hektor - 20/7/2007 11:22 PMThe purchase of Scaled by Northrop Grumman, and EADS project, space tourism is now for large consortiums ?
Seattle Dave - 20/7/2007 5:16 AMI'd of thought EADS had enough on with the IXV.
hektor - 20/7/2007 10:22 PMThe purchase of Scaled by Northrop Grumman, and EADS project, space tourism is now for large consortiums ?
Ventrater - 14/6/2007 11:55 AM QuoteDanderman - 13/6/2007 7:04 PM "Until and unless Virgin Galactic is successful, I suspect that the money people will stand back and wait and see. No! No! No! François Auque says: """« Nous avons choisi ce concept d'avion autonome capable d'assurer les deux phases de vol, aéronautique et spatial, parce que c'est incontestablement la meilleure solution en terme de sécurité, de confort et de coût »""" http://www.lefigaro.fr/sciences/20070614.FIG000000110_astrium_devoile_son_projet_d_avion_fusee.html this concept is indeniably the best, indeniably a best safety, indeniably a best comfort and indeniably a best cost... This project is a killer! This morning Branson was green... and now he is red...
Danderman - 13/6/2007 7:04 PM "Until and unless Virgin Galactic is successful, I suspect that the money people will stand back and wait and see.
Do you think Branson is still red from this announcement of the EADS study?
meiza - 17/9/2007 9:46 PMI just wonder has EADS done any development?
CentEur - 17/9/2007 10:05 PMQuotemeiza - 17/9/2007 9:46 PMI just wonder has EADS done any development?No development before go/no go decision to be made by year's end. At least that was the plan.
hektor - 1/10/2007 1:02 PMIAC latest - there was a late breaking news presentation therehttp://www.iafastro.org/?id=484http://www.iafastro.org/fileadmin/template/main/Documents/Events/2007IAC/LBN5.pdf
meiza - 1/10/2007 3:07 PM Also, I think the canards are a potentially clever aerodynamic solution for a problem that has plagued high altitude zoom programs in the past: the elevators being left behind the airflow of the wing at some high angles of attack. For example the NF-104 tended to have pitch problems when coming down to the atmosphere after the high rocket boost. This was avoided in SpaceshipOne by putting the elevators entirely outboard of the wing with the twin booms extending rearwards from the wingtips. Clever solution.
Well... the NF-104 was basically a low-alpha airframe forced to commit unnatural aerodynamic acts... the Shuttle Orbiter solves the issue in a much more elegant and simple way.
Main reason for the SS1 config is the use of the "shuttlecock" mechanical arrangement to acheive an airframe that has two distinct and deep stable pitch equilibrium points: one at high angles of attack (with the wing angled) and another at low alpha (wing flat). Max Faget had a design that acheived the same effect without a moving wing (although the depth of the stability wells were shallower - give credit to Burt for that!)
The EADS design looks very passenger-friendly. The graphics are superb. It has a significant aerodynamic challenge, though: unswept, high aspect-ratio wings do not perform too well at high angles of attach. In particular, the resulting aerodynamic properties are "squirrely" (i.e., small changes in alpha and beta produce large changes in the geometry of the highly separated airflow, and therefore in the various pitch and yaw/roll moments). Short aspect ratio swept wings handle large angles of attack a lot more gracefully and robustly, (delta wings are particularly good). That's why SS1 has a very low aspect ratio wing with significant leading edge sweepback.
Burt accepts the resulting low subsonic L/D and steep approach angle (and clevery uses White Knight to simulate the steep approaches for pilot training... brilliant...)
nobodyofconsequence - 20/6/2007 10:01 AMQuotemeiza - 20/6/2007 5:58 AM It's also true that Scaled Composites has not developed successful commercial craft in the past.... Not exactly among Burt's strong points are manufactureability / maintainability. He's more "Mr. One-off".
meiza - 20/6/2007 5:58 AM It's also true that Scaled Composites has not developed successful commercial craft in the past....
Not exactly among Burt's strong points are manufactureability / maintainability. He's more "Mr. One-off".
MrTim - 4/10/2007 2:53 AM As for the Starship, there are many internet tales about it, but ultimately the problem was this: the FAA was simply not ready for it when it arrived on the scene. Unless you have been through the process of getting Level A cert on something you have designed, you really have no appreciation for the hurdles that Starship had to overcome before it could even attempt to be a commercial success. It was a learning process for all involved (including the FAA) and later designs from all vendors have benefitted but the Starship suffered from the process.
Well... I'm not sure Beechcraft/Raytheron could not have obtained FAA certification if it had retained the ORIGINAL Rutan "soft-shell", ambient-pressure-cured design approach. But they (Beech) decided that they just HAD to go to autoclave-cured processes to get certified, destroying many favorable characteristics of the original design in the process, including its original modest non-recurring (design and tooling) cost, compounded by a lower than predicted demand.
In addition, the pusher prop's dynamics were a nightmare; i've seen high-speed films of the props twisting and bending in the wing's wake, and I swore never to set foot on a Starship again...
Starship died from a thousand wounds, not just a single one (O.K., O.K., perhaps three or four major wounds...)
The company has continued to maintain spending to refine the concept at a relatively high level—around €10 million ($13.6 million) a year—since the spaceplane was unveiled in 2007. It has agreed to pursue funding at the same level this year, he adds.
