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Earth-Friendly Space Travel: Tether Launching

Friday, 10 August 2007

The Hypersonic Airplane Space Tether Orbital Launch (HASTOL) system is a NASA advanced concept for a low-cost, low-fuel, satellite launch system designed to provide an order of magnitude reduction in the cost of transporting people and materials from earth to orbit.

The HASTOL concept would offer low cost and low fuel consumption access to space for satellite launch as well as manned missions. The HASTOL system consists of several elements: an air-breathing subsonic to hypersonic airplane, (NASA has recently tested such vehicles), a tether system which then transports the payload from the intermediate point to orbit; and a grapple system for transferring the payload from the hypersonic vehicle to the tether.

The space tether uses either gravity or earth’s electromagnetic energy as a slingshot to accelerate payloads up to orbital speeds. Momentum-Exchange Tethers allow momentum and energy to be transferred between objects in space, enabling a tether system to toss spacecraft from one orbit to another. Check out space tethers at tethers.com.

The HASTOL concept minimizes, and perhaps even eliminates, the use of rockets for satellite launch, while limiting the design requirements for a reusable air-breathing hypersonic vehicle to Mach 10. The benefits which accrue from the eventual development of this system are a reusable “pipeline” from runways near the equator to Medium Earth Orbit (MEO).

Via: NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (which is unfortunately closing at the end of August)

Comments (5)

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Space Elevator
written by Chase , August 11, 2007

This is very exciting technology! I though I had never heard about this before, but in fact, I've actually heard much more about it than I thought, just under a different name: "The Space Elevator". Some concepts for the Space Elevator are very different from what you just described in your article, but many are the same. Like the name suggests, most concepts I've heard about the tether included a motor that would transport payloads from the ground into orbit, instead of using an air-breathing plane--whatever that is.

Our untapped power to do things efficiently sometimes astounds me.

Nobody likes rockets, but --
written by Monte Davis , August 11, 2007

...while limiting the design requirements for a reusable air-breathing hypersonic vehicle to Mach 10.

Ummm... that's still one hell of a design requirement, given that for 40 years neither air forces nor airlines have found it worthwhile to push large airbreathers beyond the Mach 2 to 3 of the B-70, B-1, Tu-144 and Concorde.

Boeing, Airbus et al serve incomparably larger, better-proven markets than space, with (collectively) larger development budgets. If they develop viable hypersonics for terrestrial point-to-point, then those might be adapted to help with space access -- as described here, or simply as a reusable "flyback" first stage. But that development is very unlikely to happen for space "on its own."

...
written by Char , August 13, 2007

Slingshot? That's very Farscape of them.

don't understand
written by random girl , August 16, 2007

why must we travel to space? Isn't it enough that we are screwing up our own planet????

...
written by Malachite Lad , December 18, 2007

[[why must we travel to space? Isn't it enough that we are screwing up our own planet????]]

come on, seeing Jupiter and its moons up close would be the shit! but to get Jupiter some day we're just gonna have to (like it or not) explore our imediate area...make sense?

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