I aren't in earth orbit now?... ...

+1

Burt Rutan could have quit after Spaceship 1 and he'd still be a hero in my book.  The dude is just plain awesome.

China launched rockets from bigger rockets over 400 years ago.

I still have to catch an astronaut to ask, so may I ask anyone who's got pilot's wings...

If I throw a paper airlpane, its speed and path are determined by weight (mass), lift and drag.

So... why shouldn't NASA or anybody else experiment with a design reminiscent of the Concorde, or the SST ?
By comparison, the former Shuttle looks like a brick with stubby wings...

My vision is that of a plane which can take off with jets, reach a certain altitude, rockets kick in and propel into space.

The "spaceplane" would then manoeuver with rockets, prepare re-entry and allow itself to glide down to earth, re-igniting the jets at a suitable altitude, fly like a jet and land at a regular airport... er, spaceport (why not an airport ?).

Thoughts, Jerry ?

Maurizio -

Getting out of the atmosphere isn't the major problem; it's getting back in and surviving re-entry.  We all saw what just a little hole in the heat shield can cause - catastrophic in-flight breakup in the last shuttle accident.  There is less than a 1 degree window of approach angle - too shallow and you skip off of the atmosphere back into space; too steep and you are going too fast for any heat shield to keep the craft from burning up.

So the idea of a space plane, while interesting, has a long way to go.  Rutan's Spaceship 1 used a flap type system to re-position the tail and provide drag to slow the craft for re-entry.  I doubt that the mechanical complexity of such a solution will work for large ships, or be reliable enough for commercial use.  Spaceship 1 also didn't achieve orbit; it flew just to the edge of space in a sub-orbital flight.  Think of the fate of the occupants if the re-positioner failed to operate correctly; staying in space until your oxygen ran out, or commiting suicide by re-entering.

Going into space presents challenges that are still mind boggling, even to the engineers.  Think of how quickly airplanes evolved; only 40 years from the Wright Brothers to the first jets, and no computers for the engineers, nor even an in-depth understanding of aerodynamics for the first 30 years.  All because airplane engineering really isn't all that complex for sub-sonic flight.

Yet in the 50 years of manned space flight, even with modern engineering and powerful computers, we're still advancing only by baby steps.  I once personally chatted with Gene Cernan, the last of the Apollo astronauts to walk on the moon.  He told me that all of them who went there are still amazed that they never killed a crew in flight (only Apollo fatalities were on the ground, in the fire that killed the Apollo 1 crew on the pad during a routine test).  We did see in Apollo 13 how vulnerable they really were.

yup, saw the article last week, amazing.

...anyone interested in the "secret space program"
check this video/interview out, it's quite entertaining
and well thorth the 60 min if just for the "open mindedness
factor" of even contamplaning all this as a real posibility.



or watch here: http://www.redicecreations.com/TV/2011/RITV-ep5.php