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

Now, seriously.

[Chris Tucker]

I can see the need for commercialized flights to sub-orbital and even to orbit.

But really, what's next after this? I'd like to be able to get to the ISS for a not insane sum, like MAYBE 200 thousand dollars.

But, failing that, OK, you're in orbit. Now what? I think that "space tourism" will only be genuinely successful is if there is a destination in orbit. The whole "space hotel" thing makes a LOT of sense in that it is a destination AND a safe haven if the vehicle can safely reenter.

Not much room, but good to see the escape module

[Bearhouse]

Funny - looks a little like the original Learjet.

Nice to see the escape module. Bearing in mind that even NASA - and the Russians, Chinese etc. - have had some spectactular & sad blow-ups, it would seem likely that some of these less well resourced attempts will have the same. Shame there was not one in the shuttle - I seem to remember it was in the original proposal?

Neat idea also to tow the thing up, therefore avoiding the need for a special launch aircraft like Rutan's designs. Still, he did get there first, and this thing's only on paper...

Re:Orbital?

[Timesprout]

You idea of storing valuables in a cigarette for safekeeping intrigues me. Perchance you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?

Re:Orbital?

[Bearpaw]

Ah. Thank you for your deeply insightful and very informative response. I understand the design's failings much better now. In retrospect, even I should have seen them.

Re:Orbital?

[saburai]

Well, it clearly wasn't RobGoldsmith's fault. The article does indeed claim this business-jet sized craft will reach orbit. The first stage would be a tow plane.

I'm just not seeing this. The tow plane can get the vehicle to a moderate altitude, but nowhere near orbital velocity (delta-v=20,000 km/hr, after drag?). You'd need a mass ratio of 10-to-1 on propellant ("easy" with a capsule that jettisons everything behind it; much harder with a space plane), and you'd have to be using something with an extraordinary Isp, around 320. That probably means cryogenic propellant. So this plane is made of cryo-compatible low-weight, reusable materials? Are there turbopumps on board? I don't see a rocket engine, I see a nozzle. OMS? Reentry heat shield? How do you restart your engine for a controlled reentry burn? Do you keep propellant in those tanks for that? Have you accounted for O2 slosh?

This just doesn't LOOK like an orbital vehicle. To build an orbital craft with that profile and no significant 1st stage would require ludicrous developments in materials science.

And his answers come across as insanely naive.

"Our proposed flight profile from launch to orbital insertion enjoys the same level of safety as conventional aircraft."

No, it can't possibly. You don't even have a prototype, so I can't even entertain such a statement.

"Towing aircraft is common and NASA successfully demonstrated towing a space plane."

NASA hasn't demonstrated a space plane, so how can they have demonstrated towing one? They may have demonstrated towing a REGULAR PLANE. It is true that NASA has launched orbital missiles from airplanes (not via tow, however, to my knowledge).

"One thought I had was that the complexity of this vehicle may actually cause more safety issues, I was told that its simplicity and reliability are un-matched in any other system."

Oh, well that settles that, then. Who wrote this?

"With regards to cost I was also told that a prototype would cost $4 million USD."

That won't even pay for your propellant. For reference, a new Lear Jet STARTS at $5 million. That's off-the-lot; all development costs behind it. So an orbital space plane costs less, including R&D than a Lear Jet? How about the tow plane? Does that come free?

"The design can easily be scaled up, both in terms of the first stage capability and the capability of the parent vehicle."

No, spacecraft do not "easily" scale up. You pick your target orbital payload mass/velocity and you do whatever it takes to get you there. You can't build an orbital, man-rated spacecraft, and then just multiply the entire thing by 1.3.

"The project is currently getting a team together and looking towards getting funding."

So, really, no design yet?

I read up a bit on Robert Talmage. His expertise seems to be in rescue/escape vehicles. I think this entire thing is a publicity stunt for his cockpit-jettisoning escape system (which is all they really talk about in that article; they don't mention fuel or engines once), which, for the record, seems to depend on lifting surfaces:

"After separation, the EV (which is designed to fly at higher dynamic pressures than the parent vehicle) will naturally pitch down and accelerate. Releasing the forward weight of the EV will cause the parent vehicle to be out of balance. With the center of gravity now well behind the center of lift, the parent vehicle will be unstable and pitch up. The high drag configuration of the unstable parent vehicle will provide good horizontal separation from the EV."

...so it wouldn't even work in orbit.

I'm sure Mr. Talmage has some hand-wavy answers to all of these questions, and I would LOVE to get my hands on a $4 million space ship. But I think it's safe to say this guy has his head in the clouds, not his hardware.

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

[Free the Cowards]

At least one successful ejection has been made from an SR-71 at mach 3, which is roughly the speed that Challenger was doing when it broke up, assuming that your 1km/s figure is correct. The reason why this was survivable is because what kills an ejecting pilot isn't speed, but rather dynamic pressure caused by speed. Dynamic pressure increases with the square of speed ,but it also drops off with altitude. Your 300m/s figure is correct, but that's assuming a sea-level ejection. If you're at a high altitude then the true speed goes up accordingly. (If you're familiar with aviation terms, it's the indicated airspeed that kills you, not the true airspeed.) I don't know how high Challenger was when it broke up, but if it was more than about 12 miles then it's conceivable that ejections from it could have been survivable.

Not to take away from your post overall, as you make many excellent points, I just wanted to elaborate on that one thing.