By all accounts, the CEV, which is basically a capsule isn't much in the way of revolutionary. I suppose Nasa has basically decided that they are no longer interested in the whole idea of "Inexpensive routine access to orbit." Like they talked about the Shuttle, before it became apparent that it was nothing of the sort.

It has always seemed logical to me that the best way to achieve this dream would be with a horizontal take-off "space plane." Given the history of sub-orbital systems like the x-15, it doesn't seem *that* out there.

Usually what I hear is "that is unproven technology which does not exist."

Okay: So we would need to create new, innovative, untried and downright futuristic things that had not been done before. Remind me, NASA, Why do you exist?

From all the calculations and research I have done, and I have actually done a fair amount, it seems like a good portion of the systems needed have been tested on such things as the XB-70, SR-71, Shuttle, X-43 and such.

What seems possible would be a craft slightly heavier than the current orbiter (dry weight) and with a comparable crew capacity, though no large cargo area. Possibly a small bay for in-orbit repair supplies and so on. The craft would be larger than the shuttle, due to fuel requirements and weight would be reduced with a largely composite construction and techniques used on the 787 and some of the aircraft Burt Rutan has built.

It would take off using gas turbine engines, which at high enough speed would begin to shut down as air is directed around the turbines and into a chamber behind which initially acts as a sort of afterburner but eventually a full-fledged ramjet/scramjet. Upon reaching a high altitude and speed, rocket engines or even oxygen injection into the ramajet core would take over and finally some thrusters would achieve the proper orbit insertion.

The idea has been around for a long time and has the following obvious advantages:

1. More efficient take off than vertical launches. Uses aerodynamics to get past the most dense part of the atmosphere, where large amounts of fuel are used in rockets.

2. Saves dramatically by using more efficient jet engines. Reduces oxidizer needs.

3. Better launch windows and conditions - A spaceplane could cruise in "Aircraft mode" to the operated part of the globe for the most efficient orbital launch.

4. Safer landings - Natively lands like the shuttle, but with engines already avaliable and larger control surfaces, it would be more controllable and a band landing could be aborted.

5. Possibility of no need for large use-once components.



So could someone just explain why nasa is so deadset on using an apollo-esq capsule and won't consider ssto or spaceplane designs?

I know they're not tried and true, but these are the guys who went from the sub-orbital redstone rocket to haveing men walking on the surface of the moon in 8 years.

where you going to land that thing on the moon? without an atmosphere or runway?



NASA wants to go to the moon, not Japan.


It also I believe would have serious payload problems including carrying enough fuel to get past the escape velocity and away from the earth.

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"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
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Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

When I was growing up, the shuttle was presented to the public as the "workhorse" of space; that workhorse turned out to be a prancing political show pony.

To do the bidding of the politicians that control NASA's budget.

How many workable designs have been either accepted or rejected for reasons that have NOTHING to do with their feasibility?

If they'd just stick with one and DO it, we might get somewhere. But each congress and each administration have their own ideas, and they got the gold and make the rules.

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"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

There's one small problem with horizontal launches. That problem is: **after** you get out of the atmosphere, **then** you have to accelerate to orbital velocity - meaning, you have to carry the fuel to accelerate to orbital velocity.

Think for a moment about what that implies. On the existing space shuttle, the solid rocket boosters do most of the work of getting the shuttle above the atmosphere. So, ok, your plan for a horizontal takeoff does the work of the SRBs. So you're idea is great for that. However, the fuel in that big giant heavy orange fuel tank is then used to accelerate the shuttle to orbital velocity, and your idea does nothing to eliminate that need.

What I'm getting at is, even with your planned horizontal takeoff, you still need that much fuel to accelerate to orbital velocity. Imagine the shuttle, minus the SRBs, but still attached to the external fuel tank. What you're suggesting is building a carrier aircraft that can lift the shuttle and the ET to very high altitude. You are proposing - by far - the largest aircraft ever built.

You're absolutely right about the advantages of the airbreathing engines though. I would even add that it would be great if you could work scramjets into the mix somehow. Take off airbreathing, maybe use a rocket booster stage, then switch to scramjets and accelerate to very high speeds, then pitch up to zoom out of the atmosphere, then switch to traditional rockets for the final push.

I'm all in favor of this idea, but it's not as easy as it sounds. For now, I think that we should go with what we know. Capsules are inexpensive, and very safe.

Well, in defense of the shuttle, it can do things that no other spacecraft ever built can do: for example, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LDEF">the LDEF</a> is the size of a city bus. The shuttle grappled that sucker and brought it back to Earth. How else could you do a mission like that? The shuttle is perfect for building spacestations. You dock the shuttle and then reach into the bay and grab a station module. The shuttle is the reason the IIS is many times larger than Mir ever could have been. The shuttle is the reason we still have an HST. No other spacecraft could have done that service mission. (though admittedly, if we had Saturn V's we could just loft a few dozen more HSTs into orbit). And finally, with the shuttle you can take a satellite into orbit and then change your mind about deploying it. If the ride into space damages the satellite, you just bring it back for repair rather than throwing it away.

The thing is, the shuttle is like a dump truck. It really is a workhorse. Someone made the case that, "hey we could really use a dump truck" But then after spending all the money to buy it, they cut off funding. So all you're left with is a dump truck and now you're driving a dump truck to the grocery store and trying to pick up your kids after school in the thing. And yeah, people are looking at it and saying, "this is crazy. This dump truck isn't good at this job" and they're right, but that doesn't mean the dump truck has failed.

If I could rewrite history, we would have started building a space station on the second or third mission of the space shuttle. There would have been no "teachers in space." There would have been no, "space hab" missions. We would have developed a man-rated atlas (or something similar) to take people into space, and we would have used the shuttle as a specialized cargo carrier. We'd also have developed Nova and would by now have the lift capability to drop Walmart-Sized modules on the moon. Oh, and if wishes are horses, I'd also like to wish for Venturestar to replace the shuttle.

I've done some research on this subject. if you are able to get to about mach 6 or so in the upper atmosphere by means of a scramjet, which seems reasonable and the propellant you use is jet fuel/kerosene (much less volume than hydrogen, simpler tank design) and the oxidizer is liquid oxygen, then
my best estimate is something like 300 tons or so might actually be enough to get to LEO. I've seen some other estimates in that ball park, presuming the engines are as effecient as one could reasonably hope for.

That would make for a vehcile of managable size... although large. It's possible some relatively low cost strap-on boosters could be used if needed.

Just the same, by all accounts i've seen it's not beyond the rehlm of possibility.


Of course, it would not be very useful to go to the moon with

We build an Earth/Moon ferry in orbit, with a reuseable lunar lander, then we won't need a surface-to-surface craft. Just fuel and LEO capacity shuttles (or whatever replaces them.)

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

exactly. NASA's goal is no longer to reach orbit. We're going farther and have to somehow land once we get there.

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"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

AS much as I like the idea of returning to the moon, I'm not sure that should be the highest priority now. If a sustainable and managable way of getting to low earth orbit could first be achieved it could open up so much.

The Apollo program was basically designed to go to the moon in the short term, even if the systems were minimally capable and the platform was too expensive to keep up for a major earth-moon transit system.

I don't see why that sort of thing would help us to do again. The US has lost a huge amount of satellite launch business and right now the international space station is barely holding onto it's capabilities with the progress and Soyuz missions.

How much could be done if launches could some day be so inexpensive every graduate student could have a chance at getting their small experiment flown? or if a scientists experiment failed due to equipment malfunction they would not loose their one shot to fly it and have t wait decades for another chance?

Or if satellites could be launched at a low enough price that satellite phone service or mobile broadband could become more affordable? Or if students, ham radio operators could aford more launches? Or if satellites could be built more cheaply, because it was not so critical that they work for a long time reliably due to the enourmous cost of their launch?

Okay... i guess this would probably be something that a space plane program is likely to achieve, especially in the short term.

But that's really what I personally have always thought Nasa's imediate priority should be: accessable space.

Airline-like is probably not reasonable or possible in the foreseeable future. But even if it were on par with sr-71 flights, that would open the doors to a lot!

Our ideas on priority are rarely solicited. NASA has a mission and must do what it takes to complete. Rembember: Faster, Better Cheaper?


Well, until the aims of NASA change we'll be working on capsules. We'll move back to orbital things in the future. You realize that on a 7 month trip to Mars there will be alot of time to perform low g experiments?

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"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

It seems to me that perhaps when some other country which:

A. Has a strong enough economy to support it.
B. Has an aerospace organisation which is given a largely unchanging set of clear directives.
C. Has a government with single-minded centralised funding which can ignore the wishes of pork-barrel funding by regional elected officials.

Then this may happen - The Soviets would probably have done this eventually if they had not gone bankrupt. I guess we will have to wait and see if China or Maybe even India take up the challenge.

Of course if either of those countries does crack the problem you can be sure the USA will play catch-up very quickly.

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I'm sure all major (aero)space agencies are looking into scramjet rocket boosters.

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This whole new space initiative changed everything.
CEV:
The function was a "lifeboat" for return to Earth. The new capsule can function in that capacity. The plan was for using it on top of a rocket. Same as the new capsule.
Scramjet technology:
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall hearing any serious talk of using scramjet technology in coordination with any orbital plans. I've always heard of them in relation to hypersonic travel or reconnaissance.

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I think you're right in not having heard of serious talk about scramjets for use in launcher boosters. I'm right in saying the space agencies are working on it though.

That does not necessarily mean something concrete will come out of it in the near future or ever.

btw next to hypersonic travel and reconnaisance, also (air to air) missiles could be a major application.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

I'm sure they are doing lots of work in lots of areas that we never hear of as a "project". Just like your comment...
...I don't think they technology is to the point where they can foresee a proper application of it.
Better to keep researching on what is feesable before locking it into a direction that may or may not be wrong.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

If you're talking about a single stage horizontal takeoff space plane, there are a lot of issues. Perhaps the top two issues are weight and heat. Weight is the enemy of all things aerospace. Your HTO vehicle would need landing gear strong enough to handle the takeoff weight. Gear that strong would be much heavier than necessary for landing, meaning you'd be carrying dead weight to orbit. Unless you want a very high takeoff speed (meaning a long runway and special tires), your wings would be pretty big, too.

Turbofan or turbojet engines (perhaps the ones from the SR-71) could get you up to Mach 3 or so but then they're dead weight for the rest of the trip. The scramjet engines would be dead weight for takeoff and for speeds greater than perhaps Mach 7 (depending on the design). After that, you'd need rocket power to get the rest of the way to orbit carrying along that oversized landing gear, oversized wings, and the jet engines. You'd also have to contend with very high temperatures from the relatively long exposure to Mach 3+ speeds while still within the atmosphere.

A better approach would be along the lines of the Sanger proposal - two stages to orbit. The first stage would be a large mothership capable of carrying the orbiter to high altitude and a speed of Mach 3 or so. From there, the orbiter would fly the rest of the way to orbit, perform the mission, then return for landing. This approach greatly reduces the mass to put into orbit (mass is directly proporational to cost in aerospace vehicles) and could reduce the heat exposure. The mothership would be as big as it needed to be but wouldn't have to go higher than perhaps 100,000 feet or faster than Mach 3-7.

We've done LEO to death, which may explain why NASA's popular support has wained over the years. The goal is to return to the moon, go to Mars, and do the other things beyond LEO. Personally, I'd prefer to see a fairly powerful booster to carry payloads into LEO. For people, I prefer a small vehicle designed to carry astronauts between the Earth's surface to LEO. Reusability would be very good for this but not an absolute requirement. From LEO, the crew would transfer to a vehicle designed to travel between LEO and lunar (eventually Mars) orbit. The lander would be a reusable vehicle designed for that mission. If there does turn out to be ice or some other harvestable resource on the moon, then the whole scheme would work much better because your mass to orbit requirements go way down if you don't need to carry all that fuel from the Earth.

And yet every time we do it, it's still a very very big deal. The question, I suppose, is do you want to focus on making it easier, more reliable and hopefully cheaper to get to space? Or would you rather just shoot for the moon or mars in the name of pure science, but knowing that the whole project will cost so much that you can only do it a limited number of times and the equipment is only good for one shot.

That's basically the question. I would maintain that the benifits of making space flight easier and cheaper are extreme and more imediate. If you could get to space in a more routine manner, it would allow consumer products like orbital-imaging, satellite phones, satellite broadband to be much cheaper and more valiable.

It would also serve, in the long run to further the goal of deep space flight, by possibly providing the first step.

Building a CEV that can be used a few times and will further pure science in some ways is not without value. But I would much rather make space flight possible than do some more moon exploration and maybe go to mars (which still may not happen in the imediate future or as a direct offshoot of CEV)

No, it's evolutionary. Which is the whole point. We know it will work.

I'm sure they're interested. But they have no idea how to do it, and nor does anyone else. But the fundamental point is that NASA has been given the task of going beyond LEO, and they are designing a vehicle that will accomplish that task.

They lied through their teeth, in order to get it built. Hence the large levels of distrust of NASA in Congress, that Griffin is slowly dissipating by ensuring he doesn't promise anything (like cheap access to LEO) that he doesn't know he can deliver.

You have a unique form of logic. It might help if you set out some of the steps in this logic, you know, with calculations and stuff!

The X-15 wasn't a horizontal take-off "space plane". It was an air-launched one. Unless you're thinking off the X-15 and its carrier aircraft as one system, in which case you're right. As is Spaceship One, of course. But both of these are a long, long, long way from orbital spacecraft.

In theory you could build one. We don't know that it's a practical pssibility with current or near-future technology, but it might be. The problem is that it's more expensive than a simple capsule and booster.

Well, that's because it is "unproven technology which does not exist".

You can't do that to order! What you want may not be possible at all.

To carry out the tasks set by the Administration and Congress. Which currently is to design and build in the shortest possible time a replacement for the Space Shuttle (whose flaws have become all too apparent) that can put astronauts into LEO and service the ISS and additionally be capable of lunar missions. 'The shortest possible time' means that NASA must go with a tried and tested design, as an experimental design is just that, an experiment, and experiments can fail as well as succeed. To quote Mr Krantz in a different context: "Failure is not an option."

Once NASA has a proven system in place, the time will come again when new ideas can be tested and developed.

In the meantime, the private space sector has an opportunity to do some testing and developing of its own new ideas. Not all space technology developments have to come from NASA. I suspect that cheap access to space will come from the eventual development of Spaceship One and its competitors.

And the ones that haven't?

Which gives it a capability roughly equivalent to the Orion (six people in LEO), but with a mugh higher mass, and mass=expense.

No problemo. Just develop all these ground breaking technologies, on budget and to time, simultaneously. In the meantime, you have no manned launcher.

Which should tell you something.

But does it do the needed missions more cheaply? The answer, I suspect, is no.

Because they know it will work, and no SSTO or spaceplane design ever promulgated is cheaper than a capsule and booster.

Give them an equivalent budget, and I'm sure they could develop the Ares I/Orion whilst working out the technology for an SSTO/spaceplane. But, what are the missions for which an SSTO/spaceplane is needed and/or for which it is more cost-efficient?

That is a unique capability of the Shuttle. The problem is that there's not much call for it. And it's cheaper to put up a replacement than bringing things back on the Shuttle.

No. The Saturn V/Apollo could've built the ISS with far fewer launches, in much less time, and a lot cheaper. (The Ares V/Ares I/Orion would improve on each of those.)

No. Most of the ISS has been put up using Russian expendable rockets. (Much more cheaply than the US portion, incidentally.) There's no reason to suppose the Russians couldn't build a station bigger than the ISS.

The ISS and the HST are the reasons we still have a Shuttle. They gave it something to do!

And for less money!

Funny how the Shuttle is not used for launching satellites then! It's cheaper to launch on an expendable booster and send another up if it's broken.

No, but it means your purchase of a dump truck was not a good idea. And the solution is not to try and build a better dump truck!

Or developed the existing Saturn and Apollo technology.

Or used the Saturn V. Or developed a cheaper expendable booster. The Shuttle is expensive as a cargo carrier.

Airbreathing horizontal launch at first seems very compelling.

E.g, consider the space shuttle orbiter/external tank. 75% of the entire assembly weight is just LOX. In theory an airbreathing vehicle would avoid this, thus being much lighter or having far more payload.

In actuality the drawbacks of airbreathing hypersonic flight eat away at the advantages until there's nothing left, plus you're saddled with a vastly more complex (and expensive) vehicle. That's one reason why the National AeroSpace Plane (NASP) failed.

It's not obvious watching a rocket launch, but most of the powered flight is essentially horizontal, building up orbital speed. It only ascends vertically a brief interval. The goal is get above the meaningful atmosphere fast, then pitch over and start building speed. That's by far the most efficient way.

Airbreathers must fly a "depressed trajectory" and stay within the atmosphere for much of the ascent. It's like a reentering space capsule but far worse. The heat shielding requirements are far beyond a space capsule or the shuttle.

You've got to have huge turbine engines to haul the entire vehicle off the runway and up to scramjet speed. In actuality no turbojet can do that, so you must have an interim engine to boost from turbojet max Mach no. up to minimum scramjet operational speed.

Then scramjets cannot achieve orbital speed, so you need yet another engine type (generally rockets) to boost from scramjet top speed to orbital speed.

Each of those systems requires separate fuel, separate structure, separate control systems, and shielding for the return trip.

You end up hauling a lot of dead weight to orbit, in a scenario where weight is critical. Yet all you're saving is liquid oxygen, which is incredibly cheap. The LOX consumed by the space shuttle costs about $12,000 per launch.

Someday it may be done, but you don't get extra points for getting to orbit "the hard way". The goal is getting to orbit the simplest, safest and cheapest way. Rockets are very good at that, and the cost-per-pound can be greatly improved using straightforward methods without resorting to exotic new concepts.

Re the X-15 and air launch (vs surface launch), it had MANY times the energy performance of Rutan's SpaceShipOne, yet wasn't remotely capable of achieving orbit. Yet the X-15 almost maxes out the B-52 payload capacity.

Remember you don't count speed or altitude as a fraction of orbit, e.g, it's incorrect to say the X-15 achieved 60 miles altitude, hence was 60% of the way to orbit. Rather, you count total kinetic energy. The X-15A2 achieved about 23% of orbital velocity, but (based on KE=1/2*m*v^2) only about 6% of orbital energy.

For a manned air-drop vehicle to carry enough fuel to achieve orbital energy would therefore require a mothership much bigger than a B-52.

t/Space is thinking of having Rutan build a gigantic mothership to air launch a man carrying orbital vehicle. However the mothership would be titanic -- gross weight of one million lbs, payload 150 tons (3x a 747-400 freighter), wingspan 320 feet (1.5x a 747). It would the largest aircraft ever constructed.

That's one possible way and likely cheaper and more achievable than a hypersonic airbreathing orbital vehicle. However "cheaper" is a relative term. Building the world's largest heaviest aircraft wouldn't be exactly cheap, plus you have the additional development of the orbital vehicle.

(singing) Oh where, oh where
has my Heavy Lift gone,
Oh where oh where
can it be?

(cue Underdog theme)

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Oh, it's still out there: when you consider the total mass of the orbiter and its payload, the STS is actually pretty comparable in performance to what the Saturn V could deliver to LEO. It's just that 100+ tons of what its sending up is the reentry vehicle.

That's one of the reasons why Shuttle-C, and why Shuttle-Derived launch vehicles are one of the major research areas right now.

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Space planes are not that far out of reach actually. The main issue is trying to do it as a single stage to orbit is what's impratical.

It's actualy much more econimical to use a duel craft aproach, where the one carries it to high altidude, and releases the space place wich finishes the job getting to orbit with a minimum of fuel.

The milatary Blackstar project is an example of this.

The military has actively taken over the spaceplane projects since the time of the challenger disaster. Yes it means it's all classified, but they have the buget needed to get a working design done.

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Unfortunately there is no evidence that Blackstar is anything more than a figment of a hyperactive journalistic imagination.

Jon

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

All aspects of scramjet research (basic principles, variants and technologies, public transport, boosters, missiles, different speed profiles etc) are still a relatively young and active area of research. It is indeed too early to close off a route, whether it is because one believes to have "nailed" the technology (we haven't) or because one believes a path isn't feasible (we don't have enough experience and data to know that). We're now at the very interesting point where the principle is proven and progress is made, but we don't know whether enough progress will be made in each possible application to make it a viable concept in real life. Time will tell...

But rest assured, all aspect currently remain open to research. When researching these things however, people like something to focus on, to work towards. So you can aspect that multi-aspect researches such as these will be split up in many small projects, each focussing on a small set of aspects, one possible application. We've seen that over and over again in technology history, for example where lifting body or VSTOL research was spit up into many small projects, focussing on different materials, different flight patterns, different technology variants, etc.

It works better that way than to ask 1 group to research the best scramjet config for a 1 speed missile and multispeed passenger craft. The only thing that would result in, would be the group splitting itself up. So you better do that from the beginning anyway .

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True, however Space Ship 1 does sort of prove the concept can work on smaller scales.

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There is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives - US Army Demolitions School

I just saw Hayley's comet, she waved, Said "why you always running in place? Even the man in the moon disappeared, Somewhere in the stratosphere" - Shinedown

http://worldsofothersuns.home.comcast.net/

True, however Space Ship 1 does sort of prove the concept can work on smaller scales.

Likewise, the X-1 proved it in 1947, the X-2 in the early 1950s, and the X-15 in the 1960s. The idea of a two stage horizontal take off space plane has been around for a long time. None built to date have come anywhere near achieving orbit, though.

Does Nasa have any interest at all in a Space-Ship-1-Style suborbital spacecraft? Or a slightly more advanced

True, it won't get you to orbit and certainly not to the moon, but it does get you a good 15 or more minutes of micro gravity, a decent platform for high atmospheric study, some opertunity to test materials and other thing.

True, the capabilities are far less than the shuttle, but it's also (by comparison) extremely cheap. It seems like they could do some pretty good science with such a platform that would otherwise require a much more expensive shuttle flight.

Which is why NASA is looking at buying time with Space Ship 2. There is no need for NASA to develop its own capability in trhis area when it can buy the service commerically. Anymore than it needs to build an aircraft from scratch to carry SOFIA.

Jon

Yep. On the other hand, space ship one is a LONG ways away from anything remotely approaching orbital, and it would honestly need a complete redesign before it could approach orbital energies.