A few illustrations from a 2010 NASA presentation showing the two stage to orbit “RALV-B” (Reusable Airbreathing Launch Vehicle – iteration B). This is essentiallythe latest evolution of the X-30 NASP concept. While NASP died years ago, the basic concept – and even the basic design – survived on the back burner of aerospace studies. Note that the views show something that the NASP artwork almost never did… rocket engines on the airbreather.
The X-30 NASP would have required rocket engines to attain orbit. Even if the scramjet engine would have been able to propell the vehicle to Mach 25 – which seems spectacularly unlikely – it would have only been able to do so within the atmosphere. Thus a pure airbreather might pop out of the atmosphere, but without rockets to circularize and expand the orbit, it would just drop right back down again. But all the publicity artwork showed rocket-less spaceplanes. But if you know where to look, you can find drawings and diagrams of NASP competitors, and NASP derivatives, with rocket engines. By the end of the NASP program, designers seemed to have settled on a linear aerospike engine above the flat tail. Whether this had any influence on the X-33, I can’t say, but the aerospike engines did tend to resemble those of the X-33.
The RALV-B shown here uses a bank of conventional bell-nozzle rocket engines for final pull-up before second stage separation. Turbine based combined cycle engines are used for acceleration and climb . It is to be an unmanned vehicle capable of launching 20,000 pounds of payload to a 28.5 degree, 100 nautical mile circular orbit. Payload bay is 12 feet in diameter, 30 feet long. Dimensions for the vehicles are not given, but can be estimated from the payload bay.
8 Responses to “RALV-B”
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Looks like a PowerPoint presentation. Where did ya get it?
Wow.I had always been under the impression that the scramjet was able to operate in rocket mode for the final boost.
Thanks for that.
A pure scramjet is a pure airbreather. To get a scramjet that works in a vacuum you need to integrate rockets into it, using linear rockets to create an ejector scramjet or some such. But straight scramjets have been difficult enough… getting one engine that does everything would be ridiculously difficult at this time.
> Looks like a PowerPoint presentation.
Originally, yep.
>Where did ya get it?
Now, that would be telling.
This looks suspiciously like the top 2/3rds of the thing described here:
http://www.fas.org/spp/military/docops/usaf/2025/v3c12/v3c12-1.htm
Yeah. it would sure be great if we had figured out how to make a working scramjet in the past 25 years…
25 years my shiny metal ass. People have been working on scramjets for more than half a century.
Dreams of the past; the upper part of the thing heading towards orbit:
http://sites.google.com/site/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/tav_r80b.jpg
Uh, guys… that jet-powered thing on the bottom is going to get it up to around 500 mph and 60,000 feet if you are lucky: http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld054.htm
That only leaves you around a 150 miles altitude and 17,500 mph speed to go. 😀
Admin said:
“25 years my shiny metal ass. People have been working on scramjets for more than half a century.”
There was an interesting comment one of the guys that was involved in the old Navy Triton cruise missile program made around the time the Mach 6-7 “Aurora” aircraft was being speculated on.
He said that during the Triton program, they had done tests that showed that you could make _subsonic_ combustion ramjets operate at speeds up to Mach 6, although most people considered the limiting speed on them to be around Mach 4.
The illustration of the Triton in Gunston’s “Encyclopedia Of Rockets And Missiles” shows it with cylindrical wingtip ramjet engines that have clustered venturi intakes at their front end, looking for all the world like rocket pods.
DARPA VULCAN IS HAPPENING
TURBINE ON -> TURBINE OFF RAMJET ON -> RAMJET INTO SCRAMJET
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/hypersonic-rocketplane-program-inches-along-0194/