StrandedonEarth Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 Zooming out from under the radar comes Radian Aerospace, working the HTOL angle. No mention of power plants, perhaps they’re using SABRE tech? (Or is it RAPIER, I get those mixed up…) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beccab Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 26 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said: Zooming out from under the radar comes Radian Aerospace, working the HTOL angle. No mention of power plants, perhaps they’re using SABRE tech? (Or is it RAPIER, I get those mixed up…) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeSchmuckatelli Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 Why is the guy from Duluth standing next to the rocket? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scotius Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 Very ambitious goal for a brand new startup. I wish them well, but I will withhold enthusiasm until they show some real, reasonable hardware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wumpus Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 Kerolox SSTO. No it isn't a scam, they have tweets and everything! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrandedonEarth Posted January 19, 2022 Author Share Posted January 19, 2022 8 minutes ago, wumpus said: Kerolox SSTO. No it isn't a scam, they have tweets and everything! The only thing going for it is the rocket-sled-assisted takeoff. Then maybe if they take off from Denver, that’s another minor boost. Then they just have to hitch it to Santa’s reindeer… Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeSchmuckatelli Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 12 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said: Then they just have to hitch it to Santa’s reindeer… The pattern is open for the next several months... so why not? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrandedonEarth Posted January 20, 2022 Author Share Posted January 20, 2022 Naturally, someone is already measuring it for a coffin… Wouldn’t be a surprising ending Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeSchmuckatelli Posted January 20, 2022 Share Posted January 20, 2022 Gary Hudson? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtomicTech Posted January 20, 2022 Share Posted January 20, 2022 (edited) Nan- Nani!? It's not supposed to be possible! I've recently fallen hopelessly in love with the X-33, so I'm really excited to see where this company goes! Fingers crossed that this goes somewhere... Edited January 20, 2022 by AtomicTech Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wumpus Posted January 21, 2022 Share Posted January 21, 2022 On 1/19/2022 at 2:08 PM, StrandedonEarth said: The only thing going for it is the rocket-sled-assisted takeoff. Then maybe if they take off from Denver, that’s another minor boost. Then they just have to hitch it to Santa’s reindeer… It is an interesting concept and allows for some other possibilities. Adding SCRAMJETS might put it in the realm of physically possible, and a rocket sled takeoff might make it feasible to light such things. The Pratt & Witney SJX61 engine might not exactly be "off the shelf", but it does have a designation, official testing, and they might be willing to sell more. Slightly more likely than hitching to reindeer, but not much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shpaget Posted January 22, 2022 Share Posted January 22, 2022 Many have promised SSTO, none have delivered. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beccab Posted January 24, 2022 Share Posted January 24, 2022 On 1/20/2022 at 9:33 PM, JoeSchmuckatelli said: Gary Hudson? The Rotary Rocket guy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZenAtWork Posted February 5, 2022 Share Posted February 5, 2022 (edited) I can't believe it never occurred to us before! Just FLY to space! Boy I bet NASA's faces are red! Just imagine! All we'd need is a rocket powered sled that can sustain around 30 G's for a few hundred km, and we're right there! Duh! How could have overlooked this for so long!? Whats that you say? "It liquify the passengers?" I'm sure the worked that out. "Rocket equation?" Ah, but it's a rocket SLED! "No atmosphere to generate lift past a certain point?" Psssh! They just have launch of the EDGE of the earth! Plenty of space to get up to speed! Why, I bet men this smart will someday walk on the sun! Edited February 5, 2022 by ZenAtWork Typo corrections Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sevenperforce Posted April 2 Share Posted April 2 Radian has an update: Wow! They have finally gotten enough capital to pay for a NEW RENDER! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shpaget Posted April 2 Share Posted April 2 (edited) Specifications CREW 2-5 UPMASS up to 2,270 kg DOWNMASS up to 4,540 kg PAYLOAD BAY DIMENSIONS LENGTH 5.2 m WIDTH 3.8 m (fwd) 5.6 m (aft) HEIGHT 2.7 m (fwd) 4.0 m (aft) VOLUME ~93 m3 *SPECIFICATIONS SUBJECT TO CHANGE Yeah, $5 they'll change. Anyway, 90 on demand capability, but "Deliver anything under 2270 kg anywhere on Earth in under an hour". Edited April 2 by Shpaget Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AckSed Posted April 2 Share Posted April 2 Haven't heard of these people. It does seem similar to proposals I've read in the old sci.space.* USENET archives. And Gary Hudson made me prick my ears up. Ridiculous as it might seem, the Roton could have worked, its payload just couldn't grow beyond what the customer wanted, and, already on a shoestring, they ran out of money. The story of the rise and fall is told in USENET posts by the man himself: https://yarchive.net/space/launchers/roton.html Quote From: [email protected] (GCHudson) Newsgroups: sci.space.policy Subject: Re: Rotary Rocket: what happened? Date: 30 Jun 2000 15:21:13 GMT *snip* The essence of building a commercial space transportation company is finance, not engineering. The basic mission remained largely unchanged, even if there were technical alterations. Fail to acommodate to your customer's/investor's wishes and you absolutely won't succeed, either in finding funding (which we did pretty well, but even so not well enough) or finding launches. You'll end up with a technically pure venture which will go nowhere. Or like NASA, doing mostly technology sandbox stuff. I'm assuming he was contracted to design the engine, not to advise on the business. Back to the spaceplane. Thing is, the key metric of any SSTO is propellant mass fraction, or 'how much is fuel, versus how much is structure?' You want structure to be a low fraction and fuel to be particularly high. If you have a spaceplane and use 'wet wings' for the kerosene, the thinking goes, then the 'dead' weight of the wings becomes part of the fuel tanks and the mass penalty of having them is offset enough to have a workable mass-fraction. You also want a combination of dense propellants and relatively high ISP. Kerelox is perfectly servicable in this regard. Small launchers are particularly sensitive to mass; I recall Peter Beck saying Electron's mission to launch CAPSTONE was so near the limits of what it could do that the mass of which NASA logo sticker to use was significant. The larger you get the more mass your structure gains, but tank mass grows at a lower rate than tank volume... which increases your propellant mass fraction. This is the hope and dream behind every oversized reusable SSTO dreamed up since before the space program began. Do I think they have an engineering case? There's a flicker of hope there, but they need to be eagle-eyed to any mass increase. a business case? Much less confident yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Minmus Taster Posted April 4 Share Posted April 4 2 and a half tons to orbit for something this large? Yeah I'm not so sure about this. Still a very cool idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AckSed Posted April 4 Share Posted April 4 Found the missive; it's on how in NASA's 1993 Access to Space initiative, one working group concentrated on a hydrolox SSTO with wet wings. All hardware and structure and avionics and all that being equivalent, a kerelox vertical-takeoff, horizontal landing SSTO would have been a whopping 35% lighter, even with bulky, heavy NK-33 and RD-58 Russian engines: https://yarchive.net/space/rocket/fuels/hydrogen_deltav.html (Mitchell Burnside Clapp was one of the founders of Pioneer Rocketplane with Robert Zubrin... which also ran out of funding. 70s through to early 2000s, "US private space pioneer" was a byword for 'losing your shirt'. :-/ ) The why is interesting. For one, the structures (tank and pressurisation systems) are much simpler, more mature and need less pressure overall. For another, because you have dense propellants and lower ISP: you burn them faster and have more thrust; you grow lighter near the end of your ascent; you end up accelerating faster; and you need slightly less delta-V to reach their reference 51-degree ISS orbit. It's not much - 8,870 m/s versus 9,135 m/s - but if making a SSTO rocketplane, you take what you can get. Their improved kerelox plane was essentially the same proportions as the Boeing RASV: https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/usaf-nasa-rlv-programs-from-the-past-amsci-science-dawn-have-region-etc.315/ We know a bit more about winglets these days, so lacking a central rudder might not be a deal-breaker. Can sled launch make HT work? I don't know. Consensus is that it grants about 100-500 m/s to the initial takeoff, but the shallower ascent wipes out that advantage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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