wrote:

On Friday, September 15, 2017 at 11:44:09 AM UTC-7, Fred J. McCall wrote:
wrote:

"In 1961, an American astronaut reached space for the first time and soared
through the heavens in a gumdrop-shaped capsule.

Since then, people have flown to the moon, created space planes and designed
rockets that return to Earth for precision landings. But when astronauts lift off
next year from U.S. soil for the first time in six years, their vehicle of choice
will be another capsule."

See:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...htmlstory.html




How do the benefits of capsules and spaceplanes compare?


Capsules have lower dry mass for the cargo they carry, since you're
not carrying along all that lifting structure. I was rather
disappointed to see SpaceX back away from a powered landing on land
for the Dragon V2, since that would have addressed one of the
advantages of spaceplanes in that they don't require 'recovery forces'
to fish them out of the water. Small spaceplanes tend to be more
'reusable' than capsules. However, the fiasco that was the Space
Shuttle backed everyone away from the idea of spaceplanes.


The USAF still likes spaceplanes:

https://www.space.com/25275-x37b-space-plane.html

https://www.space.com/36985-darpa-xs...m-express.html


The USAF thinks they're made of money and note that it doesn't do
anything that either a capsule OR a regular spaceplane would do.


There's also Dreamchaser:

https://www.space.com/37636-dream-ch...v-rockets.html


Assuming they finish it. Note that Dragon carries 20% more cargo (by
weight) and is available now vice Dream Chaser perhaps being available
in 2021. That difference in payload as well as the Dream Chaser
decision to launch on ULA launchers is going to make it significantly
more expensive per launch.


The Chinese and Europeans also have spaceplane projects:

https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/5/1...rism-20-people


Not an orbital system and still largely dreamware.


http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2017...nside-a-rocket


Like the USAF system. Too small to do much (assuming they finish it).


But SpaceX, NASA, and the Russians are still sticking with capsules.


Because they're all in the business of actually putting stuff in
orbit.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw