XCOR Makes a Rocket-Powered Touch-and-Go 34
wronkiew writes "XCOR Aerospace made a touch-and-go with their experimental rocket powered airplane (see their announcement). The pilot was Dick Rutan, of Voyager fame. Aviation enthusiasts may be familiar with the touch-and-go, but for the uninitiated, this maneuver involves landing an airplane and then taking off again while still on the runway. Note that other rocket-powered vehicles require that the engine be dismantled before they are flown again. While their craft is not exactly a spaceship, it is good to hear of some progress in rocketplanes since the demise of the X-33."
Re:Definition of rocket? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Definition of rocket? (Score:4, Informative)
Some jets do, some don't. Pulse jets and ram jets don't use a turbine -- the turbine is used to suck in and compress air for combustion. Ram and pulse jets use their forward motion through the air to do this (so they need a push to get started). Jets work on the action-reaction principle too.
thus they pull themselves through the air in a way similar to a boat propeller (or, for that matter, an airplane propeller).
One particular type of jet, the turbofan, works this way (partly). Take a regular turbojet and mount a honking big ducted fan on the same shaft as the turbine. Runs a bit quieter and more efficiently than a pure turbojet, but limits your top speed (subsonic).
Jet engines cannot work in space.
Well, they could if you carried a great big tank of compressed air along -- but that'd be kind of silly. The tank would be heavy and the mass of all that nitrogen is unwanted.
Re:Definition of rocket? (Score:2, Informative)
No. Ramjets don't have compressors.
The difference is that a jet engine uses oxygen from the atmosphere as one of its fuels. Rockets carry all their fuel(s) with them.
SSTO the key to sapce (Score:5, Informative)
The actual success here, though, is perhaps not as revolutionary as it first appears. The DC-X had a similarly reusable and relightable rocket even though it was in a more conventional vertical 'rocket ship' design.
Getting cheaper access to space is the key to broader space tourism and proper space industires. Other companies trying this include Pioneer Rocketplane [rocketplane.com], Armadillo Aerospace [armadilloaerospace.com], JP Areospace [jpaerospace.com] and TGV Rockets [tgv-rockets.com] to name but a few. There's even a UK outfit, Bristol Spaceplanes [bristolspaceplanes.com],
and the European Space Agency is beginning to think in this direction too, according to CNN [cnn.com].
All the companies are small and desperately in need of money if anyone wants to invest. Its probably less risky than Worldcom!
Another useful resource is the Space Access Society [space-access.org]. Indeed they've argued that the whole X-33 mess was in fact Lockheed-Martin protecting their lucrative disposable launcher market by messing up the project. Sadly, NASA seems to have been complicit in this.