User:Doolittle

TransAtmospheric Vehicles

Transatmospheric Vehicles (Or TAVs) are envisioned as a combination of space-craft and aircraft (a spaceplane) capable of achieving low earth orbital (LEO) insertions and delivering payloads to long-distance targets over a short amount of time. In this way, the military and utilitarian applications of Transatmospheric Vehicles have warranted enough potential to garner several research projects by various orginizations. TAVs are a type of proposed Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV), as opposed to an Expendable Launch Vehicle (ELV), such as the multi-stage rockets used to carry the Space Shuttle into orbit. TAVs are generally imagined as single-stage, manned, air-breathing, winged crafts, although there has been research done into rocket-powered TAVs. TAVs are meant as singe stage to orbit craft. One research program that looked into liquid fuel rocket-powered TAVs was the United States Airforce's 1978 AMSC (Advanced Manned Spaceflight Capability) program. The AMSC was promising enough to be broken up into program stages operated throughout the early to mid-nineteen-eighties: The Science Dawn (1982), the Science Realm (1984), and the Have Region (1986) stages. The AMSC proposed that their TAV utilize revamped SSMEs (Space Shuttle Main Engines) from the shuttle, altered for horizontal operation. In 1986, the classified Advanced Manned Spaceflight Capability research gave way to the National Aerospace Plane project, in which TAV spaceplanes using air-breathing propulsion systems were favored over their rocket-powered counterparts. As its name implies, the NASP project still favored winged, manned, single-stage platforms for Transatmospheric Vehicles.

Bill Rutan's SpaceShipOne is a very recent realization of a Transatmospheric Vehicle. It is a two-staged launch system, comprised of a carrier craft and a orbital craft, respectively named White Knight and SpaceShipOne.

Notes to self: Solid-State refers to the traditional rocket's propensity to utilize solid fuels. However, I was mistaken in calling cryogenic oxygen a fuel and a solid. It is generally used as a coolant, and it is a liquid (I believe). Usually called (On Wiki) "Solid Fuel" rockets.

Air-breathing refers to aircraft propulsion systems (such as jet engines) that use external, atmospheric oxygen in their operation. Essentially, they suck air.

Sources: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/tav.htm, image: http://www.abo.fi/~mlindroo/SpaceLVs/tav_r80a.jpg

Teir One Homepage: http://scaled.com/projects/tierone/index.htm

X-30 Wiki Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-30

SSTO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_stage_to_orbit