Germany To Test Actively-Cooled Spacecraft

FleaPlus writes "The German Aerospace Center is planning to launch a novel reusable spacecraft in 2011, incorporating flat, damage-resistant tiles. Nitrogen will be pumped through the porous tiles, creating a protective gas layer that actively cools and shields the hottest parts of the spacecraft from the searing heat of reentry. The €12.5M unmanned 'SHEFEX II' project is a major technological step toward the team's eventual goal of a reusable space glider, which will be cheaper and easier to build than NASA's space shuttle."

Comments

I would hope so

[SigNuZX728]

"...will be cheaper and easier-to-build than NASA's space shuttle." I would hope they could build something cheaper and easier than the 30-plus-year-old shuttle.

German technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, German technology put the first man on the moon.

Re:German technology

[aquila.solo]

There's plenty of truth in that post.
The reason the Soviets beat us to space is that their German scientists were better than our German scientists.~

Re:German technology

[the_other_chewey]

There's a nice bon mot about this: "The Soviets got the Germans who knew how it worked, the US the Germans who knew why it worked."

This sums it up surprisingly well, and also explains (while of course ignoring lots of other relevant stuff) why the Soviets
made it up there quite fast, but after this failed to make significant progress for quite a while.

Re:German technology

[Rei]

Not at all. All but the first couple post-WWII Soviet rockets were *very* different from the V2. The R1 was basically a V2 replica, but the R7 was based on Korolyov's pre-war designs.

We always seem to be looking for ways to downplay the Soviet achievements in space in the 1950s and early 1960s. Why is that? Is it too much to accept that there were some *really damned good Soviet rocket scientists* over there? Had they not been majorly underfunded compared to the US in the moon race, and had they not made a couple of key design blunders with the N1, they likely would have beaten us in that, too. The loss of Korolyov in the middle of the project didn't help, either.

The reality is that it was the *US* that was heavily reliant on German rocket scientists and German technology, to a much greater extent than the Soviets. We shipped over three hundred freaking train loads of V2 parts back to bootstrap our space program. We took almost all of their top scientists (most Germans were scared of the Soviets, and the US offered big incentives).

Re:Nitrogen?

[aquila.solo]

In short, no.

Nitroglycerin is formed by mixing nitric acid and sulfuric acid (both highly concentrated, purified forms).

Atmospheric nitrogen, on the other hand is remarkably stable. At very high temperatures, (such as you might find at the leading edges of a reentry vehicle) nitrogen can be oxidized to to various forms of NOx. These can form acids in solution, but not in concentrations high enough to worry about.

And when you consider that there is plenty of naturally-available nitrogen in the atmosphere, this small addition probably isn't enough to worry about.

Re:why the obession with glider spacecraft?

[Rei]

Indeed -- look at the history of capsules -- the sinking of Mercury 4, the Voskhod 2 crew's night surrounded by wolves, Soyuz 18a's high-G roll that nearly sent it tumbling off a 500' cliff, etc.

I think the best example is Soyuz 23: a mistargetted landing led to the capsule landing on a frozen lake and crashing through the ice. No problem as it was designed to float, right? Well, the parachute got wet and, weighed down, dragged the capsule upside down. The vent tube -- open, as per standard practice -- now began to fill the craft with ice-cold water. The cosmonauts luckily stopped it up before it sent the craft to the bottom. So there they waited, half submerged, upside down in a frozen lake, with no air, in -22C weather. They had to cut way their space suits and get into clothes so as not to freeze; it took an hour and a half. They relied on regenerated air, and did everything possible to conserve power -- they'd leave the system off until they nearly blacked out from the CO2, then turned it on just long enough to clear up. Nonetheless, they still ran out of power. Helicopters couldn't land in the blowing mist, and rescue attempts failed until they ultimately got a hook on the parachute and dragged the craft half a dozen kilometers across the frozen landscape before they could be rescued.

Being able to control where you land is a very good thing. ;)

Re:why the obession with glider spacecraft?

[peragrin]

It is one thing I wish they would save a shuttle for.

NASA as a publicity fund raising stunt should save one shuttle's worth of parts and go retrieve the Hubbell Space telescope instead of crashing it into the ocean. Have the shuttle land and the load it directly for a flight to DC. Giving the whole pile (shuttle with Hubbell inside) to the Smithsonian.

Now that would be an awesome display. Heck I would donate money to help make that happen. To bad NASA doesn't think like awesome anymore.