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The US's new space plane


GrahamS

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It looks to m,e that the space plane is essentially a winged booster. It doesn't carry people and has no internal cargo carrying capacity. It's effectively a winged rocket and fuel tank. It carries its payload in an expendable module.

 

In some ways, it's the reverse of the original Space Shuttle concept. Rather than throwing away the tank, you now recover it.

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18 hours ago, Eric Mc said:

It looks to me that the space plane is essentially a winged booster. It doesn't carry people and has no internal cargo carrying capacity. It's effectively a winged rocket and fuel tank. It carries its payload in an expendable module.

 

In some ways, it's the reverse of the original Space Shuttle concept. Rather than throwing away the tank, you now recover it.

So mount an X-37 on it and you've got something approaching the first space shuttle concept.

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12 hours ago, Eric Mc said:

You would indeed have something close to the Shuttle concepts of 1970./71. You would have a recoverable winged booster piggybacking a winged orbital spacecraft.

Well, if the X-37 weighs 5 tonnes (less payload adapotor and fairing), and can be launched on an Atlas 501 (payloat to LEO a bit over 8 tonnes), then a Falcon9/X-37 should be feasible as it has a revoverable payload of 9.6 tonnes. (All figures from Wikipedia)  Nine out of 10 booster engines would be recovered plus the spacecraft. 

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12 hours ago, TimB said:

 

Well, if the X-37 weighs 5 tonnes (less payload adapotor and fairing), and can be launched on an Atlas 501 (payloat to LEO a bit over 8 tonnes), then a Falcon9/X-37 should be feasible as it has a revoverable payload of 9.6 tonnes. (All figures from Wikipedia)  Nine out of 10 booster engines would be recovered plus the spacecraft. 

Just shows that there are now multiple options available to spacecraft designers for recoverability.

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