/sci/ - Science & Math

Reaction Engines Limited has been trying to get funding for over a decade now. They haven't even been able to start serious R&D yet. They've only got a couple million and the entire project is expected to take several billion. The Americans are moving towards funding private companies rather than NASA, but they're not going to be giving money to a British company.

Probably not. For extremely generous and kind usage of the word probably.

REL always aimed for staged development and that's what they're getting. They have serious funding for a SABRE prototype. If it performs as advertised it will develop a lot of interest from parties all over the world.

Until then we won't know.

>>6290203

>If it performs as advertised it will develop a lot of interest from parties all over the world.

It could perform as advertised and still no one would give a shit about building a reusable SSTO ala Skylon's painted picture of its further development.

>>6290217
People give a shit now, hence ESA's lukewarm interest.

>>6290227

No, ESA funds go nowhere studies that have no great meaning that you ascribe to the one about skylon.

>>6290233
That's pure opinion, ESA is interested. No it will not usurp Ariane 6 but that doesn't it will never be funded.

>>6290241

>That's pure opinion
he said, thinking he made a point by slandering the concept of an opinion.

You really messed up by taking 93143's fucked up thinking to heart and allowing it to shape your own.

What you think you hold in your mind that you masquerade to yourself as not an opinion but as solid fact is in fact an opinion, a naive one. Here's a tip for your mental development. Everyone is opinion based thinkers. Thinking you're a fact based thinker is only thinking in selected facts that are comfortable. Opinions are good. The truth is to be found in opinions. The challenge for you is finding the good opinions from the bad. Here's another thing. A man who is 95% wrong can still be of value to you for the 5% he is right about.

Go look up the study about Orion being lofted by the Ariane 5. Good study. I did not need that study to know before hand that the idea was too expensive to be implemented by them, because I gave it some thought and developed an opinion with my carefully cultivated years of opinion crafting. ESA making that study showed the same amount of interest as the skylon stuff, which was negligible. Space programs generate profuse bullshit. Some of that is to feed study makers, some of that is to spend money and look productive aka makework. Some of that is for reasons I know fuck all about. LSS: no ariane 5 orion launch.

Another thing that comes to mind are reports on evolved Ariane 5 HLVs for exploration. Into the trash it goes.

>>6290262
ESA was interested in Orion on Ariane as it is interested in Skylon. Even more so actually as the UK doesn't contribute to launchers so ESA has no pressure to fund a pointless study from them.

Whether or not you believe it will fly it is intest pure and simple.

>>6290282

>intest

If you're going to insult me, at least provide a readable word so the point gets across.

It will never be funded by ESA. Europe will go the way of Japan and continue an uncompetitive institutional launcher for domestic payloads and also ran bones from the sat companies rather than blowing 15 billion on Skylon. No plausible scenarios.

What was I saying earlier? There are many reasons for go nowhere studies.

Here's a doozy for you. The person(s) commissioning the study have no bearing on later actual picking up of the studies findings. the act of commisioning the study does not indicate organizational movement but rather branch selection for reasons both speculative and removed from being known. Perhaps the fellow(s) are deluded skylon fans, hoping to stir interest even.

>>6290300
Ariane is competive currently and Ariane 6 will almost certainly continue that. The vast majority of it's payloads are com sats, hardly the odd bone.

>>6290305

I only mean in contradiction to the idea that it must further compete if it finds itself uncompetitive post (hypothetical still) Ariane 6. It can also choose to remain uncompetitive.

>>6290308
ArianeSpace's brief was to provide independent European access to space, if they do find themselves uncompetitive, I agree, they don't need to improve to survive but that doesn't mean they won't. This prime directive doesn't easily explain all of their choices, like taking on Soyuz.

>>6290185
Somewhat true, unfortunately. At least they're actually being funded now, no matter how minutely. God, if our government wasn't made of morons that collectively shat themselves and classified the original HOTOL we'd probably be there by now.

>>6290217
The benefit is not nearly as small as it just being SSTO. It completely frees you of the need to carry liquid O_2 as rocket fuel when within the atmospehere -- tell me that an eightfold reduction in reaction mass won't be an absolute game changer for space transport. This is crazy effective stuff and it boggles my mind that we aren't throwing every spare dollar at it.

>>6290159
No.

>>6292684
Why not?

>>6290321
>The benefit is not nearly as small as it just being SSTO. It completely frees you of the need to carry liquid O_2 as rocket fuel when within the atmospehere -- tell me that an eightfold reduction in reaction mass won't be an absolute game changer for space transport.
I tell you that. Because for that eightfold reduction in reaction mass you have to deal with an eightfold reduction of the thrust-to-weight ratio of your engines. So instead of hauling reaction mass to altitude and into orbit you have to haul engine mass to altitude and into orbit.
Besides, LOX is not that big of a problem. LH2 is a bigger one, because it needs better cooling and larger volume. But Skylon does nothing on that part.

>>6292686
See: >>6292727

SSTO with chemical propulsion is stupid for several reasons.

Airbreathing engines will only get you up to a fairly small fraction of orbital speed, and they're going to cost several if not many times the cost of rocket engines providing the same thrust, so there's no damn sense in carrying them to orbit and bringing them back down through a risky reentry and deadstick landing.

A novel vehicle that has to amortize up-front costs over many orbital launches is just not going to work. Because:
a) you're going to lose it, and
b) your flight rate is not going to turn out the way you hoped.

SpaceX is smart reusability. Skylon is dumb reusability. (The shuttle was fake reusability.)

>>6292727
>Because for that eightfold reduction in reaction mass you have to deal with an eightfold reduction of the thrust-to-weight ratio of your engines.
No that doesn't follow.

>>6292766
>Airbreathing engines will only get you up to a fairly small fraction of orbital speed
But with the rocket equation being non-linear even a modest reduction in delta-v required from the rocket phase is a major reduction is mass ratio.

>they're going to cost several if not many times the cost of rocket engines providing the same thrust
The potential being that you don't have to throw them away so this criticism doesn't hold.

>so there's no damn sense in carrying them to orbit and bringing them back down through a risky reentry and deadstick landing.
No, you've ignored the economics of RLVs entirely.

>a) you're going to lose it, and
>b) your flight rate is not going to turn out the way you hoped.
SpaceXs reusable rockets are subject to the exact same POTENTAL problems. That's the key point, you don't know what will happen. The important thing is that you actually read the studies and see what their required flight rates are before you start making ignorant assumptions. These factors are considered.

Claiming Skylon will fail because it has the exact same vulnerabilities as Falcon 9R and hence declaring it "stupid" is retarded.

>>6292811
The peak thrust-to-weight ratio SABRE is supposed to get in atmosphere is 14:1. The Merlin 1D (kerosene) pure rocket engine gets 150:1.

>>6292854
That may be so but the logic above is wrong. Reducing the reaction mass like that does not dictate the thrust-to-weight ratio change by the same factor.

>>6292826
>SpaceXs reusable rockets are subject to the exact same POTENTAL problems.
SpaceX's reusable rockets are cheaper to construct, fly once, and not reuse than most expendable rockets.

They didn't rely on reusability to make the development of their vehicle feasible. They used as much inexpensive established (and patent-expired) technology as possible, optimized for manufacturing and operational simplicity, with decent performance, and vertically integrated their operation so they had the power to control costs and prevent delays.

And they spent just a little extra on making reusability an option which could be implemented in software.

They're planning on losing vehicles they're attempting to reuse. Failures during reentry or landing don't endanger the program. They don't need to amortize vehicle costs over many flights to be competitive, they just blow all of the competition away by an order of magnitude if they can.

>>6292857
I don't think he was saying that the figures were related that simply. But he has a point.

Anyway, the reduction in total reaction mass for the Skylon SSTO is certainly not anywhere near eightfold. It's roughly twofold, with no reduction in tank volume.

>>6292865
>SpaceX's reusable rockets are cheaper to construct, fly once, and not reuse than most expendable rockets.
So they claim but we have no evidence to suggest that. With Skylon we have the studies, not so with spaceX. What we can say for certain is that a reusable F9 will cost more than a normal one so loss of vehicle scenarios will still hurt the business unless they charge more.

This also doesn't get around the second problem because no rocket is without this problem. If you're flight rate isn't what you hope you may not cover your fixed costs, it doesn't matter if it's and RLV or an ELV this is a universal truth.

>And they spent just a little extra on making reusability an option which could be implemented in software.
We'll see if it's simple by the time they have a fully reusable F9 but you're avoiding a major point here. The fact that it was cheap to develope does not mean it will be cheap to re-fly. We have no idea what the maintenance costs will be as SpaceX do not release studies. Even if it was a cheap vehicle that wouldn't make it better than Skylon outright.

This is why things aren't as simple as you make it out. F9R would be subject to both of these potential problems.

>>6292873
He said "Beacuse..", he definitely said it was related that simply.

>Anyway, the reduction in total reaction mass for the Skylon SSTO is certainly not anywhere near eightfold. It's roughly twofold, with no reduction in tank volume.
What do you base that on?

I like Skylon and think their technology has potential, but it likely won't see development at any reasonable pace simply because they have the misfortune to be British; their funding needs to come from the UK. In addition, the high upfront cost of development means that economical operation requires rock-solid reliability, quick turnaround time, and extremely high launch frequency. It would basically have to absorb half the commercial market and whatever military payloads the UK is launching.

For comparison, the Shuttle designers initially promised full two-stage reusability, a two-week turnaround time, and a payload cost to orbit of $50 per pound (in 1969 dollars). Even based on those optimistic estimates, the Office of Management and Budget found that the Shuttle would not be economical to develop if it simply replaced all expendable launchers for the Air Force and NASA. It would have to not only take on all commercial satellite launches, but also increase the frequency of commercial launches by decreasing the cost of the payload. It was expected to be economical to operate if launches exceeded 200 per year. In reality, the poor safety record and huge turnaround time meant it saw only NASA use, at 5 launches per year.

They may finish the SABRE, but I expect we'll see it on a hypersonic strike vehicle before an SSTO.

>>6292886
>He said "Beacuse..", he definitely said it was related that simply.
Jesus you're simpleminded.

>>tell me that an eightfold reduction in reaction mass won't be an absolute game changer for space transport.
>I tell you that. Because for that eightfold reduction in reaction mass you have to deal with an eightfold reduction of the thrust-to-weight ratio of your engines.

>I tell you the reduction in reaction mass won't be a gamechanger because for that reduction you have to deal with a comparable reduction of the thrust-to-weight ratio of the engines.

>>Anyway, the reduction in total reaction mass for the Skylon SSTO is certainly not anywhere near eightfold. It's roughly twofold, with no reduction in tank volume.
>What do you base that on?
The Skylon people's published projected figures. You only get to use the airbreathing engines up to 30 km altitude and 1.7 km/s speed. Then the extra mass is dead weight while you still need to get over 100 km altitude and 8 km/s speed to be in orbit. You've only cut your propellant mass load by about half.

On top of that, liquid hydrogen has a very low density. Reducing the oxygen load doesn't significantly reduce tank volume.

>>6292881
>What we can say for certain is that a reusable F9 will cost more than a normal one
Are you an idiot? The reusable F9 IS a normal one. The only difference is landing legs, which are being added for the next flight in February, and are planned to go up on every Falcon 9 after that.

>SpaceX do not release studies.
They talk about the numbers. There's no reason to think that Skylon fantasy figures released in studies are more reliable than what SpaceX representatives tell you based on their experience of actually flying orbital launchers and reusable VTVL rockets.

>>6292881
>This also doesn't get around the second problem because no rocket is without this problem.
I'm not even talking about a lack of customers and payloads to fly. I'm talking about the vehicle ending up needing too much maintenance time to be flown often enough to ever pay itself off.

This was the biggest problem with the space shuttle. Parts that were designed to be low-maintenance turned out to be high-maintenance, and it was therefore impossible to have a high flight rate.

>>6292914
No. Changing words like that doesn't avoid the point that removing oxidiser does not dictate the trust to weight ratio like that. it's still wrong.

And you're mistaken I'm not the same person that brought up the "eightfold" figure. I don't know where it came from.

>You only get to use the airbreathing engines up to 30 km altitude and 1.7 km/s speed. Then the extra mass is dead weight while you still need to get over 100 km altitude and 8 km/s speed to be in orbit.
Not a bad benchmark. It's not quite as simple as that however. "Launching" from altitude has a benefit of cutting out the drag hence why Pegasus makes sense.

>>6292937
>No. Changing words like that doesn't avoid the point that removing oxidiser does not dictate the trust to weight ratio like that. it's still wrong.
Your autism is showing.

The only way I can see it coming to fruition is if the UK and the Euro zone have an immense recovery, or if China/India decide to buy the engines and try making a SSTO themselves.

>>6292929
>The reusable F9 IS a normal one.
Heat shield on the second stage, landing motors, RCS. Is this stuff free?

>There's no reason to think that Skylon fantasy figures released in studies are more reliable than what SpaceX representatives tell you based on their experience of actually flying orbital launchers and reusable VTVL rockets.
I know what Skylon claims, I know what justification they have given, we cannot say the same for spaceX.

>>6292937
>No. Changing words like that doesn't avoid the point that removing oxidiser does not dictate the trust to weight ratio like that. it's still wrong.
You've obviously read something into it that no one else sees there. He said there was an eightfold reduction of thrust-to-weight ratio, which is roughly accurate. He didn't say or imply that the reduction of thrust-to-weight ratio was necessarily equal to the reduction of propellant mass, as some kind of law of nature. You just imagined that.

And using air as your oxidizer DOES require a reduction of thrust-to-weight ratio, because your engine is going to need additional parts to bring the air in. There is no air-breathing chemical-fuelled engine with 150:1 thrust-to-weight ratio, and if there ever is, through some miracle of material science, then it will be possible to make a rocket that has 800:1 or more.

>>6292945
Why would Skylon be an SSTO, anyway? Why not make it a two-stage airplane, with the rockets on the second stage and the air-breathers on the first stage?

>>6292934
> I'm talking about the vehicle ending up needing too much maintenance time to be flown often enough to ever pay itself off.
Another excellent concern which again applies to both Skylon and Falcon 9R.

>>6292939
More deflection, what a suprise.

>>6292945
The economies of the UK and Europe are not quite as bad as some make it seem. There is still money for space, ESA is still well funded.

>>6292950
They're not even talking about any definite plans for a reusable second stage. Most of the cost is in the first stage. Considering the amount of fuel spent to put it up there, and the lack of raw materials available in orbit, in the long run it may make far more sense to recycle spent upper stages in space (when they're not sent on oddball orbits or earth-escape trajectories).

The non-reusable Falcon Heavy blows by Skylon's original cost-per-ton-to-LEO figure that was supposed to be the big payoff. First stage reusability is plenty of cost reduction to go far beyond Skylon's goals for cost effectiveness.

>>6292952
You gain simplicity and it isn't that hard if SABER preforms. The more you add the more you have to engineer and it all goes against the desired minimum ground support.

>>6292964
>They're not even talking about any definite plans for a reusable second stage.
Even still there is new equipment on the first stage.

>The non-reusable Falcon Heavy blows by Skylon's original cost-per-ton-to-LEO figure
No it doesn't.

>>6292954
...except that SpaceX already has experience with reusing the rocket engines on F9R. They're all tested before being used. They don't require extensive maintenance between firings.

And I've already pointed out that SpaceX isn't depending on amortizing rocket costs over many flights for viability, the way Skylon would. When something goes wrong with the reusability plan, they can tolerate the loss and build a new vehicle with a fix for the problem.

Skylon depends on each extremely costly vehicle in a small fleet lasting for 200 flights. Any vehicle loss is a disaster, as it was for the space shuttle program.

>>6292964
>The non-reusable Falcon Heavy blows by Skylon's original cost-per-ton-to-LEO figure that was supposed to be the big payoff.

No it doesn't. Skylon's supposed to be around £650/kg , or about $1000/kg ; Falcon Heavy is estimated at $2,200/kg.

Note that 2.2K is more than 1K, not less. (Although if SpaceX gets re-usability working, Skylon's in trouble.)

>>6292958
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-gift-aging/201304/people-autism-spectrum-disorder-take-things-literally

>>6292974
The only differences between F9 and F9R are landing legs and a 30% reduction in payload capacity due to reserve fuel for landing.
SpaceX launches are profitable right now, such that even if they lose a few F9Rs on landing, the reusability is still a cost reduction.

>>6292982
>.except that SpaceX already has experience with reusing the rocket engines on F9R.
Not even you can claim grasshopper is anything like a full production vehicle. There are a lot more things that can cause unexpected problems.

>And I've already pointed out that SpaceX isn't depending on amortizing rocket costs over many flights for viability, the way Skylon would.
Assuming of course development isn't government funded, like falcon 9 was. In any case that ignores fixed costs, which will be the real issue.

>Skylon depends on each extremely costly vehicle in a small fleet lasting for 200 flights.
Skylon vehicles aren't costly. They cost about the same as an Ariane 5 or large Atlas which have comparable payloads. Losses wouldn't be a disaster.

>>6292996
It has RCS which is different.
But you have to ask what will reuse take? What kind of infrastructure? What size of ground support? What kind of maintenance is it going to take for customers to have confidence strapping a hundred million dollars to it?

>>6292985
Yeah, sorry. I didn't check and was comparing $/lb to $/kg.

But anyway, the stated justification for Skylon was reducing launch costs from £15,000/kg to £650/kg. An order of magnitude improvement. With a £1,430/kg launch price on the market, someone else has already done the order of magnitude.

And that's a real price that contracts are being signed on, compared to a highly optimistic program goal.

Now the justification for investing billions into Skylon and waiting through years of development is only a factor of two improvement. Meanwhile, SpaceX is talking about another order of magnitude improvement in price, if their current rocket just works as designed through their planned program of on-the-job testing.

>>6293001
>Not even you can claim grasshopper is anything like a full production vehicle.
Grasshopper was literally a Falcon 9 1.0 first stage body with a Falcon 9 1.1 first stage engine, and a set of jerry-rigged legs.

The legs are the only part that are significantly different from flight hardware.

Are you saying the legs are so hard to do that after everything else SpaceX has done, they're not going to be able to put some landing legs on their rocket?

>>6292965
>You gain simplicity
A combined turbojet/ramjet/rocket engine with an additional helium cooling cycle isn't what I'd call simple.

>>6293010
>And that's a real price that contracts are being signed on, compared to a highly optimistic program goal.
It's not the whole story, we don't know if spaceX's prices are sustainable. We have no idea what state their finances are in as it's a private company. "highly optimistic" is outright bias, you haven't read the report or noted the outside input from ESA.

> SpaceX is talking about another order of magnitude improvement in price
SpaceX never cut costs by an order of magnitude. Zenit has been at this level of prices for years.

>>6293032
>We have no idea what state their finances in

We know they're making a profit without needing cash infusions from Musk.

>>6293017
So the second stage and payload are negligible as are their effects on the vehicle?

>>6293042
We know he says that. We also know they have a fat NASA contract at the same time. We don't know if these prices are sustainable.

Can we just get a global, crowd-funded, open source, collaborative space agency up and running yet? I mean damn, these funding issues are retarded....

>>6293059
As someone who works for a space company, probably not. We're thriftier than most (we didn't have the luck of a billionaire founder), and even building really cheap space vehicles sucks up hundreds of millions of dollars. You're not getting that through Kickstarter.

>>6293075
I was thinking more like a $5 monthly add-on to a cell phone bill- get 2 million people worldwide, that's $10,000,000 a month, $120,000,000 a year- to fund specific missions, sponsor research, etc. I mean, NASA's website gets 600,000 hits a day. There's interest if you spread it globally.

>>6293091
I would sign up for a monthly subscription to a space agency that could prove that the money is being applied towards progress in space exploration.

It would be exceedingly difficult to start, though, because space requires such large upfront investment that such an agency would be unable to do anything until subscribers reached into the millions, which would be unlikely if they had not yet proven their ability to do anything.

>>6293114
Yeah, totally agreed. I sort of envisioned it as a global umbrella non-profit that wouldn't be reliant on political wranglings or private industry for support. There are so many planned and then canceled missions out there....usually canceled because of funding problems. The organization could fund research and contract out a lot of the building and monitoring of missions. Get a Kickstarter to get the organization off the ground (hire developers to get the funding infrastructure in place, hold meetings and conventions on areas of research and specific missions, etc). Not the best way to do it obviously....just dreamin' here.

>>6293047
It doesn't land with a second stage and payload up top. They've demonstrated everything but the landing on a real orbital flight, they've demonstrated running the same engines through multiple launch-length burns with minimal maintenance, and they've demonstrated the landing with a real first stage body and a real first-stage engine.

They might still need to work some bugs out, but it's going to work.

>>6293135
So you don't think the stresses of a full stack are relevant?

>>6293152
What? During the launch? We already know that this doesn't seriously harm the first stage. And they've put them under considerably larger stresses in testing.

Maybe you'll get fuselage failures on the 50th flight or something, and need to adjust the design for longer life, but nobody was expecting them to last forever.

>>6293179
>Maybe you'll get fuselage failures on the 50th flight or something
Or maybe your handwaving will fly you into orbit for half the cost of a Soyuz.

>>6293200
What do you want?

This is a "god of the gaps" FUD thing. As SpaceX accomplishes more and more in the real world, you claim there must be a fatal flaw hiding in a smaller and smaller uncertainty, while casually waving off all objections to your fantasy unfunded paper rocket that needs a dozen parts that have never been built before and is never going to fly.

SpaceX is planning to try to land a spent lower stage in shape to reuse it with minimal maintenance, after putting a payload in orbit, next month. They've already told their customers that they're targetting a $5-$7 million price for satellite launches.

There's no fucking comparison here.

>>6293232
>you claim there must be a fatal flaw
No, just because I disagree with you does not mean I make the opposite claim to you.

You'll notice I never stated once that SpaceX's plans would fail. I also never stated that Skylon would ever fly or be successful in it's goals.

I reject shitty objections, this is not waving off anything. What I particularly dislike is your total hypocrisy, when you bring up one of your objections to Skylon which equally applies to F9R but you ignore this. I never rejected the broad concerns of RLVs but you pretend like these same things don't apply when it's the golden goose in question.

>>6293059
Crowd funding will get you millions. A space agency need billions. Open source is shit, because of the dual use potential of rockets as ballistic missiles.

>>6293415
I guess i wasn't saying investing in rocket tech, more in rover tech and the like. But yeah i know...

>>6290305
>Ariane 5 is competitive
only because they have been reliable… so far. It is quite an expensive launcher, too powerful. Every commercial launch requires one primary and one secondary payload, making scheduling more challenging. SpaceX is poised to capture most of the secondary payloads, leaving Ariane 5 out to dry. That is why they are desperately funding two programs: Ariane 5 ME to shave some cost from production, and Ariane 6 to scale it down to a single payload. Certainly no money left over to fund way out there things like Skylon.

>>6293463
Arianespace has a 60% market share and a $5.8 billion backlog, enough for more than three years of launches. I can't see much reason for desperation there. The dual development of Ariane 6 and Ariane 5 ME is more due to the current uncertainty about how satellite masses will develop with electric engines and because it's the aim of Arianespace to cover the whole payload range. Which is why Vega was developed and Soyuz has been included.

>>6293075
which space company do you work for?

(and SpaceX only had a millionaire founder. His Tesla wealth came later.)

>>6293529

Implying Tesla is profitable company

>>6293534
in terms of stock value it is ;)

I got in on that when it was at $20, sold it all at $150. I think it's overvalued by about 50% at the least.

pt 1/2. Wrote this up while bored at work a bit back. I know this is total masturbation, but hell, masturbation can be fun, amirite?

>>6293564
pt 2/2

>>6293529
XCOR.

>>6293572
>XCOR
you out in the Mojave then? go out there all the time for hiking and camping. It'd be cooler to be doing what you're doing though.....

>>6293579
Yeah. Not for much longer, though - we're moving to Midland as soon as they get their spaceport license and the Mark 1 gets flying.

>>6293463
>SpaceX is poised to capture most of the secondary payloads
They're poised to capture all of the payloads. Falcon Heavy's launching this year.

>>6293496
>Arianespace has a 60% market share and a $5.8 billion backlog, enough for more than three years of launches. I can't see much reason for desperation there.
They've got a competitor who's charging about half of what they do, for a service that looks to be more capable in every way, and talking about lowering their prices by an order of magnitude in the next few years.

When asked how they would compete with launches at the prices SpaceX is aiming for, Arianespace representatives bluster about how those prices are impossible.

>>6293648
If price was everything, Arianespace would have long lost the market to Russian and Ukrainian launchers. SpaceX has a long way to go if it wants to be on par with Ariane 5's current 57 successful launches in a row. Their reliability record isn't the best.

>>6293668

57 launches isn't a bar to meet, it's a trivia question. A much less number of successful launches will win the further trust of customers. 2014 looks promising for that, 2015 more so, and so on.

what is it?

Looks like an SR71 and Nasa's low orbit space plane thing fucked and made that

>>6294178
It's a testament to reliability. Why do you think Proton doesn't get more of the market? They're cheaper than Ariane 5, you know?

>>6290159
that's a really long front landing gear, looks like a liability

>>6294184
Blow-ups aside, I think it has something to do with having to travel to gangsterland to launch your satellite.

i've seen craft that make that thing look neolithic

why are they even wasting their time

>>6294184
>Proton-M: Launches - 70, Failures - 6
>Ariane 5: Launches - 71, Failures - 4
Wow, what a spectacular difference in reliability.

>>6294486
Sorry, that's 8 failures for the Proton-M. 6 total failures, and two partial (two of the Ariane 5s failures were partial as well).

And up to last July, Proton had a 30 year unbroken record of launches with no first-stage failures. Then they pointed their nozzles toward the sky and did not go to space that day. So a long string of successes is no guarantee of reliability.

>>6294486
That's a difference. Not only because of the numerical values but more so because there's something called the learning curve. The rule of thumb is: 2 failures during the first 4 or 5 flights, 3 failures during the first 10 flights and 4 failures during the first 20 flights are seen as normal. The failures of Ariane 5 were all in the learning phase. If you look from the 20th flight onwards, Ariane 5 has a flawless record with 51 flights, Proton-M 3 failures during the last 50 flights. Besides, ILS does not only market the Proton-M but the Proton in general. They've launched other Proton versions and had failures with them, too, like with AsiaSat3 or Astra 1K. In contrast to that the other launchers of Arianespace, Vega and Soyuz, both have a flawless record so far, despite Soyuz having failures when operated by others than Arianespace in the same time period.

>>6294486
Proton-M had 8 failures in 79 flights. That's one failure every 9.875 flights on average. Ariane 5's record translates to one failure every 17.75 flights on average. Ariane 5 is 80% more reliable than Proton-M.

>>6294824
>Ariane 5 is 80% more reliable than Proton-M.
That's really not how that works.

Proton-M is 88.6% reliable.
Ariane 5 is 94.4% reliable.

You can say Ariane 5 is 5.8% or 6.5% more reliable than Proton-M, by two reasonable ways of determining it, but not 80% more reliable.

>>6294732
>If you look from the 20th flight onwards, Ariane 5 has a flawless record with 51 flights
That doesn't even show that Ariane 5 has a lower prior probability of failure than Proton-M. Proton had a 30-year flawless record with their first stages, and then they had a spectacular blow-up.

With the relatively low launch rates, that amount of difference can come down to simple luck.

Arianespace can get away with charging higher prices for reasons other than mechanical reliability. ILS, despite the American sales office, is just about all Russian now, with rockets being built in Russia and launched in Kazakhstan. The political uncertainty and corruption of Russia adds the risk that launches scheduled in advance won't happen.

This is a major advantage which they won't have over SpaceX. SpaceX is actually going to launch right out of the USA, so satellites built in the USA (and the USA is a good place to get satellites built) won't have to leave the country before going to orbit. French Guiana is an old colony, and not in the most politically unstable region, so this is an advantage SpaceX has over Arianespace comparable to the one Arianespace has over ILS.

This kind of thing is probably why Lockheed Martin and Boeing thought they could get away with charging higher prices than Arianespace for commercial launch. Of course, they couldn't. Dealing with American companies launching from American soil isn't the same step up from dealing with a Western European alliance launching from a fairly securely held colony as that is from dealing with kleptocratic post-Soviet Russians launching from Kazakhstan.

But the combination of lower prices AND launching directly from America...

>>6295364
>That's really not how that works.
Yes it's exactly how it works, because 100% reliability is impossible and you have to make some serious effort to raise reliability from, say, 90% to 95%. And it's similiarly difficult, if not more difficult, to raise it from 98% to 99%, or from 99.8% to 99.9%. All of those differences mean your rocket is going to blow up on half as many cases as before. Hence, reliability is doubled. Think about how an insurance company is estimating how much it is going to have to pay for satellite losses. If for a fixed number of flights you lose half as many satellites, you're not 5% or 1% or 0.1% more reliable. You're twice as reliable.

>>6295395
and this is why i hate statistics

>>6295395
Going from 40% success rate to 80% success rate is doubling reliability, not tripling it.

If you want to say they have half the failure rate, say that. It's not doubling reliability.

If Ariane 5 had only a 20% success rate, and Proton-M had a 10% success rate, would you call Ariane 5 twice as reliable or one eighth more reliable?

anyone have high res pics of it?

>>6296718
You know it's not a real thing, right? There are only artist's impressions.

>>6296729
then allow me to correct myself:
anyone have a high res artist's representation of it?

>>6296736
Just use google image search on "skylon", and select large images.

>>6296745
alright faggot im tryin to keep this thread going dang it

>>6290159
Britain will probably leave a hole in their security systems one day.

The Chinese will hack and steal all of that technology and apply it.

>>6296781
>Britain will probably leave a hole in their security systems one day.
they frequently do, often intentionally
>The Chinese will hack and steal all of that technology and apply it.
they frequently do, often stupidly

>skylon is the european response to falcon 9r

No. Skylon is a kooky british startup cult with pretty images who would like very well to claim that mantle in rhetoric. The European response to the Falcon 9R has yet to be defined and is more likely to resemble the Falcon 9R than adoption of Skylon.

>>6290159
No

Correction, very very unlikely given all current market trends, but not totally impossible in some form.

One of the easiest ways to increase energy costs is to move faster, and orbit is very very fast. So such a things would be really expensive, not to mention maintenance costs and other things. Getting things into space will always be resource intensive do to friction and earth's high gravity, relative to the limits of chemical energy and cross sectional strength. Nuclear rockets is another matter entirely, but let's not go there for now.