Space

One of the major objectives of the study is the definition of potential payloads to be carried on a spacecraft bus, including payloads proposed for the Mirrabooka programme and new remote sensing experiments. Both the Mineral Physics Division of CSIRO and the Centre for Remote Sensing at the University of NSW are considered to offer world class capability in these areas.

Other objectives include the study of low cost spacecraft to carry the proposed payloads and also potential low cost launch vehicles. The University of NSW is expected to contribute with experience in the area of high efficiency solar cells, CSIRO’s Radiophysics Division with high gain antennas and AUSSAT with operations experience.

HdH view the local development of a complete applications spacecraft as being a far more effective way of developing an Australian space industry, when compared to participation in large overseas projects. Such programmes by their very nature exclude minor participants from the major interdisciplinary exercises such as system integration, this will in turn subject minor participants to constraints which may further reduce the scope of their contributions. A further difficulty arises as such programmes are at the mercy of overseas launch schedules and as demonstrated by the problems the Americans have had with the Shuttle programme, this can hurt.

Twenty years have elapsed since the launch of WRESAT and it is most encouraging to see something happening again.

Re-Entry Air Data System Feasibility Study Contract Awarded

British Aerospace Australia and the University of Queensland have been awarded a contract to study the feasibility of developing a Re-Entry Air Data System for vehicles re-entering the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds. Such a system is analogous to the air data systems carried by modern aircraft with fly-by-wire flight control systems and would provide clean data to the on-board computers in a hypersonic Shuttle vehicle. Hotol, Hermes, the US National Aerospace Plane and even the Space Shuttle are targets for this class of system.

The contract provides for engineers from British Aerospace Australia and the University of Queensland to conduct studies in the US and Europe, with the objective of gaining insight at the early development stages in vehicle design.

The hypersonic shock tube at Queensland University will be used to calibrate an instrument package to be eventually developed by British Aerospace. The participants hope to commercially market the end product.

Darpa’s X-30 National Aero-Space Plane Project Approaching Selection of Contractors

The US X-30 National Aero-Space Plane (NASP) programme is approaching the concept validation phase in both powerplant and airframe design. The NASP programme is aimed at developing a technology demonstrator with hypersonic cruise capability and the ability to climb to orbit as a single vehicle. This technology would then be scaled up for the design of the proposed ‘Orient Express’ hypersonic transport and proposed Shuttle replacements. The US$3,000 million programme is the largest research aircraft development programme ever conducted in the US and involves NASA, DoD and private industry.

The project is managed by DARPA, with NASA, USAF, USN and SDI programme directors based at DARPA in Washington and technical direction managed from the X-30 Joint Programme Office at Wright-Patterson AFB.

If no major difficulties are encountered, a final decision in 1989 will lead to the construction of two X-30 research aircraft that could fly as early as 1993. These would be 100 to 150ft long and have a gross takeoff weight, with full LH2 tanks, of about 200,000. Two crew members would be carried and the vehicles would be able to reach Mach 25 for orbital flight or maintain a sustained Mach 5 to 15 hypersonic cruise in the upper atmosphere.

The X-30 has seen a major growth in the application of advanced design techniques. Advanced computational fluid dynamics models have been run at the NASA Ames supercomputer facility. The Mach 8 limitation imposed by conventional full scale wind tunnels imposes the need to simulate the upper portions of the envelope in software. NASP is currently absorbing 30% of the AMES facility’s computational throughput, although the X-30 is eventually expected to dominate the workload of the facility.

Another factor forcing the use of the Ames facility is the degree of integration between the airframe and powerplant, this forces the need to look at many parts of the vehicle simultaneously. NASA Langley have carried out numerous tunnel experiments with subscale models up to speeds of Mach 20 in order to calibrate the computational fluid dynamic software model and thus gain more confidence in the computer predictions of the vehicle’s performance. Failure to calibrate computer models is common with naive users of computer-aided design techniques and has certainly served to slow the growth of this useful tool in industry.

Langley have also tested a ramjet at 3. 5 Mach and a scramjet (Supersonic Combustion RAMJET) inlet combustor has been listed beyond Mach 10 in a Calapan Corp tunnel. In both instances, data was sought to calibrate the software model.

Three private contractors are preparing for the NASP engine concept review and two will be selected for the concept validation phase this August. Pratt & Whitney and General Electric both received US$30 million in funding to reach this point in the programme, with Rocketdyne committing US$10 million of its own funds to participate. The winning contractors will receive US$145 million to design, build and test a full-scale engine.

Five airframe contractors, Boeing, GD, Lockheed, MDC and Rockwell, are competing for the airframe concept validation contracts to be awarded this October. Three contractors will then be invited to build wing leading edges, demonstrate active cooling technology and fabricate the large lightweight liquid hydrogen tanks under the US$25. 5 million contracts. Industry sources in the US suggest that the NASP technology base may also be used to design an SR-71 replacement as a strategic recce platform as well as the more publicised civilian passenger transports.