Japanese Shuttle has Successful Test Flight 55
spacecomputer writes "First test flight of scaled-down version of Hope-X is a success! They have additional test flights in the coming week, but have no funding to proceed beyond the test stage."
Math makes them look the same (Score:2, Informative)
In doing similar tasks, the same engineering problems present themselves. You have similar speeds, loads, thermal ranges, etc., that the device has to deal with. The delta wing shape is necessary for the ultra-high speeds during re-entry. The black and white color scheme is necessary for removing heat. The skin has to be ceramic because it deals with heat the best. You need big doors that open to get cargo in & out. The engine goes at the back, the people at the front, and pretty soon it looks quite similar to the Russian and American shuttles.
Unrelated animals who have similar environments look similar. Unrelated plants evolve to have similar features when they exist in similar niches.
The situation dictates the result.
Re:what use? (Score:4, Informative)
The space shuttle is not successful. The space shuttle is an utter disaster. In fact, the space shuttle is, arguably, the worst thing that ever happened to the American space programme.
The problem is that the shuttle is trying to be both a man-rated lifter, a reusable lifter, and a heavy lifter, and as a result it does all three incredibly badly. It's a massive money pit that swallowed the American space station, SSTOs, the moon base, and any manned Mars missions...
Put it like this:
Space shuttle capacity: 6 people, 15 tonnes cargo; cost: $600M.
Soyuz capacity: 3 people, no cargo; cost: $60M.
Proton capacity: no people, 20 tonnes cargo; cost: $70M.
This means that you could replace a single shuttle launch with the Russian alternative, launch three seperate vehicles, and have over four hundred million dollars in change! With a single shuttle launch budget, you could put nearly two hundred tonnes into LEO --- or sixteen tonnes into GEO, and the shuttle can't do that at all.
Unfortunately, the shuttle is now become political, so noone's going to be able to get rid of it. It's going to hang around consuming more and more of NASA's budget, until eventually another one will blow up, and then NASA will be reorganised out of existence. Meanwhile, the Russians, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Pakistani, and basically anyone else with a clue (and alas, I don't live in such a country) will be using disposable launchers to maintain their space presence. The ISS will probably be kept up until the shuttle explosion, and then it'll be quietly evacuated and deorbited; but by then, there'll be other space stations, at least some of them privately funded.
Re:The ISS's lifeboat (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The ISS's lifeboat (Score:4, Informative)
Thanks for the info. I found some additional information [astronautix.com]. There was some talk of using this gold-plated mini-shuttle [astronautix.com] as the rescue vehicle. Then this design [spacedaily.com] was being worked on. Even though its budget was, as Lars pointed out, cut for 2002, they still test launched it as recently as December 2001. This link has some info on the use of the Soyuz [erau.edu] as the rescue vehicle.
I hadn't realized that US budget decisions had cut the ISS back to a skeleton crew. Here is a press release [spaceref.ca] from a US Senator commenting on a recently released independent review of the Space Station's Science programs.
Re:But why? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:could japan step in for russia? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The concept was actually right on (Score:2, Informative)
I suspect that you are referring to the X-33, not the X-34. In any case, both the X-33 and X-34 were suborbital (goes up, comes down) spacecraft, so they could not have replaced the shuttle.
What really could've gotten us into space for cheap was the team that built the DC-X. That was actually built, for about 1/30th the price of the X-33, and it was a superior design to begin with. There's a video of it at Armadillo. [armadilloaerospace.com]
IMHO though, our best chance now is XCOR [xcor.com].