/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12643059
>It would inflate a giant balloon of sorts to prevent terminal velocity on reentry so it wouldn't burn up in the atmosphere.
like ULA's SMART idea, you mean?

>>12643061
venture star was pretty thicc

>>12607061
I really truly wish this was our actual shuttle replacement, ready to go soon as Shuttle was retired with a fleet of Venture Stars

We've one backwards, to CAPSULES fuuck

>>12474955
LARGE

chonkstar

>>12346918
What's Jaxa up to these days? If I remember right they're working on another asteroid sampling mission after the hayabusa was such a success

>>12346939
please let this be true. It's bullshit that the dream chaser got shafted for more boeing bullshit

>>12346931
venture star looked cooler. F.

>The failure during a test of the X-33's complex, multi-lobe composite-structure cryogenic hydrogen tank was one of the main reasons for the cancellation of both the X-33 and the VentureStar
*ahem*
FUCK CARBON FIBER
AND FUCK HYDROGEN

>>12025946
its like a chonkier, chromier, larger Venture Star

>>11731127
>That said, they should have fast-tracked an iterative Shuttle 2.0

They were on that track until congression infetterance

>>11707556

>>8000526
>The VentureStar could be built with today's technology, they just had tank materials problems in the late 90s that we've actually solved.
The X-33 could be built with today's technology, you mean. The tank materials were the reason they couldn't build the subscale, *suborbital* technology demonstrator.

The tank wasn't the only problem with VentureStar. I mean, look at the size of this fucking thing. It was only ever estimated to reduce launch costs over the actual space shuttle by a factor of ten, IF everything went according to plan. That's equivalent to the expendable version of Falcon Heavy.

The claims about payload and cost were napkin-sketch level. The engineers working on the design kept lowering the payload as they got closer to a buildable system. When NASA caught on that their payload was evaporating, they made a fixed payload requirement part of the development contract. Then the size of the vehicle started creeping up.

It was a marginal concept. They couldn't design it conservatively. Even if it worked, it would probably have cost a lot to operate, or they would have suffered frequent vehicle losses, because they couldn't tolerate small irregularities or the extra mass required to make replacement parts easy to swap out.