papodidi
Geek
China plans world’s biggest spaceplane to carry 20 tourists
Happy landings: the spaceplane should be able to take off and land up to 50 times Mr Pengxin Han et al. from CALT
Happy landings: the spaceplane should be able to take off and land up to 50 times Mr Pengxin Han et al. from CALT
Even China can’t resist the lure of space tourism. A state-backed firm is developing a gigantic spaceplane, New Scientist can reveal. The plane may one day fly up to 20 passengers to the edge of space – significantly more people than any other commercial spaceflight firm has pledged to fly to date.
Plane sailing? The Chinese winged rocket will be able to carry 20 passengersMr Pengxin Han et al. from CALT
“The vehicle will take off vertically like a rocket and land on the runway automatically without any ground or on-board intervention,” Han says. It will burn liquid methane and liquid oxygen.
Han’s team has designed two versions of their rocket plane. The first has a mass of 10 tonnes and a wingspan of 6 metres. This one, he says, should be able to fly five people to an altitude of 100 kilometres – where space officially begins – at speeds up to Mach 6, giving 2 minutes of weightlessness.
But a scaled up 100-tonne version, with a 12-metre wingspan, could fly 20 people to 130 kilometres at Mach 8, giving 4 minutes of weightlessness. That larger spacecraft is fast enough to help deliver small satellites into orbit, with the help of a small rocket stage add-on that would sit on top of the vehicle. And that payload-carrying capability will reduce tourist ticket prices, says Han. They also intend to make it reusable, so each plane should be good for up to 50 flights.
Test flights soon
Tests are advanced, Han adds. “The test flights will be finished in the next two years, because almost all of the ground tests have been finished and all the subsystems of the test vehicle worked very well.”
...
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...rlds-biggest-spaceplane-to-carry-20-tourists/
