Two-Stage-to-Orbit Spaceplane Program Shelved

MadMorf writes "According to this article in Aviation Week, for nearly twenty years the USAF and "a team of aerospace contractors" has designed, built and tested a two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane, which could be used for "reconnaissance, satellite-insertion and, possibly, weapons delivery". Now this highly classified project may have been shelved for budgetary reasons."

Comments

Replaced by smaller, unmanned or disposable drones

[Isca]

I'll bet that if they have retired this, they've determined that the can do the same with unmanned drones, or a smaller unmanned satelite system that's launched as one piece package.

My money is on the drones, however. Some of the newer models can orbit at close to 100k feet for long periods of time, and are so small hard to spot that they might as well be satellites. Also, if they've been successful enough with hiding the sats that are launched, as in last month's Wired article (discussed here on slashdot) then maybe they don't need as much quick launch capability.

Wishful thinking

[codell]

I *want* to believe, but I doubt seriously if we have achieved this just yet. It would take a major breakthrough in fuel technology and/or hypersonic flight to make it from 100,000 ft. to 300 miles, even starting at mach 3. A craft the size of this hypothetical spaceplane would need a huge amount of fuel for that, not to mention heavy heat shielding a la the STS. I'm betting the NRO has found much cheaper methods of quietly getting satellites into unannounced orbits.

Re:Wishful thinking

[AKAImBatman]

It would take a major breakthrough in fuel technology and/or hypersonic flight to make it from 100,000 ft. to 300 miles, even starting at mach 3.

What makes you say that? We've had the technology for this sort of thing for quite a long time. The reason why the Space Shuttle sucks so much is:

• It carries the largest payload of any rocket currently flying, despite design recommendations to the contrary.
• Its budget was cut up into smaller yearly parcels, thus resulting in changes to the craft that would fit development within the yearly budgets.
• The craft is designed to be both a heavy cargo hauler and human transport for no other reason than because we can. This increased the vehicle's complexity by an order of magnitude.
• The Space Shuttle pioneered and/or was used to perfect many of the technologies built into its design. By now there should be a Shuttle-II system that uses that knowledge in a newer, safer, and more compact vehicle. Unfortunately, a lot of money was spent on more pie-in-the-sky endevors like compact SSTOs utiliziing bleeding-edge rocket technology.

That being said, the Space Shuttle is a marvel of engineering. The engineers were merely given a task that didn't make sense (combine cargo and human lifting), and the space vehicle industry has suffered from a lack of follow-up.

A craft the size of this hypothetical spaceplane would need a huge amount of fuel for that

All rockets do. The entire point of the Rocket Equation is to figure out the percentage of mass that will need to be expended using a given propulsion method. That's why the shuttle weighs 2 kilotonnes on the pad just to get 135ish tonnes into orbit. Or in percentages, about 6.75% of the Shuttle's mass makes it to orbit. The rest is either burned or discarded.

RLV News on Blackstar spaceplane

[FleaPlus]

There's some pretty good coverage of the supposed Blackstar spaceplane over on Clark Lindsey's RLV News. According to the latest post, the existence of the project as previously described is looking rather dubious. Here's what Lindsey wrote:

Despite the many details provided by AvWeek about the purported Blackstar program, the existence of an "operational" TSTO reusable system seems wildly inconsistent with what has been happening with all the rest of the government space programs since the early 1990s and with what they have planned for the next couple of decades.

- As a reader already commented, NASA's whole approach to space transport is based on the claim that fully reusable space vehicles are not feasible with current technologies.
- DARPA has had programs like Falcon and RASCAL (canceled due to cost overruns) that are intended to provide "responsive space" capability. For the next 5-10 years, this simply means launching microsats on short notice. Why not just use Blackstar or build on its capabilities?
- Why would a system like the Blackstar be "shelved" when it is so far beyond what anyone else is flying and beyond what the rest of the government claims is even feasible?
- The magazine article speculates that the program was run directly or indirectly by an intelligence agency and they managed to kept it secret from even "top military space commanders". So how did they manage to fly this thing to orbit and not have it show up on the military's space tracking system?
- In a government where secrets seem to stay secret only until more than one person knows about them, I find it extremely hard to believe a huge program like this could be kept under wraps for over 10 years. And not just from the public but from most of the military and NASA.

If it was the beginning of April, I would take this whole thing to be a big leg-puller.

If we were still in the 1980s, I would assume AvWeek had been led astray by a disinformation campaign aimed at the Soviets. But the Soviets are gone so I'm not sure why anyone in the Pentagon or the Intelligence agencies would bother to run an elaborate spaceplane ruse other than perhaps to get back at AvWeek for breaking so many stories about secret programs over the past several decades...

A design study program and some prototype tests, maybe, but a secret operational orbital system borders on sci-fi. I like sci-fi and I hope this story is true but I'll wait for independent confirmation before I'll buy it.

Re:I love The Slashdot Headline

[iamlucky13]

It's not that Aviation Weekly is a bad source, but the Slashdot submission discussed the planes existance as fact. The AW article said there were unconfirmed reports of a possible plane and orbiter. It's also possible that over-zealous AW readers saw SR-71's launching drones, and thought they were something cooler (yes, cooler than an SR-71, if you can believe that).

This isn't uncommon. There have also been reports of a flying wing stealth reconnaisance plane referred to as the TR-3. More concretely, there was a lot of speculation during the 80's that the air force was developing a stealth fighter called the F-19 Ghostrider. The Air Force made a bit of fuss when drawings of it were leaked, the Wall Street Journal discussed it, Revell created a plastic model kit of it, and even Tom Clancy featured the plane in Red Storm Rising. It turned out the leak was a misleading cover up to help keep the true design of the F-117 secret, which flew for several years before being made public.