Lockheed press release:
Lockheed Martin Selected By U.S. Air Force for Reusable Booster System Flight Demonstrator Program
DENVER, December 5th, 2011 — Lockheed Martin [NYSE:LMT] has been selected by the U.S. Air Force for a contract award to support the Reusable Booster System (RBS) Flight and Ground Experiments program. The value of the first task order is $2 million, with a contract ordering value of up to $250 million over the five-year indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract period. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center are developing the RBS as the next generation launch vehicle that will significantly improve the affordability, operability, and responsiveness of future spacelift capabilities over current expendable launchers.
Initial RBS Flight and Ground Experiments task orders will provide for an RBS flight demonstration vehicle called RBS Pathfinder scheduled to launch in 2015. The RBS Pathfinder is an innovative reusable, winged, rocket-powered flight test vehicle that will demonstrate the Reusable Booster Systems’ “rocketback” maneuver capabilities and validate the system requirements that will drive refinements in the design of the operational RBS.
The booster is pretty conventional, as far as “flyback boosters” go. It has a distinct resemblance to the StarBooster concept from several years back.
20 Responses to “Lockheed Flyback Booster: 2011”
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This is the kind of news that makes me happy.
Give it time. Lucy will yank that football away once again.
Yeah… you’re probably right. Even though Lockheed-Martin has botched a few projects in the past I will be optimistic that they’ll get this one right.
Oh, I have faith in LM. It’s our psychotic, ADD-afflicted government I have no faith in.
I assume someone’s already run the numbers on the cost of not buying new engines every time vs. the cost of launching giant wings every time. (Though I bet they lowballed the cost of overhauling the engines every time.)
Needing to overhaul engines every launch was a FAIL for the recently retires shuttle. As was the need to inspect all the tiles before every launch. Hopefully the new design can make repeated launches with far less attention patching it up between, more like an airliner.
Since this is a first stage booster, weight and thermal issues are not as much of a concern. So much more rugged thermal protection systems and engines can be used.
I’ve previously mentioned the H-1 engine and how easily refurbishable it was. It’d make a dandy engine for this application.
Any more info besides this? I assume this will eventually carry something piggyback, but this is just a technology demonstrator of the booster?
Why not?
Prove we can launch, retrieve, rehab, and reuse such a booster before we go slapping payloads on it. Tell the market “this is what we can do” instead of trying to be everything to every bit of the market.
Assuming 3 or 4 H-1s, payload isn’t going to be that big anyways. Also, the “rocketback” in the blurb implies using the main engines for horizontal flight thrust, which should be an interesting sight.
> Prove we can launch, retrieve, rehab, and reuse such a booster before we go slapping payloads on it.
If the demonstrator is meant to be an experimental version of a planned operational vehicle (as opposed to a purely experimental vehicle that’s just testing out bits and pieces of a hoped-for vaguely similar operational vehicle), it would probably be wise to slap a payload weight simulator on it. Otherwise the balance would be all wrong, and it’d over-accelerate… or have to be throttled way back.
> the “rocketback” in the blurb implies using the main engines for horizontal flight thrust
Sort of . The idea of a “retro thrust” booster has popped up from time to time in the past. The rocket thrust component of the return to base is often to do little more than reduce the horizontal velocity component *away* from the launch pad. The return would then be largely completed via gliding.
My questions weren’t meant to imply a “why not”. I was just curious as to the goals of this program.
> Any more info besides this?
That’s all I have at this time.
Thanks. There will be lots of interest in this going forward.
After the Constellation debacle, the AF has to keep Lockmart space folks fed. This won’t get past the study stage unless NASA picks it up as a counter to those dangerous commercial space capitalists.
LockMart should send a few bucks to Buzz Aldrin and the guys at Starbooster. It’s not a unique design, but it does look a lot like what Buzz was pushing a decade ago. As I recall, one version was based on an Atlas 5, but that might be the one he and John Barnes invented for their book, “The Return.”
(Cough) Skylon.
(Cough) What?
I see no resemblance to Skylon. Or are you suggesting that the low thrust/weight horizontal takeoff Skylon arrangement would be a better booster?
Skylon was airbreahing–one more strike against it. Due to high-volume low-density LH2, your designs are either a beached whale or a spindle. The reason behind airbreathing is this notion that LOX tanks wouldn’t be needed–and yet LOX tanks are far more compact than are hydrogen tanks, so just what are you saving.
Pure rocket designs (using LOX/Hydrocarbons) look to be the way to go if hypergolics are off the table as seems to be the case.
As an FYI, and reminder LM is at least “one-step” forward of Boeing on this project;
They have equaled “StarBooster” (previous poster: the Aldrin SB design was based on using the Atlas-III “insides” with a new design aero-shell, not Atlas-V 🙂 ) by flying a “scale-test-model” out of Spaceport America in 2008:
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/lockheed-flight-tests-a-scale-model-flyback-first-stage-223201/
Which SB/CalPoly did in 2001
http://buzzaldrin.com/files/pdf/2001.CAL_POLY_SPACE_SYSTEMS.StarBooster_Project.pdf
As for the “boost-back” concept, I’ve seen two versions; One is the same that Space-X is looking at for the Falcon-9 where the booster rotates just after seperation and burns to kill its forward velocity enough to not need AB-engines for glide back. The idea being to lower the “parts-count” and/or ops-complications of a long, subsonic trip back from a high-energy boost.
The second I’ve seen has the booster completing reentry and doing an aerodynamic turn-around manuever before re-lighting the engines and boosting back into another ballistic arc flight to the launch site. Again this is simply to reduce the return, (and assumed turn-around time as well as long autonomous/remote controlled flight operations) time to the launch site.
From what I understand with normal “glide-back” you either have to compromise your booster trajectory (hence lower your performance gain) to ensure adaquate “energy” to glide all the way back to the Launch Site. If you don’t you end up needing some sort of “propulsion” enhancement to get the booster all the way back to the Launch Site from most of the more ‘efficent’ trajectories. Boost-back “assumes” that using the engines you already have, and carrying a bit more propellant is going to be “better” than carrying “dead-weight” Air-Breathing engines along.
YMMV 🙂
Randy