ROOM
60
Astronautics
A
ll orbital space launchers in service today
can fly only once and this expendability is
the root cause of the high cost and
economic risk of spaceflight. It is
unimaginable that we would scrap a car after only a
few hours on the road – the average per day cost of
owning and driving it would shoot up to around a
thousand times more than it actually is. Much the
same applies to aviation. If aeroplanes could fly only
once before being taken out of service, the cost of a
flight across the Atlantic would be roughly one
thousand times more than it is. And likewise,
reusable launchers could reduce the cost of
spaceflight by about one thousand times, given high
enough traffic levels for economies of scale.
Just as steam locomotives transformed land
transport, so spaceplanes will transform spaceflight
and thereby make a huge contribution to life on our
planet. Imagine a new space age in which a fleet of
50-seat aeroplanes that can fly to space and offer
routine and affordable transport to and from orbit.
These spaceplanes look similar to the Anglo-French
The very high cost of sending people and payloads into space has hardly
changed in real terms over the 55 years of human spaceflight - largely due
to the use of launchers that are based on ballistic missile technology and
that can therefore be used only once. But back in the 1960s many aircraft
companies had feasible, if challenging, designs for fully orbital spaceplanes
which were never realised. What would then have been very difficult is now
more easily achievable and, if consensus can be reached on how best to go
about building an airliner that can fly into space, it might usher in a new
affordable space age within as little as 15 years.
David Ashford
Managing Director,
Bristol Spaceplanes,
United Kingdom
Spaceplane rationale –
a new way of thinking
Early US Space Shuttle
designs were fully
reusable but after budget
cuts NASA had to choose
between full reusability or
a smaller true spaceplane.
Its decision to develop a
largely expendable vehicle
probably held up low-cost
access to space by at least
three decades.
NASA
