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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.
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...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
sorted in some kinda order --please fill in the gaps.
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.
moox. for a new generation.
Well, reentry is ~3000F, so Titanium would work. But I sure would prefer something that was higher than that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
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.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
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.