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ESA Unveils Re-Entry Module
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Nov 05, 2008 09:12 AM
from the isn't-that-exciting dept.
from the isn't-that-exciting dept.
bmcage writes "The ESA unveiled the Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle, a real re-entry vehicle. Although it will not be reused, it has a better geometry than NASA's Orion or the Russian Soyuz, giving better lift, and control. This is not done by the addition of useless wings, but by using two brakes. Finally a departure from the Apollo design that is actually better?"
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Looks like a penguin (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, they rely on their small size, highly efficient shape and and their high resistance to viruses and other foreign invaders. That and funding from billionaires in South Africa.
Re:Looks like a penguin (Score:4, Funny)
So, it's like Yet Another Tuxracer fork, but in space?
Parent
FYI (Score:5, Funny)
> it has a better geometry than NASA's Orion or the Russian Soyuz, giving better lift, and control. This is not done by the addition of useless wings, but by using two brakes.
In case you're interested: The brakes are controlled separately. One applies to the front directing cilindrical sustainer, the other to the rear main power.
The optimal braking is then executed applying the force in a 3/7 proportion, to avoid unnecessary drifting.
Further investigations are studying the possibility of changing the current power source. So the astronauts don't get so tired.
It's a lifting body (Score:5, Informative)
Bmcage needs to look into what lifting bodies are -- they do not need wings.
Wings were added to the shuttle to respond to the the USAF's crossrange requirements & some of the early shuttle plans looked a lot like this.
Re:It's a lifting body (Score:5, Informative)
Pretty much. And frankly wings are not that heavy. The shuttle didn't just have a very large crossrange requirement but also a huge bring back capability.
The Shuttle is capable of bringing the Hubble back to be worked on if needed. In fact the plan was for the Shuttle to bring back the Hubble so it could sit in a museum when it's life is over.
It is a capability that has never really been used except for the SpaceLab flights.
Frankly the Shuttle was an attempt to jump from the Wright Flyer to a 707. We really needed to build a Ford Trimotor and a DC-3 first.
Parent
Re:It's a lifting body (Score:4, Interesting)
Frankly the Shuttle was an attempt to jump from the Wright Flyer to a 707. We really needed to build a Ford Trimotor and a DC-3 first.
apt summary. Now that we have the Shuttle experience, however, can we skip the Trimotor and go for the DC-3. They were pretty damn reliable and some are still in use today...
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
There is still a few tri-motors flying. But I fear we are going farther back then a DC-3 to be honest.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
[Shuttle bring back] is a capability that has never really been used except for the SpaceLab flights.
Also, there was the Long Duration Exposure Facility. [wikipedia.org] It taught us a lot of what we know about how materials react to the space environment.
Regardless of what I think of the shuttle, LDEF was Good Science.
Re: (Score:2)
There was also the Long Delay Exposure Facility [wikipedia.org]. They've also returned the work platforms, fixtures, and special tools used for Hubble repair. They've also returned the the Spacehab cargo containers (pressurized and unpressurized) used for delivering cargo to the ISS. They've also returned the MPLM [wikipedia.org]s used for cargo delivery to the ISS - the only system capable of delivering full sized equipment racks. The
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Bmcage needs to look into what lifting bodies are
Those things that almost killed Steve Austin?
Re: (Score:2)
By the time the USAF came aboard, the lifting body shuttle had been long abandoned (and had only briefly been considered in the first place) and wings to provide crossrange were already a key feature of the design. What meeting the USAF requirements entailed was to modify the planform, more of a major adjustment than a radical redesign.
bmcage also needs
Thoughts (Score:3, Informative)
It kinda reminds me of a cross between an X-37 [wikipedia.org] and an X-38. [wikipedia.org] Mostly the X-38.
It doesn't seem to have enough control surfaces or reaction control devices.
Re:Thoughts (Score:5, Informative)
Mostly it is a testbed of the design and aeronautical controls. Looking at the movie's many exploded and shaded CAD views (nice touch, guys), it appears to have no cargo space whatsoever. It doesn't look to me like that's what they have in mind - they just want to show that the flight fundamentals of the design are sound. They can work on building a larger one for cargo and/or humans if they manage this first significant milestone.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)
There also doesn't appear to be any redundancy, which has long been a design contention in the US and Russian schools of thoughts. I don't know where the ESA is, philosophically, on this issue.
This is easy: ESA has designed and is building and flying the most redundant and fault-tolerant unmanned spacecraft ever seen on this small planet: the ATV [esa.int].
In an extreme case these things are able of successfully completing their missions with half of the solar panels and fuel tanks and 2/3 of everything else (including computers, antennas, sensors, fuel lines, thrusters, actuators, electrical lines, etc...) completely damaged. Of course this is theoretical, since they would abort the mission in these circumstances, to keep the ISS safe. But still as demonstrated by the first ATV, the Jules Verne, they can successfully complete a mission with any single failure in any subsystem except the main fuel tanks.
But, the absense of thrusters in the nose leaves few options if the brakes fail or are damaged.
Hmm... I'm not a rocket scientist, but you seem to know even less than me about this. Anyway this is only a technology demonstrator and one-time test.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
There also doesn't appear to be any redundancy, which has long been a design contention in the US and Russian schools of thoughts. I don't know where the ESA is, philosophically, on this issue. But, the absense of thrusters in the nose leaves few options if the brakes fail or are damaged.
ESA's philosophy is: don't add redundancy for pretty much the only thing your going to test.
Re: (Score:2)
They can work on building a larger one for cargo and/or humans if they manage this first significant milestone.
When they scale the vehicle up, how will the systems scale up with it? Will they simply be left with a larger vehicle that also has no cargo space?
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It's SMALL [Re:Thoughts] (Score:2)
Cute! It's really a nice looking experiment.
However, note that it's launched on a Vega. That's the new small European vehicle. The thing is tiny.
It's a test article, that's all.
Overall, it looks a lot like a revised and updated version of the cancelled Hermes [wikipedia.org] spaceplane. The Hermes wings are deleted, and a parachute substituted for the final descent.
Finally? (Score:2, Insightful)
"A REAL re-entry vehicle" (that exists only on paper)? "Finally?" "Useless wings?"
Good grief, who writes this stuff anymore? I'm sure ESA's ideas are interesting and innovative, but making this out to be the savior of the manned space program is a bit facetious to say the least.
Is it not essentially a lifting body (in spite of some new ideas)? NASA pioneered this concept, which was intended to be applied to reentry vehicles at some point. The concept was most recently expressed in the X38B crew return v
ESA? (Score:2)
Re-entry vehicle? Getting a little far away from our core competencies are we, the ESA? Oh... we're not talking about videogames. [theesa.com]
Gemini (Score:3, Insightful)
looks like they are taking a step backwards to a more Gemini/lifting body approach.
i've always thought that was a better configuration, but it's hardly new.
i like it.
i think they should have taken that path with Orion.
Re-entrant? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
So that means it's thread safe?
I hope so, given all the threads in all those drogue chutes before they deploy the main chute.
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Idle questions for in-the-know Rocket Scientists! (Score:2)
1) So does it use the same sort of heat resistant but very fragile tiles that the space shuttle uses? Is that why it has a shroud covering it during launch (adding weight and complexity)?
2) Will this be able to work at very high re-entry speeds not just from earth orbit but from lunar/mars return missions? The video (at the very end) seems to imply this. (Couldn't tell from the wind tunnel footage; shows only shock waves at Mach 1.4. And no CFD simulations!).
3) Does this thing really need a FOUR stage ro
Re:Idle questions for in-the-know Rocket Scientist (Score:5, Insightful)
Single stage to orbit doesn't make sense from a fuel economy point, you need a lot of big engine at the beginning, why accelerate all that mass into orbit? Ditto on reentry, you have to bleed off all that additional energy you put in, requiring lots more of those fragile heat shield tiles.
Parent
Why All The Control? (Score:2, Insightful)
We aren't talking about making a runway approach here, so who needs all this control (besides some frustrated pilot astronaut)? No control needed to hit the Pacific or even Central Asia; just timing.
I am also concerned about the total reliance on one big honker parachute, and wonder what the vehicle's speed will be (slowed by pure air drag alone?) when that main has to deploy. I'd feel a LOT better with a wee drag chute out the back (in case of control and/or parachute failure), and at least an escape hat
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I am also concerned about the total reliance on one big honker parachute, and wonder what the vehicle's speed will be (slowed by pure air drag alone?) when that main has to deploy.
Watch the video, there's three drogues before the main cute is popped.
Why a chute at all? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In regards to the chute, weight is everything at the orbiter stage, and landing gear adds a lot of weight. And if the main chute fails, I doubt you could manually exit the vehicle in a supersonic slip stream without ejection seats (which again are way to heavy).
Re: (Score:2)
Ask Russian cosmonauts [suzymchale.com] how they feel landing with just one parachute - on the hard Kazakhstan ground, not water.
Emergency Parachutes, Good Idea (Score:2)
I think the idea of being able to exit an aircraft before it incinerates, or craters, is a good idea. But I think that the Engineers have missed a major flaw in Land-To-Space design. Burt Rutan's [typepad.com] solution allows for a more simple, graceful recovery of malfunctioning LTS Assemblies. Half the cost of an LTS project is the cost of Insurance for a second chance. By lifting parts of the project, and applying Final, and Trim Assembly in a stable earth orbit, one can reduce the overall project cost, and handle
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Too little, too late (Score:4, Informative)
IXV that this article is about is a small testing platform, not a manned spacecraft.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I must disagree. The ESA programme is designed to improve spaceflight in small steps. They try to be very cost effective. And this path has brought them the biggest market share in space cargo delivery (in form of Ariane Space).
ESA has also a Mars programme called Aurora, which includes the delivery and return of humans. But before going there, technologies have to developed which can transport objects into space and safely return them. And because the Europeans do not think they are participators in a race
Re:Trollish Summary (Score:5, Informative)
By doing things like using useless wings to get up to altitude before launch thus requiring less propellant.
No, that doesn't work. The cheapest part of a spacecraft is its propellants, second cheapest is the propellant tanks, third cheapest is to buy or design a bigger engine at the start of the design process (kind of difficult later on in the development cycle). The most expensive part of a spacecraft is systems integration, and adding wings and horizontal flight is hard to integrate. The aerodynamics of ultra high speed wings is a huge pain, and simply isn't needed, so why bother.
You are probably not aware of the 666 rule... Not to keep you in suspense, mach 6 at 60,000 feet (thats 20 kilometers in the civilized world) is a whopping 6% of total orbital energy. An impossible speed at an impossible altitude provides practically no advantage over a simpler ballistic design with tanks that are about 1/20th bigger. Most people have the peculiar idea that a civilian airliner at cruise is "almost in orbit" and the slightest push is all that is needed for a 747 to reach the ISS, and that couldn't be further from the truth.
Making an airplane that flies at mach 6 and 60Kft is no laughing matter, and then making it also a spacecraft is simply unrealistic. On the other hand making the fuel tanks a bit larger is no big deal.
There are three advantages to air launch that apply in almost no situations. One is the obvious lack of ground support, don't need to license a "spaceport" just another airport, however the EPA, FAA, USAF, NORAD, BATF, etc are going to harass you just the same anyway so this is again another way to get a small advantage at a huge cost. I guess Rutan and friends thought it was worth it, but thats a regulation and political decision not a technological decision. The other advantage is for military purposes you can assume a large fleet of aircraft could simultaneously launch an even larger number of rocket vehicles from anywhere an airplane can fly, possibly at great surprise to the enemy, this is the nuclear tipped cruise missile idea applied to a suborbital ballistic trajectory, which isn't such a bad idea but never got much traction, at least in the USA. Maybe Rutan daydreamed of selling hundreds of his vehicles to the USAF for recon purposes or something. There is a third reason to airlaunch, if you're basically making a circus carnival ride as opposed to a real vehicle, then air launch makes the roller coaster ride even more spectacular.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
There are three advantages to air launch that apply in almost no situations
Err I forgot there is a fourth theoretical advantage which relates to failure modes. 99.999% of serious launch failures will result in a giant fireball, an aluminum lawn dart, or a square mile debris field, but for that tiny fraction of survivable disasters, the more complicated air launch system can always glide home at any stage of the flight. Vertical launch systems almost always have a region at low enough altitude where a failure can't be survived. However, it's hard to find a failure mode that is b
air breathing first stage? (Score:2)
The first stage of an air launch vehicle does not need to carry it's own oxidizer as it can use air breathing engines, and some of the weight (lift) is carried by aerodynamics (wings) instead of pure rocket power. I don't think there are any air breathing engines (jet) with enough thrust to work in a pure vertical liftoff first stage, but if that were possible then some of the weight (oxidizer) could be saved in a re-usable first stage.
Re: (Score:2)
SpaceShipOne has been proven to work, but thats not a very good argument, since it was never intended to scale up to an orbital vehicle. The difference in energy required for that flight and an orbital flight is about 1:10, meaning that an air-launch reduces the energy cost by ~50% for a sub-orbital flight rather than ~5% for an orbital flight, making it much more worthwhile. This is why Rutan did it this way, but I'm pretty sure if he's considering SS3 much right now, he'll go with a very different archi
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You should also add that air launch is inherently reusable, that its cost is dramatically lower, that the carrier vehicle does not degrade in operation and could be ready for the next launch immediately, that in the event of post-detach launch failure the carrier provides observer and pursuit capability without extra air deployments, and possibly most important, that most of the dense atmospheric stresses are bypassed so everything can be lighter.
None of these things are proven, and most of them depend on the details of the system chosen.
Air launch does have some significant advantages, though; most notably in the way of range safety: you don't light the rocket until you're in a clear space, well away from ground assets.
Re:ultimate symbol of our throw away culture (Score:4, Insightful)
SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo were purely sub-orbital; they were glorified rocket planes that didn't carry anywhere near the fuel necessary to reach orbital velocity. SpaceShipThree, on the other hand, will reach orbit, but it will almost certainly be a multi-stage craft.
And while discarding empty fuel tanks may be wasteful, it would be far more wasteful to expend the enormous amount of fuel required to carry the entire craft to orbit.
Until we find a better means of propulsion than rocket fuel, multi-stage craft are the most resource-efficient means of attaining orbit.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Its not even more wasteful to do a single-stage to orbit vehicle, with current specific-impulse propellants, around 450s for the SSME, its basically impossible.
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Was? AFAIK, SpaceShipTwo hasn't even flown yet.
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Oops, yeah, I meant to say "are".
Maybe after I heard the SS2 won't be pushing the envelope any further than the SS1 I subconsciously started considering it old news.
Re: (Score:2)
Think of the Space Shuttle Columbia: It would have been possible (and was recommended by certain people) to check the hull of the shuttle before entering the athmosphere and, in case of a fault (which we now know existed) attempt a rough patch-up or wait for another shuttle to rescue the astro
Re: (Score:2)
Duh! (Score:2)
Its a rocket.
They are inherently phallic.
Its not like we had Borg technology or something similar so that we could make our space-vehicles squared.