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Rocketship (other)
A space vehicle is the combination of a spacecraft and its launch vehicle which carries it into space. The earliest space vehicles were expendable launch systems, using a single or multistage rocket to carry a relatively small spacecraft in proportion to the total vehicle size and mass. An early exception to this, the Space Shuttle, consisted of a reusable orbital vehicle carrying crew and payload, supported by an expendable external propellant tank and two reusable solid-fuel booster rockets. Reusable launch systems are currently being developed by private industry. Early spacecraft or space vehicles were sometimes known as "spaceships", a term which comes from science fiction to designate a hypothetical vehicle which travels beyond low Earth orbit and is 100% reusable, needing only to be refueled like an airplane. History In the 1865 Jules Verne novel ''From the Earth to the Moon'', successful attempts are made to launch three people in a projectile with the goal of a Mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apollo 11 Launch - GPN-2000-000630
Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and light, poetry, and more. One of the most important and complex of the Greek gods, he is the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. He is considered to be the most beautiful god and is represented as the ideal of the ''kouros'' (ephebe, or a beardless, athletic youth). Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as ''Apulu''. As the patron deity of Delphi (''Apollo Pythios''), Apollo is an oracular god—the prophetic deity of the Pythia, Delphic Oracle and also the deity of ritual purification. His oracles were often consulted for guidance in various matters. He was in general seen as the god who affords help and wards off e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flash Gordon
Flash Gordon is the protagonist of a space adventure comic strip created and originally drawn by Alex Raymond. First published January 7, 1934, the strip was inspired by, and created to compete with, the already established ''Buck Rogers'' adventure strip. Creation The ''Buck Rogers'' comic strip had been commercially very successful, spawning novelizations and children's toys, and King Features Syndicate decided to create its own science-fiction comic strip to compete with it. At first, King Features tried to purchase the rights to the '' John Carter of Mars'' stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs, but the syndicate was unable to reach an agreement with Burroughs. King Features then turned to Alex Raymond, one of their staff artists, to create the story. One source for Flash Gordon was the Philip Wylie novel '' When Worlds Collide'' (1933). The book's themes of an approaching planet threatening the Earth, and an athletic hero, his girlfriend, and a scientist traveling to the ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SpaceX
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the company has made numerous advancements in rocket propulsion, reusable launch vehicles, human spaceflight and satellite constellation technology. , SpaceX is the world's dominant space launch provider, its launch cadence eclipsing all others, including private competitors and national programs like the Chinese space program. SpaceX, NASA, and the United States Armed Forces work closely together by means of Government contractor, governmental contracts. SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk in 2002 with a vision of decreasing the costs of space launches, paving the way to SpaceX ambition of colonizing Mars, a sustainable colony on Mars. In 2008, Falcon 1 successfully launched into orbit after three failed launch attempts. The company then pivoted towar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suborbital Spaceflight
A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched. Hence, it will not complete one orbital revolution, will not become an artificial satellite nor will it reach escape velocity. For example, the path of an object launched from Earth that reaches the Kármán line (about – above sea level), and then falls back to Earth, is considered a sub-orbital spaceflight. Some sub-orbital flights have been undertaken to test spacecraft and launch vehicles later intended for orbital spaceflight. Other vehicles are specifically designed only for sub-orbital flight; examples include crewed vehicles, such as the X-15 and SpaceShipTwo, and uncrewed ones, such as ICBMs and sounding rockets. Flights which attain sufficient velocity to go into low Earth orbit, and then de-orbit before completing their first full orbit, are not considered sub-orbital. Exam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SpaceShipTwo
The Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo (SS2) was an air-launched suborbital spaceplane type designed for space tourism. It was manufactured by The Spaceship Company, a California-based company owned by Virgin Galactic. SpaceShipTwo was carried to its launch altitude by a Scaled Composites White Knight Two, before being released to fly on into the upper atmosphere powered by its rocket engine. It then glided back to Earth and performed a conventional runway landing. The spaceship was officially unveiled to the public on 7 December 2009 at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. On 29 April 2013, after nearly three years of unpowered testing, the first SS2 constructed successfully performed its first powered test flight. Virgin Galactic planned to operate a fleet of five SpaceShipTwo spaceplanes in a private passenger-carrying service and took bookings for some time, with a suborbital flight carrying a ticket price of US$250,000 in 2015. The spaceplane was also u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Shepard
New Shepard is a Reusable launch vehicle, fully reusable Sub-orbital spaceflight, sub-orbital launch vehicle developed for space tourism by Blue Origin. The vehicle is named after Alan Shepard, who became the List of space travelers by nationality, first American to travel into space and the Apollo 14, fifth person to walk on the Moon. The vehicle is capable of VTVL, vertical takeoff and landings. Additionally, it is also capable of carrying humans and customer payloads into a Sub-orbital spaceflight, sub-orbital trajectory. New Shepard consists of a Launch vehicle, launch rocket and a crew capsule. The capsule can be configured to house up to six passengers, cargo, or a combination of both. The launch rocket is powered by one BE-3, BE-3PM engine, which sends the capsule above the Kármán line, where passengers and cargo can experience a few minutes of weightlessness before the capsule returns to Earth. The launch vehicle is designed to be fully reusable, with the capsule ret ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rocket Propellant
Rocket propellant is used as reaction mass ejected from a rocket engine to produce thrust. The energy required can either come from the propellants themselves, as with a chemical rocket, or from an external source, as with ion engines. Overview Rockets create thrust by expelling mass rear-ward, at high velocity. The thrust produced can be calculated by multiplying the mass flow rate of the propellants by their exhaust velocity relative to the rocket (specific impulse). A rocket can be thought of as being accelerated by the pressure of the combusting gases against the combustion chamber and nozzle, not by "pushing" against the air behind or below it. Rocket engines perform best in outer space because of the lack of air pressure on the outside of the engine. In space it is also possible to fit a longer nozzle without suffering from flow separation. Most chemical propellants release energy through redox chemistry, more specifically combustion. As such, both an oxidizing agen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skylon (spacecraft)
Skylon was a series of concept designs for a reusable single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane by the British company Reaction Engines Limited, using SABRE, a combined-cycle, air-breathing rocket propulsion system. The vehicle design is for a hydrogen-fuelled aircraft that would take off from a specially built reinforced runway, and accelerate to Mach 5.4 at altitude (compared to typical airliner's ) using the atmosphere's oxygen before switching the engines to use the internal liquid oxygen (LOX) supply to accelerate to the Mach 25 necessary to reach a 400 km orbit. It would carry of cargo to an equatorial low Earth orbit (LEO); up to to the International Space Station, almost 45% more than the capacity of the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle; or to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO). The relatively light vehicle would re-enter the atmosphere and land on a runway, being protected from the conditions of re-entry by a ceramic matrix composite skin. Whe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
McDonnell Douglas DC-X
The DC-X, short for Delta Clipper or Delta Clipper Experimental, was an uncrewed prototype of a reusable single-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle built by McDonnell Douglas in conjunction with the United States Department of Defense's Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) from 1991 to 1993. Starting 1994 until 1995, testing continued through funding of the US civil space agency NASA. In 1996, the DC-X technology was completely transferred to NASA, which upgraded the design for improved performance to create the DC-XA. After a test flight of DC-XA in 1996 resulted in a fire, the project was canceled. Despite its cancellation, the program inspired later reusable launch systems. Michael D. Griffin has since praised the program as "government R&D at its finest." Background According to writer Jerry Pournelle: "DC-X was conceived in my living room and sold to National Space Council Chairman Dan Quayle by General Graham, Max Hunter and me." According to Max Hunter, howev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rotary Rocket
Rotary Rocket Company was a rocketry company that developed the Roton concept in the late 1990s as a fully reusable single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) crewed spacecraft. The design was initially conceived by Bevin McKinney, who shared it with Gary Hudson. In 1996, Rotary Rocket Company was formed to commercialize the concept. The Roton was intended to reduce costs of launching payloads into low Earth orbit by a factor of ten. The company gathered considerable venture capital from angel investors and opened a factory headquartered in a facility at Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California. The fuselage for their vehicles was made by Scaled Composites, at the same airport, while the company developed the novel engine design and helicopter-like landing system. A full-scale test vehicle made three hover flights in 1999, but the company exhausted its funds and closed in early 2001. Origins Bevin McKinney had been thinking about the idea of a launch vehicle using helicopter blade ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
X-33
The Lockheed Martin X-33 was a proposed uncrewed, sub-scale technology demonstrator suborbital spaceplane that was developed for a period in the 1990s. The X-33 was a technology demonstrator for the VentureStar orbital spaceplane, which was planned to be a next-generation, commercially operated reusable launch vehicle. The X-33 would flight-test a range of technologies that NASA believed it needed for single-stage-to-orbit reusable launch vehicles (SSTO RLVs), such as metallic thermal protection systems, composite cryogenic fuel tanks for liquid hydrogen, the aerospike engine, autonomous (uncrewed) flight control, rapid flight turn-around times through streamlined operations, and its lifting body aerodynamics. Failures of its 21-meter wingspan and multi-lobed, composite-material fuel tank during pressure testing ultimately led to the withdrawal of federal support for the program in early 2001. Lockheed Martin has conducted unrelated testing, and has had a single success afte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Single-stage-to-orbit
A single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) vehicle reaches orbit from the surface of a body using only propellants and fluids and without expending tanks, engines, or other major hardware. The term usually, but not exclusively refers to reusable launch system, reusable vehicles. To date, no Earth-launched SSTO launch vehicles have ever been flown; orbital launches from Earth have been performed by Multistage rocket, multi-stage rockets, either fully or partially Expendable launch system, expendable. The main projected advantage of the SSTO concept is elimination of the hardware replacement inherent in expendable launch systems. However, the non-recurring costs associated with design, development, research and engineering (DDR&E) of reusable SSTO systems are much higher than expendable systems due to the substantial technical challenges of SSTO, assuming that those technical issues can in fact be solved. SSTO vehicles may also require a significantly higher degree of regular maintenance. It ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
