Dawn Aerospace - Spaceplanes done right
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- Опубліковано 24 кві 2023
- Most rocket companies start with expendable rocket stages and then plan at some point in the future to work their way towards reusability.
Dawn aerospace has chosen a different plan - their goal is to start with a small highly reusable aircraft and evolve that into a launch system that uses a spaceplane for the booster and an expendable second stage.
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Can confirm that RL uses a refined kerosene called D60. Not RP1
Always thought D60, D40 etc were solvents. Well, that's what I used them for
I just like your channel so much. Informative content with good presentation.
Thanks. It makes me happy to hear this...
A random thought: It's interesting that commercial airplane tech is at the point that business jets have commercially available software to take off and land automatically. I bet that was a big plus for Dawn's development costs.
Nice to see HTP being used in aerospace more these days!
Engineers have been too quick to dismiss it because of a tiny loss in Isp compared to LOX.
But it's advantages more than make up for it, reliability, higher density, cheaper turbopumps, extra water vapour in exhaust etc
Things like having no hard starts and no propellant slosh (propellant in bladders), is huge for reuseable systems! :)
I'm really confused by the cult of specific impulse...
Yes, it's important, but - for example - the same thing that gives hydrolox such a high specific impulse also gives it big tanks and makes it a big pain to deal with.
And don't get me started on the nuclear folks.
Great overview of Dawn! It's an interesting and practical approach. I would only add that ISRO has a spaceplane program, which recently achieved an autonomous, unpowered landing after being dropped from a helicopter several miles up. China also has a a mysterious space plane, apparently similar in size and purpose to the X-37.
Yes, I was cheating a bit when I omitted those, but it was turning into a "spaceplanes" video rather than a specific video about dawn.
1:16 leniency regards orbit keyhole project was one twenty kilometres orbital spacetug hypersonic glide ramscoop #abep
Awesome overview of what a Dawn is doing. The flower in the song Delta Dawn is a rose!
Great Video! Been really excited about Dawn Aerospace for a while now, I'd bet the farm they really make it big in the near future
Just binging your back catalogue, don't mind me!
Thanks.
I’ve been doing the same. So many great videos to catch up on.
I took a drive along the lake by the test flight location for Dawn, a couple of years ago, stunning.
I just love this stuff.....and I didn't end up being a Nerd.......I loved this stuff..... and I grew up in this country, McKenzie Country, Upper Waitaki, Benmore, Oamarama, Otemetata Mt Cook region. Great hunting, Trout, salmon, deer, hunting etc......Yes Delta Dawn! I'm going to watch it now!
Great video. Dawn are definitely the space company I'm most interested in over the next decade. Their approach is so different, and yet makes perfect sense. And the fact that no one was trying to build a reusable sounding rocket before now is kind of crazy. I don't think any other space company has quite a much potential to be disruptive; assuming they succeed, of course.
Stoke aerospace also has a lot of potential.
@@EagerSpace That's true. Those 2 then.
Well, there is the possibility of a rocket sled which could provide additional 2.5 km/s. The main problem with SSTO is probably reentry and a light heat shield.
I talk about the sled approach in my spaceplanes video:
ua-cam.com/video/Mk16En1qqEY/v-deo.html
I’ll wait to see the full sized mockup/flight model, but… hey… aren’t we all suckers for a cool plane(insert some fringe concord reference here)
"Space plane" is an adequate description, given that it flies like a plane and reaches space for a few minutes.
The way I think of it is more of a lifting body, horizontal launch booster. (not sure i'm punctuating that correctly) "Space plane" is way easier to say, so it'll probably stick unless we have a term for what it does.
Two-stage partially reusable horizontal takeoff horizontal landing (HTHL) small lift launch vehicle.
But space plane sounds a lot cooler.
@@EagerSpace Yeah, unlikely to change it unless we come up with something snazzy. Or a small modification that makes "space plane" more accurate. Something to indicate that it is a plane-style first stage. I'm comfortable enough with space plane, though it makes me think of SSTO's.
reentry vehicles describe as planes but they glide back so don't fly independently anywhere in the atmosphere so befuddled
Anyone watching this may be interested in the in-depth interview done on the MECO podcast of April 5th. Episode 244.
Another excellent video, Greg. Very interesting to see Dawn's approach laid out. Making airplane tech work as a 1st stage instead of converting rocket 1st stage tech into a plane makes a lot of sense. Yes, the development pathway is a lot simpler that way - especially now vs the 1990s, etc.
One quibble about an omitted detail. For ground handling to make several flights per day hydrogen peroxide is easier and ~less dangerous than LOX but at 98% it requires a hazmat suit or something close to it, right? (I'm not conflating that with the RCS thrusters/hydrazine bit at the end.)
Anthony Colangelo's excellent podcast on Dawn Aerospace is here:
mainenginecutoff.com/podcast/244
Interesting question on LOX versus hydrogen peroxide.
I did a little more research, and while I think hydrogen peroxide does require appropriate PPE, I don't think it's quite as bad as LOX. Spilled hydrogen peroxide pretty much just sits there - or decomposes slowly - unless it encounters organic or other material it can oxidize.
LOX quickly turns to lots of pure oxygen with the same issues, plus you have the issues of dealing with cryogenics plus the very real risk of freezing damage if you are in contact with it.
@EagerSpace Ironically peroxide is somewhat less vicious on organic materials when it's at rocket fuel concentrations, since there is too little water in it to really enable the sort of aqueous reactions that give it its notorious corrosiveness
Until now they built a really nice model airplane…
Interesting project, it looks similar to the Boeing phantom express in concept, with a reusable rocketplane first stage and small, expendable second stage. I think that approach makes more sense than the reusable second stage design that the shuttle uses, since you're suffering less from the tyranny of the rocket equation. Unfortunately, I read somewhere that Boeing gave up on the design because they were in regulatory hell with the FAA over the mission profile. Hopefully Dawn Aerospace has better luck with that, maybe starting in New Zealand will help.
Phantom Express was Boeing's entry for XS-1, and it's similar in that it's a booster that comes back and lands, but it's vertical takeoff which inherently makes it's a rocket that glides back, not a plane.
The rumors I've read around Phantom express was that Boeing didn't really want to build it but they bid low to make sure nobody else would build it.
I had to wait and come back to rewatch this for my other question. At 18:36 you mention the figures for Mk III look right for the expected payload - but I didn't find what that payload figure is. Also couldn't find it on the internet. Is Dawn looking for a smallsat orbital payload of ~150kg? (Exclusive of upper stage.)
That information is in the Mark II fact sheet.
static1.squarespace.com/static/5e82736a5e6bb91e8af13ea7/t/642ca7372f7f0742c4b01201/1680647993871/DA+Mk-II+Flyer+20230401.pdf
@@EagerSpace Thanks. 250 kg to orbit on the Mk III sounds like a doable number. (Carrying a separate upper stage.)
Great video! A question: Have you heard about Polaris Raumflugzeuge out of Germany? They're quite similar to Dawn Aerospace in all the good ways and, funnily enough, they're launching their test flights out of Peenemünde, a name that might ring familiar to a rocket nerd.
I had not heard about them when I made this video but have heard about them since.
I haven't looked at their Aurora vehicle deeply yet, but my initial impression is that they are biting off a lot - they need to develop a linear aerospike and their vehicle needs to integrate both jet and rocket engines and propellant tanks for both. Their target mass to orbit is 1000 kg, which means it's going to be a considerably bigger vehicle than the Dawn Aerospace one.
@@EagerSpace I absolutely agree, but I am hopeful. Their aerospike demonstrator MIRA is set to fly before the end of this year and hopefully will.
aerospike in air breathers strutjet
Could it be a faded rose from days gone by?
Glad to see that somebody got the reference.
Patents by D'Auvergne and Bundo
I wonder if they’ll use combined cycle engines like the SABER.
SABRE so far seems to be a solution looking for a problem - we hear about how great their tech is but nobody will pony up the money to build an actual engine.
🌹
Interesting video! At first I thought it was similar to Virgin Orbit but using a rocket plane as the carrier is more interesting in terms of delta-v. It's also rare to see a rocket plane taking off from the ground. It has no jet engines right? A horizontally launched rocket avoids the need for a pad and, even if huge, will not destroy the ground structure as with Starship. As you say, it can genuinely replace the first stage and is naturally reusable. Pity the 2nd stage is not reusable however, so in that way it's not really comparable with the Space Shuttle. Really the best solution is two planes, carrier and orbiter, as recommended by Werner Von Braun, but this has never been tried, not sure why...?
BTW I think the carrier airplane for Pegasus went at only 300 m/s or so (subsonic). 720 m/s is nearly twice the speed of sound! So it was providing only 3% of the needed delta-v not 8%.
The plan is that the mark IIB and Mark III purely have rocket engines. That makes it less efficient at takeoff - airbreathing engines have a very high specific impulse - but it makes it a lot less simple. And - like rockets - it's going to quickly be out of the atmosphere where jet engines + tanks are just a waste of mass. You would also need a way to get the jets out of the airstream as they would add a lot of drag, which is more complexity.
The double-plane approach is clearly better than single-stage-to-orbit, but as we saw with the shuttle, that's a lot of non-payload mass to take into orbit and bring back again. Worse, you pretty much need to finish developing the second stage before you do the first because if the second stage is heavier than you expected, it's a lot harder to upsize the first stage plane to do more of the work.
WRT Pegasus, the delta v is the combination of the velocity plus the delta v it took to get to the release altitude, which is about 12 km IIRC. The combination of those two is where the 720 m/s came from.
@@EagerSpace Great analysis, thanks! If Starship and Superheavy were given wings and took off horizontally from a runway (stack lengthwise not end to end) do you think the 33 engines would destroy the runway? I guess it would need to be a long runway but would ordinary concrete suffice? It seems one of the main problems with large rockets is the ground pad. SpaceX just proved a simple flat piece of concrete won't do! But with horizontal launch the thrust is parallel to the concrete.
The selling point of Space Shuttle was it could land on a conventional runway but imagine if it could also take off from a conventional runway!
@@JohnBlackburn1975 There is still a strong chance that the pitch up manaeuvour to leave the runway points the engines somewhat at the runway but it would be at a relatively low angle.
Possibly minimised by having a very minor pitch up and primarily relying on your increasing speed to increase lift rather than changing angle of attack. You'd also only be blasting any one area of the runway briefly. I don't think its a given that spaceplanes would cause no damage to the runway but it's a possibility.
@@EagerSpace VentureStar-like shaped orbiter using Spacex technology (steel, cooling and engines) seems to be plausible.
atmosphere rocketry faster than icbm upward since residence time so heat decay's opposed build up indicates air breather
You failed to mention X-33, X-34 and Skylon. the X-33 wa 90% complete before it was cancelled (due to insistance by politicians to employ carbon fibre technology for propellant storage. Skylon with its Sabre engine is still in late development in the U.K.
I had them in there originally, but pulled them out.
X-33 was a technology demonstrator and would only fly suborbital, and of course it didn't do that.
X-34 was also a technology demonstrator that would have been airlaunched for testing purposes.
Skylon has been around for 30 or 40 years depending on how you measure things, and so far has only had some engine demonstrations.
Dawn aerospace recently gave a short interview with parabolic arc. They are aiming for Q1 2024 Test flights of the reworked MK2(A). While MK2B should follow soon after (end of the year?).
I also liked that you included the math for some predictions on how capable the system will be. I never bothered to learn the math behind it. I simply take the ISP, then add a "0" on the end -> that gives me an idea of the exhaust velocity / and a lowball-good-enough-for-me estimation of the Delta-V. From what I read, that the Falcon9 only gets 3,3 km per second if the booster is expandable. While reuse flight profiles only give 1,8-2,3 km per second (back to Landing pad, or Barge landing). It would be interesting to know how much Dawn loses due to reusability.
"Only" 3.3km/s, thats Mach10. Orbital velocity is Mach25. 🚀🏴☠️
There really is no need for an orbital delivery system to have wings, you have to haul all that extra weigh up there then slow it all down again on the way back. Glossing over the development of a Mach 3+ 25 Ton vehicle is very optimistic, considering it is in effect an SR-71.
If your 1st stage is a plane you dont need to build expensive and complex launch site, you can launch and land very easy
It is not an SR-71 and it will not have same technical problems, because it is not jet and dont need to breathe air, it will reach mach 3+ at 110 km, not 24 km
I think its more like german Me 163 Komet
Okay, I think you called their project pretty good. Without more knowledge, both as to design but probably more importantly finance can not call if it can make it.
This is gonna be an interesting video to watch because I actually at this point don't think spaceplanes have much of a use in the rocket industry.
Looking back now, with the knowledge that landing rockets propulsively works and is reliable, spaceplanes seem kinda like a concept born out of people's lack of imagination.
Like "Oh, rockets that land back on Earth to be reused *have* to have wings and be a plane, because that's how we already get from the air to the ground already normally". It's a perfectly reasonable conclusion to come to, but plane-like hardware adds extra mass that mostly isn't needed on the way up. And sure, landing on a runway to just be inspected and then refueled makes rapid reuse easier, but I think SoaceX's catching system will be the way to go to making rockets that can also land, be inspected, and refueled quickly, all without wings.
My only thing is that I'm unsure if SpaceX's second stage reuse plans are the right way to go. I personally am very interested in what Stoke Space plans there, but Im unsure if that solution is as scalable to large rockets
I can't seem to edit my comment, but that "lack of imagination" is also why I think people naturally thought reusable rockets would be ssto spaceplanes, because "oh, it has to land back at a runway, all while staying in one piece, to be rapidly reusable".
People couldn't imagine that you could both propulsively land rockets, *and* have rockets be in multiple stages, and still have it be rapidly reusable, to be able to land, be inspected, and refueled back up for another trip to space.
If SpaceX's second stage reuse plans work out, it will truly be as easy as "land the first stage back at the launch pad, land the second stage back at the launch pad, stack, inspect, refuel and go again". Just like a plane landing back at a runway, just in two pieces instead of one.
They should make the larger version have both rocket engines and jet engines. They can use the jet engines to climb to 20,000 or 30,000 feet then turn them off (create a enclosed area so they are not damaged in orbit). Start the rocket engines at 30,000 feet to propel the spacecraft to the orbit, and when they return from space restart the jet engines and fly it back to the airfield. This way they are not a unpowered glider and can go around unlike the space shuttle orbiter in a emergency or divert to a alternative airfield in case of bad weather, and do not risk damaging the spacecraft.
The tradeoff is:
Pro: Weight savings by not having to carry as much liquid oxygen.
Con: Another set of engines, another set of fuel tanks, air intakes for the engines, a way to close off the intakes at higher speed.
Generally speaking, the point of a first stage is to get above the atmosphere and going fast as quickly as possible, so the jets don't provide that much help. And the extra weight makes the mass ratio of the vehicle much worse.
Dawn knows enough information to calculate which approach works better and they've chosen to go with a pure rocket approach.
@@EagerSpace me personally I believe it depends on the scale of the spacecraft like the aurora mark B II if the spacecraft is intended for suborbital flight without astronauts I agree there approach makes more sense practically and financially. I am simply saying for a larger spacecraft like the size of a 737 or 757 with a crew and cargo for orbital flight I still believe that the combined Jet engine, rocket engine is the best approach. Which would allow a greater range of cargo from different airports to be flown to the equator for a launch to orbit from around the many airports of the world much like how cargo planes operate today. But I do see were both you and Dawn aerospace are coming from.
Nuclear powered would be good and powered by ion propulsion.
As an orbital launch vehicle, using HTP, it will need a relatively huge second stage, both to make up for the low delta-v performance of the "first stage" and to make for the low ISP of the rocket engine. Where will that huge second stage fit in that sleek "fist stage"? I don't buy it at all. But thanks much for the informative video.
Have you done the delta v calculations to figure out exactly how big a second stage you need?
@@EagerSpace No, but I can guess at the size, given the constraints I mentioned. Bigger than a Falcon-9 second stage, I imagine. Do you have such calculations?
@@williamthomas5788 Rough ones...
I took a typical dry weight to payload factor for a second stage, plugged in the expected specific impulse for their engine and came up with a second stage total mass. Given what I expected the first stage to be able to do, it seemed like a reasonable calculation.
It's pretty hand-wavy, but good enough as a first-order approximation. Clearly Dawn can do a much better job at doing the calculations and they think it's possible.
@@EagerSpace The problem is, can a sleek, fighter-shaped airplane with a lot of rocket fuel actually manage to carry that second stage internally? That is what I'm skeptical of. But, hey, maybe they'll prove me wrong. But count me doubtful.
1500 m/s for altitude and 1000 m/s for horizontal velocity doesn't neccessarily add up to 2500. Added diagonally, it's just 1800 m/s.
The delta v for altitude is an expression of the potential energy in velocity terms, so that is added directly to the horizontal velocity.
@@EagerSpace yes, vy = sqrt(2gh) ≈ 1500 m/s is the velocity in the up direction. Add 1000 m/s in the horizontal direction and the total velocity is 1800 m/s diagonally. The velocity vectors aren't parallel, so you can't just add the magnitudes.
@@15Redstones Delta v is used because that is what comes out of the rocket equation for pure rockets.
In a launch, some of it goes to gaining altitude, some of it goes to losses, and some of it goes to final velocity.
@@EagerSpace yes, and it's a vector when you calculate the change in velocity in the world, only a scalar when calculating fuel consumption of seperate maneuvers.
I have a bachelor's degree in physics and 500 hours in ksp, delta-v isn't new to me
Wouldn’t a rotating detonation engine be more efficient?
I don't think we have enough examples of real engines to make a determination on efficiency.
But it would cost a bunch of money and time to use that engine on this vehicle.
Wouldn't it be 110 km OR Mach 3.4? From your presentation I get the impression that it's only barely able to get to 110 km.
If the flight profile ends up being similar to New Shepard, it maxes out at ~1000 m/s at 46 km. Then it coasts up to 106 km, stops climbing, and drops back down again.
Pretty sure the goal is to get to both. If the plan only gets to 110 km with no useful speed it's not terribly useful as a first stage. But it's been a while since I did the video.
@@EagerSpace Checking their site, at least for the Mk II it doesn't seem like it's both. They expect to barely reach above the Karman line. If it was both, they'd coast to over 160 km. And 180 seconds of mcrogravity pretty much lines up with New Shepard.
It's a bit harder to tell for Mk III. There's not a lot of information about Mk III specifically, so maybe they plan on upping the performance substantially. But that's not my impression.
Dawn space's Mk2B looks a lot like Virgin Galactic's line of spaceplanes. Just subscale, launched from a runway and using liquid fueled engines. Would have been interesting to focus more on this comparison.
Also you sort of missed the point of airlaunch at 17:38. The speed of the carrier aircraft is really meaningless. The only notable benifits come from starting up high (less aero drag for the rocket part, and more efficient high expansion ratio nozzel geometry) and being able to move your launch site (possibly heading closer to the equator or avoiding bad weather).
Virgin galactic is not designed for the orbital market so I didn't think it was a reasonable comparison. Virgin Orbit or Pegasus are better comparisons.
@EagerSpace sure, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo isn't putting anything into orbit. Neither is the Dawn Mk1, Mk2A, or Mk2B Aurora thought. Mk1 and Mk2A aren't even spaceplanes, but Mk2B is a suborbital reusable spaceplane, just like Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo (and also Delta and the SpaceShipOne). The only difference is that Dawn are targeting more the sounding rocket market, while Virgin Galactic is mainly doing space tourism (though they can also do science on board). Even for the Mk3 Aurora, the spaceplane part would only be a suborbital first stage.
DAWN should piggy back on to 50,000+ feet first.
Their initial design is wrong. They aren't going to have the fuel capacity for orbit. The only design with enough volume to make it happen is a flying wing like the B-2. However, to develop the flight software needed to keep it in the air is a serious hurdle that must be overcome at stage one of development.
They don't plan on needing the fuel capacity for orbit, this will be a ~Mach 3 air launcher for a small upper rocket stage. A huge hypersonic flying wing is the kind of project that gets US govt funding in various configurations and then never gets anywhere. I like Dawn Aerospace's approach of going for what is doable.
Are you clear that Mark III doesn't make it into orbit? It's just a booster stage.
If you still think there's not enough fuel, then I'd be interested in seeing your calculations. The ones I made show that they likely have sufficient margins to get their target payload into orbit.
@@EagerSpace yes, I'm aware of all that. But as it stands this isn't what I would call a space plane and certainly not one done right.
@@EagerSpace To be a space plane I think the ability to achieve orbit is a necessary goal. This is literally a rehash of virgin orbit with a faster first stage. That brings all new issues into the equation. That speed is hell on an airframe, and then! The most expensive part of the whole deal is still going to orbit and not being reused. So as I said in my OP the only way to have the lift and the volume for a true space plane is with blended wing design. Or use a nuke engine.
@@rexmann1984
It's a plane that flies into space. Suborbital space, but space. And the current list of aircraft that can do that starts and ends with the X-15.
I'm assuming you're looking for a SSTO spaceplane. That's ridiculously hard to do from an engineering perspective. NASP, VentureStar, and Skylon have pretty much gone nowhere. That puts them in the "wouldn't it be nice if?" category, which is honestly one I don't spend much time thinking about because it's not actually clear if it's possible to build such a vehicle.
This approach could, in time, lead two a two-stage design where both craft are planes and the upper stage is orbital. Possible, but still pretty darn hard to do. We've seen zero designs that can do that.
Not truly a space plane if it only goes above the karman line and not into orbit, is it? It surely can't be used to bring things back.
Space plane, not an orbital space plane. But the only current orbital space plane is just a reentry vehicle with wings. You can argue that it's not a truly a space plane either.
If it was crewed, the pilots would qualify as astronauts using both US and FAI standards.
Cambridge Dictionary: A spaceplane is a vehicle designed to fly beyond earth's atmosphere and return.
NB no mention of needing to achieve orbital velocity.
I would have been very excited about this 15 years ago but right now the launch market is massively overserved and competition is brutal. There are too many people trying to chase the smallsat market, not because they expect big business there, but because it's cool, and so any serious business has to compete against a few dozen hobbyists spending their investments irrationally. Not a good environment.
Smallsat is certainly a pit, but everybody is trying to compete with rocket economics. Decent sized factory, launch pad, high fixed costs, low cadence means high allocated fixed costs per flight, assuming you're actually trying to make money. It's a really high hill to climb to get ahead - first mover really matters a ton.
Delta starts more at the SpaceX point, where you are reusing the first stage, but with lower fixed costs and maybe a simpler second-stage architecture. And the chance to maybe explore the hypersonic / suborbital research market which nobody has tried to disrupt (delta the new Electron variant).
Still a decent hill, but more likely to come up with a differentiated product and therefore be successful.
Rocket lab is way better.
I think this video is highly misleading.
This exact concept already failed. Twice.
The problem isn't the engineering, instead it is the market and the money.
Who will pay potentially hundred of millions of dollars to develop a vehicle with an insignificant capability, where SpaceX's rideshare and Rocketlab already cornered this market segment?
Even the similar Virgin Orbit is collapsed (less than two month ago), because despite backed up by an international megacorporation and led by a millionaire, is is too run out of money. I doubt a few model plane enthusiast with a shoestring budget would be able to build the Mark III within a few years and service multiple customers (for god's sake, they have less than 100 employees).
AFAIK, nobody has tried to build a horizontal takeoff rocket plane that will drop off a second stage at something close to 60 km and supersonic speed.
Which companies were working on the same concept and actually flying prototypes?
@@EagerNetwork-vl2zc I don't speak specifically about this concept because basically every single rocket is unique; before SpaceX's Falcon 9, nobody tried to land with titanium grid fins, but this doesn't mean Falcon 9 is the first rocket.
Ignoring SpaceShipTwo, the two previous non-military plane launch attempts (that actually flown) were Northrop Grumman's Stargazer + Pegasus and Virgin Orbit's Cosmic Girl + Launcher One. Both were using already proven planes (and both had successes), yet they couldn't make the thing work cheaply enough.
Dawn Aerospace basically tries to build the best plane ever from scratch, and I seriously doubt that they have the expertise and especially the budget to make a full-sized launch platform.
For me, this looks like just another stunt, like the SpinLaunch (throwing a satellite into space). They also built a small model that demonstrated the concept, made flashy animations and videos, but still couldn't make the full-size thing work (and also had fewer than 200 employees).
These tiny, nonconvetional projects have a track record of...zero, since so far every single one has failed.
The only ones that at least exist in limbo are the Boeing X-37 (made by the world's biggest aircraft manufacturer, who also builds space rockets) and the Sierra Nevada Corporation Dream Chaser (made by another industry giant with thousands of workers, a budget in the billions, and who is also a NASA and US Army contractor). Yet both the X-37 and Dream Chaser look like toys compared to what Dawn promises.
Maybe history will prove me wrong, but I doubt it.
@@Elfnethu Both Launcher one and pegasus are launched from airliners, which means the benefit they get is limited due to the low altitude and speed. Pegasus is further constrained because its uses solid propellants with poor specific impulse, requiring three or even four stages to get to orbit.
Architecturally, Dawn Aerospace is different. Their plan is to get to 60 km with a similar velocity to that of a rocket like Falcon 9, and that allows a simple second stage to get into orbit. There's no technical reason that this approach can't be successful nor is there a reason their launch aircraft couldn't be reusable.
Both X-37 and dream chaser are orbital vehicles that reenter like planes, but are launched as cargo on a conventional rocket. They obviously need to handle reentry from orbital speeds which is very challenging.
It is a big goal, however, and I share some of your skepticism as to whether they will make it.
WRT spinlaunch, it's a stupid idea. The speed/altitude they can achieve from the ground is low enough that they need a two stage rocket to get into orbit, but the bigger issue is one of getting customers. To fly on spin launch, you have to put in significant effort to make your payload hardened against the high g forces but that effort is only worthwhile if you fly on spin launch. It's not clear that any customers will want to invest the money when they could just fly rideshare on SpaceX or a fully dedicated mission on Electron.
@@EagerSpace To reiterate: I don't doubt that a horizontally launched rocket plane could work (at least on paper), but I am highly skeptical that Dawn Aerospace could make this concept work, let alone a commercially viable one within a few years with no previous full-sized aircraft designing knowledge, an aircraft factory, or - especially - the money on hand (or the market to serve).
In 2018 Dawn thought they didn't even need 30 million dollar, while even smaller companies, like the Chinese LandSpace, have already spent more than 1.5 billion dollars.
According to their own website, Dawn will at some point, in theory, launch a 5 kg payload up to 100+ km at an unknown cost. That doesn't fly anymore (excuse the pun).
I don't even know who would pay for that (and at what price). There are already research planes (including microgravity) and sounding rockets covering this extremely niche segment (not to mention SpaceShipTwo or Blue Origin's New Shepard, which also carry multiple similar experiments), while almost everybody else is already using actual orbit-capable rockets.
Boeing and Sierra Nevada are still working on their kind of, not really useful designs despite their basically unlimited budgets, manpower, and huge expertise. Same with SpaceShipTwo. I just can't see how a few dozen people with no real money or experience could make a much better vehicle with a fraction of the budget within a few years, next to not only SpaceX but their new, much more realistic competitors, like Rocket Lab or some of the Chinese companies.
There are already dozens of similarly overpromising, unconvincing designs backed up by nothing more than the inventor's world or some scaled-down models. The road to (commercial) space is littered with failed proposals and even built vehicles.
I give Dawn the benefit of the doubt that they will be able to operate their tiny rocket drone reliably, but I would be very surprised if their Mark III idea would materialize, let alone become a commercial success.
We'll see.
virgin galactic vss unity