Spring 2011 Crosslink Magazine - Emerging Technologies

[bobbymike]

http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/spring2011/index.html

Look in the "Research Horizons" section at the bottom of the table of contents for a very interesting article on next generation launch systems.

 

[mz]

Good find!

At least they seem to have now moved closer to the painful realization of some of the real goals:

Most critical to the future is investment in technologies focused on operability that would dramatically alter launch vehicle design approaches and yield fully reusable, low-cost, highly operable space-access platforms.

And NOT building scramjets, regardless if it makes sense or not.
It's a painful process of relinquishment:

Investments in novel air-breathing propulsion concepts and supporting propulsion technologies offer opportunities to increase system robustness and performance. However, these concepts introduce a new set of design challenges because of their highly integrated engine cycles.

They even considered two stage designs, fueled by *gasp* kerosene! And their performance was found to be great!

Of course, the military organizations are still going to specify some pointless point design based on some paper optimization with unfortunately unfounded assumptions, which they're going to build massively and fail, if it isn't cancelled before the program takes off... (thank god the latter happens already in today's world, much less money, effort and hope wasted)

 

[bobbymike]

Good find!

At least they seem to have now moved closer to the painful realization of some of the real goals:

Most critical to the future is investment in technologies focused on operability that would dramatically alter launch vehicle design approaches and yield fully reusable, low-cost, highly operable space-access platforms.

And NOT building scramjets, regardless if it makes sense or not.
It's a painful process of relinquishment:

Investments in novel air-breathing propulsion concepts and supporting propulsion technologies offer opportunities to increase system robustness and performance. However, these concepts introduce a new set of design challenges because of their highly integrated engine cycles.

They even considered two stage designs, fueled by *gasp* kerosene! And their performance was found to be great!

Of course, the military organizations are still going to specify some pointless point design based on some paper optimization with unfortunately unfounded assumptions, which they're going to build massively and fail, if it isn't cancelled before the program takes off... (thank god the latter happens already in today's world, much less money, effort and hope wasted)

A am not a technologist but a layman technophile and am always (mostly) puzzled by aerospace and aeronautical development (as well as defense technology in general) The seemingly stop - start - accelerate - stop - now wait - start again but slower - now go really fast - now cancel process. Yet every once is awhile you see quite simple "here is the way forward" type studies that make sense........but then never are pursued. This forum has shown me the incredible historic achievements in technology (I have learned so much here and have read threads from programs in the fifties and sixties that blew me away) that would seem to have paved the way to incredible leaps forward and then...........nothing.

I would approach technology development in three ways:
1) Improving existing "in service" systems
2) Pushing the "known" state of the art
3) Pushing the known "far future" possible technologies

I know the above is incredibly simplistic (with my brain I work with what God gave me ) but I guess it comes down to dollars and the inability to predict future funding streams.