Author Topic: Shenlong spaceplane (Read 50808 times)

enix · « **on:** 12/11/2007 12:57 pm »

http://www.war-sky.com/forum/attachment/Day_071211/18_45536_0b0aeb6cbd32384.jpg

My friend gave me this link. He said it is a test flight of a reduced scale module of reusable space vehicle. One Chinese newspaper "wenhuei" also reported that China is developing "space plane".

Can anyone confirm this news or give me more info about this? Thanks you first.

Satori · « **Reply #1 on:** 12/11/2007 08:10 pm »

This is a very interesting image. Is the first time I see this... The image comming from the http://www.war-sky.com/forum/ is there any detail that you can share with us?

I don't know if there anyone here that can translate Chinese. The forum page where the image came from is here.

lucspace · « **Reply #2 on:** 12/11/2007 08:44 pm »

Could you please post the image here? The first link no longer works...

Satori · « **Reply #3 on:** 12/11/2007 08:48 pm »

Quote

lucspace - 11/12/2007 3:44 PM

Could you please post the image here? The first link no longer works...

Here it goes...

Lampyridae · « **Reply #4 on:** 12/11/2007 11:48 pm »

Babelfish (with lots of cut and pasting)

6. 2006-2008 year management undertakes the country natural sciences fund project "the ultra-high speed flight vehicle overall multi- goals optimization theory and the method research". Publishes the article and the reward: The cooperation publication discusses, teaching material 2, publishes paper 30. In recent years took first, two prize-winner, obtain the following to reward: 1. Shanxi Province first session youth science and technology prize 2. original airspace divisions outstanding young teachers reward 3. State Educational Committee advance in technology first award (second), third prize (first) 4. astronautics advance in technology second prize (second) 5. aviation advance in technology second prize (second) 6. national defense science and technology second prize (second) 7. national human resources departments, General Armament Department, the national defense science and industry committee, the man-in-space flight project prominent contributor medal national defense science and industry committee "has prominently contributes the Chinese youth expert"

Lampyridae · « **Reply #5 on:** 12/11/2007 11:57 pm »

In other words, it's a lot of official guff cut and pasted by the one guy with no technical details. The other guys' comments are about blowing things up and something about "God Dragon" at the end. It's some kind of research vehicle, but it's "hyper velocity," not anything to do with RLV per se.

It's something more like the X-43 than the X-34 in other words. The Chinese gave up on the spaceplane idea a long while back. At the moment they're struggling to develop heavy-lift boosters, let alone RLV.

simonbp · « **Reply #6 on:** 12/12/2007 12:13 am »

I'm tempted to think it's just a cruise missile that they happened to paint black and white... Pity you can't really see the wing shape to tell...

Simon

meiza · « **Reply #7 on:** 12/12/2007 12:43 am »

It doesn't look to be air breathing with the flat belly and nozzle in the back like that...
It could be a reusable upper stage a la X-37. (Mass fraction will suck...)
The picture looks as if it's from a video.

MKremer · « **Reply #8 on:** 12/12/2007 12:52 am »

Quote

meiza - 11/12/2007 7:43 PM

It doesn't look to be air breathing with the flat belly and nozzle in the back like that...
It could be a reusable upper stage a la X-37. (Mass fraction will suck...)
The picture looks as if it's from a video.

U.S. surface and ship/sub-launched cruise missles look pretty similar before the booster stage separates and the wings and tail surfaces deploy to turn it into an 'aircraft'.

Onlt difference to me seems to be the large boost nozzle, which may indicate a much higher altitude flight profile.

Namechange User · « **Reply #9 on:** 12/12/2007 01:34 am »

I think it's an anti-sat weapon.

meiza · « **Reply #10 on:** 12/12/2007 02:12 am »

Anti-sat would be just like a rocket, with a fairing over the payload, the kill vehicle (it needs many nozzles for maneuvering).

This doesn't look anything like it, I don't know where you got the idea?

It's clearly something for re-entry.

simonbp · « **Reply #11 on:** 12/12/2007 03:10 am »

I think, if it is actually a research vehicle, it's designed to test TPS systems. The Chinese flag is pretty evident on it, meaning it's probably meant to be recovered, but not necessarily on Chinese soil. If so, it doesn't need to go that high or fast, just fast enough (in the mid-atmosphere) in to get hot enough. The engine is probably hypergolic (as that's what they have experience in), so I'd guess that the whole thing has maybe 1-2 km/s of delta V (similar to SS1 or X-15)...

(I'm beginning understand how CIA analysts must feel...)

Simon

kraisee · « **Reply #12 on:** 12/12/2007 04:47 am »

It looks like a test vehicle to me - which correlates to the article.

High altitude, high speed, with a re-entry profile of some sort, to be recovered after flight and probably tested again and again. Appears to have some sort of simple Delta wing, but its really hard to tell for sure. That would indicate a high cross-range capability to me though.

I bet it's simply an unmanned X-plane designed to gather lots of useful data - from an environment which they currently have very little data about - so as to improve the knowledge-base of the Chinese engineers working on their aerospace program. Data gathered from it will go into the next generation of vehicles and may wind up in spacecraft, aircraft, missiles and maybe UAV's too.

Its the sort of thing you'd develop if you know you are missing valuable knowledge and want to build something practical in order to go attain it. That leads to greater understanding, and that leads to better designs in the future. It isn't likely to be the first such X-plane, and isn't likely to be the last either and NASA has done numerous vehicles of its own to gather similar data in the past too.

If I were the Chinese military right now (I guess they are the ultimate bank-roller for this), I'd be looking at this sort of thing as logical a stepping stone to eventually building something like a Mach-4/6 surveillance UAV which can't be shot down.

Their own recent test of a satellite-killer demonstrates the need for a surveillance capability which is not stuck in a predictable orbit, so an air-launched high-speed UAV would seem a logical step right now. The much-rumoured SR-72 would appear to be the USA's answer to this exact same requirement.

Ross.

meiza · « **Reply #13 on:** 12/12/2007 02:47 pm »

It's not for cruise as it's blunt and has high drag. So no SR-72.
It's a re-entry test vehicle.

khallow · « **Reply #14 on:** 12/12/2007 09:47 pm »

It's testing air launch for sure. A lot of guesses here sound pretty good to me, I can't make up my mind.

Lampyridae · « **Reply #15 on:** 12/14/2007 06:59 am »

It's not a prototype anything, it is just a research vehicle. Launch, re-enter, gather data. Re-entry information has other other applications besides RLVs, such as nuclear warheads or suborbital surveillance.

The Italian IXV is likewise just a tech demonstrator, it doesn't mean the Europeans are building a spaceplane - it just means that they are developing the capability for technology related to re-entry - one area in which they have little or no experience. Just because you have lots of wind tunnel test data doesn't mean you know anything about how your indigenous tech stands up to re-entry.

mikes · « **Reply #16 on:** 12/14/2007 08:12 am »

Quote

The Chinese flag is pretty evident on it, meaning it's probably meant to be recovered, but not necessarily on Chinese soil

... or it could just mean they expect the photo to get into AVweek!

Mike

simcosmos · « **Reply #17 on:** 12/14/2007 12:07 pm »

Focusing only on specific aspects of the Chinese vehicle's shape, there are a few similarities with past spaceplane concepts (sub-orbital and orbital designs too) from Soviet Union / Russia, etc

Quick examples:

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/48.html
(Myasishev 48)

http://www.espacial.org/astronautica/tecnologia/ars1.htm
(ARS)

Just for the fun of it, will attach here a clumsy adaptation of one of my 3D models: I ask the reader to please have in mind that I'm *not* suggesting that the Chinese vehicle is a prototype for an orbital spaceplane project (crewed or non-crewed)! As mentioned in the start, just found funny the presence of a few similarities – at a first glance – with some past concepts and then simply made a very quick modification of a non related project on my 3D archives (changed colours and glued a Chinese flag on the side of the fuselage, without caring with other details such as dimensions and other differences).

António

apollo13 · « **Reply #18 on:** 12/15/2007 01:37 am »

Looks more like a Kliper to me....is size, weight, the same?

Zero-G · « **Reply #19 on:** 12/16/2007 04:00 pm »

A friend sent me this link which contains an interesting picture: http://military.china.com/zh_cn/bbs2/11053806/20071216/14552048.html

I don't have any idea, what is written there, though. Anybody here who speaks chinese well enough to give a short overview?
Or does anybody have a link for an online-translator?

Here is the picture:
It shows two models of two different designs for some sort of a RLV. The closer one has some resemblence to the European "Hermes".
There is also a model of a Shenzou DM on the table, between the two RLVs.
Don't know what the three things on the right are. Though the first one looks a little like a transport and launch container for a military missile, while the other two look somewhow like missiles or rockets.