Teensy weensy space shuttle flies and lands Sierra Nevada Corporation's “Dream Chaser” automated spaceplane has successfully flown and landed. The vehicle looks a lot like NASA's Space Shuttle and like that vehicle can land on a runway. It's rather smaller, however, and at just nine metres long is designed to fit atop lots of launch vehicles and to carry crew and cargo …
The El Reg article states 9m long, Wikipedia states 6.9m...
Maybe there are several variations... It could be a small Shuttle or a large Playmobil.
But in any event it is smaller than anything that I would feel comfortable re-entering the atmosphere in...
please fasten your seat belts we are about to enter some turbulence...
"But in any event it is smaller than anything that I would feel comfortable re-entering the atmosphere in..."
The space capsules of early years would have been smaller than that. There was a Soviet Exhibition in London in the 1960s where they had one of their space capsules on display.
IIRC it was a large metal ball with a circular hatch cover containing a small porthole. The hatch was held in place by something like 25mm diameter studs secured by hex nuts. Quite an apparently low-tech contrast to the US Gemini capsules.
...I'm going to guess an itty bitty* bit bigger than a polka-dot bikini.
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*Pedantic <spoiler>Yes, I know it should actually be itsy bitsy, but as El Reg said Teensy Weensy instead of Teenie Weenie, I reserve the right to follow their half-spoonerism</spoiler>
The Shuttle was a fairly conventional body-and-wings design like a normal aircraft.
People go with lifting bodies because they want to minimize the wing are, and hence the area you need to cover with a heat shield.
Otherwise LB's tend to have much worse handling characteristics than body-and-wings (which is an impressive feat, given the Shuttle handled like a brick).
DC is actually the most cutting edge tech seen for ISS resupply. It's a crew rated (given it has to berth to the Station) all composite (carbon fibre) human sized lifting body. Nothing has all those things together in one package.
Actually this is nearly identical to NASA's original design for the shuttle until the military turned it into a disaster waiting to happen, so I am sure there will be NASA bodies lamenting at how this was how it should have been done , though this time the military cant f**k it up again.
this time the military cant f**k it up again.
Well, they don't need to since (having experimented on humans with the original Space Shuttle) they've now had their own built, the X37.
Of course, the idea of a lifting body space plane isn't a US invention, it is a copy of an idea the Russians were trialling in the 1980s. I suppose with the F35B being an expensive copy of the Yak 141, the Russians are now originators for the US' cutting edge programmes. What will America do if the Russians stop giving them these ideas?
It does seem a lot like the X37.
More similar to X37 size?
The X37B specs from Wikipedia:
Length: 29 ft 3 in (8.92 m)
Wingspan: 14 ft 11 in (4.55 m)
Height: 9 ft 6 in (2.90 m)
Max takeoff weight: 11,000 lb (4,990 kg)
Payload bay: 7 × 4 ft (2.1 × 1.2 m)
"Of course, the idea of a lifting body space plane isn't a US invention, it is a copy of an idea the Russians were trialling in the 1980s."
If the Russians played with lifting bodies in the eighties, then THEY were the copyycats.
"The original idea of lifting bodies was conceived about 1957 by Dr. Alfred J. Eggers Jr., then the assistant director for Research and Development Analysis and Planning at what later became the NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA"
"In 1962, FRC Director Paul Bikle approved a program to build a lightweight, unpowered lifting body as a prototype to flight test the wingless concept. Construction was completed in 1963"
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/history/pastprojects/Lifting/index.html
All this research made it possible to create the DreamChaser without having to spend large amounts of money on aerodynamic research. Basically they picked up a dropped NASA project,
Sadly no, it seems to work, but needs the full ".html" at the end:
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/history/pastprojects/Lifting/index.html
But thanks for the fun 404! Kinda rare these days. For the 404 go here:
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/history/pastprojects/Lifting/index.h
It was a series of aircraft.
The first one was built by NASA scientists in their spare time. Apparently quite a few of them were building their own aircraft on hobby basis.
As the program moved on, the basic shape aquired a flat under surface with delta wing and long chin strakes https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/299259main_EC75-4643_full.jpg
Looks familiar doesnt it?
Following the evolution of aircraft design can be quite facinating.
For example the offspring of TA183 can be all over the world. amazingly the Saab Tunnan is the one that got closest to the original design, apparently because the Swedish were most adept at reading german technical documentation on it's original language.
"copy of an idea the Russians were trialling in the 1980s"
Your timeline is a bit off.
Russia had Buran in the 80s, which was a reply to the US Space Shuttle.
Before both systems were the US lifting body experiments, plus the Dynasoaur, and the Soviet BOR and MiG-105 testbeds, all starting in the '60s. The soviets were trailing in this research, the USA was trialling lifting body aircraft in the early '60s, whereas the MiG-105 wasn't until 1969.
Dreamchaser however does strongly resemble the MiG-105.
It says here:
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/9-12/features/F_Aeronautics_of_Space_Shuttle.html
"The Space Shuttle is a Lifting Body"
"The space shuttle, with a shape like a bulky glider, is actually a lifting body"
- and let's face it, NASA ought to know.
As it happens, the Apollo Command Module also counted as a lifting body, albeit with a much worse lift to drag ratio. Those stubby little wings on the Space Shuttle is how come the thing was able to land on a runway rather than having to splash down in the ocean underneath parachutes.
Ah, the awesome jetex.
In my impatience to fire up my new Payloader, I hung it from a washing line strung inside the greenhouse, lit the fuse and retired to a not quite safe distance. It quickly became a blurred into a disc around the washing line before achieving escape velocity.
It smashed a neighbour's window before the shattered greenhouse glass had hit the ground.
Jetexes are long gone. You can still find them on eBay, but since you can no longer get fuses or fuel pellets for them, they are collector's items.
The closest replacements are the Czech-made Rapier Rocket motors, which are just a range of small slow-burning model rocket motors that give similar thrust to Jetex motors and burn for a similar time.
Jetexes are long gone. You can still find them on eBay, but since you can no longer get fuses or fuel pellets for them, they are collector's items.
I have fond memories of the Jetexe. They were a bit tough to find back then but available. Then there was Estes which were popular and they're still available. https://www.estesrockets.com/
Isn't this it's first actually successful flight? IIRC the last one ended rather badly with the nose landing gear failing to deploy.
I think that I would like to see a lot more testing, including a space launch and recovery, before I signed it up to ISS resupply missions.
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