Cloud Aerospace Is in the Sky!

[MajorLeaugeRocketScience]

Also, I noticed Nevada was the launch site. Wouldn't an equatorial launch require overflight of major cities, as well as a polar launch (north and south)?

[ZooNamedGames]

7 minutes ago, MajorLeaugeRocketScience said:

Also, I noticed Nevada was the launch site. Wouldn't an equatorial launch require overflight of major cities, as well as a polar launch (north and south)?

As I understand it- we will only launch southward initially with a slight dogleg to the southwest to avoid some cities. We are prospecting some other location which may open the range of operations.

[Joseph Kerman]

6 hours ago, Tristonwilson12 said:

its made from Carbon Composites

You can actually paint carbon fiber reinforced polymers by sanding them and then painting it with a heat-resistant paint.

[Joseph Kerman]

Don't judge my horrible symmetry skills.

 

Notice me, @Tristonwilson12

Edited June 10, 2017 by Joseph Kerman

[TheEpicSquared]

So I made some speculative designs of a modular CloudIne design: 

Please excuse my horrible drawing skills.

EDIT: Also, wouldn't a better place for this thread be Science and Spaceflight? 

EDIT 2: Notice me @Tristonwilson12!  

Edited June 10, 2017 by TheEpicSquared

[Skylon]

On ‎07‎/‎06‎/‎2017 at 3:23 PM, Tristonwilson12 said:

Not currently moon base, but we are developing a rocket that can launch 16 tons to LEO

16 tons! That will be incredible. And that render of the line-up is stunning

Edited June 10, 2017 by Skylon

[Joseph Kerman]

Just now, Skylon said:

16 tons! That will be incredible. Any renders?

That would be the Vapor rocket.

[Skylon]

51 minutes ago, TheEpicSquared said:

So I made some speculative designs of a modular CloudIne design: 

-snip-

Please excuse my horrible drawing skills.

EDIT: Also, wouldn't a better place for this thread be Science and Spaceflight? 

I was thinking that a modular design would make more sense. Would a Luna IX have the thrust to lift a Cloud One second stage?

Also, are the Vapor engines named? I was thinking of something like 'Raindrop' or 'Snowflake'. Or something less cute, like 'Hailstorm' or 'Lightning'

Edited June 10, 2017 by Skylon

[TheEpicSquared]

14 minutes ago, Skylon said:

I was thinking that a modular design would make more sense. Would a Luna IX have the thrust to lift a Cloud One second stage?

Also, are the Vapor engines named? I was thinking of something like 'Raindrop' or 'Snowflake'. Or something less cute, like 'Hailstorm' or 'Lightning'

You mean a CloudOne first stage (or stages, as per my designs), with a Luna IX second stage? I guess that could work, but it would weigh more than the current CloudOne design. Probably would work if the Luna IX replaced the upper stage on the CloudOne-4 and CloudOne-6 (referring to my speculative designs).

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

You know he's kind of busy with his current line-up, right? These suggestions look nice, but a little out of scope for a company that hasn't even lauched anything yet. 

[Skylon]

31 minutes ago, TheEpicSquared said:

You mean a CloudOne first stage (or stages, as per my designs), with a Luna IX second stage? I guess that could work, but it would weigh more than the current CloudOne design. Probably would work if the Luna IX replaced the upper stage on the CloudOne-4 and CloudOne-6 (referring to my speculative designs).

I mean a Luna IX replacing the first stage. Generally sounding rockets have high TWR, so it could have the thrust to lift the second stage of Cloud One 

[TheEpicSquared]

15 minutes ago, ThatGuyWithALongUsername said:

You know he's kind of busy with his current line-up, right? These suggestions look nice, but a little out of scope for a company that hasn't even lauched anything yet. 

 

1 hour ago, TheEpicSquared said:

 speculative  

 

45 minutes ago, TheEpicSquared said:

speculative

^ Just a bit of speculation.  

14 minutes ago, Skylon said:

I mean a Luna IX replacing the first stage. Generally sounding rockets have high TWR, so it could have the thrust to lift the second stage of Cloud One 

Oh. I would think that it would result in less d-v, since it's smaller than the CloudOne first stage. And if you enlarged the second stage to compensate, then that would make the second stage heavier and thus result in a lower TWR for the first stage. That's not including the payload mass. 

But I think using a Luna IX as a second stage would work reasonably well, or at least a Luna IY.

[Skylon]

7 minutes ago, TheEpicSquared said:

Oh. I would think that it would result in less d-v, since it's smaller than the CloudOne first stage. And if you enlarged the second stage to compensate, then that would make the second stage heavier and thus result in a lower TWR for the first stage. That's not including the payload mass. 

But I think using a Luna IX as a second stage would work reasonably well, or at least a Luna IY.

You would use it as a less powerful version of Cloud one, or a Luna IX Plus kind of thing

[TheEpicSquared]

6 hours ago, Skylon said:

You would use it as a less powerful version of Cloud one, or a Luna IX Plus kind of thing

Seems like a good idea, but is there a market for satellites that small? If so, a Luna IX first stage + CloudOne second stage could possibly earn back potential development costs.

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

Okay, I'm critiquing the Vapor's unique engine design because it's just darn hard to make in KSP.

 

 

[Skylon]

What is the reasoning behind the weird engine configuration on the Vapour?

[NSEP]

How is everything going?

Once i get my hands om some programming skills, i will most definitely make a Cloud Aerospace mod for Realism Overhaul!

If it is allowed....

Edited June 13, 2017 by NSEP

[Ultimate Steve]

Okay, how in the world did I not notice this until now?!?!?!?!?

I would like to help in any way that I can. However, I may not be able to help in any way whatsoever. I see you are planning to launch from Nevada - are you also based in Nevada? I am in Iowa, so if I can help it will probably have to be remotely. That, and I'm still in high school, so I may not be that big of a help.

I could theoretically do some design work, but you probably have mostly everything designed already for Cloud One.

Also, do we have pictures or video from any of the static tests? And what's the status on the first stage firing that was pushed back?

Since I haven't seen this picture on this thread yet, this is all I could find:

"Little Boy II" test firing.

 

Also, my browser thinks the website is malicious.

 

Also, because I haven't seen the link in this thread yet, Cloud Aerospace's launch manifest.

[Tristonwilson12]

On 6/11/2017 at 3:38 PM, Skylon said:

What is the reasoning behind the weird engine configuration on the Vapour?

the corner engines Gimbal, and act as the landing engines

[_Augustus_]

Website appears to be down/hacked as I'm getting similar errors to Steve.

[Ultimate Steve]

DISCLAIMERS:

1. I am fully aware that there is an exceedingly high chance that the following will never become reality at all.
2. I have no formal education in aerospace engineering.
3. The following is waaaay to heavy to launch on Cloud One and potentially too heavy for Cloud One Plus, depending on the stats.
4. I did this purely to see if it was feasible. I may or may not know what I am doing.
5. I am not affiliated with Cloud Aerospace in any official way.

So, I had a little bit of spare time and I decided to see if it was feasible to design a 1.1 (I rounded up from 1.08 to keep it doable in 3 hours on graph paper) meter diameter manned space capsule. As it turns out, if you're not really tall, you can lay down inside a 1m interior diameter capsule if you bring your knees up to your chest. So, diameter works.

Now, mass is a very different challenge. Cloud One can get ~50kg to orbit according to the officially published stats. Even a person with a spacesuit probably weighs more than that, so C1 is out of the game unless you were to do purely suborbital flights. We have no idea what Cloud One Plus (C1 with Luna boosters) would be able to lift.

So, with that in mind, I tried to go as low mass as possible.

DISCLAIMER: I designed this in less than three hours, half of the people here could probably do better than me at optimizing mass. I also have no idea if there is enough thermal protection on the sides of the ship. I also have no idea if this would simply crumple in on itself under the G-forces of launch.

(1 square=5cmx5cm)

First off, material. This is not the lightest solution nor the most thermally resistant, nor the strongest, but it's the only one I looked into (and I designed something similar for another space capsule I designed for a school project). Imagine corrugated cardboard, but with aluminum on one side and as the corrugation, with Rene-41 (a heat resistant alloy uses on the exterior of the Mercury spacecraft) as the outside. Doing some rough, back of the napkin calculations (which very well may be extremely wrong) (assuming wall thickness is 2mm for all sheets, and we're building 5cm thick walls) we can get a bottom disc, a 25cm tall cylinder, and a semisphere shape for the top (and a bulkhead right below the cone) for around 90kg.

The heat shield would probably be reminiscent of the Apollo heat shield (made of AVCOAT, google it) (skipping the math here) and would weigh about 25 kilograms if it was made 5cm thick. The curve in the heat shield would either be simply made by varying the thickness, or by sticking a bunch of beryllium poles (because beryllium has a high specific heat) of varying lengths in between the shield and the base of the capsule. Note that the heat shield is not strictly necessary for low altitude suborbital missions.

Parachute: Estimated at 20kg. Not sure if this is anywhere near the actual amount needed.

Launch Escape System: Again, estimate time: 50 (?) kg.

Oxygen/Nitrogen system: Somewhat like a SCUBA tank system for suborbital flights. More for orbital flights. ~30kg. Also includes a lithium hydroxide canister for CO2 scrubbing.

Frame: (Inside the corrugated aluminum there will be a series of strong (probably better than aluminum) pipes. A ring at the bottom, a ring at the top of the cylinder, and a ring at the parachute bulkhead. There would be eight other pipes going up through the walls at 45 degree intervals for added structural support. 10-30kg, depending on pipe thickness.

Battery/computer: Minimal. For a few hours on orbit, a modern laptop and its battery might just be enough. ~5kg

RCS system: Would use the same supply of O2 as the life support unit. Minimal, requires piping, nozzles, and valves. There would be 8 nozzles total in the forward section of the craft, two in each direction providing full pitch, roll, and yaw authority. ~5kg (because the tanks are already there).

Retrorockets (orbital flights only): located in the forward section of the craft (yes, I know, negative g-forces and that sort of stuff, but it would be a mass burden to make a jettisonable structure to place the retros on the bottom). There would be two or four. ~10kg.

The hatch: There would be a hinge above the astronaut's head, just below the parachute storage bulkhead. That entire section of hull would open similar to a gull-wing door. I'm not sure how it would seal, but that's probably not too huge of a problem. Not too much added weight. Would have a borosilicate glass window.

Flight profile: LES jettisoned sometime. Enters orbit. Astronaut does spacey stuff. Retrorockets fired. Capsule re-enters. The dome portion beyond the parachute bulkhead is detached, and the retrorockets with it. Parachute is deployed.

 

Total: between 245 and 300 kilograms, plus the astronaut and spacesuit (60-90kg), so, minimum of 305kg and maximum of 400kg. Definitely doable for suborbital flights, maybe for orbital depending on the capabilities of Cloud One Plus.

List of other things not taken into account:

1. Landing rockets to lessen the shock of landing similar to the ones used on Soyuz. With the rigid walls, slim amount of padding, and parachute descent, you'd be hitting the land at around 10m/s, not a healthy speed for your spine. Water landing isn't really an option because the airbags would take up a lot of weight and space, and the hatch goes all the way down to the base of the craft. If you opened it, the capsule would flood.
2. Communications systems.
3. Any sort of decoupler between the capsule and the upper stage.
4. Other scientific payload.
5. How high the acceleration of Cloud One Plus's first stage burn will be. If it's more than ~6-7 gees (10 if you're a trained fighter pilot), then this concept is worthless.
6. How the LES is mounted.
7. The mass of a control panel.
8. The mass of any seat or seating restraints. There is room for 5cm of padding.

Well, that was fun.  I may flesh out the numbers more if I have some spare time in the coming days. Even though this will probably never go anywhere.

@Tristonwilson12, if manned flights are somewhere you want to go with Cloud Aerospace, then suborbital flights using the Cloud series are definitely possible. Depending on the capabilities of the Cloud One Plus, then orbital flights are theoretically possible, if that is a direction in which you wish to go.

[Skylon]

@Ultimate Steve let's hope they're not claustrophobic...maybe the vapour could do it?

[Joseph Kerman]

@Tristonwilson12 Have you simulated my shuttle yet? I would like to see what launch system you'd add for the shuttle. Is it assymetrical, like the Space Shuttle, or inline, like the Dream Chaser?

[ZooNamedGames]

@Ultimate Steve I have already been working on a automated manned capsule concept for tourism. 

[Joseph Kerman]

@Tristonwilson12 @ZooNamedGames I don't have resources or time to make a scale model, so I will ask you a different question related to the shuttle. Which launch system will you use for the shuttle?