jess
09-16-2006, 09:16 PM
I'm not sure why you all invited me to join this forum. I've reviewed the postings, and I tend to be a bit more of a hard techie vs policy type. My area of expertise is space access, reusable space access in particular, or what I like to call military spaceplane. Think of a miltiary spaceplane as an "air" vehicle that can fly into orbit for short periods of time and accomplish a wide range of sortie missions from spacelift to military sortie missions. I had the pleasure of leading a team that flew DC-X a few years back. Did same for X-40A. Then I retired from AF. After a stint with private industry I ended up at AFRL as a civilian.
There is much good and bad news in this field. The good news is that NASA has finally withdrawn - after the technical and programmatic failures of X-33, X-37, X-34 and X-38. Unfortunately, although AFSPC has a solid suite of requirements documents in place for military spaceplane, aka operationally responsive spacelift, it is such a leap from how we do business today, that it is not clear we have a viable path ahead. It is important to remember that we are not talking about a Shuttle II. A Military Spaceplane is essentially a brand new class of vehicle - a flying propellant tank is a good description. Shuttle on the other hand is a 250,000 lb satellite that happens to be recoverable.
On the solid good news side, there are a host of commercial companies trying to develop new capabilities which will have military applications. Spaceship One is an example. And yes I know that Mach 3 flight is a huge difference from orbital Mach 25 flight, the technologies are different. But Mach 3 is on the path to Mach 25, and although the technologies are different, there are many similar processes. In addition to Rutan and Branscom with their Spaceship One, another interesting company pursuing RLVs is Blue Origin - owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com. Rocketplane, USL, TGV, Armadillo, XCOR, Masten Space and half a dozen others with varying levels of credibility are also on the list. And then there is Elon Musk with his SpaceX low cost ELV - let's hope he can compete.
I should also note that spaceplane is used in the most generic sense. These vehicles are really not planes, closer to flying propellant tanks as noted earlier. And the primary property of planes that they try to emulate are the operability and cost efficiency. Indeed several of these commercial companies are focused on VTOL (like DC-X) just to enhance operability.
So my question is does the Air Force need truly responsive, low cost, reliable space access? And should we be pursuing military spaceplanes?
There is much good and bad news in this field. The good news is that NASA has finally withdrawn - after the technical and programmatic failures of X-33, X-37, X-34 and X-38. Unfortunately, although AFSPC has a solid suite of requirements documents in place for military spaceplane, aka operationally responsive spacelift, it is such a leap from how we do business today, that it is not clear we have a viable path ahead. It is important to remember that we are not talking about a Shuttle II. A Military Spaceplane is essentially a brand new class of vehicle - a flying propellant tank is a good description. Shuttle on the other hand is a 250,000 lb satellite that happens to be recoverable.
On the solid good news side, there are a host of commercial companies trying to develop new capabilities which will have military applications. Spaceship One is an example. And yes I know that Mach 3 flight is a huge difference from orbital Mach 25 flight, the technologies are different. But Mach 3 is on the path to Mach 25, and although the technologies are different, there are many similar processes. In addition to Rutan and Branscom with their Spaceship One, another interesting company pursuing RLVs is Blue Origin - owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com. Rocketplane, USL, TGV, Armadillo, XCOR, Masten Space and half a dozen others with varying levels of credibility are also on the list. And then there is Elon Musk with his SpaceX low cost ELV - let's hope he can compete.
I should also note that spaceplane is used in the most generic sense. These vehicles are really not planes, closer to flying propellant tanks as noted earlier. And the primary property of planes that they try to emulate are the operability and cost efficiency. Indeed several of these commercial companies are focused on VTOL (like DC-X) just to enhance operability.
So my question is does the Air Force need truly responsive, low cost, reliable space access? And should we be pursuing military spaceplanes?