Next Gen Shuttle-Capable vehicle interest as secret effort to save orbiters ends

[JohnFornaro]

Why not come in at a very shallow angle, and take several days and a number of decreasing orbits to land?  The orbits would be pretty eccentric at first, gradually spiralling down into the lower atmo.

Once you start to fall out of orbit it just falls straight to the ground kind of exponentially. Your final speed would be no slower than if you did a traditional deorbit burn.

Sorry about not knowing the terminology here, but:

You're coming in at the lowest speed possible, tangential to the upper atmo.  You aerobrake, and start eccentric orbit #1; at apogee perform a retro maneuver; you come back, aerobrake again to slightly less eccentric orbit #2; repeat until your orbit is nearly circular, and gradually descend.  Yes, your final speed is like that of the shuttle, but you've taken several days to drop, instead of the fast drop like shuttle.

Obviously, you still need to breathe, eat and all while you're de-orbiting, so there's more mass involved than the shuttle drop. 

Just askin', not trying to derail the topic.  If there's another thread?

[Kaputnik]

Why not come in at a very shallow angle, and take several days and a number of decreasing orbits to land?  The orbits would be pretty eccentric at first, gradually spiralling down into the lower atmo.

Once you start to fall out of orbit it just falls straight to the ground kind of exponentially. Your final speed would be no slower than if you did a traditional deorbit burn.

Sorry about not knowing the terminology here, but:

You're coming in at the lowest speed possible, tangential to the upper atmo.  You aerobrake, and start eccentric orbit #1; at apogee perform a retro maneuver; you come back, aerobrake again to slightly less eccentric orbit #2; repeat until your orbit is nearly circular, and gradually descend.  Yes, your final speed is like that of the shuttle, but you've taken several days to drop, instead of the fast drop like shuttle.

Obviously, you still need to breathe, eat and all while you're de-orbiting, so there's more mass involved than the shuttle drop. 

Just askin', not trying to derail the topic.  If there's another thread?

If you followed the Fobos-Grunt EOM thread, or if you remember the demise of Mir, you will see that a low, atmosphere-skimming orbit will naturally circularise itself until it becomes entirely within the atmosphere, whereupon the rate of decay will swiftly increase, accelerating until eventual impact.

A big problem is that there is no way of knowing until about an hour beforehand when or where the entry will occur. Also, for a vehicle that is skimming through the atmosphere, it is potentially unwise to deploy arrays; the thermal environment is probably also 'interesting', compounded by the inability to deploy any radiators.

You could achieve a similar effect by simply circularising propulsively to a very low orbit, then making the final deorbit burn from there. But I think the effect on the vehicle's experience of entry would be essentially negligable.

[paycom]

The "mysterious" investor group said they would publish more details about the project in "the first quarter of 2012".
Now the first quarter of 2013 begun, and we didn't hear anything more from them. So I don't think wi'll ever hear about the project again...

[Martin FL]

Are you asking a question or making a statement?

[paycom]

Are you asking a question or making a statement?

Making a statement.

[Lars_J]

It would sure be nice to hear SOMETHING about it, since so many on this forum were convinced of its feasibility, and that it would happen.

[JohnFornaro]

Why not come in at a very shallow angle, and take several days and a number of decreasing orbits to land?  The orbits would be pretty eccentric at first, gradually spiralling down into the lower atmo.

Once you start to fall out of orbit it just falls straight to the ground kind of exponentially. Your final speed would be no slower than if you did a traditional deorbit burn.

...You're coming in at the lowest speed possible, tangential to the upper atmo.  You aerobrake, and start eccentric orbit #1; ...  Yes, your final speed is like that of the shuttle, but you've taken several days to drop, instead of the fast drop like shuttle.

Obviously, you still need to breathe, eat and all while you're de-orbiting, so there's more mass involved than the shuttle drop.

... a low, atmosphere-skimming orbit will naturally circularise itself until it becomes entirely within the atmosphere, whereupon the rate of decay will swiftly increase, accelerating until eventual impact. ...

You could achieve a similar effect by simply circularising propulsively to a very low orbit, then making the final deorbit burn from there. But I think the effect on the vehicle's experience of entry would be essentially negligable.

Thanks for the answer.  Going back to the original context of my question, I was referring to the return of a flyable "fluffy" airframe, along the idea of the shuttle.  Unlike Mir or Fobos, the air frame would be aerodynamic, flyable, and controllable.

A better question might be this:  Clearly the shuttle, though a flyable airframe, has aerodynamics which cause a rapid deorbiting.  Is there in principle, a different airframe which would be more "uplifting", that would allow a more gradual glide down?  The U2 would be the extreme form of this airframe.  Could there be something between the extremes of shuttle and U2?  Could there be a moveable wing system?

[Robotbeat]

Hypersonic lift is crappy for any design.

[Archibald]

Whatever the plan / investor was, he was between a rock and a hard place.
He had to chose between
- a shuttle that existed, but had many flaws; or
- an eventually better vehicle that unfortunately only existed on paper.

The way I see it.

The shuttle for all its flaws existed, it had some unique capabilities and a set of missions (Hubble, Spacehab, ISS)

When the gpvernment announced it withdrew the fleet, someone probably asked itself "could a private company have its hands on the shuttles and assumes those missions up to 2020, as NASA once planned"
A straightforward substitute to NASA - that was probably the idea.

But the idea failed, and NASA retired the shuttles to museums.
With the existing shuttles  retired, what could be done ?
Re-creating a vehicle with capabilities similar to the shuttle (or even marginally, say, a ten ton payload) would be a major endeavour (pun not intended). Technically it would be perfectly doable - start from Hermes or MAKS or Buran. Or Dreamchaser eventually. But the business case looks weak...

[Rugoz]

Maybe 2 shuttles attached to each other, tanks instead of payload bays, crossfeeding, one shuttle goes to orbit with 7 tourists.

 

[Lar]

Is this site still in contact with the next generation shuttle group?
If so do they say when they might go public with their concept?

In the style of Jim...

1) Yes.
2) We'll work any advancement in the already set up L2 area (one area for the NASA shuttle effort, one for the follow on) and go public via an article if and when they approve.

Do you have anything further to add, Chris? Thanks.

[Chris Bergin]

No, I don't - or I would have.

Edited your post, as that's very dangerous to post if it's not the same guy.

[rdale]

It's an old post - but I honestly complete forgot about the project until I found it mentioned at length in a book I just came across! There is plenty of documentation (including NSF links ) and presentations on STS-136 including details on some of the causes of its failure...

https://a.co/d/5aE6IQ6