to serve the "free day pass" seem to be slashdotted. I disabled adblock, clicked the "free day pass", waited for 10-15 minutes while the browser tried to connect to a.as-us.falkag.net and some more, and finally got tired of waiting, clicked "browse on free day pass" and viola, works, new story with red headline, "you're browsing on a free day pass" and my "haven't seen an ad since..." counter untouched.
Of course I had to re-enable adblock. The main page won't load until the ad linked from falkag.net times out, that is in some 5 minutes. Only with adblock slashdot main page loads in reasonable time. (still need to disable google-analytics.com yet, it slows down loading seriously too.)

Stealth, too?

[sl8r]

First thought that popped up was "With that angular body, it must have stealth capabilities, too!". I've been watching too much History Channel...

All metal?

[YA_Python_dev]

It seems a bit strange to me that an "all metal aircraft" can have sufficient heat insulation for an orbital re-entry... someone can clarify this?

Re:All metal?

[Hadlock]

Maybe they put the ceramic tiles on the inside? If they switched to Titanium for the frame from aluminum, you jump up about 2000 degrees in melting temperature, so the frame doesn't have to be as safely insulated.
 
Aluminum melting point = 1400F (or thereabouts); Titanium melting point = 3500F (or thereabouts).
 
Some aluminum alloys have melting points near or below 1000F, so insullation is more impostant. By starting over from scratch, you can avoid the aluminum spaceframe design and work with modern materials.

Re:All metal?

[WindBourne]

Well, reentry is ~3000F, so Titanium would work. But I sure would prefer something that was higher than that.

Re:All metal?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

It's called a hot airframe. The space shuttle is a cold airframe. If it gets hot, it fails, therefore it requires an additional heat protection system. On the shuttle, this is a very fragile ceramic/silica tile.

This spaceship uses a hot airframe. The metal parts of the vehicle are designed to get hot during reentry, and all the parts that are delicate are protected behind the very strong metal exterior.

Re:All metal?

[LWATCDR]

No It can't Ti turns to liquid at 3500 it weakens long before that. There are metals that can stand much higher heat. They are known as refractory metals. They do not tend to be light. They are commonly used in things like jet engines. The problem then becomes how to protect the other parts of the craft from the hot structure.

Predictions!

[mister_llah]

"Say, Terrence, do you know what my space suit smells like?"

PFFFBBBBLLLT!

Cool!

[polyp2000]

Its about time our space-ships looked like the ones in the movies.
This one bears more than a passing resemblance to the star destroyer!

http://starwars.wikicities.com/wiki/Venator-class_ Star_Destroyer

nick...

Re:Cool!

[EnglishTim]

Pfff! Anyone can see it's a modified Faulcon Manspace Police Viper, powered by a deLacy Super Thrust VC10.

Is it cost-effective?

[pv2b]

The main question on my mind is whether it's cost-effective.

From what I've heard, the current Space Shuttle is actually more expensive to operate than an equivalent single-use vehicle, partially because of the amount of work that has to be put into making the Shuttle operational again after landing.

Will the Silver Dart actually fare any better?

Re:Is it cost-effective?

[Randall_Jones]

Why don't we get some disposable astronauts, too? Cue the Christy McAuliffe jokes...

Re:Is it cost-effective?

[Vo0k]

1) Various parties had their business in putting their parts in the shuttle, and cost and quality were often on a far place when considering priorities (political friendships being most important). They often need checking, replacing, in short they suck. A commercial-made shuttle won't have this kind of weight attached. Middle ground between safety and price is the key value. And good-bye all the 60's - based parts still kept for political reasons.
2) The shuttles have -enormous- amount of redundancy/safety features because of all the publicity related to astronaut deaths. Commercial solution for own use should be just secure enough to pay itself back and give profit. Likely some/lots of the redundancy will be removed. Cheaper, easier, simpler, lighter. And lesser chance of -any- part failing (if there are 4 sensors instead of two, sure, in flight 3 will still work if one fails, instead of one, and two instead of none, but on Earth you need 4 checks instead of two, the chance that at least one sensor will be broken doubles and so do costs associated with them.) In short, astronauts are a bit more disposable...
3) If it's not cost-effective, it will just end up in bankruptcy of this company and taking over the market by others. Not in stalling progress for decades by pumping billions into failed design just to keep it flying for showoff. These guys get paid for actually delivering stuff to the orbit, not for providing some parts that may or may not quite work like intended but uncle governor said they should be used.

Re:Is it cost-effective?

[wulfhound]

... and despite all that redundancy and safety, two have been lost in around a hundred missions.

If space travel is to be scaled up, and space tourism to catch on, we certainly can't afford to have it any -less- safe -- how many people would fly commercial aircraft if one in 100 airline flights ended in a fatal accident (as opposed to of the order of one in a million)? OK, so space tourism is a bleeding-edge, once-in-a-lifetime experience, but still - a safety record worse than one fatal accident every 1000 flights (roughly equivalent to the very early days of airlines c. 1930) is not going to win a lot of business, and no existing manned rocket system has gotten close to that.

Re:Is it cost-effective?

[Vo0k]

So adding extra safety checks and multipling the redundancy in a failed design has proven to be a wrong approach. What's the right approach? Redesigning the device almost from scratch, then making it safe not by adding devices minimizing damages in case of failure but by reducing the chances of failure by rugged, simple, fault-proof design, then proving it's safe by lots of successful cargo flights ("lots of" possible only when profitable = inexpensive).

Instead of providing a fault-prone original and 3 spares plus a system to automatically switch between them provide one original that won't break no matter what. Nobody builds a second bridge below a bridge so in case the bridge collapses, people won't drown but will land on the second bridge among the rubble. You just build a bridge that will withstand multiples of the maximum weight it would ever carry.

Won't it be hard to launch that far north?

[aapold]

I mean there's a reason most space agencies launch from closer to the tropics... to gain additional velocity from the rotation of the earth...

I guess they'd have to launch from somewhere else...

That is unless their reviving the Gerald Bull Space Cannon program...

Re:Won't it be hard to launch that far north?

[lashi]

They are building it to sell to NASA or space tourism agencies. They are not launching it. Someone else is.

Re:Won't it be hard to launch that far north?

[aapold]

How will they test it before selling it then?

Re:Won't it be hard to launch that far north?

[ceoyoyo]

We'll launch from the Turks and Cacos when they eventually become the eleventh province.

Re:Won't it be hard to launch that far north?

[Eightyford]

We'll launch from the Turks and Cacos when they eventually become the eleventh province.

I never heard about that, but after looking it up, it seems like a great idea. Maybe someone should let the new government know that we want this in January.

Wikipedia entry on Turks and Cacos.

Re:Won't it be hard to launch that far north?

[ceoyoyo]

I didn't know NS had invited them to be part of the province. That sounds like a pretty good solution. We need a law prohibiting condos though, otherwise non of us poor folk will ever be able to visit.

Re:Won't it be hard to launch that far north?

[confused philosopher]

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/davinci_xpriz eupdate_040805.html
Xprize
http://www.kindersley.ca/future.html

Avro Arrow et al

[pettau]

Some of Canada's aerospace history ...

• The Canadarm2
• The Canadarm
• The Avro Arrow
• The o-rings on 51-L (if memory serves me correct)

sorted in some kinda order --please fill in the gaps.

Re:Avro Arrow et al

[florescent_beige]

The original Silver Dart; the Buffalo, Beaver, Otter & Twin Otter; the Black Brandt; the Argus; the Dash 7 & 8; the CL-84 tilt wing; the CL215, 215T & 415; the 600/601/604; the GX; the CRJ 200/700/900; the CL41, satellites: the Alouette (1963); the Anik A/B/C/D/E/F; Nimq, Radarsat. Off the top of my head.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

-and when countries strive to be different from the US, you hate that too.

Tang's out, Timmy's in

[komodotoes]

I guess it was only a matter of time before Tang got replaced by Tim Horton's anyhow.

For all non-Canadians - Tim Horton's is a huge national chain of coffee shops that sells the most adddictive street legal stimulant known to man. It is also one of three everlasting symbols of Canadiana - the other two being Molson Canadian beer and the beaver. Go figure.



NeverEndingBillboard.com

Ten rockets?

[Zarf]

from the article:
The spacecraft is expected to launch vertical atop a stack of about 10 Canadian Arrow rocket engines and land horizontally on an aircraft runway, they added.

If I remember my space history correctly, Russia had a moon rocket design that tried to incorporate the firing of 20 or more independant rocket motors. The design proved far too complex for the electronics of the day to coordinate and control.

With todays computer processing power I'll be interested to see if the problem of coordinating that many rocket motors simultaneously has become trivial enough to make a reliable launch vehicle.

IIRC: The old soviet rockets would spin out of control.

However, IANARS (I Am Not A Rocket Scientist).

Re:Ten rockets?

[bryantthesmith]

The Delta II can use up to 9 strap on rocket boosters in addition to the main main motor. This configuration has flown successfully for many years. If they try to make all 10 boosters controllable I could see them having problems (like the Soviet Moon rocket). If they just have a few motors for control and use the rest for boost it will probably be an easier task.

Re:Ten rockets?

[Zarf]

The Delta II can use up to 9 strap on rocket boosters in addition to the main main motor. This configuration has flown successfully for many years. If they try to make all 10 boosters controllable I could see them having problems (like the Soviet Moon rocket). If they just have a few motors for control and use the rest for boost it will probably be an easier task.

Thank you, that's very informative. The subtle difference is the idea of a control rocket versus a boost rocket. Boost rockets being easier to coordinate than individual control rockets. I wasn't aware of the difference... I'm just a computer geek.

Re:Ten rockets?

[florescent_beige]

The Saturn V first stage originally had only four engines but as the program went on and the weight grew they needed more lift capacity. As Vau Braun said, there was this space right in the middle of the existing four engines that was just crying out for one more, so they put one there. Interestingly and getting to my point, the central one was not steerable while the other four were. It's just a matter of putting in the minimum amount of hardware to give you the steering authority you need.

I thought the problem on the Soviet N1 was explosive self-disassembly of the oxidizer pumps.

Re:Ten rockets?

[uberdave]

The Canadian Arrow doesn't use a gimballed motor. It uses graphite vanes to direct the thrust - far less moving parts, far less opportunity for failure.

Re:Ten rockets?

[J05H]

Soyuz flies with several dozen thrust chambers, and is the most reliable launcher in the world:
http://www.space.gc.ca/asc/img/soyuz-rocket-comtoi s.jpg

(canadian site since we're discussing Silver Dart)

I think the Silver Dart is just paper, or PowerPoint. They really, really need to fly the "Arrow", it's almost 2006. If they couldn't fly it for the XPrize or the Zeroth XCup, their probably not going to fly. You or I can easily do what they've done to "make" the Silver Dart: haul out pictures of your favorite NASA airframe, redesign it using modern materials in CAD or 3D software, render it and make media with it. It has nothing to do with actual aerospace engineering. We've suffered 3 decades of viewgraphs from NASA, the small alt.space groups are supposed to be innovating not copying the space agency's worst attributes. Build it, fly it, break it.

This is for all of the guys in the biz or getting there: make me eat crow. Fly something cool and blow my socks off. I was at Mojave for SS1's first XPrize flight, THAT blew my socks off. Some 3D artist's wireframe does not impress me. Prove me wrong.

Josh

Shuttle tiles

[JetScootr]

Shuttle tiles were used cuz in the 1970's the metal alloys to withstand the >4000 F reentry temps (allowing for hot reentry in failure/emergencies) were either too expensive or not yet invented. In the 1990's NASA JPL developed a metal alloy that can take the heat without losing strength. Titanium may melt at 3500F, but it loses strength long before that.
Unfortunately, the NASA program was scrapped after a few test flights of working 1/2 scale models.
The knife-edge surfaces are needed for hypersonic flight. The shuttle does not "fly" at mach umpteen, it "falls", belly first, and ablates orbital speed in exchange for a huge plasma cone that can probably be heard on radio out to pluto.
modern tech can probably build a high-temp reentry surface that can actually fly under (limited) control to any chosen landing spot - making the New York - Canberra run an hour-and-a-half or so.

Re:Shuttle tiles

[DerekLyons]

modern tech can probably build a high-temp reentry surface that can actually fly under (limited) control to any chosen landing spot - making the New York - Canberra run an hour-and-a-half or so.

No, it can't.

Re:Don't crap it all up!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a moron.

Space Traveling

[Ashley Bowers]

Should be interesting to do some space traveling one day even if it is just for a few minutes at a time in a aircraft. I hope the American Governmentdoes decide to use the Canadian company for some of its missions for the ISS maybe it would help ease strained relations between the two countries. I just wonder if they will be able to fix it so everyone does not throw up once in space.

Re:Don't crap it all up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, it made sense to me... you're just a dickless turd...

Re:Don't crap it all up!

[http101]

Well, it's true, the iPod is part of everything now. The damned player actually has a DJ mixer docking station now that let's you plug 2 iPods in and even has HiFi speakers/PA speakers available. You've got to be kidding me...

Ten bucks

[StarKruzr]

says this thing never makes it out of 1/3-scale airframe prototypes.

The great thing is that I don't have to have even a tenth of a percent of the experience, knowledge or education of anyone who calls themselves an aerospace engineer in order to make this prediction.

Let's call it StarKruzr's Law: "Any new spacecraft proposal will be massively underfunded, poorly designed, have lukewarm support, or simply not work (pick any three)." This is because God and physics really, REALLY hate human spaceflight. One needs only to browse through Wikipedia to examine the endless parade of failed manned spacecraft projects to come to this conclusion.

Plus, this thing looks way, WAY too cool to actually work.

(tongue inserted mostly in cheek, of course, but you have to admit it really seems to be true)

Turks and Caicos

[uberdave]

Don't worry. Plans are underway.

Obligatory Great White N ref

[Carpe PM]

"Take off, eh"

Ablation is the word and Im slightly skeptical

[technoextreme]

It seems a bit strange to me that an "all metal aircraft" can have sufficient heat insulation for an orbital re-entry... someone can clarify this?

Im not sure about the shuttle but the Apollo mission always used ablative cooling. Basically the concept is similar to sweating. A metal with a high vaporization actually turns into a gas that channels the heat away. This article has more information: http://www.nasa.gov/lb/centers/ames/news/releases/ 2004/moon/adventure_apollo.html Unfortunately, the problem with this system is weight and I doubt they could actually get a decent payload into space with this system. I remember reading NASA rejected the idea for this type of system for the space shuttle because it would result in no extra weight.