DARPA opens the competition for awarding the first design contracts for a new experimental unmanned space plane, set to launch in 2017.
DARPA opens the competition for awarding the first design contracts for a new experimental unmanned space plane, set to launch in 2017.
DARPA has high expectations for the XS-1 program, which it hopes can eventually launch 3,000- to 5,000-lb (1,361 to 2,268 kilograms) payloads to orbit for less than $5 million per flight — and to do it at least 10 times per year….
DARPA officials laid out their broad vision of the robotic XS-1 vehicle in a press release issued in September: “XS-1 envisions that a reusable first stage would fly to hypersonic speeds at a suborbital altitude,” they wrote. “At that point, one or more expendable upper stages would separate and deploy a satellite into low-Earth orbit. The reusable hypersonic aircraft would then return to earth, land and be prepared for the next flight.”
But DARPA is leaving the specifics of the XS-1 system — which aims to provide routine, aircraft-like access to space — up its potential builders, Sponable said. “We don’t care if it’s vertical take-off, horizontal land, vertical-vertical, which brings in a lot of the entrepreneurs,” he said in the FISO presentation. “We don’t care if they air-launch it, air-tow it, whatever. So we’ve left all those wide open.”
This DARPA program dovetails nicely with NASA commercial manned space program, as well as the emerging suborbital tourist industry. The combination should energize the reusable launch market quite effectively.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
DARPA opens the competition for awarding the first design contracts for a new experimental unmanned space plane, set to launch in 2017.
DARPA has high expectations for the XS-1 program, which it hopes can eventually launch 3,000- to 5,000-lb (1,361 to 2,268 kilograms) payloads to orbit for less than $5 million per flight — and to do it at least 10 times per year….
DARPA officials laid out their broad vision of the robotic XS-1 vehicle in a press release issued in September: “XS-1 envisions that a reusable first stage would fly to hypersonic speeds at a suborbital altitude,” they wrote. “At that point, one or more expendable upper stages would separate and deploy a satellite into low-Earth orbit. The reusable hypersonic aircraft would then return to earth, land and be prepared for the next flight.”
But DARPA is leaving the specifics of the XS-1 system — which aims to provide routine, aircraft-like access to space — up its potential builders, Sponable said. “We don’t care if it’s vertical take-off, horizontal land, vertical-vertical, which brings in a lot of the entrepreneurs,” he said in the FISO presentation. “We don’t care if they air-launch it, air-tow it, whatever. So we’ve left all those wide open.”
This DARPA program dovetails nicely with NASA commercial manned space program, as well as the emerging suborbital tourist industry. The combination should energize the reusable launch market quite effectively.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Hope they get to build it – and can find up to ten cargo’s a year in the 3,000-5,000 lb range? [And if its X-37B compatible. ;) ]
The Mils been trying to go to RLV launchers for decades and keeps getting blocked by congress.
ironically, Congress forced the mil to stick with ELVs so NASA would focus on RLVs, but the cost reductions that attached DOD to them, was the problem that repelled NASA from them. It would be amusing if they reversed place with NASA going all expendables with SLS and its successors, and the mil goes all RLVs..
Sounds like a solution looking for a problem.
Why a plane as a first stage?
Why hypersonic at all?
Why a reusable hypersonic first stage?
Why a non reusable final stage?
Why will the payloads not be recoverable?
Sounds like a whole lot of engineering for something a simple mass produced standard launch system would do just as well?
It sounds like they want an SR-71 back.
Just jacked up in size.
They found out that standard turbine engines could only reach a specific speed. A relation of their turbine speed. They can’t go faster than the turbines go around.
So they tried adding a SCRAM or Ram jet to the plane. It worked and they could then go faster than the turbine engines but found the turbine engines made to much drag. Plus they could only just barely make the speed needed to fire the new engines.
Thats why they have now just settled on testing Ram jets to craft that are launched on rockets. Drop the rocket after the Ram engines get enough speed to fire up.
So now your hypersonic first stage will have to be rocket powered just to get up to the speed and height needed to fire up the Ram engines for hypersonic flight.
Or just skip the ram engine altogether and use rockets all the way till second stage.
Once your using just rockets just use the Grasshopper idea and toss out the hypersonic plane idea altogether as a waste of time and cash.
Unless you have a second job for the first stage.
Just leave the hypersonic plane idea to inserting missiles/bombs into enemy territory. To fast to intercept. Unless you have a laser.
Falcon 9 and SpaceX could be just the answer to this cargo launch problem.
> Why a plane as a first stage?
They specified an interest in reducing costs, and they may think that this is the way to do it.
> Why hypersonic at all?
DARPA and the military have been interested in hypersonic for a few years.
> Why a reusable hypersonic first stage?
Reusable theoretically reduces costs. The reusable Space Shuttle cost more than expected, though. I understand that is why Orion is not a reusable space plane.
> Why a non reusable final stage?
Upper stages are even more difficult to reuse than first stages; the shuttle’s SRBs were reusable, and it is taking SpaceX a while to figure out how to reuse its first stage. Upper stages would have to have some form of heat shield in order to reenter the atmosphere; first stages don’t.
> Why will the payloads not be recoverable?
I didn’t see that as part of the article, but recovering a payload is more complicated and expensive. They may want to keep it simple. There are no limits on creating a system that could recover payloads. For instance, returning material from the ISS was not part of the COTS contracts, but SpaceX did it anyway, and thank goodness that they did.
> Sounds like a whole lot of engineering for something a simple mass produced standard launch system would do just as well?
It may do it as well, but would it be less expensive? And where is the progress in making the same old same old? The article is clear that DARPA wants to move beyond the techniques of half a century ago. “We stopped when we flew the X-15 back in the ’60s; we didn’t do anything else. … Well, that was a mistake — we should have continued pushing the technology, because we would not be in the dire situation with respect to space access that we’re in today had we done so.”
Hypersonic aircraft is a dead end path.
The higher the speed the less wing you need or use. Eventually you are left with just a lifting body and that presents even more trouble, at low landing speeds and also as it goes faster. It gains more and more lift as the speed goes up. So now you need less of a lifting body at higher speeds.
Eventually you are left with a rocket body. A tube with an engine. But not just one engine, it has to both work at slow speeds and hyper speeds.
They have been trying for 50 years to make that engine and it doesn’t work.
How will that rocker shaped hyper plane land?
Just use a standard rocket and land it with the help of some parachutes.
If it works to land something on Mars why not on Earth?
Its called Grasshopper and it will be flying inside the next 5 years. At minimum expense and proven re-usability.
Just throwing cash at a dead idea in the hopes that someone one day will roll the dice and magically come up with the answer is a sure fire way to throw away money.
Make what you have cheaper and mass produce it to bring down the costs. Its a proven business strategy. Sell more, cheaper.
That offer will sit on Darpa,s shelf for the next 30 years and in the mean time standard rockets will be doing the job instead.
Or
In a year or two they will change the parameters and it will then include a system thats a week away from being proven.
>> Why a reusable hypersonic first stage?
> Reusable theoretically reduces costs. The reusable Space Shuttle cost more than expected, though.
> I understand that is why Orion is not a reusable space plane.
Not exactly.
Shuttles margin costs came in at the projected $200ish a pound (in ’70’s money) but lowered costs was a big political problem with voters. Griffen’s Constellation (which SLS is a partial continuation of) was designed to RAISE costs.
>> Why hypersonic at all?
> DARPA and the military have been interested in hypersonic for a few years.
Also using airbreathing systems to Mach 6 (easy to do with off the shelf parts) halves the fuel and LOx needed to get to orbit. Which halves the total weight/cost of the craft.
>> Why a non reusable final stage?
> Upper stages are even more difficult to reuse than first stages; the shuttle’s SRBs were reusable,==
??
Ah, and the shuttles upper stage was the orbiters which were more reusable?
Don’t follow you here?
As for the mil, given X-37b makes a very nice recoverable upper-stage/cargo, they really need to do more work on a first stage – especially one that doesn’t need the heavy launch facilities, which really cost more per flight then the boosters do.