TAAS Company Presents New Orbital Space Plane

RobGoldsmith writes "The TAAS Company have released details on their new Orbital Space Plane. The new design has many attributes to set it apart from its rivals. One highlight is the integrated Safety System; this is where an escape vehicle can eject from the main body of the craft then fly home safely. They claim: 'With the system's performance capability, economical first stage tow and independence from ground launch facilities, it can offer the lowest price. It also offers the safest flight.' Could this spaceship rival Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo?" Reader wooferhound points out related news from XCOR Aerospace (which we've discussed previously), that they're beginning to take orders for seats on their own suborbital flights, with test runs planned for 2010. Seats will be going for around $95,000 each, less than half the cost of the first tickets for SpaceShipTwo.

Comments

This proposal is irritating

[saburai]

Gosh. I find myself getting really riled up by this article. I work on the Shuttle External Tank, so I see every day how demanding, how difficult and precise manned space flight has to be.

I have a lot of respect for the suborbital tourism industry, and for SpaceX, since they're both doing very difficult things, too (getting a human to the boundary of space, and getting a payload to orbit without government funding, respectively).

And here, this guy just waltzes in and claims he can do all of that and more for a low, low cost of $4 million and a bad Photoshop of a Lear Jet with "rocket" and "propellant tank" drawn on the fuselage? Cripes!

Re:Not much room, but good to see the escape modul

[david.given]

Shame there was not one in the shuttle - I seem to remember it was in the original proposal?

The first four flights had modified SR-71 ejection seats, but they'd only be useful in the last stages of descent, and were only there because they were test flights.

Escaping from dying spacecraft is rather harder than it looks. It's only in the first 45 seconds or so after launch when a rocket's going slowly enough to eject from. Challenger broke up about 70 seconds into flight, at which point it was already travelling at over a kilometre per second --- and the breakup wasn't caused by the explosion; it was caused by the explosion wrecking the shuttle's aerodynamics to such an extent that it started tumbling, and then the hypersonic wind tore the vehicle apart. You don't eject into that. Most fighter aircraft ejection seats can only be used at speeds of 300 metres per second or so (although I'm sure someone can quote me something really esoteric that works at faster speeds).

The shuttle does have an escape protocol; you put the vehicle into a stable glide and jump out the door (using a frankly ludicrous system to avoid hitting that huge wing). They put that in after the loss of Challenger. It wouldn't have helped.

The best way of escaping during launch is to fire the entire crew capsule free. Mercury, Apollo, Soyuz and the upcoming Orion, if it doesn't get cancelled, all used/will use escape towers; a set of solid fuel rockets on the crew capsule designed to get the capsule clear of an impending explosion in a hurry. But they're intended to work on the ground, and get ejected about 50 seconds into the flight.

You might be interested to read up about Soyuz 18a; the second stage hadn't separated when the third stage fired! The Soyuz capule was jettisoned, reentered normally, and landed safely. But that accident happened much later, when the whole vehicle was out of the atmosphere in a suborbital trajectory. Not having to worry about atmosphere makes things far easier.

Escaping on reentry is much harder. Columbia broke up while travelling at about *eight* kilometres per second, through atmosphere. I don't know of any way to survive an event like that.

Re:Now, seriously.

[evanbd]

You want to look at Bigelow Aerospace. By the time companies like XCOR and Virgin are offering orbital rides, Bigelow is quite likely to have an orbiting hotel for your destination. Note that Bigelow has a launch listed on the SpaceX manifest. They're quite serious, and well funded. They don't always get as much press, because they don't make hot flamey stuff, but they're just as important.

Re:Not much room, but good to see the escape modul

[DerekLyons]

Challenger broke up at 48kft (14.6 kilometers or 9 miles).
 
Ejections seats for Shuttle ascent were rejected on three grounds, none of them related to dynamic pressure:

1. Ejection seats are very heavy.
2. It's virtually impossible to provide them for the lower deck passengers.
    
   --and--
    
3. For 90% of the period during ascent when they'd be useful, the ejectees would be fried by the SRB exhaust.