Thursday 8 November 2012

CAC-1

A sea-launched sub-orbital VTOHL rocket using LNG/ LOX engines, the CAC-1 was intended to carry six passengers from port city to port city as a rapid transit service, a transatlantic flight taking about 12 minutes. Designed and promoted by Advent Launch Services, the project was eventually scrapped after the company failed to raise sufficient financing through a deposit scheme. The original start of commercial service was to be July 4 1999. A former X-Prize contender.

DELTA CLIPPER (DC-X, DC-XA, CLIPPER GRAHAM)

The Delta Clipper was a proposed VTOL orbital vehicle. The DC-X and later DC-XA (derived from the DC-X) were low-speed, reusable test-vehicles built by McDonnell Douglas which flew 12 times between 1993-96, until suffering major fire damage after falling over when a leg failed to deploy on landing. On a total budget of about $100 million provided mainly by the US Department of Defense (DoD) and McDonnell Douglas Aerospace, they demonstrated that reusable rocket vehicles can be flown repeatedly and routinely by a small team - essentially like an aircraft.
Having inherited the project from the DoD, NASA cancelled it after spending some $40 million. Instead, NASA spent $1,300 million over 5 years on the X-33 and X-34, neither of which ever flew before being cancelled. Go figure!
It's notable that, apart from its computers, the DC-X could have been built 30 years earlier - and indeed a proposal for such a vehicle was made at that time by the Douglas company, a fore-runner of McDonnell-Douglas. Why it wasn't built, and why NASA cancelled the the DC-XA, are key to the stagnation in the space industry.

SPACE VAN

The Space Van is designed to carry 16 passengers plus a flight crew of 3 to LEO. A reusable booster stage accelerates the orbiter to around mach 3 at 30km altitude; the relatively low velocity compared to other booster designs allows a simpler and less complex design. Proposed by Space Tour, an unmanned cargo carrying variant is also on the drawing board.

SPACECUB

An unusual and innovative strategy, SpaceCub is a sub-orbital four-seater rocket vehicle aimed at the future hobbyist market as an all-inclusive kit for an expected price of somewhere between a quarter and half $million, though you'll have to supply the fuel yourself. A possible X-Prize contender.

SKYLON

SKYLON is the successor to HOTOL being developed by Reaction Engines Ltd. It is an unpiloted fully reusable aircraft-like vehicle capable of transporting 12 tonnes of cargo into space and is intended as a replacement for expensive expendable launchers in the commerical market.

POGO

As an example of how airbreathing engines could be used, the Pogo is intended as the first stage of a TSTO or MSTO launch system. Shown here using existing jet engines from the F-15 it is expected to reach at least Mach 2.5 and 80,000 ft before releasing a Pegasus-sized vehicle. Jet engines being developed for a proposed hypersonic commercial transport ("Hypersonic Transport Propulsion," Aerospace Engineering, June 1996, pp 7-11.) could take a much larger Pogo to Mach 5 and 100,000 ft. For many payload sizes, low-cost jet engines can do the job of rockets in the region where rockets are most expensive and inefficient.

SPACE CRUISER SYSTEM ®


SCS is a fully recoverable fully reusable piloted passenger carrying sub-orbital 2-stage spaceplane being offered by Vela Technology Development and the basis of the ticket deposit scheme being offered by Zegrahm Space Voyages, intended to operate from and return to a commercial airport with a flight time of the order of 2�-3 hours. The booster stage, Sky Lifter, carries the second stage Space Cruiser underneath it on a pylon on twin turbojet engines. After separation, the second stage uses Nitrous Oxide/Propane pressure fed rocket engines to reach space.
Zegrahm ultimately expects to be able to fly two flights a week whilst the vehicles are being designed to be capable of upto two flights a day.
Space Cruiser ® and Sky Lifter ® are registered trademarks of Vela Technology Development, Inc.