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

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?

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).

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.