TS-116
Study of a Sea Launch Concept of Aerospace Shuttle with Heavy Class Ekranoplane as Takeoff and Landing Assist
Eduard A.AFRAMEEV*, Atexander V.NEBYLOV**, Nikolai P. SAVICHENKO***, Nobuyuki TOMITA****, Yasushi YOSHIDA*****
ABSTRACT
There is no doubt that the sea launch of the space vehicles is a perspective way to inject a payload into the Earth orbit. Besides, the interest for aerospace systems of new structure is increased according to the development of technique. Horizontal start of aerospace shuttle is one of the problems to be studied further. A concept of Horizontal Sea Launch and Landing of Aerospace Shuttle with Heavy Class Ekranoplane (Wing-in-ground effect planes) as for takeoff and landing assist is developed in the paper. Such type of takeoff allows to use the advantages of launch from the equatorial region and to provide momentum for aerospace shuttle to achieve the necessary speed for motion in the atmosphere. A possibilities of landing of aerospace shuttle on ekranoplane when it returns into atmosphere are also provided. The special properties and advantages of indicating start system are studied in the paper.
Key Words: ekranoplane, aerospace plane, sea launch, docking.
1. INTRODUCTION
World ocean is widely involved in an orb of various activity of the man. Its huge water areas allow to decide some relevant technological problems of the mankind on qualitative higher level. One of such problems is the creation and exploitation of advanced systems for the outer space exploration.
The objective reasons for the world ocean use for space systems development are connected to a capability to the lower energy spending for injection a payload into space at the expense of start of space vehicles from equatorial latitudes, to eliminate disposal of land territories in zones of dip of rocket spent stages, to ensure the mobility of start system of and to extend regions of starts and also the range of orbit inclinations of space vehicles, to increase ecological and emergency safety of exploitation of space systems. Totally, the marine start can allow considerably below the cost of delivery of a payload into orbits. For example, as follows from Fig.1, at carry of space start of Russia from high latitudes, where its overland space ports are arranged, to regions of equator the value of payload injected by the same rockets increases 1,7-2 times.
At present the international marine buoyant space-rocket complex Sea Launch (Russia, USA, Ukraine, Norway), intended for implementation of unreusable rockets start in a vertical position, is operating already.
It is necessary to point out, however, that the greatest hopes to cheapen considerably the space start the specialists connect with creation of completely recoverable reusable aerospace airplanes (ASP). The intensive development of reusable space vehicles is conducted, within the framework of which the different versions of vertical and horizontal ASP start from overland space ports are esteemed.
From a surface of ocean with similar to Sea Launch gantries or specialized vessels it is possible to execute the vertical start reusable aerospace airplanes, as well, however the technically justified scheme of their returning is the horizontal landing to the applicable overland landing strip. Such scheme of operation of a space complex from a surface of ocean is represented as non-optimum for many reasons.
The present paper is dedicated practically to single version of implementation on the surface of ocean both horizontal start and horizontal landing of reusable space vehicles. This version of an aerospace system envisions the use of ekranoplane (Wing-in-ground craft - WIG) as a speed-up-receiving stage for start and reception of a reusable aerospace airplane.
In the earlier published papers [1,2,4,8], dedicated to this problem, the ekranoplanes with a large take-off mass - from 1500 up to 2000 tons - and aerospace airplanes of mass 600 - 800 tons were analyzed, and their creation may be the distant outlook for 5-7 years.
Fig. 1 Relative value of a payload injected into the orbit by rockets.
