[New] Spaceplane Discussion Thread

[Rutabaga22]

There doesn't seem to be a spaceplane discussion thread that wouldn't be necroposting, so I am making a new one!

I generally believe spaceplanes are only really useful for crewed spaceflight. I think my ideal spaceplane would be designed for long duration science missions. Like an ISS that can return after missions. All you would need is resupplies every once in a while. 

[tater]

16 minutes ago, Rutabaga22 said:

I think my ideal spaceplane would be designed for long duration science missions

I'd think more like a taxi to get the crew TO a spacestation.

 

[Meecrob]

Mathematically it is inefficient to drag a plane around with you into space but I have to admit, they are sooooo cool!

[tater]

19 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

Mathematically it is inefficient to drag a plane around with you into space but I have to admit, they are sooooo cool!

The plus is you get to throw propellant out the back that you don't have to carry (assuming it has an air-breather phase of flight).

[Meecrob]

I wasn't even considering air-breating engines...thanks for bringing some legitimacy to what is basically a 13 year-olds fantasy!

Edited October 1, 2022 by Meecrob

[kerbiloid]

Until there is something to carry from orbit, the spaceplanes are useful only for military applications due to their crosswind maneuver capability.

[Meecrob]

6 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Until there is something to carry from orbit, the spaceplanes are useful only for military applications due to their crosswind maneuver capability.

I know exactly what you are getting at, including why the space shuttle had wings the size it did, but to be totally fair, I don't think cross-range capability has ever been utilized.  Although having said that, not a single ICBM has been launched in anger, and they are probably the biggest boon to peaceful spaceflight,  As a thought excercise, I am deeply curious to what spaceflight would look like today had the space shuttle never been built.

In any case, to keep it on topic,  I'm hoping Dreamchaser is successful, if for no other reason than to show the general public that spaceflight can be "routine." SpaceX is doing this also, but your regular person isn't looking at a Falcon 9 first stage and thinking "wow,  reusable, just like my car"

[kerbiloid]

2 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

I know exactly what you are getting at, including why the space shuttle had wings the size it did, but to be totally fair, I don't think cross-range capability has ever been utilized.  Although having said that, not a single ICBM has been launched in anger

What does this have to ICBM?

A miltary craft can be launched to a custom LEO at random inclination, and should be able to return to an airbase after random number of revolutions in any time without delay (say, after one or two orbit turns), evading the bad weather areas. So, it needs the crosswind capability.

A non-combat spacecraft can just wait at ISS as long as it needs until the predicted deorbit trajectory  gets crossing the designated landing zone, and the weather gets calm.

So, a civil craft doesn't need the crosswind capability and thus be a spaceplane.

(Until the blurry horizon of the orbital industry.)

[DDE]

40 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

but to be totally fair, I don't think cross-range capability has ever been utilized

It hasn't been. But then nor have there ever been a true spaceplane combat sortie mission.

Yet.

[Rutabaga22]

42 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

What does this have to ICBM?

I think because spaceplanes have military applications, but also space applications, just like ICBMs were originally.

[Meecrob]

14 minutes ago, Rutabaga22 said:

I think because spaceplanes have military applications, but also space applications, just like ICBMs were originally.

Precisely. The first humans were launched into space on missiles designed to bring nuclear armageddon.

 

I'm simply trying to say that my armchair quarterback take on spaceplanes can turn out vastly different than the evidence we have today...just like how when someone was asked to design a missile to nuke Moscow, they didn't think it was gonna orbit John Glenn.

Edited October 1, 2022 by Meecrob

[SunlitZelkova]

1 hour ago, Meecrob said:

Although having said that, not a single ICBM has been launched in anger, and they are probably the biggest boon to peaceful spaceflight,

I disagree. If anything profit from continually maintaining ICBMs has kept spaceflight going, while it was the development of ballistic missiles in the first place that facilitated space exploration in space.

GIRD-09, the first Soviet liquid fuel rocket from 1933, was built with the official goal of mimicking the effects of a 122mm artillery shell.

Whoops. I forgot what boon means lol.

1 hour ago, Meecrob said:

As a thought excercise, I am deeply curious to what spaceflight would look like today had the space shuttle never been built.

We might be better off in some ways, worse off in others.

Without a spaceplane choking NASA funding, a post-Skylab space station could be built sooner. Perhaps the Apollo CSM/Saturn IB combo could have gone on to be as prolific as Soyuz and Soyuz.

On the other hand, a return to the Moon would be more difficult to get going. SEI would probably still die for the reasons it did IRL- no one saw any need for a Moon base. With no Columbia disaster, there would be no need for Constellation. And with no Constellation, there is no need for SLS.

So a more efficient ISS would be the only thing in crewed spaceflight until 2026, when China tests its super heavy lift crew rocket for lunar flight, and the US is finally forced to go back to the Moon for hysterical national security reasons. China’s space program is focused on matching the achievements of other countries, so they would likely go there regardless of whether Constellation/SLS exist or not.

Assuming an uncrewed Progress-type cargo derivative of the CSM was built by the US, there would be no need for Commercial Payload Services or Commercial Crew. SpaceX might still exist so long as Musk has his Mars dreams, but it would not have NASA funding or support. With no Artemis, I don’t know if Starship would take longer or not.

Edited October 1, 2022 by SunlitZelkova

[kerbiloid]

16 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

27 minutes ago, Rutabaga22 said:

I think because spaceplanes have military applications, but also space applications, just like ICBMs were originally.

Precisely. The first humans were launched into space on missiles designed to bring nuclear armageddon.

ICBM and spaceplanes have no relation to each other in sense of purpose, even if use same boosters.

The only two advantages of spaceplanes are:

1) A built-in boxcar to deliver cargo from orbit (never used in practice due to the absence of cargo, and there is no foreseable cargo in near future).

2) A crosswind maneuver, required only for custom/random orbits and short autonomous flights, never needed for the civil crafts, which can just wait for several days for the optimal deorbit conditions.

So, there is no purpose for a non-combat spaceplane in the foreseable future.

P.S.
Even the X-37B odyssey could be easily performed by a conical craft in every part except studying the spaceplane flight itself. 

Edited October 1, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Meecrob]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

So, there is no purpose for a non-combat spaceplane in the foreseable future.

You heard it here first, folks! {snip] All you aeronautical engineers bow down to some guy on the internet. Clearly spaceplanes are stupid, that's why the USSR made one too?

Edited October 1, 2022 by Curveball Anders
Removed personal remark

[SunlitZelkova]

1 hour ago, Meecrob said:

You heard it here first, folks! {snip] Clearly there is nobody smarter than Kerbiloid working on spaceplanes...crap..who is gonna tell the X-37 people...they will be liquided when they realize Kerbiloid tells them they just wasted 10 years of their lives...

Non-combat means non-military…

Someone is working on Dream Chaser, and while it is nice, I have to wonder what advantage it has over Dragon.

[kerbiloid]

20 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

You heard it here first, folks!

First? I'm telling this for several years.

21 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

he can't figure out a non-military use for spaceplanes

Name one.

22 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

All you aeronautical engineers bow down to some guy on the internet.

The aeronautical engineers have developed up to ten new conical spaceships and no spaceplane except X-37B (pure military R&D) and wannabe-Dreamchaser (still chasing the dream).

So, they know this excellently.

24 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

Clearly spaceplanes are stupid

Without a purpose - certainly. That's why they aren't popular.

25 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

that's why the USSR made one too?

One (Buran) and two projects at high level of readiness (Spiral and LKS).
Any non-combat among them? All three had functionality of bomber and interceptor.

[sh1pman]

Hopefully we’ll see more spaceplanes flying within our lifetime. Only, they need somewhere to fly to.

Using a spaceplane for Moon landings would be inefficient, same with transit between stations in space. So, their main use case is trips between Earth and LEO. Therefore, if there’s a need for large LEO stations, spaceplanes will be very useful.

I like spaceplanes for these missions more than Starship because of their ability to do unpowered landing and lower G forces during reentry.

Edited October 1, 2022 by sh1pman

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Without a spaceplane choking NASA funding

I think you are overlooking the cool-wow feature of Shuttle. 

Since Jules Verne, space flight always had a bullet or rocket shape to people's minds - inescapably tied to the weapons that spawned them.  Such things are the exclusive tools of governments and militaries.

But then came Shuttle - which looked like a plane. 

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/45-years-ago-space-shuttle-enterprise-makes-its-public-debut

Hugely approachable and not immediately reminiscent of a weapons platform - it was something for civilian science.  And the people loved it. 

"In contrast to the lukewarm support the public showed for the efforts to land Americans on the Moon, as shown in Fig. 5, the public has consistently agreed that the Space Shuttle is a good investment" 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0265964603000390

[Deddly]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

there is no purpose for a non-combat spaceplane in the foreseable future.

Then how come you insisted a while back that the only way Starship will work is if they put proper wings on it and shape the hull like a lifting body? 

[SunlitZelkova]

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I think you are overlooking the cool-wow feature of Shuttle. 

Since Jules Verne, space flight always had a bullet or rocket shape to people's minds - inescapably tied to the weapons that spawned them.  Such things are the exclusive tools of governments and militaries.

But then came Shuttle - which looked like a plane. 

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/45-years-ago-space-shuttle-enterprise-makes-its-public-debut

Hugely approachable and not immediately reminiscent of a weapons platform - it was something for civilian science.  And the people loved it. 

"In contrast to the lukewarm support the public showed for the efforts to land Americans on the Moon, as shown in Fig. 5, the public has consistently agreed that the Space Shuttle is a good investment" 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0265964603000390

I am a little bit skeptical of such a conclusion.

Apollo unfortunately coincided with the greatest level of public protest and anti-government opinion ever (so far) in the US. The Space Shuttle arose in era where *we* (our elected representatives) learned our lessons regarding control of the narrative and the general situation was good enough that no one needed to really question things to the extent they did in the 60s*.

IMO, if the Shuttle had been built in the 60s, we would have seen the costs and cancelled it in favor of cheap expendable rockets. If Apollo had occurred in the 80s, we would have seen science opportunities and went on to build a lunar base.

That said though, my point was not that the Shuttle was something malicious done to spaceflight, but that ignorance allowed it to happen. You do bring up a good point though. In my Apollo-space station fantasy program, does public support for spaceflight stay high?

I would think high enough to get some kind of ISS-like station built, IMO. People take what they can get, and it would be embarrassing for American science to abandon crewed space while the Soviets did Salyut-Mir.

*60s protests would have been much smaller without the threat of being sent to die in a war, and 80s protests would have been larger with the threat of being sent to die

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

does public support for spaceflight stay high?

I would think high enough to get some kind of ISS-like station built, IMO. People take what they can get, and it would be embarrassing for American science to abandon crewed space while the Soviets did Salyut-Mir.

You are hitting on a point that is very salient.  The late 90s  and the recent 'teens' are informative. 

Absent an external threat America turned inward.  Naval gazing. We got really into the culture wars. 

9/11 shook us out for a while - but once Iraq was won and Bin Laden went down, we stopped caring again.  It became more fun to debate who got to use what bathroom. 

It became cheaper and easier to buy rockets from Russia - justified to the hawks as a Non-proliferation measure and so long as everything stayed cheap and easy we were happy with the ride. 

Cheap and easy.  Cheap and easy.  That is the song we sing as we sink. It takes real leadership to place eyes on a far horizon and get people to strive for that.  True leaders are historically in short supply. Far easier to get them to run a given way if they're scared of something else.  Otherwise?  Milling about and whining seems to be the norm. 

If the folks in your story can stay focused on an external threat - they can hold it together and do great things... But the minute they succeed?  They're primed for self destruction. 

 

Arguably, the worst thing for humans is success.  Progress is bad. 

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race

(grin!  Enjoy!) 

Edited October 2, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, Deddly said:

Then how come you insisted a while back that the only way Starship will work is if they put proper wings on it and shape the hull like a lifting body? 

Will?

I insisted that it's the only way to make it flyable at all. 
And the only purpose of the winged Starship is to reuse the upper stage, not to make a real spaceplane.

To the date, the original "wow! it needs no tiles!" is replaced with "wow! what the cool tiles it has!", and they still believe that their faith will supercede the L/D aerodynamics.
(Though they carefully start talking about "well, probably the maiden flight won't be reusable, but then...")

6 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

it was something for civilian science

It was to deliver spysats for servicing, but the electronic guys rooted the idea by creating 15-year-lasting sats.

If instead of 135 Shuttle flights NASA was putting in LEO tens of ISS modules, it would have a whole orbital town and a lunar village for science.

So, in sense of science the Shuttle was also a fail.

55 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Absent an external threat America turned inward.  Naval gazing. We got really into the culture wars. 

9/11 shook us out for a while - but once Iraq was won and Bin Laden went down, we stopped caring again. 

Bin Laden was even greater hazard ffor America than Viet Kong, yes.

And I can't remember when the Patriotic Act was cancelled after the decisive victory, 

[SunlitZelkova]

I suggest we get back to the spaceplanes.

Apologies for taking space history to politics.

7 hours ago, Deddly said:

Then how come you insisted a while back that the only way Starship will work is if they put proper wings on it and shape the hull like a lifting body? 

I think @kerbiloid ‘s claims of what he did are what he did.

He merely said that for Starship to work it would need to be redesigned as a spaceplane, not actually advocating Starship itself.

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

And the only purpose of the winged Starship is to reuse the upper stage, not to make a real spaceplane.

Starship is technically envisioned as a Mars spacecraft, so it would be better off as a generic semi-expendable SHLV rather than a spaceplane should the current design fail.

[Rutabaga22]

What are the opinions about the space shuttle around here?
I personally dislike it, but I think Spacelab was pretty cool. I just like the idea of having small labs for science compared to the ISS.

[DeadJohn]

10 minutes ago, Rutabaga22 said:

What are the opinions about the space shuttle around here?

IMO, the shuttle had a worthy goal: reusable body and main engines with rapid turnaround for lots of launches. In practice, the shuttle didn't reach that goal because it needed too much maintenance between flights, and even if maintenance issues were fully solved there wasn't enough demand for placing big payloads into space.

The space shuttle ended up being a very expensive way to place payloads and crews into orbit, despite the partial reusability. It was too big and too expensive to use as an ISS ferry.

The shuttle could do some neat things like servicing Hubble, but if NASA didn't have a shuttle it would have figured out another way to do that job. Hubble could have been launch on a large disposable rocket and serviced by whatever other launch systems evolved. NASA and Space X are looking at that now: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-spacex-to-study-hubble-telescope-reboost-possibility

We learned a lot from the shuttle. The heat tile problems led to improved methods for the X-37 robot spaceplane, Space X Dragon, etc.