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Aviation History
2003
2003 - 1755.PDF
Future of Flight Spaceflight REUS/ LE REALITY Routine access to space has proved elusive. As the cost becomes clear questions are being asked about the need to make spacecraft truly reusable. GRAHAM WARWICK / WASHINGTON DC Wb-S THE FIRST 100 YEARS Spaceflight Goddard launches first uid-propellant rocket . Goddard tests gyroscopi cally controlled, fin-guided rocket First launch of German A-4 (V-2) ballistic missile First US two-stage rocket (Bumper-WAC) launched 1957 First artificial Earth satellite (Soviet Sputnik-1) First solar-powered satellite (US Vanguard) 1959 First space craft reaches the moon (Soviet Luna-2) 1961 First manned spaceflight (Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin) 1964 First geosta tionary-orbit satellite (US Synoom-3) 1965 First spacewalk (Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov) France launches first satellite 1966 First spacecraft dock- jj ing (US Gemini-8 and Agena-8) <7 1969 First manned land ing on the moon (US Apollo 11) Soviet N1 moon rocket explodes on launch pad FLIGHT 1970 First soft landing on Venus (Soviet Venera 7) China and Japan launch first satel lites 1971 First space sta tion (Soviet Salyutl) First soft land ing on Mars (Soviet Mars 3) US Skylab space station launched (re-enters 1979) Soviet Soyuz and US Apollo space craft dock 1979 First European Ariane launch Spaceflight is substantially younger than flight itself - half a century younger - but its pioneers were dreaming of voyaging to the moon and beyond even as the Wright brothers made their first flights 100 years ago. There has been significant progress in the 46 years since the Soviet Union put the first artificial satellite into orbit around the Earth, but the dreams of spaceflight pioneers such as Robert Goddard and Wernher von Braun remain unfulfilled. The truth is that spaceflight is hard, arguably the hardest thing man has tried to accomplish. And if spaceflight is diffi cult, then safe, routine, commercially viable manned spaceflight is almost impos sible - at least for another few decades. The disintegration of the Space Shuttle Columbia during re-entry was a setback for manned spaceflight, but it could also prove to be a milestone in the development of reusable launch vehicles (RLVs). The Columbia Accident Investigation Board is likely to criticise NASA for han dling the experimental Shuttle like an operational vehicle after only a few test flights. Columbia was the first of five orbiters to fly, in 1981, and had flown 28 times in just over 20 years when it crashed on the 113th Shuttle mission. It was the sec ond fatal loss of the world's first reusable spacecraft, following the Challenger explosion in 1986. Aircraft, in contrast, fly for thousands of hours before they are certificated and delivered to the customer, and accumulate tens of thou sands of hours a year once in service. Aircraft-like operations are the holy grail of reusable spacecraft developers, but any designer with an RLV on the drawing board must be asking how it will be possi ble to prove the vehicle's safety and relia bility without incurring the prohibitive cost of many development test flights. The alternative is to accept the risk of placing a relatively unproven design into service, then drive the risk down as the vehicle matures. But as two decades of Shuttle experience shows, risk reduces only slowly, if at all, when flight rates are low. The Columbia accident came barely months after NASA had restructured its space transport plan, deciding to keep the Shuttle upgraded and in service for up to two more decades and launching develop ment of an orbital space plane (OSP) for International Space Station (ISS) crew return and transfer, while delaying development of a second-generation RLV by at least five years. The latest plan calls for the Shuttle to operate until 2015 at least, with a decision in 2010 on whether to extend its life www.fliqhtinternational.com FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 8-14 JULY 2003 29
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