the project is still in the works I haven't given up im still working on refining my design and saving up for another test model and also exploring the concept of furthering this morphing wing system further with a combined morphing fuselage where you go from a stol type low altitude aircraft to a hypersonic wave riding fuselage to a reentry vehicle fuselage and back to stol configuration another holy grail on top of having a single stage to orbit space plane I believe this is the direction to go to further the project for a ship to brake orbit my currant published design concept is still very viable and does do some morphing l left out a front spoiler or trim device and details on control surfaces I still have to test going forward with more complex systems and components 3d printing and design will be even more extensive
I been searching through all my hard drives flash drives and sd cards and digging out the goods looking for some of my best space plane works that are worth detailing further in the upcoming weeks and months I will be taking them and cleaning them up finishing them out adding more details and descriptions and explanations and testing some stuff out before I start building the next more detailed validation prototype realizing this is going to take some work im wanting to also hit this project from a few different angels as mentioned earlier with the advances in 3d printing I am going to use what I got so far and start from scratch on a 3d print friendly version from the ground up the advantages to this are many but the big one hear is builders can out source the ideal situation being to buy the harder to build components a piece at a time like a kit plane reducing a lot of fabrication time to assembly so we I looking at this from a lot of different angles how can I fast track this project make it blast off to sort of speak im not getting any younger just getting fatter and I want to break gravity with some hot super models and get in the 369mile high club I got the hang glider harness and bungee chords ready to go alright lets cut the bs and get back to business im not the know it all I don't have all the answers someone out there mite but I doubt it if they do there keeping to there self so where's all the talent well for starters right hear on hackaday i.o looking at all the projects there's a bunch of out right genus's right here so if you look at my projects page I started a parallel space plane project for every body to join in chine in participate you can just go hog wild on it after all space is the new wild wild west so where else can we get some brain farts the aerospace industry otherwise known as the industrial military complex oh shit the star lords going over to the dark side traitor bastard now just hold on one second before you start getting your torches and rope hear me out the industrial military complex where talking about every aircraft aerospace company and all there supporting company's both world wide collectively and individually the bottom line is the hard truth that hardly anyone talks about all these corporations and all the people in them from the stock holders to the ceos to the guy mowing the grass the designers the sectary's the lunch lady are participating in a massive endeavor to kill other human beings alright that's harsh but at the rock bottom line that's the absolute truth this is a massive world wide undertaking where the end result ends up being the whole sale killing of human beings how stupid is that for whatever reason and usually the reason is bull shit these are the serious enablers but have to be considered just as responsible its like if someone robes a bank and kills everyone in the bank the getaway driver gets charged with murder to but when you have thousands of getaway drivers its ok right like then you have hundreds politicians waging tribal warfare does that not spread out the blame I think not so the point im getting at who better to try and co opt turn than these misguided souls use there evil genius that have kept the world one push button away from nuclear Armageddon to finally man up and help humanity but how the hell you plan on doing that these are some serous greedy rotten bastards exactly just point out to them how much more money they can make enabling a open source space economy and that's what I been doing going down the list boeing spacex Grumman lockhed relativity space scaled composites im just getting started think of it like this out of the hundreds of world wide corporations even if none sign on the word will eventfully get out to some employees so say if I get one employee or past employee from even one percent of the world wide system I would be able to rival or surpass even the giants of the aerospace industry why because where not going to turn anyone down everyone can participate
here's a couple of pics showing the black raven on reentry the first one shows dragging a balute basically a large high temp reinforced balloon that's inflated before reentry creating more aerodynamic drag the second represents skip reentry a type of airo braking technique where you bounce or skip off the atmosphere in stages to reduce heat build up I would like to combine both to try to get the coolest reentry as possible
here's a couple of pics of jettisoning cargo pods in low earth orbit or near space the second pic shows how a orbital craft can come in and do a pickup or transfer the orange ball is a balute decelerator for manned pod incase it misses pickup and has to do a hot reentry
as previously discussed before I started wading through to much bull shit we where talking air to air refueling a refueling probe will almost be a necessity these are proven systems easily to reverse engineer with two most common variants one the navy type one type used by air force a duel type probe would seem to make more sense or a common one but does the government make sense? what im saying is using a common probe would add some extra redundancy just in case one day they throw you a bone and actually help out but most of all ease of reverse engineering these space plane refueling probes will retract under the top aero cover out of the way for reentry also as previously stated the best way to refuel a space plane is your buddy's space plane this would be one of the most important collaborations to keep everyone's cost down so of course having a probe design that can be reconfigured and lengthened for pumping fuel would be desirable. Ok your toped off and ready for the big push it all depends on what engines your packing say at first you can only get your hands on one surplus jet engine and you made it this far the max altitude you can only go so high with a air breathing jet you could try to squeeze more out by retro fitting some type after burner setup or introducing some type oxidationer like liquid nitrous highly risky and more complicated as a note im quite parcel to using a rocket that uses jet A and liquid nitrous. but say your just using a jet as your primary propulsion for now all you got so far is a very high performance high altitude aircraft but you can still launch remember those pods I was talking about there ideal for jettisoning at extreme altitude and could very well reach low earth orbit with minimal rockets either solid or liquid this methods like the poor mans stratolauncher the advantages are a little less risky for initial flight ops less reentry burn quicker turnaround. as a note lets look at some ruff expectations for these type craft all depending on configuration engines and flight geometry hopefully im looking to launch around 1000lb maybe 1500lb a striped down non manned autonomous remote control bird with a high performance duel cycle air breathing rocket using jet A and liquid nitrous might get 2000-2500lb in orbit . lets talk other options o yell this designs a modular beast designed to morph at this time your wing pack is out the main inner wings are ideal for hanging drop tanks or solid propellant ascension rockets.
I added my mars raven space plane concept you can 3d print ,modify test on this model I have glider wings in canard configuration and a tail set up for more lift in breaking my rule of keeping the tail strait for reentry this is just a concept open to you to test and develop further I can see Burt Rutan shaking his head now and saying that boy needs to go back to canard school. lets talk flight geometries and also the many and varied uses and implications of a open source space plane a open source space program and a truly free open source space fairing society and culture. first off trying to build and fly a experimental space plane and launch your ass in to outer space. there's nothing more dangerous more crazy more inspiring more allsome than that endeavor it would almost be akin to your next evolution for humanity all you need are giant balls made out of steel whether your a man or a woman and be able to spit death in the eye. but for some people just wanting to go up for a joy ride look at the pretty planet sight see I would say that would be almost a crime the black ravens made for hauling shit its the Toyota pickup truck of space planes the Conestoga wagon for the new pioneers with this birds lifting body it has a huge internal volume so once in orbit and fuel expended and tankage is reconfigured the options are only limited by your imagination for off world operations so how to get there. as said this is a flying space boat made for water take off and landings so we will start from there the flight geometry's all depend on what your trying to accomplish but most of all propulsion propulsion propulsion o that small little detail no motor you have a funny looking very slow sail boat .with a maximum fuel load and using only a single jet engine your options are varied you could use two jet engines and still yet not have enough power to get up on step you could use small detachable or retractable hydrofoils to break suction with the water you could use a single lower powered jet just enough to gain altitude and fire up the rocket and turn it off for take off one of the easiest is to takeoff with a minimal fuel load and do some air to air refueling or any combination that gets the job done once airborne your golden your the master of the universe you only got 300 or so miles strait up to go and your home. air to air refueling you almost certainly will need to use it unless elon starts selling some high efficiency duel cycle air breathing/vacuum operating rockets for the kit space plane market hay there making flame throwers seams rockets for home build space craft would be less off base but I would still love to have one of his flame throwers you never know when you mite have to barbeque some aliens hope there good eaten. no matter what combination engines you use your probably going to air to air refuel. who does that oh the air force lets just call them up hay guys im up here at 100,000ft can you swing by and top me off right. lets talk open source space culture for a minute I just mentioned two possible malty billion dollar niche business in the last six lines some one could jump on kit rocket engines for the home builder and a private high altitude space plane refueling company these are just the tip of the iceberg when you develop a open source space program what's the best way to air to air refuel a space plane another space plane in the open source model you can take the various collaborations you jackoffs do on the computer to the real world and beyond. just right here on this hackaday site I see enough raw talent and outright genus's to start and develop more than a hundred space planes/programs with niche specialty's and corporations I can see differing groups from all over the world collaborating to help each other to achieve there goals im not talking about some dumb ass star fleet some pansy ass cum by ya ideology what im saying is when enough people start to develop a space culture and economy moores law could start to kick in just like with computers and before you know it we are superluminal faster than light then the biggest real-estate boom of all time starts trump franchise planets anyone oh maybe not but hell why not anything's possible.
lets talk flight controls as can be seen from the cad model this bird uses twin tail fins. that particular tail fin is not the final version I kind of cheesed that one out the details and theory on the tail I am keeping my tails well in board to keep them as cool as possible un like other designs as they have them on the outer edges of the fuselage I made that decision taking the home build nature of the ship in to account the root or base of the tail will house the actuators to move the fin on the final version im using a much larger base which will act as a stationery fin in its self for redundancy in case the moveable fin fails you will still have some stability also im debating on having any camber to the fin like other designs or have a adjustable system im using two split panels on top and bottom for altitude control with smaller trim tabs on outer edges lets go back to the tail for a minute as said im using a canard wind pack these canards usually don't employ a traditional rear tail as the dual wing acts as the attitude control this has caused problems in some canard planes with uncontrollable unrecoverable spin with the heavy fuel hauling nature of the bird I was pondering having a extendable tail and fin system on a retractable boom so that it extends out the back of the ship and retracts either under the wing pact fairing or on top in its currant position a boom system could tie in with the wing pact rail but were talking a lot of extra weight these options can be explored in fight test scale models but im leaning to keep it simple and lite lets talk in orbit flight control most space craft use a thruster system small reaction rockets built in to the ship in different areas to move the ship in differing directions some have quit a few plumed in all over the bird and in some places that could cause problems on reentry my proposal would be a thruster system mounted on a retractable boom possibly the air to air refueling boom or a robot arm the advantage is it can be retracted under the wing pact fairing for protection you can use fewer thrusters easer to repair replace and maintain but most of all weight savings. think the early space walkers had a hand held thruster system to move around with before they came up with there fancy jet pack.
starlord
