Spaceplanes are the future

[@thecheaperthebetter4477]

You've mentioned how much safer planes are than rockets a few times, and used that to postulate that spaceplanes must be safer than rockets... however I have to disagree. The reason rockets are so dangerous is their engineering tolerances can only be 1.5- 2 over the forces being applied to them, which means they are much more sensitive to minor faults. Spaceplanes, being SSTOs and with the extra complexity of the SABRE engine (for example) could very likely have much lower tolerances (especially since they entire air-frame is going to have to re-enter), this will make is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous than a 2 stage design that sacrifices bleeding edge performance for higher tolerances and lower payload. (something a spaceplane cannot afford to do)

[@philbiker3]

What about a two-stage space plane? The space plane can take off aboard something like the Stratolaunch - it wouldn't have to actually burn any fuel until it was already at 50K feet travelling at 600mph. That would save a LOT of fuel for the space plane itself. Both the Stratolaunch and the space plane could land at the same airport/spaceport. Space Planes at this point are like Thorium based Molten Salt Reactors. A promising, perhaps inevitable, idea on paper with nobody willing to spend the money to make them real.

[@tomblack458]

dawn aerospace has you covered

[@jeffmorris5802]

This video glosses over... a LOT of the reasons spaceplanes haven't been successful.

[@GreyDeathVaccine]

Name a few, this way your comment will be much better.

[@rboosterman9944]

@@GreyDeathVaccine Spaceplanes are flat, rocketships are fat.

[@idranardone4500]

Shh, pessimist🤫

[@MiG-25IsGOAT]

@@rboosterman9944 Rocketships are better

[@Mothball_man]

@@GreyDeathVaccine1. Heat. The SR-71 used titanium and still it was almost not enough. A spaceplane will be going MUCH faster. Therefore, fragile tiles that are extremely difficult to contour and adhere around wings and odd surfaces are the only known solution. And they are a major problem… requiring months of attention between flights. 2. Fuel consumption: If you study the x-15 experiments in the early 60s you’ll understand how insanely inefficient flying fast through the atmosphere is. This is why vertical takeoff WILL ALWAYS be cheaper fuel-wise. A good example of this is commercial airlines climbing so steeply to get out of the thicker air. The upfront inefficiency is well worth it to get to thin air quickly. Rockets go vertical and are quickly beyond max Q. A spaceplane must go at least 10 times further to pass max Q. 3. Payload: Because a spaceplane would take much longer and must carry the weight of its own lifting aerodynamics, the payload would be MUCH smaller than a heavy lifter like starship. 4. Safety: Not so much on takeoff but return would be an absolute b*tch. The mass of an entire winged vehicle of those proposed sizes… my heavens. The flat area underneath…the forces those wings would have to endure. Plasma would have a field day finding little nooky areas to swirl and ablate. Spaceplanes are fun to think about but they’ll not be delivering us to orbit anytime in the next century.

[@SD-tj5dh]

The skylon would be fine for orbital missions, but they would struggle to land or take off from other worlds with thin atmospheres.

[@jensbrandt7207]

That wouldn't matter in a solar system with significant offworld infrastructure. Performing a month-long Hohmanntransfer might be acceptable in the early days of colonisation. However, as the system develops, faster transport is required. So the spaceplane just has to deliver its cargo to the interplanetary transfer system. That could mean spacehooks, laser or particlebeamarrays, nuclear boost tracks or Orion Drive spacecraft. All of these systems can get you to Mars in a few weeks, some might even in under 24 hours.

[@robinolisa1524]

@@jensbrandt7207 And neither exists as practical options.

[@valenrn8657]

@@jensbrandt7207 Define "interplanetary transfer system", Hint: Space X's Space Ship.

[@jensbrandt7207]

@@robinolisa1524 Just because these systems don't exist now, doesn't mean they are impractical in the future. Several of them were seriously investigated by companies and governments. (Project Orion, Boing Skyhook, ...) what makes these systems impractical at the moment is the lack of demand for goods and transportation in space. These systems can move millions of tons of cargo. Give it 200 years and space travel will go something like this: leave a planet with a spaceplane or via a launch assist mechanism (probably an Atlas Tower mass driver or Laser Launch Array for bulk cargo), then meet up with whichever interplanetary transfer system you can afford/is appropriate (see the list in my first comment), finally you arrive and decelerate under your own power or using the local infrastructure and then you are unloaded

[@jensbrandt7207]

@@valenrn8657 While I love SpaceX and believe that Starship will open the solar system of settlement, chemical rockets are not powerful/cost efficient enough to run a true interplanetary economy. Starship might do for 50 years, but after that it will be out competed by nuclear thermal slow boats, mass drivers and spacehooks for bulk cargo transfer and by nuclear pulse propulsion and beamed propulsion for fast transports. I believe that Musk is aware of this and will turn to the development of a true interplanetary rocket (either nuclear thermal or nuclear pulsed) after the Starship program is over. Starship would then be used as a ground to orbit ferry until something better is developed for ground to orbit transport (possibly a Laser Launch Array).

[@Electronic424]

Everything looks better on paper...

[@princeofkernow9875]

True enough and if it was Elon saying it I'd be sceptical but the original designer on this project worked and delivered Concorde.

[@dumitrulangham1721]

But I bet you the people that met Elon saying I want to build a private fleet of rockets probably thought he was mad but look how that turned out

[@nickhardy9651]

The problem with single stage space craft is that you have to get all that weight into orbit and back down again. Which basically means that the payload you can take with you gets smaller. The whole idea for two stage rockets is that you take a big rocket to get you up high enough, above the thickest atmosphere and then the second stage takes over but doesn't have to haul the mass of the first stage. Anyway, that doesn't mean I don't like the video. It's been put together really nice. With great video and voice-over.

[@t.3465]

But with orbital infrastructure (like a Skyhook), the weight issue would be shoved down the drain instantly.

[@nickhardy9651]

@@t.3465 The sky hook needs to counter all that extra mass too. I don't think that would be feasible.

[@andreabindolini7452]

The same with some applications of Starship, for example the Moonship lander.

[@dumitrulangham1721]

It’s the same problem with rockets one of half the vehicle is just for fuel to get into space 😊

[@rhysrail]

What if you made it to stage then with a secondary plane.detaching from the body when it’s used it’s fuel

[@kpcgkhn]

beautiful narration

[@rustyspace900]

To be fair, Skylon is the only current project that would be even close to competing with Starship. We need a third billionare to adopt Skylon! ;)

[@fl00fydragon]

It would make far more sense in trying to get the ESA involved with it. It's new agenda supposedly wants to speed up the space colonization process for the EU and push for moon bases, orbital industry and martian exploration in the next two decades. A skylon would speed this process up because they couold build space only interplanetary ships that could carry a lot more payload, have a lot of living space and could utilize spin gravity, such systems could use rockets as access boats for the moon and mars (where a spaceplane would not work).

[@rustyspace900]

@@fl00fydragon Involved as a funder and a customer yes, like they do for Arianespace and NASA does for Spacex. I highly doubt ESA would be able to develop Skylon fast enough without high level private involvement

[@fl00fydragon]

@@rustyspace900 ESA has stated it wants to acellerate it's R&D process. Do not underestimate what a public R&D initiative can do with the economic backing of a superpower, it has a far higher ceiling than what a private corp has not only due to the funding but because it can do high cost, long term and high failure rate experimentation at the limit of our known physics. Something that no investor would be willing to do. That's pretty much why all our current disruptive tech like LCD screens, lithium ion batteries, GPUs RAM, advanced material technology, current medicine, etc. are all mostly if not completely the product of decade+ multi billion dollar public innovation. the myth that the free market breeds innovation that was used as the argument to defund public R&D megaprojects in the US and instead attempt to rely in private R&D has resulted in a decade+ stall in disruptive technology and the death of any project that was barred funding even if it was in the final stages of development (venture star) or projects that were supposed to go from public to private funding (supercollider) with the breakthoughs we got being the products of refinement of older tech(internet and cellular technology), the implementation of the final batch of the older megaprojects (smartphones) or patents opening up (3d printing). If we want to go faster we need to bring back the era of going big, an era where taxed corporations properly to fund progress, an era where we could see research funds took up a seizable chunk of the GDP. The ESA has taken this into consideration, not only does it want to pull more money from the EU, it wants to officially become a full blown EU agency and even push for it's federalization as the more centralized EF (european federation) would be a lot more efficient courtesy of having a common economic policy, a single military, a common taxation policy, a common infrastructure network etc.

[@sumreensultana1860]

Although I feel that skylon will take few more years

[@valenrn8657]

@@fl00fydragon 1. ESA does NOT have a re-useable rocket after many years in the rocket business! 2. The GPU term was defined by NVIDIA as "GeForce 256" which integrates T&L, rasterization, texture units, texture filtering, ROPS (read/write color, read/write Z-buffer, blending, and 'etc'), Blitter, and RAMDAC components into a single chip and it's mostly a PC gaming graphics accelerator. The drive towards single-chip as the GPU is mostly due to cost reduction, profitability, and mass production issues. NVIDIA wreaked companies with expensive products like SGI and Lockheed Martin's Real3D graphics processor business. 3. The 1st "CPU" was the Intel 4004 which integrated many different components into a single chip. The drive towards single-chip as the CPU is mostly due to cost reduction, profitability, and mass production issues.

[@jobob7158]

TG, this is an outstanding video; perhaps one of the best I've seen explicating the importance and advantages of the spaceplane approach. I've spent my career developing turbine based combined cycle (TBCC) engines for use in aerospace planes, and arguing for the benefits of spaceplanes compared with traditional staged rocket approaches for space access (usually without a lot of success). You've done a great job laying out how the spaceplane approach benefits space launch through easier and less-costly logistics, and improved safety, which IMHO is a very significant but under-appreciated aspect of human spaceflight. Another aspect worth mentioning in that spaceplanes which use air breathing engines can reduce the required on-board propellant mass per unit payload mass. This is not currently appreciated by rocket launch architectures because the propellant costs are negligible compared with everything else. But in mature systems where the flight rates are an order of magnitude higher, recurring costs associated with propellants are a critical cost component, and transportation systems work very hard to reduce that cost. In any case, a great video, and I look forward to further products. And FWIW, if you're interested, here are some links to some TBCC systems under development by myself and my colleagues, for spaceplane applications: kzbin.info/www/bejne/lXLEqZxujdFqfLc kzbin.info/www/bejne/f37ZYqOEfc5pmLc

[@Thumblegudget]

Thanks. I'm going to be doing some more videos on how rockets work in the near future. I've not looked at turbo rockets before, but at some point in the future I'd be happy to have a chat and maybe do a video on them.

[@jobob7158]

@@Thumblegudget That sounds great. I'd be very glad to discuss air turbo rockets and TBCC engines with you, whenever you'd care to. Please consider me a resource and an ally.

[@davidgifford8112]

My heart says spaceplane. My head says cost per kilogram. As reusable rocket technology advances I don’t see a theoretical barrier to starship like rockets approaching the safety, reliability and turnaround of airliners, but at a fraction of the time build cost per payload kilogram than SSTO spaceplanes. The added bonus of a starship type rocket is also its extraterrestrial landing capabilities.

[@stevepirie8130]

Noise pollution too, airports get constant complaints and restrictions. Space planes just like rockets would need basing far from large urban areas.

[@J7Handle]

It’s already hard enough getting the necessary delta v for multistage rockets to reach orbit. Dynetics apparently did the math for their lunar lander and found that it had negative payload capacity, meaning unless they shaved off weight somewhere they didn’t have the delta v. Many SSTO projects have been started and cancelled, and zero have reached orbit. My guess is they did the math and found they were coming up short, and tried to develop new tech, but invariably failed to make the delta v materialize. Skylon seems maybe plausible, but I imagine the furthest they’ve got is just the math on paper for getting the engines to work, and maybe the math on the reentry profile. Blunt bodies experience much less heating and much more drag than the pointing Skylon, and only have to be heat shielded on one side. I imagine all of the available heat shield options are far too heavy for the delta v requirements. And then they still need to build the first ever RAPIER engine and have it perform well enough to make an SSTO with it. Those engines are no joke either, because they need to fking slow down high mach intake air (causing compression and heating as a result) and cool it to cryogenic temperatures to condense it. And they have to do 100s of kilograms per minute. And they have to contend with 80% of it being nitrogen. The thermodynamics are insane. And let’s not forget, the only real advantage of Skylon is the safety of winged landings vs propulsive landings. But unlike airliners, and like Space Shuttle, Skylon can barely fly at low speeds, has a crazy descent rate, and has no chance for a go around (unless you aerial refuel it? That might be worth checking out). The only real safety advantage of Skylon over Starship is that wings and control surfaces are typically much less likely to break at inopportune moments than rocket engines. And granted, Starship prototypes have been plagued by engine trouble. But I honestly believe that after things get ironed out, 2 engines on landing + 1 for redundancy is safe enough for humans. And if not, more engines. Some Starship renders have 7 sea level optimized Raptor engines. While the extra performance of vacuum optimized engines might be desirable, early crewed variants of Starship could sacrifice that in the name of safety and still be super capable. Skylon still has yet to even make the math work.

[@pranavghantasala6808]

@@J7Handle The SABRE engine's precooler was tested in 2019 and successfully cooled air from over 5000°C to ambient temperature in under 50 milliseconds, and did so over 700 test cycles. The math checks out.

[@J7Handle]

@@pranavghantasala6808 Yeah, for some reason I thought that the precooler was something like an A/C unit, using purely electrical power to cool incoming air. But now I understand it has to do with the fact that the liquid hydrogen fuel is already really cold to begin with, so you just use a heat exchanger to cool the intake air using the hydrogen. It does mean that the choice of hydrogen as fuel is mandatory, as other fuels like liquid methane aren't liquid at a low enough temperature for precoolers to work.

[@TheHiralis]

Nah man, SSTO planes are the goat. The Starraker concept would have been as cheap as $30/lb in modern money. Starship is terrible.

[@Amadeu.Macedo]

Outstanding and inspiring concept! Hopefully, some visionary billionaire will emerge to embrace it to render this dream a plausible reality...

[@sdprz7893]

Great Quality video, don't stop uploading, Great potential here

[@maximusironthumper]

Nicely done - I hope the video takes off (excuse the pun!).

[@Veldtian1]

**horizontally of course.

[@remliqa]

The problem with SSTO like Skylon is is that it will always be inferior compared to multiple stage rockets in term of amount of payload it can deliver. Combined with reusable booster (and upper stage) this will also mean that an SSTO will also be more expensive.

[@sumreensultana1860]

Yeah plus It would have shuttle like problems Some problems SPACE PLANES NOT COMING ANYTIME SOON MAYBE IN 400 YEARS ( 100 YEARS LIKELY)

[@sycodeathman]

Yes the increased complexity of any SSTO like Skylon means that each vehicle will cost a massive amount to build, and due to the tighter mass margins the operational lifetime of those SSTO vehicles is likely to always be shorter than the stages of a reusable TSTO. Cost estimates of Skylon per vehicle were put somewhere around $1.2 billion. Starship by comparison is expected to cost less than $200 million per stack, that is to say $200 million buys you a complete Starship vehicle and Booster with all engines and other hardware included. Skylon was designed to be able to put 20 tons into LEO, Starship is designed to put 150 tons into LEO. Starship is designed to launch 100 times without any refurbishment work required. If we assume that Starship can only fly 100 times total before being scrapped, that's a necessary $2 million per launch in order to cover the cost of production, plus some more millions to pay for launch ops and of course to make some money performing the launch. For Skylon to compete and get a lower per launch cost based purely on covering production cost, Skylon would need to be able to launch at least 600 times. 600 launches in total doesn't sound like much compared to the lifetime of an airliner, but the vehicle was actually designed to launch just 200 times at minimum before retirement. Now, that's not to say 600 launches would be impossible, but it would be 3 times the design operational lifetime, so it wouldn't be very likely in my opinion. If I were to make a prediction about the future of space access, I would say that reusable TSTO vehicles are not just here to stay, they are going to be the ONLY means of space access one way or the other for a very long time. The advantages of reusable TSTO over reusable SSTO are just too great to ignore; even if we decide that pure-rocket vehicles like Starship aren't safe enough to routinely use, it would make more sense to modify the crewed Starship design to have it work as a horizontal landing vehicle (lands like an airplane using wings for lift) and continue launching it on a big first stage reusable Booster. The current Starship design will be able to launch between 100 and 150 tons into LEO; I can't imagine the modifications to a horizontal landing variant would add so much dry mass that the payload would drop to zero. Rather, I would expect that such a Winged Starship would remain volume limited in terms of how many people it could send into orbit, which would be it's only purpose, mind. Conventional Starships with flaps that land like rockets would still be used for all cargo launches, because those vehicles will be more effective and cheaper both per unit and cheaper to operate. With a winged Starship purpose designed to be safe for humans, the major modifications would be to allow the vehicle to land on a runway using wings and wheels, to add engines in order to give it a high enough thrust to weight ratio to escape any launch failure event, and the ability to rapidly dump excess propellants as necessary. These three major modifications would produce a vehicle that has every advantage of a vehicle like Skylon with none of the drawbacks.

[@seansargeant7966]

Very good video; I'm more of a sceptic on spaceplanes, but the case for Skylon is undeniable. For the next couple years minimum, I don't expect them to take off, but once the first bases or colonies are set up the chance seems to drastically increase.

[@ZontarDow]

From what those like CSS have reported, there is now a company trying to bring about the Rockwell Star Raker off the ground.

[@tim10ery46]

I believe Space Planes will definitely dominate near earth operations, especially transport of people and relatively light cargo. I suspect Space Planes and large scale super heavy lift rockets will work beautifully in tandem, with the heavy vehicle acting like an Oceanliner to transport large loads across the solar system and Space Planes doing the quick work. Star Wars comes to mind lol

[@fje1948]

Thank you for explaining the concept. I was lucky enough to fly for BAE based at Filton in the mid eighties with mostly ex Concord test pilots. Your assessment makes perfect sense.

[@jarfmusic]

Neil Taylor from reaction engines was one of my lecturers and assessed my final year project. It shocks me how simple the Skylon concept is in terms of Aerodynamics but so difficult in terms of propulsion. And re-entry isn't even the hard bit - to get the TBCC thruster to work will be a feat in itself but seriously opens up opportunities in terms of what can and can't get into space. It remind me about how the jet engine was simple in concept but never saw use until the later parts of WW2. Much of the time, an avenue is seen but there is so much auxiliary work intended for a a design that does not make is feasible at the moment. Spaceplanes ARE the future, but we are limited by current design knowledge.

[@mopippenger7373]

How do you not have 100x the views and 1,000x the subscribers!? This is top-quality content!

[@trucksanddirt1506]

They like the spectacle of SpaceX and all the lies from Musk

[@TotallyNoAim]

bullshit content. there are reasons spaceplanes suck and he simply ignores them. dont give him any views

[@adodgygeeza]

Starship isn't committed to orbit once launched it can always drop Superheavy and then use the Delta V of Starship to do either an RTLS abort or an over the ocean abort, like the shuttle but with less constant miracles interspersed with acts of God. The only real dead spot in it's ascent is the first 20 seconds or so of ascent or obviously any deflagration of the booster or Starship. It's the landing which I think will be difficult.

[@rboosterman9944]

I wonder if using LEO-only 25 passenger Starships equipped with launch-escape pods to rendezvous with the interplanetary 100 passenger Starship in LEO is a solution to the LES safety feature? Assuming that the 100 passenger Starship LEO seat cost would be $20k, the use of the 4 25 passenger LEO-only LES-equipped Starships would add $80k to the $200k-500k Moon/Mars ticket (the majority of the ticket price coming from the numerous tanker Starships refueling the 100 passenger Starship in LEO). Aerobraking the 100 passenger Starship on Earth return to LEO then using another 4 25 passenger LES Starships to rendezvous with the 100 passenger Starship will add another $80K. Adding an extra $160k for the added safety of LES on both ascent and return trip.

[@Chris.Davies]

18:40 Quote: "When a fleet of just 2 or 3 Skylons could easily meet the entire planet's launch needs, the numbers just don't add up." Yeah - they don't add up, I agree, but only because your numbers are total rubbish! :P Firstly, you are so wrong you're not even wrong: Skylon is far too small and has far too low lift capacity to service even a decent percentage of the world's lifting requirements. It can't reach a high orbit at all, and only could potentially carry less than 9,000kg to a 480km orbit. Only 12,000kg to 300km! In a pitifully small 13m x 4.8m-radius payload bay. No, sorry, it can't deliver hardware to orbit of sufficient size to be useful in future construction projects, and it can only deliver a lightly-loaded MPLM-size object to the ISS. Skylon's low G-forces and low lifting capacity may make it potentially an ideal passenger delivery system, in a dedicated transfer module it uses to take people up and back to a space hotel, but it's virtually useless for on-orbit work of any other kind, unless it's just as a ferry to LEO. It might prove useful delivering 10-tons of fuel to LEO per flight, however! It certainly could not carry any hardware headed to Mars or the Moon. To delivery anything anywhere except LEO, the tiny payload would need to include a booster stage, or enough fuel so that an ob-orbit tug vessel can use it to locate the payload to the right orbit. There's no provision for a robotic arm in the payload bay, nor is there a control room to allow a crew to perform work with the Skylon. Secondly, the world's launch mnarket is rapidly developing, and as costs drop due to the launch rate alone, more markets open up, and we can't even imagine what entrepreneurs will do in space. It seems obvious to me that the world's first trillionaire will be an NEO miner. Skylon can't really help with that project, either - as it's too small. The future launch rate across the globe is going to go ballistic - pun intended. And Skylon could maybe accommodate 10-20% of the market if it had numerous launch locations to allow it to reach better orbits. Finally, the idea you're going to make 3 Skylons, and that's it - is laughable. A Skylon is NOT going to be a gas-n-go reusable spaceplane. Oh, no. Not a chance. Each flight is going to require maybe 1,000 hours minimum of inspection and maintenance, and repairs. Minimum. If you could ever turn a Skylon around in a 7-day period, I would be incredibly and deeply surprised. You simply underestimate the severity of the environment such a craft will be required to endure, over and over again. The forces and the machinery involved are prone to wear and failure in unexpected and unanticipated ways. This is the nature of space exploration and access to LEO. The most violent thing humans ever do in space isn't even in space - it's boosting from the bottom of Earth's gravity well. And you want a craft to go through that like an aeroplane? That is NEVER going to happen. Not this century, and not next century, either - or the one after that. It may be robots attending to the craft, with almost no human intervention. But the idea of SSTO spaceplanes operating like aeroplanes is total nonsense.

[@kentonian]

Snake oil hits it on the head regarding skylon. Ssto is dumb and an unnecessary massive waste of delta v.

[@iancash3559]

The plan was never for just 3 Skylons, nor was it for Reaction Engines to be the launch provider (they provide the engines). The Skylon model was for numerous spacelines (analogous to airlines) owning and operating their own fleet. There are currently 72 government space agencies who would no-doubt be interested. Everything in the concept was geared for rapid turn-around, hence the minimal types of fluids used (and their non-toxicity) and non-ablative/rugged thermal management and zero integration of stages. It's payload capacity was designed to meet the needs of the largest GEO satellites at the time - which is still the case today. Any larger space construction projects (one of which I'm very familiar with) would be modular. Alongside Skylon is the fully-reusable upper stage which delivers standard payloads to GEO before returning to the cargo bay. Larger payloads could also be delivered to MEO (above the inner VA belt) for them to use solar-electric propulsion to reach final GEO. The reusable on-orbit space-tug you demand is called Fluyt. The ESA provided the initial review of the concept and found it to have no technical show-stoppers. The economics have also been extensively studied and found favourable.

[@FakeMaker]

Agreed. One other thing that doesn't add up are the engines, or nozzles. If the SSTO used a sea-level nozzle, it would face some serious inefficiency in higher altitudes, pretty much wasting fuel. On the other hand, if it used a vacuum nozzle at or close to sea level, then it would face flow separation, which is no fun. So SSTOs would greatly benefit from an aerospike engine, but then, the history of aerospikes is similar to SSTOs-looks great on paper, but isn't worth it(for now, at least.) I would love to see an actual SSTO fly using an aerospike engine, reach orbit, deploy cargo, deorbit, re-enter and land, but there's a reason(or bunch of them) why we don't see them being used.

[@Blaze6108]

I mean, full reusability in the current market in general doesn't make sense. There simply isn't an economic need for a vehicle that can be turned around in a day, or that can do 100 tons to LEO reusable, or both. The only way this could change would be if other innovations, in other sectors, made operating space vehicles so unbelievably cheap that you could legitimately take an orbital ride for the price of a short haul flight. THEN we could talk about lots of spacecraft coming and going.

[@koori3085]

Great video, SKYLON or its offspring will fly one day.

[@troy3456789]

Star-Raker would be great. Hint: it's coming to come to fruition.

[@PaddyPatrone]

Problem is, the only place where you can land with Wings is earth. Skylon hasn't shown much so far.

[@debott4538]

Well, Earth is where the customers usually live. ;)

[@t.3465]

Spaceplanes are a post-colonial vehicle. They are meant to be used in mass AFTER all the necessary infrastructure has already been set up. It's like saying "you can't drive a car on the Moon because there are no roads." You eventually need to build the infrastructure.

[@PaddyPatrone]

@@t.3465 wings need an atmosphere

[@t.3465]

@@PaddyPatrone Mars, Venus, and all the gas giants (and even Titan) have atmospheres.

[@t.3465]

Even if interplanetary travel using spaceplanes becomes inefficient, you could still use it as a viable orbital passenger/cargo shuttle, still a multi-billion dollar market.

[@oscar.ortroi]

Your content is amazing, I dont understand how you have so little views. I hope you keep this up!!

[@GSF404]

Amazing video, thank you for that sir. Beautiful backing track too, I *hope* SKYLON happens, it's a potential piece of history in the making.

[@tombouie]

Yeaps, scramjets have a range of 12-24 Mach & air is used as the main oxidizer. PS: UQx HYPERS301X 1.5.1V5 Ramjets and Scramjets kzbin.info/www/bejne/iYKagZ5ve811kLc UQxHYPERS301x 3.2.1 Shockwaves - Flow in the scramjet inlet kzbin.info/www/bejne/bHSvammbdqx1pZY

[@jamesbohlman4297]

Imagine moving a 40-ft shipping container filled with tools and equipment to a job site on the moon, and then turning around days later to do it again.

[@summerlakephotog8239]

You make a good case with a well-made video. One point though. The second Shuttle disaster was heat shield failure during re-entry. There is exactly the same risk in a space plane. Also Starship’s long term goal is orbital refueling for interplanetary trips not simply reaching orbit.

[@machinaexcarne]

The lesson I've learned from that is that you don't attach spaceplanes to anything covered in foam that can flake and hit your plane at multiples of the Mach number.

[@princeofkernow9875]

Actually it been discovered that blunt bodies aren't required for atmospheric re-entry thus the orbital profile can be changed to avoid the excessive temperature seen on the Space Shuttle re-entry, so those tiles will not be required. Reaching orbit with enough mess to do something meaningful in one trip rather than dozens well be a game changer. Starship is just old tech we might be able to reuse but with all the same issues of landing etc

[@XKS99]

The progress spaceplanes have been making lately is truly breathtaking :)

[@laughingatu3699]

The reason air launch space planes won't work is because the structural integrity needed to survive the air launch would make the plane too heavy. Virgin galactic has tried this approach and well we are not talking about them anymore are we.

[@radmanzarbock820]

Thank you for the incredible inspirational video! I'm going off to university for aerospace this summer and this is one of the primary things that I want to work on in my career. I always appreciate in-depth videos like these from other space enthusiasts. Excellent synopsis, production quality, and I wish you and your channel the best!

[@kspsuchti5673]

I have one Question: Why would you use a huge Spaceplane (SSTO) if you could just use a fully reusable two Stage Rocket, with only a smaller part going through the intense Reentry? From my point of view that seems to be a lot safer.

[@Thumblegudget]

Actually a big, light vehicle, like a spaceplane that’s mostly empty hydrogen tank, has a much gentler reentry than a smaller one. It’s all about the ballistic coefficient. SpaceX’s Starship also takes advantage of this.

[@kspsuchti5673]

@@Thumblegudget Yeah thats completely clear to me. Just my oppinion, but an SSTO just doesnt make much sense, if you can have a fully reusable two Stage Vehicle like Starship. Also my last point to the reentry: an SSTO fully goes through the (still) very tough reentry, but for example the SuperHeavy Booster (which is the largest Part of the Starship System) doesnt go through that much heating and can therefor be reused thousands of times.

[@loodwich]

@@kspsuchti5673 A Kerbal can not say NO to a SSTO... I designed a lot for that game.

[@kspsuchti5673]

@@loodwich Yeah SSTO´s are really cool ;) But sadly dont really are reasonable in Real LIfe.

[@loodwich]

@@kspsuchti5673 Sorry, I am not reasonable, I want to develop them... In Kerbin is very easy, because if you reach Mach 5 you are at a good altitude and good velocity, only a bit of push and you are in orbit. On Earth is more difficult, because you need to obtain Mach 28. The world is now full of technology advances impossible 10-20 years back.

[@mrrolandlawrence]

wow im re-motivated for alan bonds skylon!

[@fridaycaliforniaa236]

And HOTOL before it =)

[@thecaspeer]

I like how he uses the space shuttle as an example, whilst the space shuttle was acting the same as a space shuttle on a return trajectory

[@42crazyguy]

The space shuttle was acting the same as a space shuttle?

[@Mark_badas]

@@42crazyguy Yes.

[@cancelanime1507]

I think he's saying that because the Space Shuttle launched like a conventional rocket..

[@HeWhoX]

Spaceplanes are the future? Most likely if we mean an orbital flights. Guess, all future interplanetary flights will start from Earth orbit by another spacecrafts, able to fly only ‘orbit to orbit’ without landing. This feature allows them to use either nuclear or ionic/plasma propulsion, unfit for using in atmosphere but enable to reach a speed of tens km/ sec. Certainly, such spacecrafts will need a shuttle aboard for landing on the moon or Mars. The shuttles will differ. Lunar landing module will look like a kind of Peregrine, while a Martian one should be able to fly through Martian atmosphere. Maybe we call it a spaceplane one day also.

[@rustyheckler8766]

I'm not totally convinced. I believe we need more than an A and B option here. Planes and rockets will both be horribly expensive to operate, reusable or not.

[@petrpodskalsky1785]

What about a maglev track that would give a theoretical SSTO spaceplane an initial boost into the stratosphere? The Rails would need to be about 270 km long with 3Gs of acceleration to achieve 4km/s at the end, with the top about 6000 meters above the sea level (Ideally inside a mountain). It would be quite an investment, but the higher the initial speed is, the easier it would be to design the spaceplane, and its payload capacity would be enormous relative to its size, certainly much bigger than any rocket or Skylon-like spaceplane could hope for.

[@ExospaceAnimations]

This didn't age well RIP Skylon

[@Thumblegudget]

@@ExospaceAnimations I think it will age very well. Skylon’s problem was that it came decades too early.

[@LV93262]

@@Thumblegudget You can't get over simple math here. It'll always be more economically viable on this planet to have TSTO vehicles.

[@neobrandeggen]

@@Thumblegudget You could say that for anything, you could say that about Starship in an alternative universe where SpaceX didn't come up with starlink, and then couldn't fund Starship, and now everyone talks about how it would never work anyway. I do agree with a lot of what you say in the video btw, but one thing I disagree with is you say the reasons companies like SpaceX does not develop spaceplanes is because of development costs. For SpaceX's case this is untrue because SpaceX was founded on the grounds of colonizing Mars, and Starship is purpose built for that task while also being capable of regular rocket operations. For example a spaceplane could not land on Mars, and I think you agree when I say that it's fair to assume that a spaceplane would struggle to reach the required delva-V margins to make it to Mars, and on top of that there are no runways, and the atmosphere is too thin for winged flight (unless it's a glider-like aircraft or a small helicopter).

[@ro.zyipitoe5226]

Star Raker was the best that plane would've changed everything

[@ZontarDow]

There's a company currently trying to revive it.

[@cancelanime1507]

@@ZontarDow who?

[@emmanueljrodriguez691]

Well done! An absolutely marvelous summary and an incredible vision of what the future may very well hold for humanity. Thank you for your effort in putting this together for the world to see.

[@mostlymotorcycles.]

Interesting, no nonsense space flight video. Good to see your not a one eyed spacex fanboy. Keep the impartial videos coming.

[@nathanlewis42]

I’m a spacex fanboy and I also enjoyed this video. I also have two eyes.

[@yelectric1893]

@@nathanlewis42 woke

[@NottanALias]

19:31 substitute “visionary” with “delusional” and you got yourself a fairly good video.

[@JFrazer4303]

When you can demonstrate reliable robust propulsion, maybe. The HL-20 and HL-42 were space planes. Put them on top of reusable boosters. The Pioneer rocketplane was another that requires aerial fueling. Still workable, especially with tripropellant rockets. See also the Rockwell Star Raker which just goes big, for a HTOHL SSTO.

[@northernaeronautical3166]

Great video, really enjoyed it! You made lots of great points towards a space plane future. The elegance of a space plane is something else, so I hope your right because I’d love to see one some day (and ride one if I’m lucky)

[@fodank]

A great video. Well produced and factual. A rarity nowadays. Thank you. Cheers, D.

[@3gunslingers]

Incredible video. The delivery of the math involved is superb. One point I have to disagree with is the needed infrastructure, tho. Starship doesn't need a huge, flat and long runway. It doesn't even need to be moved on the ground (that much). Especially the booster can land so close to the launch table that a crane can pick it if, if the booster doesn't land on the launch table right away. If the interface between booster and Starship is designed well enough, you don't even need any manpower to "reset" it. It's pluck and play. Integration of payload is an other question. If you only want to fly passengers, then a gangway is enough. If you have sensitive equipment, you need a dedicated hangar anyway. For Starship you admittedly need a moving platform for that. But SpaceX already has them at Boca Chica, so I don't think that would even be a show stopper money-wise.

[@TeamNova80]

I am a huge fan of space planes. I truly agree that they will be the new future of space travel and change the future. Great video man 🙂👍💯💯

[@mintakan003]

While I'd like to see a SSTO spaceplane like Skylon, I think SpaceX has basically won this one. It may not be ideal for any one thing, but the platform has generality, that will work together in a flexible and interoperable way, for different types of missions. It's not only for going to LEO, but the the moon, and eventually Mars. With Starship and Superheavy, they can lift huge payloads, for cheap. It may not be pretty, but if they can get the economics and capabilities worked out (including orbital refueling), they maybe the space transportation infrastructure of the future.

[@brandonporter6223]

Lots of people hold onto the scifi notion of space travel, like it would be in the movies, but reality is so different from how its been portrayed in most media for a long time. IMO its very interesting how we're gonna have to think about life in space in a very different way than we're used to, its almost alien really, which is fitting dealing with extraterrestrial objects (moon, mars, etc) and space itself. Starship is going to be monumental for human civilization, allowing us to access space for the first time in any meaningful way. And once the first O'Neill cylinder is built, mankind's path will be written in the stars.

[@philbiker3]

Starship and Superheavy don't work. They probably never will. They have demnostrated nothing but the ability to destroy themselves. They are an utter failure.

[@martrecechildress5551]

Starship is good for space travel. Spaceplanes are good for earth travel.

[@液体光る]

ion tug is good for space travel but not starship

[@nicholasn.2883]

I love spaceplanes. They just feel right

[@t.3465]

They also look sooooooo much better than rockets

[@georgethompson1460]

Thing is space planes make sense if a lot of people are going into and out of orbit, which'll only happen if there's an industrial incentive. Meaning that space planes will only become viable after we begin exploiting space on a large scale, another point in the favour of rockets is that where safety is less of an issue they offer benefits in mass to orbits. Rockets scale up better in terms of heavy lift than planes, meaning for bulk transport they make more sense.

[@Desrtfox71]

To be truthful, spaceplanes, even with your considerations, only really make sense in the near term if you hand wave away a lot of their potential issues. SSTO will always have a huge payload problem compared with multistaged, even with air breathing as an option. Also, looking like a plane and taking off from a runway and landing on one doesn't make a SSTO like an airliner in any way. There will be much more refurbishment and testing necessary after each flight than a multistage rocket simply due to the fact that the entire craft reaches orbit, orbital velocity, and undergoes re-entry, where only the upper strange goes through this extreme regime in a multistage vehicle. Also, SSTOs are necessarily more complex. There's no guarantee that wings and runways can compensate for any of the SSTOs inherent issues. SO, far, no such vehicle has made the case that an SSTO is viable in the near or midterm IMHO.

[@cancelanime1507]

Great video! If only the Skylon project can get the full support of ESA then we could be living in a "2001 Space Odyssey" type future with Space Hotels and orbital and lunar industries..

[@bobwilliams8038]

I love your content :) Please persist through the obscurity phase of growth; your content is high quality and inspiring; you can make it big.

[@viracocha2021]

What about the tether system? It looks the fastest and cheapest of all the options. Do you have any clue why we haven't advanced in that idea yet?

[@dapeach06]

You mean essentially a space elevator? Materials technology isn't there.

[@nyanradium]

@@dapeach06 I think he/she is talking about skyhook.

[@lars-erikstrid2278]

To come closer to two-stage performance while evading some of the concerns of two stages is the tanker stage to orbit. Fill up the space-plane with the heavy oxidizer from a tanker plane, reducing GLOW. Each part operate from ordinary runways(not even HOTOL would do that, it would use an undercarriage system when taking off) and are optimized for quite different tasks.

[@ReflectiveLayerFilm]

This is a very good channel. I especially like this video. Space plane (or something better) is the only future if we plan for Mom, Pop and little Johnny to go to space.

[@sjoerdhaerkens5887]

14:00 you say that spaceplane designs don't require exotic materials, but I was under the impression that was one of the mayor problems with spaceplanes. They experience Massive amounts of heating over their entire body during launch similar to re-entry. Like you said this creates problems with engine functioning, but it also creates problems with the choice of materials to make the engine and all leading edges out off. You want to stay inside the atmosphere for as long as possible to use the intake air for more efficient propulsion, however this same air creates massive heating problems all over the vehicle. The SR-71 suffered from these issues a lot and space planes will have to endure these heating problems a lot more. Considering that radiation heating goes up with the 8th power of your velocity it's very beneficial to do most of your acceleration outside of the atmosphere. This is directly in conflict with flight path profiles for space planes. For this reason I believe it will be very hard for spaceplanes to provide an advantage over tradition rockets, their main advantage is directly tied to their biggest problem.

[@iancash3559]

That may be true, when comparing spaceplanes with traditional rockets as you state. However, fully-reusable rockets have to contend with these same "massive amounts of heating over their entire body" during the re-entry from orbit. Wings allow kinetic energy to be bled-off over a longer duration - reducing the peak temperatures and the need for exotic (or ablative) materials.

[@sjoerdhaerkens5887]

@@iancash3559 I didn't think about it that way yet, that's a good point you are raising. I wonder how those problems compare to each other. I feel like the heating for the booster of a traditional rocket is probably a significantly smaller problem than that of a spaceplane, but that also heavily depends on the trajectory of each vehicle. For the space bound portion I think heating issues should be similar during decent, but significantly easier for accent. This is definitely not as clear cut of a direct advantage for traditional rockets as I thought. I'm curious for an actual comparison in detail on those heating fronts, but I don't have the time too look into it.

[@eliyasne9695]

That's a good case for the viability of spaceplanes, but i still don't entirely agree with you. I have two objections: 1) yes, the saber can make it work, but it seems like you'd always be better of just putting a small cheap SRB as a second stage to double your payload capacity, thus making it an SSTO no more. 2) I think that the saber engine might be quite expensive to inspect between flights, due to the delicate plumbing in the heat exchanger.

[@sycodeathman]

If you're using a reusable spaceplane as a first stage for an expendable SRB second stage, you effectively just have a more complex and worse performing version of the Falcon 9. Also, there's no such thing as a cheap solid rocket booster, this is a misconception. Solid rockets do get more thrust force per dollar compared to liquid engines, but they are so much less efficient that they actually cost more per unit impulse (thrust force over time) than liquid rocket engines. That is to say, you're almost always better off using a liquid fueled rocket stage versus a solid motor for a given amount of delta V. I agree that a Saber engine would be expensive, both to build and to maintain. I really honestly don't see any way that an air breathing single stage rocket can beat a conventional rocket powered two stage to orbit vehicle. The only real advantage stated about Skylon is that it can abort to a horizontal landing. This capability could also exist in an upper stage vehicle on a TSTO rocket like Starship, the only reason Starship isn't using that technique is because it isn't ideal for sending massive payloads to orbit first of all, and second it is useless for landing on the Moon or Mars. Maybe in the future we will see Starship variants meant specifically to allow large scale human transport with full abort capacity, horizontal landing capability, and so forth, if that is something worth developing and conventional Starship doesn't pan out as being as reliable as SpaceX wants it to be.

[@Zebred2001]

I completely agree! There are no way rockets, with their complex launch procedures, can ever maintain the time-critical schedules necessary for serious space development. As a Canadian I'd like to see a Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK joint project to ultimately build a fleet of Skylon aerospace planes, but only, and I mean this, if there is an absolutely rational business and joint security justification for it. Such a fleet must be safe, cheap and reliable. There needs to be enough capacity per launch in terms of mass and volume of cargo modules to LEO and Geosynchronous orbits to facilitate very ambitious space construction projects.

[@darklordofbavaria6398]

I dont think that the launch of a spaceplane will be less complex. Especially cryogenic fuels require a complex infrastructure and tanking procedure. And an inspection after every landing is still necessairy. The difficult steps in the launch procedure will be the same.

[@LordOfNihil]

i have a feeling both vertical takeoff vehicles and skylon-type spaceplanes are going to end up filling different niches. right now reusable rockets are the low hanging fruit. and by their very existence will allow for the space launch market to really boom like its never boomed before. its a lot easier to get a satellite or a probe launched than it used to be. the science budget of a middle tier university for example can get their cubesat flown. as capacity goes up and costs come down, combined with the continued advancement of technology and miniaturization, unmanned space exploration will advance exponentially. its going to take asteroid mining and space tourism to bring in the next wave, and that's where something like skylon makes sense. large reusable rockets become freight trains to space, and skylon becomes your first spaceliner/spacemail plane.

[@erikals]

Fantastic Presentation! Thank You! :)

[@andreabindolini7452]

Always thought that the ugly Superheavy/Starship will be a temporary solution and that air-breathing SSTO like HOTOL remain the solution of the future. Hoping that this future doesn't stay future forever.

[@kabbyrp]

Hope this blows up and maybe we can get some interest in space planes. I need to do more research but this sounds promising.

[@w0ttheh3ll]

Even if a spaceplane were much safer on the ascent compared to conventional rockets (which is doubtful), safety on deorbit will limit your overall safety. Assuming conventional failures are distributed 50-50, if your ascent is 1000 times safer but the descent is not improved, your overall safety is still only 2 times higher.

[@bazoo513]

I admire your optimism regarding the future of spaceplanes and their technological readiness, but I am afraid I don't share it. I followed the work of Reaction Engines with much hope, but as time passes and not even a single chamber ("1/4 SABRE") is close to a full wind tunnel test, let alone flight, I expect less and less. Granted, the most challenging part, the pre-cooler, _has_ been successfully tested, but since then hardly anything happened. Don't forget that hugely complex engines, wings etc all add to mass. Reaction Engines people were recently on record lowering their ambitions of merely suborbital flights, with a kick stage still needed for reaching orbital velocity. I hope I am wrong.

[@matthewatherton4514]

2025, the engine work truly begins fortunately

[@bazoo513]

@@matthewatherton4514 I hope so.

[@finalfrontier001]

@@bazoo513 fortunately your opinion is wrong.

[@bazoo513]

@@finalfrontier001 Care to elaborate? Liquid Air Cycle Engine efforts started in early 60' (the pre-cooler idea was first mentioned in '55). Over General Dynamics' work, to Rolls Royce's RB545 to Reaction Engines' SABRE, attempts are almost 70 years old. We are yer to see a single high speed air breathing mode test, and not from a lack of effort.

[@glencmac]

How many decades has Skylon been on the drawing board??? At least 2, maybe 3.

[@pendecho48c]

Thanks a lot. Really good work and highly interesting! Please keep it up.

[@olsonspeed]

The Saber Engine looks to be the breakthrough required to make space planes a reality. Skylon is a fantastic machine, I look forward to it achieving orbit in the next few years. Excellent explanation of the advantages and disadvantages of vertical launch and space plane systems.

[@janbfiala]

I think you're omitting several crucial factors. You correctly say that the cost of operating one vehicle is lower than that of operating two vehicles. However, the Skylon is estimated to carry 17 tons to LEO, whereas Starship's capacity is projected around 100 tons to LEO. you would need 6 Skylons to carry the same mass of cargo as one Starship with its Superheavy booster. In addition, Starship (or New Glenn, for that matter) will have the ability to carry much larger loads, like entire space stations in one go. It also has the capability to more efficiently perform interplanetary missions. Skylon could theoretically do those too, if refueled in orbit like Starship would be, but you would need to accelerate all that atmospheric hardware like wings and precoolers without any use. Also, It's not like the initial acceleration is free without any cost. All that extra mass you need to make your rocket air-breathing is just useless added weight once you rise up from the dense lower levels of the atmosphere. The materials needed to withstand mach 5 in atmosphere are also much heavier than those you need if you're just rising out of that thick atmosphere at the shortest route at a relatively slow speed, which is what rockets do. Like, Skylon is a really cool concept and I would love to see them fly, but I just don't think they can compete with these new fully reusable superheavy rockets that also seem to have the leg up development-wise. I'm afraid by the time the first Skylon prototype is flown, SpaceX and Blue Origin will have already covered the most lucrative avenues, with smaller companies like Electron possibly filling the gaps for any remaining small-cargo niches, and there would be no space for Skylon. I hope I'll be proven wrong though!

[@Tsr2_plen]

very good, especially for LEO i agree

[@keithbrown2458]

Excellent video thank you

[@davidripley2916]

Okay then, where's my Skylon?

[@PolicyThwonk]

When I first saw this video, I was skeptical about space planes. I still have some questions about re-entry but after watching your video I could definitely see them filling a need in the future space market. Well done!

[@TheBeardyPenguin]

Ayy a Southampton graduate! Any chance you did the Aeronautics and Astronautics course I'm on?

[@NoSTs123]

Hai

[@royrequireswifi488]

Good video but I disagree with some of the conclusions

[@loodwich]

"Karman line": Where the air is so thin, that a plane to fly there, has the same velocity as is necessary to orbit at that altitude. OK, I will give a new approach, you said perfectly well that a jet engine that works on the surface when the plane has a velocity of 0 m/s. colling the air with hydrogen is Mach 5... but if you use a Scramjet you can reach Mach 10, the problem with the Scramjet is that you need around Mach 1 to start de engine... but if instead of a runway, you could accelerate with a rocket sled ... for example a maglev, now that the Japanese have a maglev train (Chuo Shinkansen) that reaches 600Km/h, you can include a solid buster to accelerate to match 1 and start the Scramjet, and you don't use the oxygen on the plane until you reach Mach 10 (1/3 of the orbital velocity)... so, that is the ∆v of a single-stage rocket. Is difficult, and we need to work a lot (money and hours work) but we can reach it.

[@xymaryai8283]

single stage VL rockets might be possible, but payload is still an issue. 2 stage is currently (and probably will continue to be) the best for payload, but very difficult to launch, land, and refurbish. single stage VLR has all of the downsides, with none of the benefits. SSSP's have less of the downsides, with some of the benefits. I don't see why using a SCram Jet over a SABRE engine like in the Skylon would be better at all, it is way harder to develop a closed loop SCram jet.

[@loodwich]

@@xymaryai8283 Is only because the orbital velocity is around Mach 28, SABRE is a very good option, and I know that the efficiency of the trial model is very good. But now, one of the DARPA programs is developing a SCRAMJET to put a nuke in China in 10 minutes... I hope that these researchers and engineers later develop a commercial program... At that moment the companies will have two options to build an SSTO... If some other teams find the third way to make an SSTO... We will have it in less than 100 years. Of course, until that time, 2 Stages, will be the better option.

[@jasonleahy5543]

If you visit the Reaction Engines website you will see that DARPA is one of the backers along with Rolls Royce, BAE Systems, Boeing, UK and European Space Agencies and the UK Ministry of Defence which has awarded a contract to Reaction Engines and Rolls Royce for studies into a SABRE scramjet version for Mach 5 6th next gen Tempest fighter planes and hypersonic missiles.@@loodwich

[@kalliste23]

Nuclear rockets have potential ... then there's Orion bomb powered goodness too.

[@name.placeholder1965]

Isn’t that dangerous?

[@kalliste23]

@@name.placeholder1965 It's a rocket. It's not safe.

[@name.placeholder1965]

@@kalliste23 yeah but I feel a regular engine is safer than literal nuclear explosions.

[@kalliste23]

@@name.placeholder1965 facts don't care about feelings.

[@name.placeholder1965]

@@kalliste23 are you implying the nuclear option is safer?

[@sporehux8344]

I've always envisioned a massive electro magnetic rail catapult (mega structure) system, with some partial vacuum tube to thin air high altitude launch assist.

[@GreyDeathVaccine]

Isaac Arthur channel already covered this topic :-)

[@nicholasn.2883]

I’m like 16 now. Optimistically I’ll be working on my spaceplane concept in 5 years but I can see it taking 10. I’m glad I found out my brain is just a little bit different

[@Thumblegudget]

I like your optimism.

[@bass9112]

Wish you a lot of good luck and happy days in your life!

[@machinaexcarne]

I'm about to turn 32. I'm a humanitarian-turned-techie, and have been marinating a spaceplane concept since I was 19, eating various technical and historical bits of aviation info, and studying it all. Optimistically, I will be alive when it takes shape, so I've been working on extending my life expectancy as well. I know, when I start on it (I aim within next 5-10 years), it will take the rest of my life. But if it pays off to even start on it, It will be worth it, and I won't need anything else but that, and maybe my immediate family. We do need lots of independent organizations to achieve spaceplanes, for more dynamic environment. We should make them ourselves, and avoid getting bought out by these "passion billionaires" who buy companies, and then bully their CEOs out of chairs. Much care is necessary in choosing who we share technical information with, and why. I know a few cutting edge AI engineers, for instance, who face attempts at stealing their tech secrets every day. We currently live in a society where we have to either hoard ideas or risk them having stolen and patented in someone else's name. My approach will need a new organization, so I'm laying a groundwork for future networking. This is as much as I care to share in one comment.

[@dsdy1205]

Of course it's important to point out this doesn't mean VTVL rockets will be obsoleted by the arrival of spaceplanes. Rockets scale much more efficiently than spaceplanes, and a higher mass ratio can be achieved simply by scaling up, vs a spaeplane where the mass ratio decreases as you try to build a bigger plane. In all likelihood upon their successful introduction the launch market will fragment into freight and passenger segments, with rockets hauling freight and spaceplanes hauling passengers. But therein lies another roadblock for spaceplane development. Companies like SpaceX can recoup the cost of unmanned test flights in preparation for padsenger carrying flights by using them as freight flights, but that would be less economical for a spaceplane developer due to the inherent economic limitations of the spaceplane platform above a certain scale.

[@SLPCaires]

Great video, you have a new subscriber!

[@Papershields001]

I’ve been saying this for years. A vehicle that returns in one piece and can be turned around in a few hours by non-experts just like commercial airliners is the only way space travel will become commonplace.

[@bartbliek469]

If development cost weren’t an issue, wouldn’t the maximum payload still be lower than a two stage due to the added weight of the wings, air breathing engines etc? I guess if your payload is people it would make a lot more sense. And what about the heat the surface of the plane would experience going mach 5 at such a low altitude? I recall this being a major limitation for the sr71, if heat shields become a requirement I can see the payload being a negative number again....

[@sycodeathman]

Yes, there would be a significant payload hit. The heating is a major issue, cooling the intake air is one thing but the skin of the vehicle will absolutely need to be coated in a thermal protection system capable of handling reentry temperatures and hypersonic flight deeper in the atmosphere, and can't add so much weight that the delta V budget drops below the minimum requirement to achieve orbit. In my opinion SSTO simply isn't realistic and is not practical enough to bother pursuing. Reusable TSTO technology is just overwhelmingly superior, and the development pathway to getting a reusable TSTO which is as safe as or safer than an equivalent SSTO vehicle is a much shorter and easier program than the development of a safe SSTO vehicle in the first place.

[@GLORY-TO-ENTROPY]

space solar power would be a great project that would utilize the launch capability of spaceplanes. The mirror could be so thin, just like solar sails and would be so light for a certain amount of power it generates. The light could then be concentrated to ground based receiver to boil water and turn steam turbines.

[@danyulsherer]

starship is NOT a spaceplane

[@undertow2142]

Imagine the kind of performance you could get out of using the raptor engine power head with a linear aerospike. Single stage spaceplane with 50-70 ton payload to orbit or anywhere in the world. Build it with room for about 500 people and you have a very attractive point to point or space station vacation platform that can land on a runway. I think with time space flight will differentiate to using a space planes for moving people around and super heavy lift rockets for putting payload in orbit and farther out.

[@thomasciarlariello3228]

My dad's brother who had designed a Grumman Lunar lander had designed an external ramjet spaceplane for Boeing.

[@cairoakehurst1172]

I am working on this right now. We are integrating Earth into space with similar vehicles. In a plan to have a base for all prospective operations.

[@4DCResinSmoker]

Most likely the best Video I’ve ever seen produced regarding the Skylon!

[@slevinshafel9395]

19:32 that is nice concept. grabity because rotation and slow rotation because is huge circle nice nice. only a problem micrometeorits on the glass.

[@KingLutherQ]

This is a great video. Very entertaining and educational. But.... Payload for space launch (LEO 400km): Starship = 91,000 kg Falcon 9 = 23,000 kg Skylon = 10,000 kg

[@iancash3559]

Excellent video. I'm curious where you found the combined Starship/Skylon animation at 17:15. Please keep these videos coming - you deserve 117K+ subscribers! Subscribed and shared.

[@LivakProductions]

@Hazegrayart KZbin. Video Link: kzbin.info/www/bejne/o4DUeqGFmpqabs0

[@iancash3559]

@@LivakProductions Thanks - hadn't seen that one before!

[@GSF404]

Great animation, but not sure it's all that accurate. Look at the exhaust plume from the RS-25 engines, it's almost invisible. Given that SABRE is a LH2/LOX engine just the same, I doubt there'd be a huge plume of blue flames like that. Cool though!

[@sebastiaomendonca1477]

I don't see spaceplanes and reusable rockets as mutually exclusive. To me it makes more sense to have them compliment eachother. Spaceplanes are great for things like crewed flights, they can take off of any regular airport and ingress and egress people quickly, as well as fly comfortably. Mulitstage reusable rockets excel at heavy cargo. The thing you're missing about Starship is that its being designed with turnaround and stacking in mind. They will attempt to catch Superheavy while landing with the launch tower precisely because that makes it easier to put back on the pad

[@alexeytsybyshev9459]

Producing actual launch vehicles is way harder than taking an idea and just implementing it. There are a lot of considerations that only become obvious when you get your hands dirty. Some of them can be: engine reusability (is it possible to make a spaceplane engine easily reusable?); heat protection (which was the bane of the Shuttle, and it seems pretty much inevitable for spaceplanes due to the necessity of sharp-edged wings); general complexity and price of manufacture. Some of the comparisons in the video also do not make a lot of sense. For example, comparing Starship to a spaceplane, neither of them can save the crew from an explosion, and both can glide down if there is no thrust (Starship would need some way of arresting the final bit of momentum though, but the same goes for the spaceplane, what would be its terminal velocity?). The re-stacking of Starship+Super Heavy is also supposed to be done mostly automatically by an integrated crane, not by some crews in an army of cranes, so the complexity of reflight is not so different.

[@Chris.Davies]

I love the idea of SSTOs and RBCC engines (Rocket-Based Combined Cycle) such as SABRE. However, we've spent an awful lot of money and many decades studying the concept, and so we know a lot about SSTOs. And what we know is that they absolutely suck. :( They just don't work. The necessity of making everything ultra-robust and low maintenance once again makes the craft too heavy for reality. Now, I would absolutely LOVE for the Brits to somehow steal a march on the world, with Skylon, but the simple facts are that such a craft requires billions in development, and probably a decade of constant work to create a test item. But the chances of it working as advertised is practically zero point zero, sadly. Keep working on the idea - sure - but until billions are devoted to this idea, it will remain like fusion: always 20 years away.

[@LPFR52]

I think even if SABRE is able to meet its design objectives - which is still not yet a certainty - it would still be more efficient to use it in a multi-stage launch vehicle (which could be a multi-stage spaceplane) rather than SSTO. The only benefit of SSTO is that you only have a single vehicle to manage, but that comes at the cost of much lower payload efficiency and thus higher fuel costs. We have seen in the aviation industry that Airliners will happily replace their fleets of large aircraft such as the 747 and A380 with larger fleets of smaller but more fuel efficient aircraft. So as the space industry matures, I predict that fuel costs will become the limiting factor rather than the logistical costs of operating SSTO vs. multi-stage vehicles.

[@t.3465]

@@LPFR52 I think eventually that we will have efficient fuels (like He3 fusion) that render staging obsolete, so when that happens, the SSTO industry will probably face an overnight boom and they will likely prevail for the rest of history. Even if not so, we are (even currently) capable of creating a perfectly efficient airplane that can fly up to an 80km-high skyhook to get a nice boost of energy in interplanetary travel. This would reduce an Earth-Mars trip’s time by 70%, and reduce the scale of the vehicle by ~90% (since you would barely need any fuel tanks). Of course, we would need conventional rockets to construct the skyhook, but once it’s up and operating, talk about efficient, luxurious, and cheap space travel!

[@geryz7549]

I'd say Starship is, in a sense, a spaceplane. I mean think about it, it has a lifting body (e.g. fins) and the re-entry procedure is a lot more like that of, say, the space shuttle than that of a capsule. While not the kind of air-breathing horizontal take-off and landing SSTO you're talking about, it qualifies as a space plane in a lot of ways

[@maximilianwimmer627]

Yes it has fins, but so do other rockets and their job isn't really to provide lift but rather to induce drag and thus move the centre of gravity. This turns the rocket into an self-stabilizing system so that the rocket doesn't flip when trying to fly in a straight line. It also allows the rocket to steer within an atmosphere beyond the gimbal range of the rocket engines. And so far, both in CGI and real demonstrations, Starship always is shown as being able only to start and land upright (like a rocket) and not on its side (like a plane).

[@thebozo-m4j]

the fins move the the center of aerodynamic pressure, not the center of gravity

[@mmb3006]

Haha can't wait to see that runway on the moon and Mars

[@8797lilly]

Truly a great video, you changed my mind on space planes. One quick question though, how would a space plane handle re-entry heating? Would it be better or worse than the starship belly flop maneuver?

[@Thumblegudget]

Thanks for the compliment. An SSTO spaceplane like HOTOL or Skylon is basically a flying empty hydrogen tank at re-entry, so it is actually very large but light. It therefore experiences a much more benign reentry than the Space Shuttle. The Starship design also makes very good use of this principle. As for the belly flop manoeuvre, all I will say is that NASA lost zero prototypes gliding the space shuttle to a runway landing. I think it's fair to say that the belly flop is inherently more difficult to achieve safely.

[@dapeach06]

@@Thumblegudget weight has nothing to do with reentry heat, it's about speed. The way to reduce reentry heating is having enough delta-v left over to slow reentry speed. Otherwise, you'll have the same heating as any other spacecraft

[@Thumblegudget]

@@dapeach06 Weight and surface area. Ballistic coefficient.

[@sycodeathman]

@@Thumblegudget So far SpaceX has had no issue controlling the belly flop mode of aerodynamic descent. In fact since Starship is effectively just a cylinder with a cone on one end, it is actually passively stable flying sideways through the air, like any other cylindrical object. The flaps really serve to move the center of dynamic pressure and tilt the vehicle away from its passively stable 90 degree angle of attack, in order to adjust the angle of air shunting which allows the vehicle to control its trajectory.

[@Chris.Davies]

You can't operate a Skylon from a regular airport for noise reasons, most likely. You might be able to make a SABRE engine work, but you won't be able to make it quiet. It requires dedicated runways, launch, maintenance and processing centers. Ideally, the factory will be close by. One of the excellent things about Skylon is that it will land softly, horizontally, and with completely empty fuel tanks making it less likely to commit RUD when it touches down. Unlike a Starship.

[@carterpavloski9276]

eventually it will be made quieter and building a spaceport is easier then building a launch center like Kennedy