The McDonnell Douglas Delta Clipper Team recently completed the initial flight testing of a one third scale version of an operational single stage to orbit vehicle. The Delta Clipper Experimental, DC-X, is a 14 m tall, totally reusable, liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen fueled test vehicle powered by four P&W RL-lOAS rocket engines. It has totally autonomous on board flight control and mission control systems; flight test mission requirements are simply added through software to the mission controller. The DC X is designed to explore and validate the low speed flight qualities of a vertical take-off and vertical landing spacecraft and its flight characteristics closely duplicate those predicted for the full scale DC-1 vehicle. The DC-1 vehicle would be capable of routinely flying people and/or cargo to and from space and would have a lift capacity for carrying 12 metric tons to low earth orbit.
Test Aspect of Single Stage to Orbit Systems
1995
7 pages
Report
No indication
English
Test Aspects of Single Stage to Orbit Systems
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