Blue Origins, update |
Blue Origins, update |
Jan 4 2007, 02:47 AM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 163 Joined: 16-March 05 From: Oakville, Ontario, Canada Member No.: 201 |
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Jan 4 2007, 12:53 PM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1870 Joined: 20-February 05 Member No.: 174 |
With adequate heat shielding, a vehicle derived from the current shell design for this test vehicle could make a very nice reusable orbital vehicle when put on top of a reusable DC-X style first stage.
One of the fundamental advantages of a VTVL vehicle <vertical take off vertical landing> is you can have a structurally efficient vehicle, structually efficient tanks (unlike the horrific X33 from Lockmart) minimal landing leg mass, no wings, use your flight rocket engines at very low thrust and only carry a little extra fuel for landing.. and you can land (as DC-X did) on unimproved reasonably flat terrain. |
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Jan 4 2007, 08:27 PM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2488 Joined: 17-April 05 From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK Member No.: 239 |
Back in the 1960s there were a number of paper studies by Philip Bono at Douglas Aircraft Company, Inc looking at future launchers. Notable was SASSTO, an S-!VB derived single stage to orbit design. SASSTO had a payload capability of 3,629kg to a 185km orbit. Many excellent colour paintings of this and other projects were included in the 1974 'Frontiers of Space' book he co-authored with BIS stalwart Kenneth Gatland.
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/sassto.htm Wings won in the first serious stab at RLV technology, but the economics of VTVL remain attractive. Bono's beloved plug-nozzle rocket engine design has still not been flight tested on a large scale, though the X33 and VentureStar would have used such propulsion. Bob Shaw -------------------- Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!
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