Posted on 01/24/2022 10:35:40 AM PST by Red Badger
Artist's concept of the Radian One spaceplaneRadian Aerospace VIEW 7 IMAGES
A new company has entered the commercial space race. Startup Radian Aerospace has emerged from stealth to announce it has secured US$27.5 million in seed funding to develop a single-stage to orbit (SSTO) spaceplane called Radian One, which is designed to lift and land horizontally.
The commercial space field has been growing steadily in recent years, with contractors taking over ferrying crews to the International Space Station, launching huge constellations of satellites into orbit, and even sending private missions and tourists into space. In addition, there are plans to replace the ISS with private space stations and proposals to send private missions to the Moon and Mars.
These private ventures tend to fall into two categories for getting into space. One is to launch payloads atop conventional staged rockets. The second is to use boosters dropped from high-altitude aircraft to deliver small payloads to low-Earth orbit.
Radian Aerospace says that it plans to break this mold by developing a delta-winged spaceplane about the size of a small commercial jet air transport that will launch horizontally using a rocket-powered sled to allow the craft to conserve as much fuel as possible. Once aloft, three rocket engines put the spacecraft into orbit under a low-g ascent, for crewed missions of up to five days, before landing on any 10,000-ft (3,000-m) runway.
(Excerpt) Read more at newatlas.com ...
“Like a mothballed space shuttle?”
The shuttle lifted vertically and required much more than 10k feet to land.
No, because it was later thought unpractical. But I remember the original NASA broadcasts in the 70’s, just after the final Apollo mission. It was supposed to be a true “space plane” that would take off and land like an airplane. But the difficulties in doing that resulted in the ugly space truck that we got.
“But I remember the original NASA broadcasts in the 70’s, just after the final Apollo mission. It was supposed to be a true “space plane” that would take off and land like an airplane.”
Updating your memory cells:
In July 1969, the Space Shuttle Task Group issued a report that determined the Shuttle would support short-duration crewed missions and space station, as well as the capabilities to launch, service, and retrieve satellites. The report also created three classes of a future reusable shuttle: Class I would have a reusable orbiter mounted on expendable boosters, Class II would use multiple expendable rocket engines and a single propellant tank (stage-and-a-half), and Class III would have both a reusable orbiter and a reusable booster. In September 1969, the Space Task Group, under the leadership of Vice President Spiro Agnew, issued a report calling for the development of a space shuttle to bring people and cargo to low Earth orbit (LEO), as well as a space tug for transfers between orbits and the Moon, and a reusable nuclear upper stage for deep space travel.[8]: 163–166 [5]
wiki
That only works for short hops just barely above the atmosphere. If Rutan's design ever got into orbit, it would burn up on reentry.
The heat produced by orbital velocities colliding with air is just incredible, and i'm not even sure SpaceX's stainless steel "Starship" can take the heat.
That came to my mind as well! My favorite Saturday morning show.
Yup!
Perhaps the memory banks are somewhat degraded over time. In any case, the space shuttle was originally supposed to be a much cheaper way to get into space. That was a bust, since it costed almost a billion dollars per launch. And on top of that, NASA was building a huge space station that I’ve never heard one good thing come out of, other than we now know how bees cope with zero gravity. That’s some valuable information, there. I’ve seen the ISS fly directly overhead, though. Pretty impressive.
I always wanted one of those hover bikes, or whatever they were called.
And we had Skylab, which got off to a bumpy start involving overheating. One of the solar panel didn’t deploy, if I remember right…
At least Skylab didn’t cost something like 15 aircraft carriers (the ISS). One launch, one space station. And we didn’t have to share it with the whole civilized world (meaning not the Chinese). The neat thing about it was wondering where 100 tons of sizzling steel were going to smack down when they found out its orbit had decayed.
I think one didnt fully deploy and the other was torn off along with the heat shield. I was ~10 when they launched skylab and I remember going out that evening to watch it fly over in the night sky. We expected to see one bright light, and instead we saw a train of seven bright objects come across the sky.
Not quite. Skylab did have one of it’s solar panels that did not deploy, because it was ripped off during launch. The thing that caused overheating was one of the outer panels which was also ripped off during launch and exposed the under skin of the space station. They ended up having to put a tent over the exposed part to prevent overheating.
Thanks for refreshing my memory. If my memory is correct, the cost was kept down by repurposing a rocket stage, which gave them all the room they had to move around in.
Skylab took up the Saturn V’s 3rd stage. It was normally used to propel the Apollo craft from earth orbit to the moon.
Thanks again🙂
Reentry from orbit, versus falling back down from straight up at nowhere near orbital altitude, are entirely different things.
Heat shielding will be necessary unless they can carry enough fuel to burn and control their descent and lateral velocity all the way back to earth.
And because we are still in the chemical rocket stage of space travel, that will not happen with a SSTO.
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