Japanese Shuttle has Successful Test Flight 55
spacecomputer writes "First test flight of scaled-down version of Hope-X is a success! They have additional test flights in the coming week, but have no funding to proceed beyond the test stage."
Vacuum? (Score:3, Funny)
Are they crazy?!? Everyone knows wings don't work in a vacuum.
They want to build a tall, manly, rocket; like the Saturn V. That works in space, I know, I've seen that film what has got Tom Hanks in it.
Re:Vacuum? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Vacuum? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re: (Score:1)
It's happened before... (Score:4, Funny)
It's just of matter of time before low cost, high quality shuttles with great fuel economy become available. This is just the kick in the pants that the American shuttle industry needs to start being innovative.
Re:It's happened before... (Score:2, Interesting)
At any rate, I wish these guys the best, but I don't see this replacing the shuttle anytime soon.
Re:It's happened before... (Score:3, Interesting)
I asked this elsewhere. How many shuttle missions leave with a full payload? I believe that Hubble filled the cargo bay, as did the various ISS modules, and the European Spacelab. But doesn't that leave dozens of missions with partially loaded cargo bays?
Re:It's happened before... (Score:2)
Indeed, I am sure that not every mission that goes up has a full payload. And to blunt my earlier criticism, if this shuttle is more efficient then the US's (fuel wise, but also without the thousands of tiles of heat shielding on the bottom)Then the simple solution is to take more trips for larger projects.
Re:It's happened before... (Score:5, Insightful)
The shuttle's government anyway, so it doesn't respond to reality the way the auto industry had to when Japanese imports took off. (It'd be real nice, but I don't see this kicking Yankee political pride enough to make it happen.)
There are lots of folks trying to make it in the space launch business, many with government subsidies, and not that much stuff that needs to be launched. I wish 'em the best, but I don't see how the Japanese could make money doing this. And their government is also BIG on pork...
Re:The concept was actually right on (Score:2, Informative)
I suspect that you are referring to the X-33, not the X-34. In any case, both the X-33 and X-34 were suborbital (goes up, comes down) spacecraft, so they could not have replaced the shuttle.
What really could've gotten us into space for cheap was the team that built the DC-X. That was actually built, for about 1/30th the price of the X-33, and it was a superior design to begin with. There's a video of it at Armadillo. [armadilloaerospace.com]
IMHO though, our best chance now is XCOR [xcor.com].
Re:It's happened before... (Score:1)
~*mumble* what! yes of course i'm sleeping!
Okey... (Score:5, Funny)
Okey, when are they going to make the one for Dr. Evil, as evidently they can make one for Mini Me?
oh dear (Score:5, Funny)
could japan step in for russia? (Score:5, Interesting)
Would the full size final version of this thinger be able to ferry big structural pieces or modules, in place of the Russian rockets? I get the impression that the it would be too small, which would suck.
Re:your sig (Score:2, Funny)
Re:could japan step in for russia? (Score:3, Insightful)
The cheapest and best solution is probably to just fund the Russian space program. They already have dependable large rockets. It would be much more expensive to revive that kind of program in the US. If we decided to kick in more Europe might be convinced to do it too, especially if they could get the designs of Russia's rockets, since Europe only has smaller rockets.
Japan has a very small program, they want to create a larger space program but they are in a deep 10 year depression with no end in sight. We could also adapt the Russian engine designs for the shuttles to lift larger payloads. I've read their engines are at least 10% more efficient, but they use much cheaper fuel so some re-engineering would have to happen for them to work with our stuff. Cheapest solution is to fund the Russians esp. if we can get the Europeans to pick up most of the tab in exchange for technology.
It's also good from a world peace standpoint to keep rocket builders employed in Russia.
Japan will at some point develop a space program, but it won't be fast tracked unless it really has to be (say if they feel they need to build tactical nuclear weapons, which they are severely antogonistic toward for all kinds of reasons.)
Re:could japan step in for russia? (Score:2)
Re:could japan step in for russia? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:could japan step in for russia? (Score:1)
The ISS's lifeboat (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah. The ISS has a Soyuz docked to it, to serve as a lifeboat, if the ISS suffers a disastrous failure. The Soyuz can fit three spacesuits, so when the shuttle leaves they only leave three scientists aboard the shuttle at any one time.
Well, the Soyuz isn't left there permanently. They loft a new one every six months or so. So, if the Russians pack up their Space program either the ISS inhabitants have to get left there with no lifeboat, or a substitute has to be designed.
How difficult would designing a return module be? It wouldn't have to be as robust or sophisticated as a Soyuz, Apollo or Gemini, if its sole purpose was to serve as a lifeboat. It could be brought to the ISS by a shuttle, so it wouldn't need to control the one shot rocket that launched it. And, it wouldn't require the endurance of an Apollo or Soyuz. Its mission would last less than an hour or two. It would only have to endure long enough to bring the ISS researchers back to Earth.
Re:The ISS's lifeboat (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The ISS's lifeboat (Score:4, Informative)
Thanks for the info. I found some additional information [astronautix.com]. There was some talk of using this gold-plated mini-shuttle [astronautix.com] as the rescue vehicle. Then this design [spacedaily.com] was being worked on. Even though its budget was, as Lars pointed out, cut for 2002, they still test launched it as recently as December 2001. This link has some info on the use of the Soyuz [erau.edu] as the rescue vehicle.
I hadn't realized that US budget decisions had cut the ISS back to a skeleton crew. Here is a press release [spaceref.ca] from a US Senator commenting on a recently released independent review of the Space Station's Science programs.
Re:The ISS's lifeboat (Score:2)
Sleeping pills that put you to sleep for five days are pretty close to fatal. Taking sleeping pills repeatedly over the course of five days could also be fatal, or at least addictive.
what use? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of the manned mission to space has just resulted into exploring curiosity without any real scientific research (certainly not worth the cost).
It was ego that resulted in mission to moon. It was miscalculation of cost that resulted into US space shuttle (they thought that the reusability of space shuttle boosters will make it cheaper than traditional rockets). No wonder, during the time, space shuttle was developed, Europians overtook US in launching commercial satellites. Russian space shuttle Buran is a failure but their traditional rocket business is successful. ISS hasn't produced anything scientifically or technologically to justify the cost. The only scientific advantage of US shuttle program could be successful launch and subsequent repair/upgrade of Hubble space telescope. Excluding this, the manned space mission have been mostly wastage of public money.
Why hasn't the US shuttle been more successful? (Score:3, Insightful)
I read, a long time ago, that the US shuttle's design incorporates features to serve the USAF, or reasonable equivalent. The story, as I read it, was that NASA didn't think it could get the funding to build the shuttle if it didn't have allies inside the Beltway. Elements in the Defense department agreed to endorse the shuttle, provided they got input into its design. The large size of the shuttle was given as one of those compromises. The suggestion was that if NASA had been allowed to build a shuttle without design compromises, it would have been more successful.
I'd welcome knowledgeable comments on this story. Sorry, I can't remember where I read it.
As it turned out, the US military doesn't use the shuttle, do they? Don't they use the old one-shot rockets?
Why does the shuttle have to be so big? Okay, Hubble, and the various ISS modules more or less fill the shuttle bay. But there have been something like 100 shuttle missions so far, how many of those missions had payloads that fully filled the cargo bay? They could all have been launched with big one-shot rockets, couldn't they? The 197?s Skylab was launched by a surplus Saturn V wasn't it?
The Hubble repair missions could have been mounted from a more modestly sized shuttle, couldn't they?
I read, something interesting back during the first years of Hubble's deployment, back before its optics were corrected, and everything was out of focus. NASA cut corners. They tested all the pieces separately, on the ground. But they didn't test the fully assembled telescope on the ground. I read that they considered doing so, but it required the construstion of a test jig. The test jig would have been expensive, and the decision was made to gamble.
The story was that the US already possessed a test jig suitable for testing large space telescopes. But NASA couldn't use it, because it was top secret, because it was used to test the large telescopes of top secret spy satellites, which were focussed on the Earth.
Can anyone debunk this story? If true, those satellites must have been launched by one-shot rockets.
Re:Why hasn't the US shuttle been more successful? (Score:1)
Re:what use? (Score:4, Informative)
The space shuttle is not successful. The space shuttle is an utter disaster. In fact, the space shuttle is, arguably, the worst thing that ever happened to the American space programme.
The problem is that the shuttle is trying to be both a man-rated lifter, a reusable lifter, and a heavy lifter, and as a result it does all three incredibly badly. It's a massive money pit that swallowed the American space station, SSTOs, the moon base, and any manned Mars missions...
Put it like this:
Space shuttle capacity: 6 people, 15 tonnes cargo; cost: $600M.
Soyuz capacity: 3 people, no cargo; cost: $60M.
Proton capacity: no people, 20 tonnes cargo; cost: $70M.
This means that you could replace a single shuttle launch with the Russian alternative, launch three seperate vehicles, and have over four hundred million dollars in change! With a single shuttle launch budget, you could put nearly two hundred tonnes into LEO --- or sixteen tonnes into GEO, and the shuttle can't do that at all.
Unfortunately, the shuttle is now become political, so noone's going to be able to get rid of it. It's going to hang around consuming more and more of NASA's budget, until eventually another one will blow up, and then NASA will be reorganised out of existence. Meanwhile, the Russians, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Pakistani, and basically anyone else with a clue (and alas, I don't live in such a country) will be using disposable launchers to maintain their space presence. The ISS will probably be kept up until the shuttle explosion, and then it'll be quietly evacuated and deorbited; but by then, there'll be other space stations, at least some of them privately funded.
Re:what use? (Score:1)
Let me get this straight, you are sad because you don't live in a country like Russia, Japan, China, or Pakistan? I think emigration is a lot more reliable way to regain your happiness than hoping the US will get a clue about it's space program.
funding??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Japan previously worked on developing a space shuttle dubbed the Hope, but the project was frozen due to a lack of funds and other difficulties.
Japan has been trying 'government by construction' for years trying to revitalize their economy and have achieved the industrialized world's biggest national debt. So where are they getting the money for a space program?
Seriously, Japan just built an 11 mile long tunnel under Tokyo Bay in '97 that cost almost 11 billion dollars (1.44 trillion yen), yet no one uses it. Why? The toll is about $50. Does Japan really need a space program?
I'm not from Japan and I don't pretend to be infallible - these are my thoughts on the subject. If you live in Japan, what do you think? Also, there was a good article on Tokyo [nationalgeographic.com] in last month's National Geographic, check it out in print if you can.
Re:funding??? (Score:1)
The space program is something altogether different and it's hard to fathom the logic sometimes with respect to economics. The US had the largest national debt in the industrialized world during the 1980s, but it didn't stop them launching shuttles did it?
When will they learn (Score:5, Funny)
My question is... (Score:1)
Shouldn't they be trying something different?
Math makes them look the same (Score:2, Informative)
In doing similar tasks, the same engineering problems present themselves. You have similar speeds, loads, thermal ranges, etc., that the device has to deal with. The delta wing shape is necessary for the ultra-high speeds during re-entry. The black and white color scheme is necessary for removing heat. The skin has to be ceramic because it deals with heat the best. You need big doors that open to get cargo in & out. The engine goes at the back, the people at the front, and pretty soon it looks quite similar to the Russian and American shuttles.
Unrelated animals who have similar environments look similar. Unrelated plants evolve to have similar features when they exist in similar niches.
The situation dictates the result.
Re:Math makes them look the same (Score:3, Interesting)
Buran, the Soviet shuttle, has been discussed here on slashdot in the past. I spent most of an afternoon following some links other slashdotters had provided to details of Buran's design.
I found it fascinating. They do look similar. But there were some important differences, under the skin.
One of the web-pages discussed the similarity in appearance of Buran and the American shuttles. It said that Soviet engineers had considered a number of hull designs, with differing appearances. The other hulls looked, on paper, as if they would be just as successful as the American hull design. IIRC the only advantage of the American hull design was that it was a proven design.
The American shuttle uses strap on boosters fueled with solid fuel. Buran's boosters are liquid fueled, and it could strap on three of them. Consequently, it had a much larger lift capacity than the American shuttle.
Buran's crew, at least four of them, were protected by ejection seats.
It has been a year or two since I read these pages. I may not remember them correctly. But wouldn't Buran's liquid fueled boosters be innately safer than the American shuttle. Solid fueled rockets can't be shut down. If the challenger had liquid fueled boosters, would they have been able to shut down the booster, and have a greater chance of survival? Liquid fueled boosters wouldn't have had the dangerous "O ring" feature.
Re:Math makes them look the same (Score:2)
At any rate Buran used the Energia [astronautix.com] as it's launching vehicle, the actual Buran spacecraft had, compared to space shuttle, very little thrust *on the spaceship itself*. On the other hand, Energia is, and was, the most powerful rocket ever constructed by man with the possible exception of the Saturn V. It was enormous powerhouse of a rocket. For more info read the link.
Max Faget's straight-wing shuttle (Score:3, Insightful)
Max Faget was the early and leading proponent of a blunt "capsule" instead of a winged reentry vehicle as a cost-effective solution to the reentry problem. His unique contribution was to have the "capsule" (Tom Wolfe tells us that astronauts hated that word -- they preferred "spacecraft", although capsule distinguishes the thing from lifting-body or winged-reentry vehicle) reenter ass-backwards -- the Air Force Corona/Discoverer capsule reentered face forward.
An axi-symmetric capsule is zero lift, meaning you have little control over where it lands once you fire the retro rockets, and the G-forces can get quite high. You can give a capule a small amount of lift by shifting its center of gravity by rearranging stuff inside, reducing the G's a little bit and giving some control over where you land by doing a roll in the direction you want to head, all without sacrificing the minimal heat shielding requirement compared to a winged reentry vehicle. Gemini, Apollo, and Soyuz use this trick.
The Faget straight-wing Shuttle was supposed to reenter belly first. His critics complained that straight-wing hypersonic vehicles aren't the most stable: Chuck Yeager's famous recovery of the X-1B going end or end and Mike Adam's fatal reentry in the X-15. What Faget explains is that by reentering belly first (think of it as angle of attack of 90 degrees -- in a full stall if you weren't going hypersonic), his straight winged shuttle works just like a capsule -- the belly of the Shuttle and the underside of the wing are like a cookie cutter applied to the underside of a traditional capsule. He argues that it is perfectly stable and works just like proven capsules.
The trick is that as you come out of reentry, you have to do this kind of stall recovery maneuver descending from 80,000 to 60,000 feet and start flying like a conventional glider or airplane. This stomach-dropping transition maneuver, the higher G-load of a capsule style reentry, the limited choice of a landing spot compared to a delta wing Shuttle (the Defense department did not want to make emergency landings in Communist China), all conspired to shelve the straight-wing shuttle. The consequence of going with the delta wing, however, was much higher heat shielding requirements for which the infamous tiles were the answer, and now you know THE REST OF THE STORY.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:But why? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:But why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Long term the other space launch capable countries probably are researching alternatives. The only thing is research takes time and money. Basing your immediate solution on something that is known to work is the best alternative. While very similar the solution is likely to have innovations, that will make a difference. A good analogy are automobiles, since they all look more or less the same, but each have varying features based on what the manufacture feels is important. It does the job, so why change the approach?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:But why? (Score:2)
Seems to me... (Score:1, Insightful)
2. it can't go even remotely near space
At best, it can be described as a test plane, but calling it a space shuttle is a little much. Okay, it's ridiculous.
Re:Seems to me... (Score:2, Funny)
I bet it becomes a truck!
Its a jet, not even close yet I'm afraid. (Score:1)
Maybe they could put a camera on it and have it join our other unmanned recon planes above Afghanistan and Iraq.
Sorry, mod me down but I am throuroughly unimpressed.