Air Force quick turnaround, reusable booster.

Aviation Week has an article this week about an Air Force plan to build a
rocket plane to put medium-weight payloads in orbit quickly and cheaply.
The concept is called Affordable Responsive Spacelift (ARES) and uses a
rocket plane (vertical launch) first stage with two upper stages on its
back. Once is seperates (at 250,000ft, Mach 7) the first stage flies back
to the launch point with jet engines.

The goal is for a two day turnaround (provied an already mated payload and
upper stages). It will launch 10,000-15,000 pounds to LEO. It has a cost
goal of $2000/lb. (one third of a delta at $6,000-$7000/lb) It will user
RP-1 kerosene and liquid oxygen engine. (The RP-1 might also be used for
the jets on the way back)

They made a big deal about keeping it under Mach 7, so that the maintnence
on the thermal protection system will be really easy.

One quote that I thought was a good sign that something might actually work
was:

Another reason is that the three-stage design doesn't require ultra-high
motor and structural performance, which should improve both cost and
reliability. "We don't push technology," Dean says. "The key is how to
integrate technology. It's a systems engineering leap."

If they keep it simple and don't "push technology" this should be a fairly
no brainer....except for things like Mach 7 seperation and attaching jet
engines to a rocket :-)

I hope it works out, if they meet their goals, this could open up quite a
bit of new ground for the launch industry.

On 2005-05-02, Tom Kent wrote:

Aviation Week has an article this week about an Air Force plan to build a
rocket plane to put medium-weight payloads in orbit quickly and cheaply.
The concept is called Affordable Responsive Spacelift (ARES) and uses a
rocket plane (vertical launch) first stage with two upper stages on its
back. Once is seperates (at 250,000ft, Mach 7) the first stage flies back
to the launch point with jet engines.

A little more info at Global Security, see :

http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/ares.htm

Seems like they are looking to have subscale demonstrators by 2010


Iain

More,
with a pictu
http://www.aero.org/news/newsitems/ARES3-28-05.html

Powerpoint on it:
http://www.losangeles.af.mil/SMC/XR/...uments/introge
njamesrevll.ppt

Word Doc:
http://www.losangeles.af.mil/smc/xr/...uments/orbiter
articleares.doc

PDF:
http://www.losangeles.af.mil/SMC/XR/...uments/aresfac
tsheet.pdf

Will this help or hinder private space development?

At first glance it seems quite a good concept, comparable to private low
cost approaches. It might help demonstrate what is possible and
encourage private investment.

On the other hand, the usual suspects might build it and "demonstrate"
to potential investors that space is hard and that even the low cost
space initiatives advocated by private space developers are not low cost
or economically viable.

I hope the Air Force pulls it off, there certainly is a need, and it
might be a useful platform for allsorts of other research projects.
What other military applications might it be directly used for?
Piloted?

Perhaps once demonstrated, venture capital would become available to
redesign it for low cost commercial use.


Pete.

Tom Kent :

If they keep it simple and don't "push technology" this should be a fairly
no brainer....except for things like Mach 7 seperation and attaching jet
engines to a rocket :-)

This idea has been discuss here before. And one of the better ways to KISS
this design is just make the rocket plane a 100% rocket plane. If you add up
all the mass of the jets engines and thier support systems you will tend to
find it close to the same mass in rocket fuel/oxidzer needed to bring the
plane back and land it. IE get rid of the jets and thier needed sytems and
just make the tanks a little larger.

I do think there was a go around problem with rocket planes only getting two
chances to land otherwise the fuel needs grow too large and jets engines
start to look better. Question how often beside aircraft carriers does this
problem come up?

Earl Colby Pottinger



--
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This might be a good concept, but what's the point if Falcon V can do
13,200 lbs at $1,200 per lb?

And Falcon V is more likely to achieve these goals than USAF is to
achieve their $2000 per lb goal.

"Tom Kent" wrote in message
. 30.48...
More,
with a pictu
http://www.aero.org/news/newsitems/ARES3-28-05.html

Powerpoint on it:

http://www.losangeles.af.mil/SMC/XR/...uments/introge
njamesrevll.ppt

They're looking at a reusable first stage with expendable upper stages. The
cost goal is $1000 to $2000 per lb to leo with a total payload to LEO of
10,000 lb to 15,000 lb to leo. That gives a range of cost per flight of $10
million to maybe $30 million.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

Earl Colby Pottinger wrote:
[...]
I do think there was a go around problem with rocket planes only
getting two
chances to land otherwise the fuel needs grow too large and jets
engines
start to look better. Question how often beside aircraft carriers
does this
problem come up?

In about 2 dozen flights (as a passenger on commercial aircraft), I've
experienced 1 go-around. Thank goodness that was the flight with
cockpit audio on the channel selector ;-)

/dps

"Alex Terrell" wrote in message
oups.com...
This might be a good concept, but what's the point if
Falcon V can do 13,200 lbs at $1,200 per lb?

The lower flyback stage alone is potentially cost competitive, the rest
could be incrementally upgraded. Falcon derived upper stage? The
flyback booster might enable self ferry, other launch sites, and the
24-48 hour turnaround they talk about. This might better suit the Air
Force way of doing things.

And Falcon V is more likely to achieve these goals than
USAF is to achieve their $2000 per lb goal.

Indeed. But what is the Air Force's Falcon back up?


Pete.

"Earl Colby Pottinger" wrote in message
...

This idea has been discuss here before. And one of the
better ways to KISS this design is just make the rocket
plane a 100% rocket plane. If you add up all the mass of
the jets engines and thier support systems you will tend to
find it close to the same mass in rocket fuel/oxidzer
needed to bring the plane back and land it. IE get rid of
the jets and thier needed sytems and just make the tanks
a little larger.

I would tend to favour a multiple rocket engine approach with engine out
capability with the ability to fly home on one of them. Over the life
of the booster the extra propellant cost will likely be much less than
the added drymass cost of jet engines, so it may also be both a direct
short and long term financial winner.

One concern is the higher the staging speed the further the fly back,
(trajectory dependent), and the more fuel required. It is important the
flyback booster not be too ambitious. It could land at a closer runway
and be ferried back, but this might be overly restrictive. Ferrying can
be accomplished via towing, so that should not be a big issue.

I do think there was a go around problem with rocket
planes only getting two chances to land otherwise the fuel
needs grow too large and jets engines start to look
better. Question how often beside aircraft carriers does
this problem come up?

I would be surprised if the flyback booster would see more than a
hundred flights before retirement, so there is little point in going
over board on such landing risk mitigation just to save the booster.
The shuttle has managed without any go around capacity. If the risk of
go around is primarily due to traffic, then I expect such risks could be
substantially reduced by temporarily increasing the traffic safety
margins.

Assuming some extra care is taken to reduce the risk of go around, I
doubt the need to do it twice is justified. If the weather is good
enough to launch, it will probably be good enough to land. Even if
manned a crash landing, (say in bad weather), might be mostly
survivable. By landing time it has already done most of its job, and it
carries little in the way of valuable cargo, (no passengers). It should
not be the end of the world if you damage or right the odd one off.
A primary concern might be collision on a runway, though there are many
ways of reducing this risk, traffic exclusion, multiple runways,
ditching over the ocean, etcetera.


Pete.