ESA partners with French company to build space plane “demonstrator”
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the French company Dassault Aviation yesterday announced a partnership for building a space plane “demonstrator” that will lay the groundwork for developing a family of such spacecraft dubbed Vortex.
The ESA press release is here. Both this release and the Dassault release linked to above provided little detailed information, other than the demonstrator will be a small scale suborbital testbed for eventually developing the full scale orbital vehicle. Neither a budget nor time schedule were even hinted at.
ESA has funded a number of these demonstrators in the past decade — Themis and Calisto come to mind — all of which are behind schedule and have as yet not flown. It will be interesting to see if this project fares better, as it seems it is being led by a single commercial company rather than the government run mishmashes of the other projects.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the French company Dassault Aviation yesterday announced a partnership for building a space plane “demonstrator” that will lay the groundwork for developing a family of such spacecraft dubbed Vortex.
The ESA press release is here. Both this release and the Dassault release linked to above provided little detailed information, other than the demonstrator will be a small scale suborbital testbed for eventually developing the full scale orbital vehicle. Neither a budget nor time schedule were even hinted at.
ESA has funded a number of these demonstrators in the past decade — Themis and Calisto come to mind — all of which are behind schedule and have as yet not flown. It will be interesting to see if this project fares better, as it seems it is being led by a single commercial company rather than the government run mishmashes of the other projects.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Sub-scale, sub-orbital. Everything is sub-real, sub-useful in Europe these days.
I am reminded of a scene from Battle of the Bulge in which Robert Shaw’s Col. Hessler character is being shown a scale model of the King Tiger tank by a rear-echelon Nazi general. “It’s a very beautiful model, General. It proves that the Germans are still the world’s best… toymakers.
I don’t think it was a toy that could hole two Shermans in a row with 88’s
Vortex is just Hermes/Hope warmed over.
I am hoping folks will give this all rocket winged TSTO some love:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceLiner
But this is what interests me:
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/most-energetic-molecule-ever-made-is-stable-in-liquid-nitrogen/4021662.article
One (smaller) cryogenic tank. An all chemical version of Zubrin’s NSWR.
Here, I think a hexanitrogen monopropellant would demand Starship to use even heavier steel—be built more like the PLUTO/SLAM concept called “The Flying Crowbar.”
Neutral hexanitogen’s exhaust is just nitrogen gas.
Yes, there is an explosion risk—but that we see anyway.
N6 has twice the energy as RDX.
Remember, Sprint also used explosives as propellant:
Wow, ESA putting money into a politically connected ‘dino’ aerospace company … what could go right, probably not a lot.
Meanwhile, new space companies are looking these announcements (seems to be always ESA €€€ into ‘French’ companies) and must be frustrated.
Jeff Wright,
The real King Tiger was no toy, but taking out a pair of Shermans with one shot was a trick I don’t think the Jerries ever accomplished. Sherman drivers pretty quickly found out that circling a Tiger at close range was the best defense as its turret slew rate couldn’t keep up. That allowed even a single Sherman to plink away until the Tiger was crippled or destroyed. The process went faster with two or more Shermans in the mix – and there usually were. Shermans were pack animals.
I don’t know if the King Tiger shared its older sibling’s turret slew deficiency, but it was quite a thirsty beast and didn’t do very well off-road even on frozen ground in winter. And it was also, of course, a sitting duck for rocket-firing P-47s whenever the sun came out.
Share your opinion of Vortex vs Hermes. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
Wasn’t previously aware of Spaceliner. Just one more artist’s-concept-only Euro-rocket, though sexier than the average such. Kinda Gerry and Sylvia Anderson-ish.
Interesting about those exotic nitrogen compounds. One wonders what the upper limit is for the general approach taken. Definitely seems worth someone putting a few bucks into to find out.
Looking through the Wikipedia article on Sprint reveals that its solid motors used a mix that was part explosive and part artillery-type propellant powder. The manufacturer, Hercules, was expert in production of both.
It seems there was also an even quicker and lower-altitude missile called HIBEX that had four times the acceleration of Sprint. Sprint was a last-ditch “leaker” defense for the longer-range, but much lower-G Spartan interceptor. HIBEX, had it ever been deployed would have been a last-ditch “leaker” defense for Sprint.
Gonna be a lot easier to put the interceptors in VLEO along with sensors allowing both prompt boost-phase intercepts and also continual sniping during mid-course unpowered flight. Something like Sprint or HIBEX, but non-nuclear and with more sophisticated guidance, might still be worthwhile for point defense of particularly critical targets. That’ll be for the architects of Golden Dome to determine.
The Wikipedia article on PLUTO was interesting too. Nuclear engineers certainly had big clanking balls in those days. Probably just as well it was never put into production or deployed though.
AO!,
Can’t disagree with a single word.
Not a big fan of Dassault. They’re responsible for the quite problematical CATIA computer-aided engineering system. They also bought SolidWorks from its original developers and CATIA-ized it, thus screwing it up. I suspect more than a bit of SpaceX’s greater speed and success, relative to its notional “competitors,” is that the latter all probably use CATIA or equivalent “industry-standard” CAD/CAE systems and SpaceX apparently decided – correctly in my view – to roll its own. That may also have something to do with SpaceX’s seemingly far greater invulnerability to hacking of its IP by unfriendlies.
I keep hoping Starship will wind up a real Orbit Jet.
If built heavily enough, I think it could handle N6.
O/T
The strikes on Fordow…am hearing no radiation leak.
Iran might have enough for a single gun-style fission bomb.
Were I a sleeper operative, I would want to smuggle it..assuming any aircraft or rocket would be shot down.
I want to know if there are any lithium battery recycling facilities in Tel Aviv.
I might try to put a gun-style in a cement mixer full of lithium as an ersatz dewar and hope for a runaway.
If it doesn’t work, I still have a Hiroshima. If it does work—Tel Aviv goes the way of a certain Atoll.
Jeff Wright wrote: “If built heavily enough, I think [Starship] could handle N6.”
Most likely, it is best for SpaceX to continue working with what it knows in order to get Starship working. Once they have an operational version, then they could consider switching propellants to something else that is untried.
On the other hand, it may be up to a different company to use propellants and methods that are more efficient in order to out-compete Starship.
What makes something with that level of energy density attractive is that you don’t have to worry as much about weight. You want it heavy. Yes it is a bomb—but since it is stable in a liquid cryogenic, just have it warm in a nozzle.
I think it best for very heavy, insensitive payloads—spacecraft hulls…then have Dragon ferry the crew and another rocket the fuel.
That should cut down of depot flights.
Jeff Wright,
That’s why I think further research on these meta-stable nitrogen molecules should be undertaken. The bigger the molecuar weight, the more energy in a given mass and the higher the ISP. If one could achieve an Isp in even the high 500s or low 600s, one could build even lighter, less complex and more powerful monopropellant engines than Raptor 3. With no reactor issues and parasitic shielding mass, this could make chemical rockets the equals or superiors of NTRs and finally put those in their richly-deserved graves. A stack the size of Starship could put 500 or 600 tonnes of payload into LEO. If said payload was more of these high-energy nitrogen molecules, that would, indeed, radically reduce the number of depot-filling missions needed to undertake any given type of deep space mission, manned or otherwise.