[HN Gopher] After decades of dreams, a commercial spaceplane is ...
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After decades of dreams, a commercial spaceplane is almost ready to
fly
Author : danboarder
Score : 48 points
Date : 2023-11-04 17:45 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| roughly wrote:
| > almost
| viburnum wrote:
| Is it really space when it's only 200 miles up? You can bike that
| far in a day if you get up early.
| andrewljohnson wrote:
| No one can do 200 vertical miles in a day right? Pick your
| slope, still not gonna happen.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Well, it's possible if you pick -100%, at least for those
| pieces of yourself and the bike that survived the reentry.
| jameskilton wrote:
| Yes https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/
| idiotsecant wrote:
| The part about the beats in the proclaimers song is
| startlingly good communication.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| Space is generally considered to start at either 100 km or 60
| miles up, so 200 miles is squarely in space. Before the Space
| Shuttle was retired, the ISS orbited at just over 200 miles for
| years.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| > only 200 miles up
|
| Statements like this always cause me to reflect on the
| breathtaking achievements in powered flight over the past 100
| years.
| imtringued wrote:
| I think you forgot the part where you are supposed to go 200mph
| up and not sideways, but okay let's play this game and assume a
| 100% incline.
|
| Here you go: https://youtube.com/watch?v=n_cHSx7VM18
| SonicScrub wrote:
| Unfortunately my maximum cycling speed is well short of 7-8
| km/s
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| There's a lot less "up" and "down" in the world than there is
| "around" and "across".
|
| Incredibly difficult heights to achieve are very frequently
| quite commonplace distances to cover. It's weird, but it's just
| part of living on a planet dominated by gravity.
| wolf550e wrote:
| Very much yes:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line
| ben_w wrote:
| Space[0] is easy, orbit[1] is hard.
|
| [0] The Karman line, where aerodynamics are less important than
| orbital dynamics, is only 100 km up.
|
| [1] You're _always_ falling. The trick is to go sideways so
| fast you keep missing the ground.
| LorenDB wrote:
| I just want an SSTO like Skylon to become reality.
| rokkitmensch wrote:
| I was hoping for a Skylon update as well
| mrlonglong wrote:
| Unfortunately to get into orbit at least 90% of your mass has
| to be fuel. That means unless there's a breakthrough we will
| still need multistage rockets. Skylon's a good start but
| still needs to carry a lot of fuel.
| rokkitmensch wrote:
| They've nominally solved airbreathing rocket engines
| through to the edge of the atmosphere, have you looked into
| the SABRE engine?
| 7952 wrote:
| And even with a breakthrough that new technology may just
| make multi stage rockets better. Instead of SSTO spacex
| just get to launch more payload or fuel.
| wolf550e wrote:
| SSTO is unlikely to happen, because every SSTO design becomes
| better when you modify it to be TSTO.
|
| See this video explanation:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk16En1qqEY
| Animats wrote:
| Nice.
|
| They're going directly from helicopter drop tests of landing on a
| runway to a launch with docking at the ISS. No suborbital flight
| and landing first. No orbital flight without docking first.
| That's ambitious. If it works, that will be impressive.
|
| There's a "national security version" being planned. This looks
| much like the US Space Force's official painting.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-
| Display/Article/3566...
| agluszak wrote:
| > after decades of dreams
|
| I wonder who are the people that dream about commercial
| spaceplanes and not affordable housing and healthcare...
| thriftwy wrote:
| People who already have a home and can afford their healthcare?
| barney54 wrote:
| Affordable housing is a solved problem, but people don't like
| the solution of allowing people to build housing all over the
| place.
| pstuart wrote:
| Agreed in principle, but "all over the place" is worth
| debate. High density is the way to go versus suburban sprawl.
| I understand the appeal of a suburban home (been there, done
| that) but it comes at great cost.
| cryptoz wrote:
| Yeah you can only dream about 1 thing forever. Can't have
| multiple things you dream about unfortunately :(
| ctoth wrote:
| Hi. I dream about commercial spaceplanes. Maybe I can help you
| understand it a little!
|
| What's holding us back from affordable healthcare and houses?
| Humans.
|
| What's holding us back from affordable spaceplanes and cool
| rockets? Physics!
|
| When I fight with humans, people get angry with me.
|
| When I fight with physics, cool stuff happens and physics
| doesn't (usually) get angry with me!
|
| So, for a conflict-averse nerd who likes to dream about cool
| stuff, spaceplanes > endless committee meetings.
|
| Any more questions?
| circuit10 wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/2368/
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| What problem does this solve that justifies the big booster
| that's still required?
| ricardobeat wrote:
| It's mentioned in the article: soft landing is much more
| comfortable for people, allows carrying animal and plant
| specimens back to earth, and can land close to actual
| facilities instead of kilometers out in the ocean.
|
| The booster would be used anyway to send cargo to the ISS, you
| just need a bit more fuel for the added spacecraft weight.
| modeless wrote:
| > roughly half of the [NASA space] shuttle's habitable volume
|
| > it features an add-on cargo module that is not reusable.
|
| It's hard for me to get excited about this when Starship
| dominates it in size and (I'm guessing) cost per kg to orbit, on
| a similar time frame. It's only useful in a world where Starship
| fails its reusability goals. While Starship's success isn't
| certain, I wouldn't bet a company on its failure.
| ruslan wrote:
| This Dream Chaser thing reminds me a rarely known USSR orbital
| "passanger" spaceplane MiG-105[1] from 70s codenamed "Spiral", as
| it shares same concept. It made a couple of successful suborbital
| flights, but then the programme was cancelled in favour of
| Buran[2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-105 [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)
| smoyer wrote:
| It reminds me of the space craft that inspired the crash at the
| beginning of each episode of "The Six Million Dollar Man" -
| https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/crash-made-famo...
| cubefox wrote:
| The Ars Technica piece mentions that the Dream Chaser design
| goes back to spy footage of the Soviet BOR-4, which is also
| mentioned in the first Wikipedia article.
| cubefox wrote:
| It's sobering how much less ambitious the Dream Chaser space
| plane is compared to the plans for the VentureStar:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VentureStar
|
| It sometimes seems technology is going backwards.
| p1mrx wrote:
| If we're comparing against fictional vehicles, the Enterprise
| had interstellar warp drive in 1966.
| cubefox wrote:
| The VentureStar was very much possible technology, the reason
| for cancellation was fairly minor.
| wolf550e wrote:
| The inventor of the PICA heatshield does not think it was a
| very possible technology [1].
|
| As evidence, nobody since has tried to revive it.
|
| 1 - https://youtu.be/g3gzwMJWa5w?t=460
| modeless wrote:
| *2245
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