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

So...

[jimbo3123]

So, now the program that "Doesn't exist" doesn't exist any more.

I love The Slashdot Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot reports this spaceplane being shelved as a certain fact. Even the article can't report it as certain. It's mostly conjecture and hearsay at this point.

When did slashdot turn into the Weekly World News? First it was political conspiracy theories, not this. It's getting ridiculous.

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.

In the end it's to AVOID killing others

[Goldenhawk]

>It seems infinitely sad to me that the primary motivation
>for most technological advance in the world is to come up
>with a better means of killing others.

I'm sure I'll burn some karma on this, but I would beg to differ.

There is an interesting premise to Larry Niven's sci fi writing about the Kzin war - the Kzin telepaths reported to their masters that the humans had no military weaponry, and were sure to be an easy conquest. Yet when they first attacked, humanity threw them back in short order, because the civilian technology we DID have was so powerful it cut thru their military systems like butter.
http://www.larryniven.org/kzin/empire.htm
Hmmm.

I see things a little differently, however. I work for the US military as a civilian, directly involved in the procurement of weapons of war. Anyone in our organization will immediately tell you that the goal is not to wage war, but to avoid it. Ronald Reagan knew this when he emphasized his "peace thru superior firepower" mantra. If we allow ourselves to become weaker than our foes, we will find war waged upon us, simply because it's possible. Granted, the only way to stay ahead is to work hard at it, and stay atop the technological king-of-the-hill game. To many (and apparently to this person) it looks as if we want the weapons so we can use them - but I assure you that the vast majority of soldiers, airmen and marines in this country want nothing to do with going to war. I have great respect for the armed services in America, because they are willing to put themselves in death's way to free others. But nobody that I've ever talked with had any interest in conquering another county for the sake of expanding our territory, or taking something that was not already ours.

In the end, I find it fortunate that our military research ends up providing such dramatic benefits for the civilian world.