Black Horse

[hesham]

Hi,

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR890/MR890.chap3.pdf

 

[hesham]

Hi,

http://www.islandone.org/Launch/Blackhorse-bhm2f2.gif

 

[Michel Van]

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/blahorse.htm
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj95/sum95_files/spacast3.htm

http://www.aircraftdesign.com/blackhorse_3view.jpg
http://www.aircraftdesign.com/blackhorse_painting.jpg

the Idea is not bad
a rocket plane that use JP-5 and H2O2
after liftoff from Air base Refuel by KC-135
launch into low earth orbit

there allot dispute about the Black Horse study
have they build it and use it as top secret Reconnaissance ?

 

[Orionblamblam]

Hi,

http://www.islandone.org/Launch/Blackhorse-bhm2f2.gif

Ah, the good old days... these were two of the first model kits I ever released...

 

[CFE]

the Idea is not bad
a rocket plane that use JP-5 and H2O2
after liftoff from Air base Refuel by KC-135
launch into low earth orbit

there allot dispute about the Black Horse study
have they build it and use it as top secret Reconnaissance ?

The idea isn't very sound, in my estimation. The wings and cruise engines (or rockets) have to be sized for supporting the full mass of the spaceplane just after tanking. The only mass savings from airborne propellant transfer comes in the form of lighter landing gear, sized for supporting the craft without its load of oxidizer.

There are some advantages to this approach that are shared with air-launch: optimization of the nozzle for operating in the thinner upper atmosphere, mission flexibility, and reduced drag losses. With that being said, I don't think any of these add up to being able to pull off single-stage-to-orbit flight.

Given the higher structural mass of winged spacecraft relative to ballistic rockets, it's hard to see airborne propellant transfer as an enabling technology for SSTO. The value of APT is increasing the payload of a viable TSTO system.

 

[Orionblamblam]

The wings and cruise engines (or rockets) have to be sized for supporting the full mass of the spaceplane just after tanking. The only mass savings from airborne propellant transfer comes in the form of lighter landing gear, sized for supporting the craft without its load of oxidizer.

You also get lighter wings (and associated TPS and such). Wings that only get hit with the full weight of the propellant when the vehicle is already going 400 knots can be much smaller than those that need to lift the fully-loaded vehicle off the runway at less than 150 knots.

 

[Archibald]

Don't think inflight refuelling will make SSTO viable.

What is really interesting is having an upper stage in the bay. Black Horse led to Black Colt, then to the RocketPlane Pathfinder. The last two sounds more interesting...

Tell me if I'm wrong somewhere

Black Horse

- no turbofans
- SSTO
- H2O2 + Kerosene

Black Colt

- turbofans (more practical when refuelling...but too heavy for a SSTO)
- sub-orbital
- upper stage send payload to orbit

RocketPlane Pathfinder

- turbofans
- suborbital
- drop H2O2 in favour of an off-the-shelf RD-120 from Russia, because the project is now a private venture.

Problem: LOX in much more difficult to transfer than H2O2 (non cryogenic)

IMHO the Black Colt sounded the most interesting design of the three...

 

[Orionblamblam]

Don't think inflight refuelling will make SSTO viable.

The math on Black Horse consistantly worked. It was perhaps in a somewhat limited performance/propellant envelope... the reason why H2O2 was chosen rather than O2 was that the ratio of H2O2/fuel was far higher than it'd be for LOX/fue, meaning that the benefit of inflight ox loading would be that much greater for H2O2.

 

[Kevin Renner]

Something like Black Horse isn't really a SSTO. True the vehicle would go up as one stage and come back as one but in reality it is a Two Stage Vehicle in which the first stage is really the tanker A/C. The two stages just don't leave the ground together.

 

[hesham]

Hi,

http://www.fas.org/spp/military/docops/usaf/2020/app-h.htm

 

[flateric]

From Dan Raymer's site (www.aircraftdesign.com)
He was its designer, BTW.

 

[Kevin Renner]

While I admit not being an aeronaticual engineer I always thought one way to packeage the engines for a BH type vehicle would be to have reasonably sized turbofan have its airflow pass arounda pod or bullet extension holding the rocket motor

 

[mboeller]

information about the blackhorse spaceplane:

http://www.islandone.org/Launch/BlackHorse.html
http://www.islandone.org/Launch/BlackHorse-PropTransfer.html

overview:
http://www.islandone.org/Launch/

and last but not least:
http://www.risacher.org/bh/

 

[FlyBack]

Black Horse copyright


Does anyone know if the name "Black Horse" is copyrighted or a registered trademark.

Regards,

FlyBack

 

[Abraham Gubler]

Re: Black Horse copyright

Does anyone know if the name "Black Horse" is copyrighted or a registered trademark.

You can't copyright a name, unless its a very long one. A quick search of ATMOS, the Australian Trade Mark register, shows "Black Horse" is registered trade mark of Lloyds Bank Plc of London... The USTPO's TESS shows some 47 tradmarks, live and dead, to do with Black Horse. You are not allowed to have competing marks in the same product range. So its OK to have Black Horse (TM) Power Boats and Black Horse (TM) Golf Carts.

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=4003%3A3i6vd4.1.1&p_search=searchss&p_L=50&BackReference=&p_plural=yes&p_s_PARA1=&p_tagrepl~%3A=PARA1%24LD&expr=PARA1+AND+PARA2&p_s_PARA2=black+horse&p_tagrepl~%3A=PARA2%24COMB&p_op_ALL=AND&a_default=search&a_search=Submit+Query&a_search=Submit+Query

 

[mz]

Black Horse is a men's long underwear brand over here. Very handy during the long cold winters....

 

[FutureSpaceTourist]

There's a fair amount of Black Horse material at http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/im/magnus/bh/

 

[hesham]

Hi,


http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/im/magnus/bh/pictures.html

 

[XP67_Moonbat]

I always wondered what happened to that concept.

 

[martinbayer]

I always wondered what happened to that concept.

The same that has happened to all other RLV concepts to date - nothing...

Martin

 

[blackstar]

The same that has happened to all other RLV concepts to date - nothing...

I remain skeptical that SpaceX is going to make reusability work. Even if they can make it work technically, the economics may be marginal and it may not succeed. And certainly there has been a tremendous amount of hype over what they are doing, with many fanboys already declaring success and designing their own space programs based upon cost savings that they pull out of thin air, or a monkey's butt.

That said, I think there is an important distinction between what SpaceX is doing now and the previous RLV concepts and it is that a lot of them required some big leaps with no intermediary steps and no way to gradually move towards reusability. Everything just had to be designed, and then work right. With SpaceX, they're actually doing testing with vehicles that are otherwise operational. So the testing is just a bonus, and if the test does not succeed, they're still okay. And in fact, even if they don't get their reusable first stage to work economically, they are still left with an economical throwaway rocket. So they get something out of it. The same is not true of Black Horse or the other earlier proposals. If they didn't work technically, you were screwed, and if they didn't work economically, you were also screwed.

 

[sublight is back]

I remain skeptical that SpaceX is going to make reusability work. Even if they can make it work technically, the economics may be marginal and it may not succeed.

The reliability to weight ratio has always been so close that it seems near impossible that they could even find optimizations in re-usability. I would imagine there would be more room for cost savings improvement in mass production.

 

[blackstar]

The reliability to weight ratio has always been so close that it seems near impossible that they could even find optimizations in re-usability. I would imagine there would be more room for cost savings improvement in mass production.

The problem is that you have to have a demand for a lot of rockets. So mass production may not work either.

 

[Archibald]

I always wondered what happened to that concept.

It become rocketplane XP, and later merged with Kistler - and sunk the company with an unworkable subrobital Learjet (the XP)
Mitchell Burnside Clapp currently work at DARPA.