With funding from NASA's Space Launch Initiative (SLI), Andrews Space & Technology's approach to RLV development has lead the company to a two-stage-to-orbit concept that would save weight for HTOHL by producing oxygen from air in flight. Once the LOX tanks are filled at rather low altitude (about 10 km) with rather pure oxygen on turbofan power, the motherplane would accelerate and then launch a smaller second stage onto orbit. LOX is generated using liquid hydrogen as a coolant and as a fuel after heating with the incoming air in modified hydrogen-fuelled turbofans. To do the work on the NASA contract, Andrews S&T has, for example, teamed with Pratt & Whitney for turbofan work and UT Corp. for work on air separation technologies. Rather surprisingly perhaps, this in-flight oxygen collection concept has also been investigated since a few years under ESA contracts by the Royal Military Academy of Belgium (RMA) and other Belgian contributors. RMA has just now received new contracts from ESA under the auspices of the Belgian Federal Scientific Services in order to develop hardware for this rather exotic technology, i.e. to do work on a rotary distillation separator and on advanced heat exchangers. Experiments on the influence of a LOX collection plant "integrated" with the turbofan are still on the list of desired work to be done in the future. For all that, the RMA has teamed with Techspace Aero, the von Karman Institute and the University of Liege. The differences between the US and "Belgian" concepts will be outlined in this paper. This paper will present a summary and a comparison of the views on both sides of the ocean. It will show which critical technologies have been selected to be studied and implemented in Europe and why and also explain the trade-off done in these choices regarding the available funding. It will also show the latest developments on hardware and test installations and the perspectives on the ESA side. Vehicle performance and engine performance with hydrogen fuel will also be presented with rather details.


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    Titel :

    Technology development for in-flight oxygen collection TSTO's


    Beteiligte:
    Hendrick, P. (Autor:in) / Verstraete, D. (Autor:in) / Bizzarri, D. (Autor:in) / Ngendakumana, P. (Autor:in) / Breugelmans, F. (Autor:in) / Strengnart, M. (Autor:in)


    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2003


    Format / Umfang :

    6 Seiten, 7 Quellen



    Medientyp :

    Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)


    Format :

    Print


    Sprache :

    Englisch




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