Why is skylon unmanned?

[kiwiak]

And will it stay this way up to its first orbital flight?

Sure it can carry crew, but as its currently designed, only as cargo.

Did we came to this point when humans are just not meeded anymore?

[Themohawkninja]

Crew = space

space = less fuel/cargo

less fuel/cargo = tighter fuel budgets and less contracts for whoever owns a Skylon craft.

[kiwiak]

Crew = space

space = less fuel/cargo

less fuel/cargo = tighter fuel budgets and less contracts for whoever owns a Skylon craft.

But what about some unpredicted conditions that autopilot will not be able to cope with, and no communication with the ground to romote controll ship.

All that its human cargo can do then is to i say "damn". Giving crew no means of any controll its strange for me. I mean, they dont even need a window to pilot, how heavy some flight instruments and Joystick can be?

[rpayne88]

They are going to have to add crew when they decide to take people up. If they make it anything like the airlines, you're going to have flight attendants and cabin crew. As for the actual piloting of the spacecraft, they will also need to add crew. Although it is more than capable of flying a mission itself, what happens when it's guidance systems fail (and given enough flights, they will) and its carrying people. If there are no pilots, you may as well start signing the passenger's death certificates. If that happens, they WILL lose contracts for manned flights until they add in an alternative (i.e. human pilot) guidance system. Look at airliners, IIRC they can handle everything from takeoff roll to touchdown. The pilots on those only need to taxi the thing and take over in an emergency.

Edit: Ninja'd

Edited January 12, 2014 by rpayne88

[Themohawkninja]

But what about some unpredicted conditions that autopilot will not be able to cope with, and no communication with the ground to romote controll ship.

All that its human cargo can do then is to i say "damn". Giving crew no means of any controll its strange for me. I mean, they dont even need a window to pilot, how heavy some flight instruments and Joystick can be?

Pretty much what rpayne88 said. Once you add crew, then you need the pilots to take over when s**t hits the fan.

[Tex_NL]

...

Did we came to this point when humans are just not meeded anymore?

We've already passed that point decades ago. Most current launches are automated and unmanned.

The weight of a single astronaut and his/her life support system could also be used to add a second (or third) satellite to the payload. The same goes for the Skylon. It saves a lot of weight and doesn't risk lives. Imagine how the public would react if the very first Skylon flight ended in a fireball killing the pilot? They'd probably cancel the entire program.

[kiwiak]

Pretty much what rpayne88 said. Once you add crew, then you need the pilots to take over when s**t hits the fan.

And thats what i thought when creating this thread, but what i read about skylon, it seemed that it will be still unmanned in terms of piloting even with live cargo.

Well we dont really need human pilot for strictly cargo missions, that what i agree about with you.. unless cargo is really PRICELESS and everything has tobe done to provide its safety... But i dont really know what woudl be so varnuable... Maybe some UFO artifact.

[Themohawkninja]

it seemed that it will be still unmanned in terms of piloting even with live cargo.

Can you cite that? Was that from the Wikipedia page? Reaction Engines website? Somewhere else?

[DaveofDefeat]

What would the pilot do besides stare at the shiny buttons?

[kiwiak]

Can you cite that? Was that from the Wikipedia page? Reaction Engines website? Somewhere else?

Well i dont really checked any source before making this thread. I just heard it will be unmanned, but also capable of carrying human cargo to station so i connected this facts.

What would the pilot do besides stare at the shiny buttons?

Well he coudlfor example take manuall controll of lunar lander and take it away from boulder field if it was heading towards any

[Kryten]

Well he coudlfor example take manuall controll of lunar lander and take it away from boulder field if it was heading towards any

Like Chang'e 3 just did?

Humans would simply be useless in any kind of emergency situation that could hit skylon. If the control system failed, that would be it; something as aerodynamically complex as skylon isn't going to be pilotable without fly-by-wire.

[Nuke]

i think they plan to get a manned rating for the craft for taking astronauts to leo. they will be in a special crew container that can be installed into the cargo bay. not sure if they will be able to patch manual flight controls into the ship as an extra layer of redundancy for manned flight (crew pod could come with a backup fbw control system, should the primary system fail). but unmanned launch capability makes sense for when all you are doing is launching a satellite. but if you need to, for example, transport crew to the iss or carry out repairs on hubble, you still have that option.

Edited January 12, 2014 by Nuke

[rpayne88]

Like Chang'e 3 just did?

Humans would simply be useless in any kind of emergency situation that could hit skylon. If the control system failed, that would be it; something as aerodynamically complex as skylon isn't going to be pilotable without fly-by-wire.

The Northrop YB-49 wasn't stable without fly by wire either (it hadn't been invented yet,) but people still managed to fly it in test flights. I'm sure a highly trained pilot can take over and land the thing if computer systems failed.

[DaveofDefeat]

What happens when the human pilot fails.

[Kryten]

The Northrop YB-49 wasn't stable without fly by wire either (it hadn't been invented yet,) but people still managed to fly it in test flights. I'm sure a highly trained pilot can take over and land the thing if computer systems failed.

The situations aren't comparable. YB-49 was just a bad design; skylon has extreme aerodynamic constraints (i.e. the requirement for controllable hypersonic flight) that require highly non-standard control surfaces and flight inputs. It'd be more comparable to something like the F-117 or B-2, both of which had crashes caused by the flight control systems.

[Themohawkninja]

What happens when the human pilot fails.

Just like every time the pilot fails, if their lucky, they can eject, if not... well... bye-bye Skylon.

[Drunkrobot]

At least part of it has to do with development costs. Alan Bond (the chief engineer at Reaction Engines) said that adding a manned element straight away would double Skylons' development cost. REL isn't exactly Airbus. If anyone can pull off Skylon, they can, but they don't have the money or the reputation needed to get enough backers for a manned spacecraft, especially one that's such a departure from conventional thinking as Skylon. When Skylon has conquered the launcher market, and REL has enough money to bury Oxfordshire, then the "Logistics Module" (the "crew capsule" if you prefer") can be developed and flown.

[Nuke]

it also avoids an extra layer of maned flight certification that the ship would have to meet before you could even put a test pilot onboard. being a commercial spaceplane kind of brings with it a whole bunch of legal issues that a government agency could circumvent. instead go with the automated system and when you have your automated cargo hauler up and running then you can worry about getting a manned rating for the thing so you can haul astronauts up to leo. sorta like what spacex is doing with dragon.

Edited January 12, 2014 by Nuke

[Thiel]

High speed aviation (Mostly jet fighters at this point) is already at the point where the pilots only option in case of a flight system failure is to punch out, I don't see how he'd do any better on an aircraft that's going some 20 times faster.

[Nibb31]

First of all, Skylon is just a paper spacecraft at this point. Its engine, airframe, TPS, and pretty much every other technology are unproven. In theory, with some very optimistic margins, it should be capable of SSTO with a payload, but that's only theory. In practice, aerospace projects always end up costing more, weighing more and being more complicated. If the SABRE engines slightly underperform, or if the airframe ends up slightly heavier than planned, then there goes your payload and the viability of the project.

Nobody can tell what its actual capabilities are, or even if it will be viable, because nobody has any experience in operating SABRE engines, in constructing an airframe like Skylon's, in commercially operating a reusable SSTO spaceplane, or even if the TPS is capable of withstanding the reentry constraints. We don't know how reliable it can be, what the service intervals or operation constraints will be, how much payload it can carry, how much it will cost to buy and fly, or if it can be economically viable. Skylon is practically 100% new unproven technology, yet they claim it will cost much less than an average airliner to design and build, which is wildly unrealistic. So let's not get carried away with what it can or cannot do.

Second, ever since Vostok and Mercury, pretty much all spacecraft have always been automatic. Astronauts and Cosmonauts are just a payload like any other. Soyuz can launch, dock, reenter, and land without a human on board, just like a Progress. So will Orion.

The only spacecraft that were not designed to fly unmanned were the Space Shuttle, Gemini, and Apollo because of the egos of the US astronaut corps who wanted to be seen as pilots and not test monkeys. Even then, launch and reentry were controlled by a computer, because a human would only get in the way. And the Shuttle only really needed a pilot on board to deploy the landing gear.

Edited January 12, 2014 by Nibb31

[Seret]

Skylon is designed as an unmanned cargo carrier. Any talk of passenger modules is a long way down the road, it's not an important design goal at the moment (they need to get the thing to actually work first!).

There will be humans in the loop but they won't be physically sitting on board the aircraft. This is pretty normal in spaceflight, but a bit alien to people's expectations of aircraft, because unmanned aircraft are still quite rare. That'll change over the next few decades, you're going to see unmanned aircraft becoming a lot more common. The technology is ready, all it needs to really get going is for the regulatory framework to catch up.

[Thiel]

Heck, modern airliners are already at the point where they can take off, fly to their destination and land again without the pilot ever touching the controls.

[Albert VDS]

Sending stuff into space never has or will be something a human has direct control of.

It's just more efficient that way.

[Skyler4856]

Life Support and Human Pilots aren't required to put up a satellite.

[PakledHostage]

Heck, modern airliners are already at the point where they can take off, fly to their destination and land again without the pilot ever touching the controls.

Not quite. They cannot take off on their own and the auto flight systems do not have control of the flaps or landing gear on any of the Boeing or Airbus aircraft that I am familiar with. Autopilots also cannot interact with ATC. An autopilot is just a tool to reduce workload. It allows the crew to focus on what humans are good at but the pilots still need to manage the autopilots through the various phases of a flight.