Request Spaceplane addon request. "Haley"

[EndeavourCmdr]

Drew this up today. Concept of a spaceplane to orbit. I know I should have 3 views, but I'm not really an artist. Anyone wanna have a go at modeling this? It uses regular turbofan engines to ascend up to about 37,000 feet, then switches to a liquid fueled rocket motor for orbit insertion.

The wings have a 5 degree dihedral angle.

 

[Urwumpe]

Canards and T-Tail... I better inform the SAR units.

 

[EndeavourCmdr]

Canards are only used for high-speed adjustments, such as over mach 1, and during reentry. During canard usage, the rear elevators are locked in the neutral position, sort of like how an airliner uses high-speed lockout for the ailerons. The elevators are only used below mach 1.

The rear section in black is also a body flap which works in conjunction with the canards.

 

[Urwumpe]

Nevermind, it is just fiction anyway.

But in real engineering, your design is actually pretty poor and your explanation why you added this stuff is completely reversing the physics: Canards are better for low speed and extremely disturbing for high speed. During reentry, they are nearly impossible to protect since you can't make their leading edges as thick as the main wings.

T-Tails are prone to [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertia_coupling"]inertia coupling[/ame] Especially at higher angles of attack as you have during reentry, since the tail becomes less effective then. That is why T-Tails are pretty unpopular today for supersonic planes.

So, you pretty much designed something that is pretty unstable, at a high risk to burn up during reentry since it can maximally be protected for a very very narrow altitude/speed corridor, and which will likely cause dramatic failures when a control surface is having too much error in its position during high speeds - especially the canards will be outside the Mach cone during high speed and be very sensitive... and hot.

 

[EndeavourCmdr]

Huh. Well cool I learned something new.
Would the design be more sound by completely removing the t-tail and the canards and just using the ailerons as elevons, and body flap for control?

Anyhow, anyone wanna try to model it?

 

[Urwumpe]

Huh. Well cool I learned something new.
Would the design be more sound by completely removing the t-tail and the canards and just using the ailerons as elevons, and body flap for control?

Yes. You should also try using a bit more wing sweep. The simplest way for development would be researching a NASA wind tunnel test object and use its shape and aerodynamic data as reference - NASA has tested many spaceplane and lifting body designs.

If you drop the jet engine stuff and use vertical take-off (by booster rockets) or launch from another plane, you could use much smaller wings.

Anyhow, anyone wanna try to model it?

I am programmer, not modeller... I would also recommend making a three-view. You could also make a primitive mesh yourself and let a more professional modeller refine it.

 

[Loru]

It uses jets after reentry and lifts off by conventional means (like Buran Shuttle) but here is my concept:

 

[EndeavourCmdr]

Thanks for the tips Urwumpe.

Looking better?

 

[Urwumpe]

A lot.... now remember that Kerosene is a viable rocket fuel.

 

[Loru]

Yeah - you can use kerosene as rocket and jet fuel so you don't double the tanks.

 

[EndeavourCmdr]

Ooooh yeah. I was thinking of using H2O2 as propellant, but yeah, Kerosene would do the trick for both. Cool.

EDIT: So it turns out that H2O2 is actually used AS an oxydizer for kerosene rockets. What luck, since H202 is ALSO propellent!

 

[Urwumpe]

And you could pull the wings back a bit further, so the control surfaces have more effect for a delta configuration - otherwise you better use stabilizers.

 

[EndeavourCmdr]

Final version. Like?

 

[Donamy]

What can it carry ?

 

[EndeavourCmdr]

I was thinking that it could be kind of modular, where the area behind the cockpit is a "flatbed" like area with latches, and a "shuttle cargo bay" shaped module would be attached there before the flight, depending on the mission. It may BE a cargo bay module, or a passenger crew module, or even an additional fuel or oxygen module... could be just about anything. Kind of like... hmmm... well, maybe an illustration would be better.

 

[Urwumpe]

Do you think you can store enough fuel there for reaching orbit?

 

[EndeavourCmdr]

Possibly. As I said, I did plan for this thing to take off and get up to cruising altitude much like an airplane. Even if it takes 40 minutes to get to 37,000 or 41,000 or whatever, it wouldn't use much fuel on the climb to altitude. I'm basing this off a standard airliner. So, all of the remaining fuel would be used for the rocket. Might have to add additional tanks in the wings. Possibly the tank configuration could be rearranged as to have the wing tanks designed so that they hold just about the amount of fuel required by the turbfans for ascent to cruising altitude before they are empty, then ALL the remaining fuel in the fuselage would be strictly for the rocket ascent. Id have to do some research into the thrust and ISP for a Kerosene/H2O2 engine, but it would be interesting to see if it could hold enough.

 

[Loru]

Are you planning some magic engines that will be able to lift it into space with fuel onboard?

:ninja: ed by Urwumpe

Stil Skylon in plans barelly can make it with more efficent LH2/LOX configuration.

 

[EndeavourCmdr]

maybe the same "magic" engines that the Deltaglider, DGEx, XR5 etc use? Lol, seriously though, I'm not actually building the dang thing. It's hypothetical, within realistic limitations. It's not "antimatter" powered and it doesn't use hover engines. I'd say I'm giving it some reasonable thought.

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, lets assume you just launch off 37000 ft (14 km) and 250 m/s (almost the speed of sound). This saves you just about 500 m/s from the first order estimate of 9200 m/s that you need for reaching orbit (including gaining altitude, fighting drag, controlling trajectory)

This means then, by assuming kerosene + H2O2 as propellants and very effective engines, that all but 5.5% of the mass of your plane in the moment you start your rocket engine has to be propellant.