New Space Shuttle

Indian's aren't BTFO, because they are also testing their own spaceplane! Just three days ago they had the first test flight of their own RLV. The eventual goal is to put wings on both the first and second stages, so that the whole launcher can be reused.

Also, they developed the RLV thus far for a paltry $20 million. India is really good at doing aerospace work cheaply.

What makes the whole shuttle idea so appealing?
SpaceX has already demonstrated that you can just land propulsively with engines.....

Which is something that could have done at any point really

You can land significant cargo with wings. You can't land anything huge with parachutes or even retro-rockets

The thing is, Dream Chaser can't land any significant payload.
Anyway, I can't wait for it to crash again with people on-board. I loled so hard when the landing gear didn't deploy last time.

?
Wouldn't take much for SpaceX to produce a larger Dragon capsule

But you can also burn up in reentry killing your whole crew.

The thing is, there's basically no need for large return capacity right now.
For that matter, dragon is just fine at returning ISS experiments.
The rest is waste and burns up in atmosphere with Cygnus missions.
Unless we start harvesting some asteroids, I don't see it changing.

Considering thats exactly how the Dragon2 is designed to be landed (with full crew), im gonna argue against that.

inb4canceled

lifting bodies a shit

not enough control surface for surface area

wind powered?

I hope they do well

I'm wondering what the abort scenarios are for Dream Chaser.
I mean the ones that don't involve the crew dying.

In other words, the BEAM-testing seems to have hit a snag
space.com/32999-nasa-inflatable-space-station-room-snag.html

From what I understand, they deviated from the plan when they tried to inflate it with ISS oxygen reserves rather than onboard ones(which they feared would inflate it too fast for ISS to sustain).
Seems like a project management failure to me. Had Nasa expressed this fear earlier, we wouldn't be in this situation where the lack of pressure is preventing the module to grow in its longitudinal axis.

The entire point of a winged space vehicle is to kill astronauts. This shuttle cannot do any mission that cannot be done more cheaply and safely by a Soyuz or by a payload fairing, except for killing people.

I know right?
Even the Shuttle seems more safe because you could theoretically separate it from the main stack anytime, because it's attached sideways.
Truth is they wouldn't have survived the trail heat of the SRBs.

>separate it from the main stack anytime
Wait, was that ever a serious idea? Jesus fucking Christ

Well I said it "seemed like".
No serious abort scenarios involved the SRBs still running.
So several minutes of implied death during ascent.

Why should we haul wings into space? The space shuttle was a huge mistake.

Oh shit, it's motherfucking soyuz. Soyuz does not give a fuck.

Rocket on fire? No problem:
youtu.be/UyFF4cpMVag
Upside down reentry? No problem:
universetoday.com/13820/soyuz-capsule-hatch-nearly-failed-and-crews-lives-were-on-a-razors-edge/

Of course they had to sacrifice Komarov to get this level of safety

> they developed the RLV thus far for a paltry $20 million.
It was not a test flight of an RLV, it was a demonstrator hoisted by a sounding rocket.

It has abort motors just like any capsule. DC was actually one of the first to opt for a pusher system which used the OMS engines, a scheme later adopted by Dragon.

This shuttle isn't the shuttle, it carries astronauts and pressured cargo. It is not a launcher.

The ultimate purpose for Dargon is going to Mars, so no one is BTFO.

Funny thing is, SpaceX will have to do a launch abort test,and waste a first stage, while neither Siera Nevada nor Boeing will have to.
Boeing got out of it because "muh escape towers are tested".
SpaceX's escape system is integrated into the capsule, so they want more testing, I guess.
I don't even understand that Dream Chaser is considered at all. It's catastrophy waiting to happen. Either on launch, or reentry, or landing.

>You can't land anything huge with parachutes or even retro-rockets
[citation needed] very much on that, the Dragon lands more cargo than this thing could ever hope for.

>lifting bodies a shit
lmao no
>not enough control surface for surface area
This isn't inherent to all lifting bodies at all, and the Dreamchaser seems to perform just fine.

>The entire point of a winged space vehicle is to kill astronauts
>This shuttle
Yeah, no, the only reason why both Challenger and Columbia failed was because of NASA incompetence. Thiokol-Morton engineers on-site begged the launch not to happen, they launched, the engineers were proven right. Result? The government let NASA fix itself. Fast forward to Columbia, same shit, different day only this time it was a thermal tile and the NASA bosses blocked any attempt to investigate while in orbit. Using the retard parade that is NASA as a metric for anything is stupid.

>What makes the whole shuttle idea so appealing?
It's a hell of a lot easier to glide something down rather than gently fall it down. There's engineering challenges to make sure the thing is light enough to do it (see the entire Shuttle program for more info) but the reward is pretty easy to see. Alternatively a capsule is pretty fucking simple, you could probably build one in your garage that could survive the trip; the trick is to do it efficiently enough to allow for cargo returns. You're going to lose a bit of capability compared to a spaceplane but you'll have less maintenance and upkeep overhead which is a significant factor for spaceplanes.

For those of you in the aviation industry think of the steps to restore an aircraft's airworthiness after hard maneuvers through severe hail. Every flight.

All in all the Dreamchaser seems kind of neat, I can see the appeal for sure, but I'm not sure it offers a significant advantage over the Dragon and Soyuz. This isn't the Shuttle, it isn't big.

>Funny thing is, SpaceX will have to do a launch abort test,and waste a first stage, while neither Siera Nevada nor Boeing will have to.

DC hasn't been selected for manned flights, it doesn't require testing because it isn't moving forward with NASA manned flights.

Hopefully enough test pilots will die to cause the project to be canned before putting anyone else at risk.

>There's engineering challenges to make sure the thing is light enough to do it (see the entire Shuttle program for more info) but the reward is pretty easy to see.

What is that reward, specifically? Is it safety for the passengers? Is it lowered money costs?

>What is that reward, specifically? Is it safety for the passengers? Is it lowered money costs?
Well that depends on what you mean by safety. If you had a sound design that was properly maintained? Well, you -can- glide the thing, if there's every a problem with retro rockets or parachutes on a capsule it's not going to end well. (a unicorn of a problem though, completely unlikely) Spaceplanes have a real advantage in doing more with less, that is to say they can carry more with less weight compared to capsules. So far the Shuttle has been the only vehicle that could bring back a decently-sized satellite intact, that's the kind of advantage a successful spaceplane design can offer. Downside to that is it's a mother bitch of a design challenge, new materials had to be invented specifically for the Shuttle program for it to work right; and then there's the issue of upkeep that I mentioned earlier.

Right now we have to ask if we need that sort of capability, and honestly the tiny Dreamchaser certainly doesn't even come close to offering that. I think the only thing it has on the Dragon is that it's allowed to land at a commercial airport, no returning capsule will ever be allowed to get near sensitive airspace like that.

We don't ever have to bring a satellite back to Earth intact. That is a silly mission profile that deserves an investment of $0.

God damn it I quoted the wrong post.
>We don't ever have to bring a satellite back to Earth intact.
Except asteroid mining will be a thing, and unless you have a teleporter on hand there is a need to bring things from orbit to the surface both safely and efficiently. Before you pipe up about something resembling breaking up the asteroid into smaller pieces let me remind you of something: it's in orbit. There were two geologists in a thread a few months ago who pointed out why trying to chip an ore-bearing asteroid into smaller pieces wouldn't work. I can think of one reason why off the top of my head and that's the debris, breaking it up in orbit would be messy as all hell.

Do I think a spaceplane is the ideal vehicle for an flying ore car? No, not necessarily, but saying such a mission profile doesn't or won't exist is pure stupidity. Likely the better option would be to put some sort of inflatable heat shield on the front and deorbit the rock on to some open piece of real estate, maybe have a drogue chute or something to further slow it down. I'm not going to rule out the necessity for bringing things down from orbit intact though, and the larger the payload space and capacity the better.

You also have no idea if we ever will need to return a satellite from orbit intact. I can't imagine a reason why right now, but I'm not going to say never.

>there are still space mining people on Veeky Forums

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, since the board is also full of flat-earthers.

>people on here actually believe in the space x meme.

>people are actually drinking the Elon kool-aid.

wwwwwwew lads..

I am actually really interested in seeing how viable this design is in comparison to SpaceX.

>I guess I shouldn't be surprised
Give us a good reason why it isn't viable then, explain your reasoning; minimum of four paragraphs. Everyone in the industry disagrees with you, so provide an explanation or shut the fuck up.

And why can't we break an ore bearing adteroid into smaller pieces?

Asteroids are in orbit yes, but they are in orbit around the sun, not earth. There is HUGE amount of empty space out one can afford to get messy. Not to mention there are methods to contain the dust.

permanent.com/asteroid-mining.html

Not to mention moving a whole bunch of worthless slag (ore) back to earth is a very bad idea when you need a couple of Km/s of delta v to even get it back to earth.

The only things that are even remotely worth returning to earth are precious metals, to get a significant amount of precious metals to earth in the form of unprocessed material you need a HUGE chunk of rock. Gold is present in concentrations of ~3.5 parts per million at best, platinum is present in concentrations of ~24 ppm.

At 3.5 ppm to get 1 ton of gold to earth you need to return a chunk of rock that weighs more than a cruise ship.

Getting that to the surface of earth intact will be difficult.

Space mining makes more sense for stuff you use in space lile propellant

>And why can't we break an ore bearing adteroid into smaller pieces?
I can't remember the reason, something about the ore being tough or something like that. I don't remember the thread, and I'm sorry but I don't have time to dig it up right now.
>Asteroids are in orbit yes, but they are in orbit around the sun, not earth.
Yes, I understand all of that, but at some point you're going to have to ask yourself, "where should I process these ores?" On one hand doing it on site, far from Earth means mess wouldn't matter, but you're then moving the refinery to the mine and that really isn't efficient. Moving things "up" is far more difficult than moving them "down" an orbit, so the dV for dragging an entire refinery to the asteroid belt starts to get pretty wild.

There's also the question of, "what is the refined material going to be used for?" If we're talking about a chunk of rock rich in platinum group metals then it would be valuable on Earth, less so in orbit. We already have refineries on the planet, their size isn't at all restricted by launch requirements and already operate with excellent efficiency. So the question of where to refine it isn't even present in that scenario, instead we're dealing with moving the ore.

>Getting that to the surface of earth intact will be difficult.
There's no need to keep it all intact though, just reduce the speed significantly. That's why I suggested an inflatable heat shield and a drogue chute, if the rock breaks up on impact it will be just make preparation for terrestrial transportation easier. Our concern is significant heat ablation and thermal shock causing the material to explode in when it passes through the stratosphere.

It would be easier to deal with slag and byproducts, we already have infrastructure on the planet for that.

I agree that space mining is best utilized to serve space interests, but that doesn't provide financial incentive to actually do it. Remember, this is about money, not science.

?
Dragon was just their lander, its not the MCT
Purpose of Dragon is to make money for them

>At 3.5 ppm to get 1 ton of gold to earth you need to return a chunk of rock that weighs more than a cruise ship.

No you see we'll just process it in space with a gigantic mining and refining operation that is assumed to cost nothing because of robots or "human destiny".

I like how this is shaped so much like the GI Joe Defiant shuttle.

And the Defiant mold was apparently re-used for the Crusader

...

>space
haha
haha
hahaha
not knowing objective betterement

I think this is really cool. This is the space shuttle that will be cost effective, and what it should have been from the beginning.

Talking about future space tech, I found a podcast that talks about CubeSats and space, pretty cool stuff. soundcloud.com/uga-small-sat-lab

I listen to them too! They're trying to send some up themselves, and they've got a crowdfunding thing going on, with some pretty good tier rewards. For those interested: smallsat.uga.edu/funder

tha'ts not new

This is a better info-graphic describing the winged return booster concept that India is pursuing.

However a full prototype won't be ready for another 10 years. That might be too late?

>Funny thing is, SpaceX will have to do a launch abort test,and waste a first stage

They'll probably just reuse one of the recovered first stages.

Quite interesting, it looks like the lower stage won't need to house a space for satellites like the space shuttle.

Any idea what the payload will be?

>However a full prototype won't be ready for another 10 years. That might be too late?

Perhaps, but I don't think they have any hard deadlines like private enterprises. By that I mean they will be supported by Indian tax payers till that date. In fact it looks like their funding has increased this year.

A manned/remote controlled winged reusable booster is something they could have done 50 years ago

Nowadays it seems stupidly dated after SpaceX has demonstrated vertical landing.

Dated how?

>controlled winged reusable booster is something they could have done 50 years ago
I cannot recall anyone attempting to do so 50 years ago.

Is it cost prohibitive in comparison to SpaceX?

that's why it's unmanned dumbasses

Dated because they are now working on methane engines, they have vertical landing without needing all the structure necessary for vertical landing

Where is this runway going to be since they are launching out into the ocean?

It's doubtful this thing will ever fly

>Where is this runway going to be since they are launching out into the ocean?

Sriharikota to Andaman Islands is quite possible. I don't know if it will return to Sriharikota after launch.

>Dated because they are now working on methane engines

ISRO plans to use scramjet engines on the lower winged stage.

>It's doubtful this thing will ever fly

Who knows, I share the same doubt as you.

horizontal landing*

Thats a lotta miles, but I guess with wings it could fly the distance.
>ISRO plans to construct an airstrip greater than 4 km long in Sriharikota island in the "near future".
Guess that answers where

Without the scramjet idea, I'd say this is something they could do.