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SSTO
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 vehicles. To date, no Earth-launched SSTO launch vehicles have ever been flown; orbital launches from Earth have been performed by either fully or partially expendable multi-stage rockets. 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 is considered to be marginally possible to launch a single-stage- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Douglas SASSTO
Douglas Aircraft's SASSTO, short for "Saturn Application Single Stage to Orbit", was a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) reusable launch system designed by Philip Bono's team in 1967. SASSTO was a study in minimalist designs, a launcher with the specific intent of repeatedly placing a Gemini capsule in orbit for the lowest possible cost. The SASSTO booster was based on the layout of the S-IVB upper stage from the Saturn family, modified with a plug nozzle. Although the SASSTO design was never followed up at Douglas, it is widely referred to in newer studies for SSTO launchers, notably the MBB "Beta" (Ballistisches Einstufiges Träger-Aggregat) design, which was largely an updated version of SASSTO. History In 1962 NASA sent out a series of studies on post-Apollo launch needs, which generally assumed very large launchers for a manned mission to Mars. At Douglas, makers of the S-IVB, Philip Bono led a team that studied a number of very large liquid-fueled boosters as a way to lower the ... [...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. 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, however, he had tried hard to convince Lockheed Martin of the concept's value for several years before he retired. Hunter had written a paper in 1985 entitled "The Opportunity", detailing the concept of a Single-Stage-To-Orbit spacecraft built with low- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reusable Launch System
A reusable launch vehicle have parts that can be recovered and reflown, while carrying payloads from the surface to outer space. Rocket stages are the most common launch vehicle parts aimed for reuse. Smaller parts such as rocket engines and boosters can also be reused, though reusable spacecraft may be launched on top of an expendable launch vehicle. Reusable launch vehicles do not need to make these parts for each launch, therefore reducing its launch cost significantly. However, these benefits are diminished by the cost of recovery and refurbishment. Reusable launch vehicles may contain additional avionics and propellant, making them heavier than their expendable counterparts. Reused parts may need to enter the atmosphere and navigate through it, so they are often equipped with heat shields, grid fins, and other flight control surfaces. By modifying their shape, spaceplanes can leverage aviation mechanics to aid in its recovery, such as gliding or lift. In the atmosphere, par ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skylon (spacecraft)
Skylon is a series of concept designs for a reusable single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane by the British company Reaction Engines Limited (Reaction), using SABRE (rocket engine), SABRE, a combined-cycle, Air breathing engines, 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 number, Mach 5.4 at altitude (compared to typical airliner's ) using the Atmosphere of Earth#Oxygen, atmosphere's oxygen before switching the engines to use the internal liquid oxygen (LOX) supply to take it into orbit. It could 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 Geostationary transfer orbit, Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO), over 24% more than SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle in reusable mode (). The relatively ligh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lockheed Martin 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 after a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philip Bono
Philip Bono (13 January 1921 – 23 May 1993) was a Douglas Aircraft Company engineer. He was a pioneer of reusable launch system, reusable vertical landing single-stage to orbit launch vehicles. As a visionary designer, he is credited with inventing the first version of a recoverable single-stage spacecraft booster, and his contributions influenced spacecraft design. Bono pursued single-stage space launch as simpler and cheaper. He realized to do this he would need to use high specific impulse liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen rocket engines. Afterwards he proposed to make these vehicles reusable. From his ROOST design onwards Bono advocated space launch vehicles without wings, usually using rocket assisted vertical takeoff and landing (VTVL). According to his estimates, wings consisted mostly of dead weight that decreased launch payload mass. He patented a reusable plug nozzle rocket engine which had dual use as a heat shield for atmospheric reentry. His early 1960s concepts infl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spaceplane
A spaceplane is a vehicle that can fly and glide like an aircraft in Earth's atmosphere and maneuver like a spacecraft in outer space. To do so, spaceplanes must incorporate features of both aircraft and spacecraft. Orbital spaceplanes tend to be more similar to conventional spacecraft, while sub-orbital spaceplanes tend to be more similar to fixed-wing aircraft. All spaceplanes to date have been rocket-powered but then landed as unpowered gliders. Four types of spaceplanes have successfully launched to orbit, reentered Earth's atmosphere, and landed: the U.S. Space Shuttle, Russian Buran, U.S. X-37, and the Chinese CSSHQ. Another, Dream Chaser, is under development in the U.S. As of 2019 all past, current, and planned orbital vehicles launch vertically on a separate rocket. Orbital spaceflight takes place at high velocities, with orbital kinetic energies typically at least 50 times greater than suborbital trajectories. Consequently, heavy heat shielding is required ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Douglas Aircraft Company
The Douglas Aircraft Company was an American aerospace manufacturer based in Southern California. It was founded in 1921 by Donald Wills Douglas Sr. and later merged with McDonnell Aircraft in 1967 to form McDonnell Douglas; it then operated as a division of McDonnell Douglas. McDonnell Douglas later merged with Boeing in 1997. History 1920s The company was founded as the Douglas Company by Donald Wills Douglas Sr. on July 22, 1921 in Santa Monica, California, following dissolution of the Davis-Douglas Company. An early claim to fame was the first circumnavigation of the world by air in Douglas airplanes in 1924. In 1923, the U.S. Army Air Service was interested in carrying out a mission to circumnavigate the Earth for the first time by aircraft, a program called "World Flight". Donald Douglas proposed a modified Douglas DT to meet the Army's needs. The two-place, open cockpit DT biplane torpedo bomber had previously been produced for the U.S. Navy.Rumerman, Judy. "The Dougla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rocket Engine
A rocket engine uses stored rocket propellants as the reaction mass for forming a high-speed propulsive jet of fluid, usually high-temperature gas. Rocket engines are reaction engines, producing thrust by ejecting mass rearward, in accordance with Newton's third law. Most rocket engines use the combustion of reactive chemicals to supply the necessary energy, but non-combusting forms such as cold gas thrusters and nuclear thermal rockets also exist. Vehicles propelled by rocket engines are commonly called rockets. Rocket vehicles carry their own oxidiser, unlike most combustion engines, so rocket engines can be used in a vacuum to propel spacecraft and ballistic missiles. Compared to other types of jet engine, rocket engines are the lightest and have the highest thrust, but are the least propellant-efficient (they have the lowest specific impulse). The ideal exhaust is hydrogen, the lightest of all elements, but chemical rockets produce a mix of heavier species, reducing the e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rotary Rocket
Rotary Rocket Company was an aerospace company in the late 1990s. Its founders were among the first to recognize that the end of the Cold War represented a significant shift away from the militarization of space, to a new civilian-led, commercial space industry. In 1996, Rotary Rocket Company was formed to address this emerging market. The company developed the Roton launch vehicle as a fully reusable single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) piloted spacecraft. The design was initially conceived by Bevin McKinney, who shared it with Gary Hudson. The Roton was intended to reduce costs of launching payloads into low earth orbit by a factor of ten. Rotary attracted considerable media attention, as well as venture capital from angel investors and opened an engineering design and test center 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 a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NEXUS (rocket)
The NEXUS reusable rocket was a concept design created in the 1960s by a group at General Dynamics led by Krafft Arnold Ehricke. It was intended as the next leap beyond the Saturn V, carrying up to eight times more payload. Several versions were designed, including 12,000 and 24,000 short ton vehicles with payloads of one thousand and two thousand short tons respectively. The larger version had a diameter of 202 feet (61.5 metres). It was never built. It was a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle that would be fully recoverable upon landing in the ocean. It would use parachutes to slow descent, with retrorockets (on top) for a final soft touchdown. Notes External linksrefs "Astronautics, January 1963, pp. 50-56." re Nexus Space launch vehi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Krafft Arnold Ehricke
Krafft Arnold Ehricke (March 24, 1917 – December 11, 1984) was a German rocket-propulsion engineer and advocate for space colonization. Biography Born in Berlin, Ehricke believed in the feasibility of space travel from a very young age, influenced by his viewing of the Fritz Lang film ''Woman in the Moon''. At the age of 12, he formed his own rocket society. He attended Technical University of Berlin and studied celestial mechanics and nuclear physics under physicists including Hans Geiger and Werner Heisenberg, attaining his degree in Aeronautical Engineering. He worked at Peenemünde as a propulsion engineer from 1942 to 1945 with Walter Thiel, then went to the United States with other German rocket scientists and technicians under "Operation Paperclip" in 1947. He worked for a short time with the Von Braun Rocket Team at Huntsville. In 1948, while working for the U.S. Army, Ehricke wrote a story about a crewed mission to Mars called "Expedition Ares". It anticipate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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