A lot of info on their plans. You know, the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft was modified with twin tails for a reason. Hope that vehicle doesn’t clip the vertical stabilizer.
4 thoughts on “Swiss Space Systems”
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A lot of info on their plans. You know, the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft was modified with twin tails for a reason. Hope that vehicle doesn’t clip the vertical stabilizer.
Comments are closed.
My heart leapt for a moment after misreading / inverting the post’s phrase as ” Shuttle Aircraft Carrier” — a space-going vehicle to extend strategic power via launch-from-orbit of atmospheric military craft? REALLY?
Oh.
No, not really.
🙁
I don’t see their shuttle project going anywhere. Other than Scaled Composites no one seems to have half a clue of how to make such a system work. Even Scaled has had its fair share of problems with SS2. But I wish them good luck.
The An-225, which the Soviet Union made to carry Buran, also had twin tails for much the same reason as Rand said.
The 747 that transported the Space Shuttle still had its stock vertical stabilizer. It added two additional vertical surfaces at the ends of the horizontal stabilator to increase yaw stability and perhaps improve pitch control through the endplate effect.
NASA did wind tunnel tests in the 1970s to verify that the Shuttle would separate cleanly for the glide tests. It did, so long as the Shuttle’s angle of incidence and the 747’s dive angles were correct. If the Swiss project progresses, I’m sure they’ll also do wind tunnel tests to verify a clean separation.
As the previous poster noted, the carrier has a triple tail because the large bulk of the shuttle disrupts the airflow around the vertical stabilizer and causes control issues.
Rand: if you want, I have a current (ie 3 day old) photo of the shuttle carrier 747 tail.