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Air breathing re-entry concept
I have been contemplating various reentry options for my imaginary air
breathing SSTO vehicle. If I can solve the problem of going to orbit by using an air breathing engine in the beginning until mach 8 and switch to hydrocarbon (propane-LOX)rocket propulsion to go to orbit it would be nice to have a good reentry strategy. I read the article again in the Nov 2000 popular mechanics that describes the air force's saucer shaped orbital vehicle called Lenticular Reentry Vehicle. It seems to me that the saucer shape has many advantages, namely low drag, good lift, large usable interior volume. Now I am wondering if I can just reenter with a vehicle like this and use a shallow reentry profile, to spread the heat over a longer time, to reduce the heat load on the structure. The other alternative I am contemplating is to use an air scoop to collect air during reentry and use one or more air breathing engines to more quickly decelerate before I get into the denser atmosphere. Basically if I gather some air in the upper atmosphere I can use the air breather to loose my orbital velocity and then just drop down to earth without all the heating. The fuel used is not terribly much. Zoltan |
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Air breathing re-entry concept
Using the air breathing scopp, I guess you mean some kind of scramjet... you
use this for retro-fire, decellerating past the speed required to scoop sufficient air and... your light goes out? Seems like scramjets are great for going up, maybe not so much for coming back down? |
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Air breathing re-entry concept
Zoltan Szakaly wrote:
I have three in my garage that work at 0 velocity, they suck in air and they pump out heated air. They burn fuel with the air as oxidizer. They have no moving parts and get an Isp of over 4,000. How do they manage to suck in air with no moving parts? Jim Davis |
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Air breathing re-entry concept
In article ,
Zoltan Szakaly wrote: What if I have a metal nose cone filled with a liquid and as the liquid is heated it boils out through a hole at the very tip. This would work for a conventional cylindrical rocket that comes back nose first... Schemes somewhat along those lines have reportedly been used for ICBM warheads, which want to keep their velocity as much as they can (to make interception difficult). As others have already noted, for a reentering spacecraft, a sharp nose is a ghastly mistake. Reentering spacecraft want as much drag as possible, to slow down at high altitudes in thin air, so the blunter the better. (Even the shuttle orbiter basically reenters belly-first, not nose-first.) Given a blunt shape, cooling it with an expendable liquid is an attractive idea, although the technology is poorly developed. It's essentially an ablative heatshield where you can refurbish the ablator by refilling a tank, which is very nice. But nobody has a very clear idea of how best to arrange the details. -- MOST launched 1015 EDT 30 June, separated 1046, | Henry Spencer first ground-station pass 1651, all nominal! | |
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