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Very interesting SSTO, it was proposed in 1971 as an alternative to the Space Shuttle. The SERV is a gigantic capsule (27.4 meters diameter and 23.3 meters height) that take off vertically with 12 aerospike LOX-LH2 rockets. It reenter like and Apollo capsule and land vertically using 28 turbojet engines, added to enhance cross range capability.
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi. … 010131.pdf
It was discarded because USAF wants a spaceplane capable of return at the base after one polar orbit, like Space Shuttle was (erroneously) supposed to do.
Would it be safer and more cheep than space shuttle?
Last edited by Quaoar (2015-02-06 05:14:27)
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Well, is fusion safer and cheaper than fission?
Who knows! It's very hard to speculate on such technologies because they don't exist. I would imagine that, unless the program were run more effectively, Shuttle SERV would have been just as expensive as the Shuttle that was actually developed.
-Josh
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Well, is fusion safer and cheaper than fission?
Who knows! It's very hard to speculate on such technologies because they don't exist. I would imagine that, unless the program were run more effectively, Shuttle SERV would have been just as expensive as the Shuttle that was actually developed.
Capsule entry is less critical than spaceplane. And for orbital ascent, SERV have not to bring up heavy wings, so its payload would be almost 50 metric tons. I don't know if the refurbishing of its 12 rockets will be so expensive as SSME.
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With that many moving parts, what could possibly go wrong? More reliable than a Space Shuttle? Probably not. The only accidents that the Space Shuttle encountered were from administrators and engineers ignoring real problems.
Without the ridiculous cross range requirement that necessitated the use of turbojet engines, this project would have been doable, but increasing the count of moving parts only increases complexity and cost. Adding the weight of 28 turbojets only assures that SSTO will be nearly impossible with any useful payload.
SERV would have had slightly better aerodynamics than a refrigerator.
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Interesting. I had forgotten about this one.
I've seen a lot of things like this over the years. That's an awfully-detailed WBS and cost model for nothing but a speculative concept study, and at that a concept never tried before. That's why most of those things died on the vine: too much accounting and not enough engineering, too early in the process.
All space capsules have the aerodynamics of a brick. A refrigerator isn't mass-coupled enough. That's OK, a capsule doesn't have to lift much, just slow down. The propulsive landing approach has since been vindicated by Spacex, of course.
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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