Space Rider is a symbol of hope for a reusable spacecraft after the retirement of the Nasa Space Shuttle.
Ever since the NASA space shuttle was retired, we’ve had a shortage of reusable spacecraft. Could the European space agency’s Space Rider be the solution?
Spacecraft is an expensive technology. Such aircraft take decades to design, test, and build. Then, after being separated from the module that brought the crew back to earth, they were ‘thrown’ into space on their first and last mission.
How about we make a plane that can return to earth to be used again and again, going on mission after mission?
The earliest concept of an ordinary airplane-like spacecraft, or spaceplane, was dreamed up by German scientist Eugene Sänger in 1933. That dream moved to America decades later.
In 1959 and throughout 1960, the United States space agency (NASA) and the US Air Force (USAF), with the help of Sänger’s efforts, launched the X-15 experimental probe. The spacecraft did not take off like a rocket or an airplane, but was dropped from a USAF bomber, a B-52. Once dropped, the X-15s can fire up their rocket engines and reach a height that the air force considers to be spaceflight, above 80.4km.
Space Rider can orbit as early as 2020.
The X-15 did not reach orbit because it was just an experiment. Since 1930, however, the X-15 was the closest technology to a spaceplane until NASA’s space shuttle was launched in 1981.
Announced by President Nixon a decade earlier, the shuttle would land like a regular airplane, but take off like a rocket. The dream of a spaceplane as comfortable as commercial planes is far from a reality and Nasa’s shuttle fleet was ‘retired’ in 2011.
A very similar Soviet design, the Buran, was also flown on test missions, but never reached orbit with a crew.
Spurred on by NASA’s shuttle, in 1980 the European Space Agency (ESA) began designing their own spaceplane, the Hermes.
The aircraft is designed to weigh 21 tons and is capable of carrying three astronauts and three tons of cargo to orbit up to a maximum altitude of 800km.
ESA’s latest spaceplane design, Space Rider, is not as ambitious as Hermes. It will only carry 800kg to an altitude of 400km. But it does show that hopes for a reusable spaceplane didn’t end with the retirement of NASA’s space shuttle.
Hermes is not alone. British defense company BAE Systems, formerly British Aerospace, also has their own spaceplane design, the Hotol. The plane will operate like a commercial aircraft, taking off and landing on its own runway. Meanwhile, Hermes is planned to be launched from the top of the ESA rocket, Ariane 5.
Hermes and Hotol never materialized, but they live on. ESA’s newest design spaceplane, Space Rider, will also launch from atop a smaller rocket, called Vega.
Like the IXV and Hermes, Space Rider will launch from French Guiana. But it will operate as a robotics laboratory in orbit with the function of, among other things, material testing. The experiment will be exposed to space when the Space Rider opens its cargo compartment door.
“Space Rider’s first and foremost mission is to demonstrate a range of technologies for various applications, from Earth observation to robotic exploration, science, telecommunications, and more, alongside research on microgravity,” said Space Rider and Vega rocket development program manager Giorgio. Tumino, told BBC Future.
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