Re: VTVL?
- From: "Wayne C. Gramlich" <Gramlich@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:11:11 GMT
Russell Wallace wrote:
Wayne C. Gramlich wrote:If you arrange your launch site such that the recovery site
is in the ocean, the range of possible recovery sites becomes
much larger.
Plus there are fewer regulatory headaches with an ocean site.
I suspect that this is a major plus.
I'm guessing you'd want to land it on a ship rather than dumping it into the ocean, to avoid the headache of refurbishing equipment that's been soaked in salt water? That also gives you the option of having the ship hold tanks of propellant so it can refill the vehicle and let it fly straight back.
I can imagine both landing on a ship or just landing directly
on the water. Both involve those engineering/business
trade-offs that Jonathan mentions...
Landing on a ship requires the additional cost of acquiring
the ship and installing a landing pad that is big enough
for your vehicle. Spearing a landing pad in the middle
of the ocean (even with GPS) is going to take some careful
engineering. Once it lands, you can either refuel and fly
back, float the entire assembly back, or hire a chopper to
fly just the engine and electronics back. There is lots of
operational flexibility once the first stage is sitting on
the boat deck.
Landing on any old patch of ocean reduces the targeting
requirements substantially, but requires extra effort to
keep the salt water from wrecking everything. If a heat
shield is already needed to help slow the rocket down, it
could be made water tight as well. When the rocket is just
above the water, the engine could be shut off, and a hatch
could close off the compartment. A little tricky, but not
inconceivable. Inspecting for salt water corrosion would
be a pain, but compared to the cost of buying a whole boat
to own and operate, it might be preferable.
An outfit like Armadillo Aerospace could probably try out
both options, lose a rocket or two and get some real useful
operational experience for not all that much money expenditure.
Getting a 2x or 3x increase in payload (Jonathan's numbers,
not mine) for the additional hassle of figuring out how to
recover in the ocean seems like it is worth exploring a
little (to me anyhow.) Indeed, maybe somebody could sponsor
an X prise to make it a little more sporting.
Irrespective of whether the recovery site is on land or on
ocean, the weather at both launch and reentry site must be
acceptable. This will also adversely influence flight rate.
Indeed the landing site probably needs even better weather than the launch site?
Of course you could always use ships for both sites, which would improve the weather dependence and get bonus site flexibility; I imagine there'd be extra cost associated with doing that, though.
Agreed. It is obviously possible since that is exactly what
SeaLaunch does. SeaLaunch spent a huge amount of money on their
floating launch platform. In contrast, launching from a slab of
concrete on some dirt near a convenient coast seems likely to be
substantially cheaper though.
-Wayne
.
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