Author Topic: Past air-launch rocket proposals  (Read 4212 times)

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #20 on: 10/08/2024 12:17 am »
A killer for most/all these air launch projects is that the aircraft require pilots, and you’re putting a big, pressurized, liquid fuel bomb next to them.


In the case of AirLaunch, the big pressurized bomb was behind the pilots, and I'm sure that they looked at that thing and wondered what would happen if they had a nose gear collapse on the runway.

Lots of these concepts tended to be at the high end of the aircraft's performance envelope, which resulted in tough decisions. What happens if you get to altitude and the satellite/rocket doesn't have good comms? You're not going to want to drop that thing over the ocean, so how do you dump all that liquid fuel overboard so you can land? (For those with little aircraft knowledge: planes can take off with more weight than it is safe to land with, which is the reason why some airliners in an emergency have to dump fuel before they land, to bring the weight down.)

I think that one of the other issues with AirLaunch was that it required a C-17, and the Air Force has a limited number of them and would not want to dedicate one airframe to that single-use mission. This requirement has often caused designers to look for commercial or ex-military aircraft that they can use instead.
« Last Edit: 10/08/2024 01:34 pm by Blackstar »

Offline TheKutKu

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #21 on: 10/08/2024 12:49 pm »
Some PDFs on the late 2000s French (EADS-Dassault), Rafale-launched "MLA" project, as part of the wider "Aldebaran" european small launch studies. One of the proposal had a rather unique "Trimaran" configuration, to maximize the Rafale's carrying capacity.

The PDFs include references to many other small launcher proposals of the late 2000s, and particularly other French airlaunch proposals (CNES/ONERA Daedalus which was designed with a drone twice larger than Global Hawk, and led to the Altair/Eole mock-up a decade later... or the "HORVS" concept of A400M-dropped solid launcher, comparable to the Minuteman air drop test)

Also mentionned and notable, but may outside the scope of this thread, is the recurrent (and patented) DLR concept of an "air capture" of a RLV, where a "flyback" First stage would get captured by a probe-drogue system of another plane (here A340), then towed back, like a glider, to its launch site, enabling the removal of airbreathing engines for return to launch sites. The last pdf talks about it.
« Last Edit: 10/08/2024 01:10 pm by TheKutKu »

Offline leovinus

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #22 on: 10/08/2024 06:27 pm »
Attached NTRS 20170007919 "Motivation for Air-Launch: Past, Present, and Future" including Chapter IX "Air-launch for space access" from page 15 which has some NOTSNIK, Caleb, WS-199, F-104, F4 and more.

And other pointers

[55] Bille, M., and Lishock, E., “NOTSNIK: The Secret Satellite,” AIAA-2002-0314, 2002.
ALSET Japanese Air Launch System Concept and Test Plan
Air-launched Mini shuttle
Supersonic Aircraft for Reusable Rocket Air-Launch (SARRA)
A New Air Launch Concept: Vertical Air Launch Sled (VALS)

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #23 on: 10/09/2024 01:30 am »
Back around 2016 or 17 there was an AIAA session on air launching rockets and I remember somebody showing a slide listing all the air launch companies that were supposedly developing vehicles at that time. There were a LOT of them. You might guess as to how many of them succeeded.

Online Spiceman

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #24 on: 10/09/2024 02:58 pm »
This has just popped up at secret projects. https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/fenix-space-towed-glider-air-launch-system-tgals.44511/

I'm not pretending to be an aerospace engineer (nor a rocket scientist, but Shania Twain said it wasn't impressing her, so...)

But really. The concept sounds ludicrously stupid. Why not just hang the rocket on the bizjet ? why adding towing a glider ? and don't tell "because the bizjet is not modified for the rocket" yeah, sure dude. It is modified for towing. A glider. With a rocket ticking bomb underneath.

What could possibly go wrong ? Particularly at takeoff ?
« Last Edit: 10/09/2024 02:59 pm by Spiceman »

Online AmigaClone

Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #25 on: 10/09/2024 08:46 pm »
Back around 2016 or 17 there was an AIAA session on air launching rockets and I remember somebody showing a slide listing all the air launch companies that were supposedly developing vehicles at that time. There were a LOT of them. You might guess as to how many of them succeeded.

If the definition is limited to "company successfully developed and launched an air-launched orbital vehicle, putting a payload in orbit" there was one company that started developing their vehicle in the 21st century that reached that level of success before going defunct.

Online AmigaClone

Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #26 on: 10/09/2024 08:57 pm »
I believe several concepts would have used Stratolaunch as the launch platform, including a 'Falcon 9 air'.

Online Spiceman

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #27 on: 10/10/2024 03:49 pm »
Most successfull (a relative term obviously) air launch rocket so far has been Pegasus. Except the record is definitively mixed on that one, it wasn't (isn't ? is it still alive ?)  really cheaper than the rest of the ELV fleet.

Offline deltaV

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #28 on: 10/13/2024 02:24 am »
Most successfull (a relative term obviously) air launch rocket so far has been Pegasus. Except the record is definitively mixed on that one, it wasn't (isn't ? is it still alive ?)  really cheaper than the rest of the ELV fleet.

Pegasus was decently successful 1990-2008 with 35 successful launches, 3 failures, and 2 partial failures. However in the 15.8 years since then it has only launched 5 times (all successful). Pegasus cost $40M in 2017 (https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-17-609.pdf) which is about $51M in today's dollars. That's not competitive in the modern marketplace, e.g. Firefly Alpha and ABL RS1 can lift about twice the mass for about a third the price. Pegasus lost the IXPE mission on price to Falcon 9 despite Falcon having a liftoff mass over 20 times larger. Nova is perhaps the biggest threat to Pegasus since it will lift ~6 times more mass fully reusable so it could be 1/10th the price or even less. Other potential competitors include Starship, Electron, Neutron, MLV, New Glenn, and Rocket 4. Many of the competitors will fail and many of the others don't have a good track record yet but in the long term Pegasus is doomed. I don't understand why Northrup Grumman hasn't canceled Pegasus yet.

Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne was the second most successful orbital air launch rocket. Its payload was 500 kg to LEO, slightly more than Pegasus's payload. It had 4 successful launches and 2 failures. It was priced reasonably competitively ($12M) and was getting more business than Pegasus but went bankrupt in 2023.

Virgin Galactic has air launched several rockets, but they're suborbital.

Offline JetProp

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #29 on: 10/13/2024 04:33 pm »
And a few concepts involving MiG-31s, since that plane is pretty fast (albeit the rocket carried can only be tiny).
Ishim. I think, that Ishim use results of works by antisatellite programm "Contact" 30P6.
https://www.airwar.ru/enc/other/mig31i.html
« Last Edit: 10/13/2024 04:33 pm by JetProp »

Offline JetProp

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #30 on: 10/13/2024 05:58 pm »
Thanks you very much for that. I'm really interested in the An-124 concept. How heavy was the rocket, for what payload ? liquid propulsion has better performance than solid, particularly advanced Soviet engines. But is sloshes, and this can be hairy...
Presentation about "Air start", made by Goverment rocket center.
GRC has experience with development of air launch - in 70th years GRC developed projects of air launch 4D75 and 3M40 missiles from An-22 and An-124.

Offline bobthemonkey

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #31 on: 10/13/2024 08:28 pm »
Some PDFs on the late 2000s French (EADS-Dassault), Rafale-launched "MLA" project, as part of the wider "Aldebaran" european small launch studies. One of the proposal had a rather unique "Trimaran" configuration, to maximize the Rafale's carrying capacity.

The PDFs include references to many other small launcher proposals of the late 2000s, and particularly other French airlaunch proposals (CNES/ONERA Daedalus which was designed with a drone twice larger than Global Hawk, and led to the Altair/Eole mock-up a decade later... or the "HORVS" concept of A400M-dropped solid launcher, comparable to the Minuteman air drop test)

Also mentionned and notable, but may outside the scope of this thread, is the recurrent (and patented) DLR concept of an "air capture" of a RLV, where a "flyback" First stage would get captured by a probe-drogue system of another plane (here A340), then towed back, like a glider, to its launch site, enabling the removal of airbreathing engines for return to launch sites. The last pdf talks about it.


Thank you! I was going to see if anyone remembered the trimaran MLA on Rafale proposal.

I still wonder if you could do some interesting responsive mil-space opportunities by launching it from a carrier. I suspect to make it of any use you would need to launch with minimal fuel and budget for a buddy tanking from another Rafale.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #32 on: 10/13/2024 08:57 pm »
Some PDFs on the late 2000s French (EADS-Dassault), Rafale-launched "MLA" project, as part of the wider "Aldebaran" european small launch studies. One of the proposal had a rather unique "Trimaran" configuration, to maximize the Rafale's carrying capacity.

The PDFs include references to many other small launcher proposals of the late 2000s, and particularly other French airlaunch proposals (CNES/ONERA Daedalus which was designed with a drone twice larger than Global Hawk, and led to the Altair/Eole mock-up a decade later... or the "HORVS" concept of A400M-dropped solid launcher, comparable to the Minuteman air drop test)

Also mentionned and notable, but may outside the scope of this thread, is the recurrent (and patented) DLR concept of an "air capture" of a RLV, where a "flyback" First stage would get captured by a probe-drogue system of another plane (here A340), then towed back, like a glider, to its launch site, enabling the removal of airbreathing engines for return to launch sites. The last pdf talks about it.


Thank you! I was going to see if anyone remembered the trimaran MLA on Rafale proposal.

I still wonder if you could do some interesting responsive mil-space opportunities by launching it from a carrier. I suspect to make it of any use you would need to launch with minimal fuel and budget for a buddy tanking from another Rafale.


AXUMITE was a proposal to launch a satellite off an F-4:

https://thespacereview.com/article/4809/1

That was supposed to be land-based, but the F-4 was a carrier aircraft, so it possibly could have been adapted for that purpose (although carrier aircraft have restrictions based upon losing an engine at takeoff that their land-based versions do not have).

The problem with a lot of these is that a fighter-size launch platform isn't big enough to carry a rocket with a decent payload.

Offline deltaV

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #33 on: 10/14/2024 03:29 am »
The problem with a lot of these is that a fighter-size launch platform isn't big enough to carry a rocket with a decent payload.

+1.

Even Stratolaunch, which is the largest existing airplane and designed specifically for air launch, can only lift 250 tonnes to 30k feet. That's enough for ~6 tonnes of payload to LEO expendable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_II_(rocket)), maybe ~3 tonnes to LEO with full reuse. That's similar payload to Vega and Nova and enough to be useful, especially with propellant transfer, but only barely. If you switch to a smaller airplane that's not designed for air launch, like Pegasus and Launcher One use, both rocket mass and mass to LEO apparently drop by an order of magnitude and you're competing in the ~500 kg to LEO market, which many, including SpaceX and Relativity, believe to be too small to be worth servicing with dedicated launchers. Fighters are even smaller.

Offline JAFO

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #34 on: 10/14/2024 03:47 am »
How about a tow launch behind a 747?



Kelly Space and Technology hoped to use the results gleaned from the tow test in developing a series of low-cost, reusable launch vehicles.

The ultimate plan is to tow a spacecraft off the ground with a jumbo jet, such as a 747, tow it to altitude where it would be through most of the Earth's atmosphere, where they would "light up" the spacecraft's engine(s)as it was released from the tether.  That way it would save fuel (and weight), and be more economical than using booster rockets. After attaining orbit, the payloads would be dispensed, and it the "Eclipse” spacecraft would fly back to Earth.

Of course no one here at Holloman (or Tyndall) thought much of being towed like a glider in anF-106.  The project acquired the nickname "Dope on a rope" when we first heard about it.  Mark wasn't very fond of it during his training here, but when he returned after completion of the project, he said he preferred "dope on a rope" to what the NASA folks at Edwards were calling him--"The Drag Queen!"

https://www.f-106deltadart.com/eclipse.htm

Concept testing was done by towing a F-106 behind a C-141, which showed it was possible.



« Last Edit: 10/14/2024 04:04 am by JAFO »
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Offline Blackstar

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #35 on: 10/14/2024 12:15 pm »
The problem with a lot of these is that a fighter-size launch platform isn't big enough to carry a rocket with a decent payload.

+1.
Even Stratolaunch, which is the largest existing airplane and designed specifically for air launch, can only lift 250 tonnes to 30k feet. That's enough for ~6 tonnes of payload to LEO expendable

Yes. There are a lot of limitations to air launch, including scalability--meaning that once you have a design, you cannot really make the rocket bigger because the airplane cannot carry a bigger rocket. My point was that it really doesn't work at the low-end, with fighter-size aircraft, because the payload is too small to be useful.

Now thinking about this a bit, recent advances in smallsats may open that up a bit, allowing a more useful payload. But there's still all the related stuff with competing in the market against companies like SpaceX that can carry dozens of similar smallsats on a single launch. But at least for this thread we should focus on historical proposals, not possible future ones.

Online Spiceman

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #36 on: 10/14/2024 01:16 pm »
If you want to go to the deep end of air launch... how big of a mothership ? bigger than Stratolaunch ?

Most airport runways have a limit of "30 metric tons per wheel". Beyond that : runway damage. Then how many wheels ? the late An-225 had almost 30 of them. And then there are all kind of different airport limits, as shown by the Airbus A380: span and length, 80 m by 80 m.

End result: it is almost impossible for a large plane to weight more than 600 metric tons, 700 might be the absolute limit.

Out of this, payload can only be one-third. Vanilla 450 mt 747-8F is a) 150 tons of plane b) 150 tons of fuel and c) 150 tons of cargo payload. End result there is Roc payload of 250 mt : hard to get beyond that, say: to 300 mt.

And then are rockets own limitations, such as specific impulse: 466 seconds in vaccuum - or bust. With deep cryogens. And then you may want a reusable SSTO, because no spent stages dropped downrange.

All of this, combined: 20 mt to orbit. Less than Ariane 5, less than Shuttle, much less than any SpaceX launchers, reusable too their unique way. And that's only for LEO. In fact air launch falls a little short of manned spaceflight and GEO comsats.

Lots of fixed costs and other sacrifices, for a de facto limited throw weight to orbit...

Offline deltaV

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #37 on: 10/14/2024 02:16 pm »
If you want to go to the deep end of air launch... how big of a mothership ? bigger than Stratolaunch ?

New concepts belong in another thread. This thread is in the history section.

Offline VSECOTSPE

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #38 on: 10/14/2024 03:30 pm »
AXUMITE was a proposal to launch a satellite off an F-4:

https://thespacereview.com/article/4809/1

Related air-launch concept — MIPCC-augmented F-4s and F-15s — that I had a hand in:

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20140010526/downloads/20140010526.pdf

Built on the Peace Jack high-speed reconnaissance F-4 concept for the IDF:

https://www.joebaugher.com/usaf_fighters/f4_29.html

DARPA RASCAL also used MIPCC.

Offline bobthemonkey

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Re: Past air-launch rocket proposals
« Reply #39 on: 10/14/2024 09:32 pm »
I’m sure I’ve exchanges messages with Blackstar and others of this before, but the HIAC camera proposed for Peace Jack was eventually replaced with the SYERS camera system for the U2. I mention this as this camera was then adapted to various experimental lightweight IMINT satellites under the TACSAT and ORS (Operationally Responsive Space) programmes.

These were launched around 2010 on ICBM derived LVs such as Minotaur, but at 450kg are 2x to 3x the capacity of something like the MLA proposal. Today, SSTL have demonstrated sub 1m resolution in a 150kg satellite, which could fit within a single MLA.

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