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Showing results for tags 'rlv'.
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Discussion of Russian vs US launch vehicles and Buran vs Shuttle vs Soyuz got me thinking. I'm sure all of us here are well aware that the Shuttle program was based on some ill-conceived notions, both with respect to the demand for flights as well as the capability of NASA to execute rapid Shuttle turnaround. The Shuttle had some neat capabilities (launching payload along with service crew, e.g. Hubble) and promised abilities (sat recovery), but it was never really used like it could have been. And the flight rate was so low that reuse cost more than it saved. But what if they had been right about the demand for the Shuttle's abilities? What if the market demanded a launch vehicle that could sent up large payloads along with crew, as well as occasionally retrieving sensitive cargo from orbit? What if the market was so saturated with demand that economies of scale were in full swing? It's clear that even under those circumstances, the Shuttle's high refurbishment cost and lengthy turnaround time wouldn't have been the best fit (even ignoring its safety record). But what might have been better? If you were designing a launch vehicle with these sorts of target capabilities, how would you go about it?
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India could launch as soon as May its first prototype of a reusable spaceplane. The program, known as RLV-TD (Reusable Launch Vehicle Technology Demonstration), was announced four years ago and consists of four flights to test powered hypersonic flight, autonomous landing and atmospheric reentry. The program will set the foundations for the Avatar program, a full-scale unmanned SSTO (single stage to orbit). Avatar could fly as soon as 2025, depending on the timescale of the technology demonstration program. The first flight (HEX, or Hypersonic Flight Experiment) will feature a 1.5 ton RLV. Liftoff is set from the Satish Dhawan space centre on the island of Sriharikota. The launch vehicle will be a one-stage S-9, basically a solid rocket booster that will propell the spaceplane up to Mach 5.9. The spaceplane will separate from the launch vehicle (which will be lost upon reentry) and coast up to 70 km on a suborbital trajectory. Immediately after, it will start reentering. Its scramjet motor will guide it to a landing in the Bay of Bengal. In the near future, a landing strip capable of accomodating vehicles returning from orbital or suborbital flights will be built in the Satish Dhawan space centre. The images appear to be very similar to Europe's IXV which flew last year on top of a Vega rocket. Well then, good luck to India! Looking forward to following this mission.
