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Mission Guide: Jules Verne
The "Jules Verne" is Europe's first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to fly to the International Space Station. Read on to find out more about its crucial mission which launches on Sunday.


PRE-LAUNCH

ATV - THE FIRSTS
The ATV is the first completely automated rendezvous and docking ship to go to the ISS
The ATV is the largest and most powerful space tug going to the ISS over its mission life
It provides the largest refuelling and waste elimination capability for the space station
It is the only vehicle on the current timeline able to de-orbit the ISS when it is retired

Built for the European Space Agency (Esa), the ATV is an unmanned, automated spacecraft designed to deliver up to 7.6 tonnes of cargo - air, water, fuel, scientific equipment, food, clothing and even personal items - to the platform.
The ATV is part of the barter arrangement Europe has with its international partners on the ISS project.

Instead of handing over cash to cover station running costs, Europe will take on the major responsibility of resupplying the platform.

With the US space shuttle soon to retire and a replacement some years away, this role will be vital when the crew complement rises to six individuals in 2009.

The station will continue to receive deliveries from Russian Progress craft and a future Japanese vehicle called the HTV - but neither have the capacity of the ATV.

The ATV will also be used to boost the platform to a higher altitude. This is necessary to overcome the effect of atmospheric drag which gradually pulls the ISS back to Earth.

One day, the thrust from an ATV's four main engines may be called on to de-orbit the ISS itself when it has reached the end of its mission.


LAUNCH

An ATV has to be launched on a specially prepared Ariane 5 rocket from the European spaceport at Kourou in French Guiana.


Arianes are more accustomed to launching communications satellites with a mass not exceeding 10 tonnes. These spacecraft are usually placed in Geostationary Transfer Orbits (GTOs) that take them out to 36,000km above the Earth.
An ATV at launch is about 20 tonnes and has to be put in a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at just 260km above the Earth. The Ariane 5-ES will use a re-ignitable upper-stage to circularise this low orbit and put the ATV on the right path to catch and dock with the ISS.

The upper-stage will complete two re-ignitions; the second - after releasing the ATV - will put itself into a controlled dive over the ocean.



PHASING
The ATV is designed to be launched independently of other spacecraft. This enables mission controllers to work other missions around the ATV, as it can be put into orbit and parked temporarily.

While the ATV waits, other vehicles, such as the space shuttle, Soyuz "taxis" or the Progress cargo ships, are able to dock with the ISS.

When docking, the ATV will approach the ISS from behind and below. It will then simply wait to be instructed to join with the space station at an opportune moment.



RENDEZ-VOUS

The ATV uses a sophisticated navigation system to find its own way to the space station.

GPS (Global Positioning System) technology is employed to get to within 300m of the platform. Optical sensors are then used for the final approach.

These involve flashing laser light off reflectors already positioned around the docking port on the ISS's Zvezda module.

The ATV moves in stages towards the station. At each hold point, ground staff in Toulouse will approve the next phase of the automated approach.

An astronaut on the ISS also sits in front of a monitor and panel to oversee the docking.

Two important buttons - one yellow, one red - allow the astronaut either to stop the ATV in its tracks or, in an emergency, send it away from the station to a safe parking location.



ATTACHED TO ISS

ATV CAPACITIES
Maximum total load is 7,667kg
1,500-5,500kg - dry cargo
0-100kg - air (oxygen/nitrogen)
0-840kg - drinking water
0-860kg - refuelling propellant

An ATV will stay at the ISS for about six months. Once docked, the crew of the ISS can walk about the ATV without the need for spacesuits.
Inside the ATV, the crew will find, water, oxygen and nitrogen, letters from home and other supplies essential for their mission.

Dry cargo is packed in white bags and is carried out. Fuels are piped across to the ISS. Fresh air is simply vented into the platform by turning a valve.

As these stores are depleted the ATV will be used to store station waste - up to 6.5 tonnes.



DEPARTURES AND RE-ENTRY

When the ATV undocks from the platform, it will take this waste into a controlled re-entry over the Pacific Ocean.
The ATV will break up into small fragments. It is currently more cost-effective to use the ATV once, rather than design a spacecraft that can be used several times.

Design concepts exist for ATVs that allow for part of the vehicle to survive the fiery re-entry, for heat-resistant capsules to be released on the descent.

These could be useful if scientists wanted experimental items from the ISS returned intact.

However, at the moment, these concepts are not being taken forward.


WHAT'S IN A NAME?

The French author Jules Verne wrote about fantastic voyages - into space, to the bottom of the sea, and around the world.

The ATV could also herald extraordinary voyages for Europe.

Although the ATV is not designed to carry astronauts, the fact that people can move around safely inside it demonstrates Europe has many of the necessary skills to implement a manned space transportation system should it decide to.

Autonomous navigation and docking will be an essential technology for any mission which attempts to return rock samples from Mars - a stated goal of both Europe and the US.

Specimens lifted off the surface of the Red Planet would meet up in orbit with a transfer vehicle that had the necessary power to get them back to Earth.



Cost: Total bill was 1.3bn euros (at least 4 more ATVs will be built)
Total cargo capacity: 7.6 tonnes, but first mission will fly lighter
Mass at launch: About 20 tonnes depending on cargo manifest
Dimensions: 10.3m long and 4.5m wide - the size of a large bus
Solar panels: Once unfolded, the solar wings span 22.3m
Engine power: 4x 490-Newton thrusters; and 28x 220N thrusters


Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Mission Guide: Jules Verne

Published: 2008/03/05 21:16:01 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

 

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Jules Verne ATV : CG

 

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Antarctica's unique space rocks
By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News, Houston

A pair of meteorites discovered in Antarctica are in a class all of their own, a major space conference has been told.
Studies of the extra-terrestrial rocks have revealed qualities that set them apart from any meteorites previously known to science.

Researchers are pondering where in our Solar System the meteorites could have originated.

An origin on Planet Venus has been discussed, but now looks unlikely.

The notion of a meteorite hailing from this hothouse world is highly contentious. As yet, nobody has found one, probably because it is very difficult for rocks to escape Venus' thick atmosphere and strong gravity.

Several scientists propose that the Antarctic meteorites broke away from a previously unrecognised reservoir of asteroids before falling to Earth.

The space rocks are much older than the majority of Venus' surface - appearing to rule the planet out as the source.

The results have been discussed here at the 39th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

Origins unknown

The paired meteorites, known as GRA 06128 and GRA 06129, were discovered in the Graves-Nunataks region of Antarctica in 2006.

The rusty, slab-shaped rocks have defied classification, not fitting into any of the existing groupings drawn up for meteorites.


The meteorite family tree is getting bigger and bigger
Dr Caroline Smith,
Natural History Museum, London

The pair's distinctiveness has been revealed by analyses of their mineral make-up and of the ratios of different forms - or isotopes - of oxygen present in them.
Dr Ryan Zeigler, from Washington University in St Louis, US, has been studying samples from GRA 06128. He told BBC News: "It's unique - it's the only meteorite that has this much plagioclase (a form of feldspar) of this composition.

"There are other meteorites that have minerals of the same composition but not in anything approaching the same proportions."

Chip Shearer, from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, US, raised the possibility of a Venusian origin in the title to his conference talk. But at the meeting, he acknowledged the reference was intended to be "provocative".

Dr Shearer agreed the 4.5-billion-year ages of the meteorites indicated the likely source was an asteroid.

"The history of this rock involves partial melting on a fairly primitive body," he explained.

Even if the rocks had been blown off Venus in an impact 4.5 billion years ago, they could not have drifted in space for such a vast length of time before landing in Antarctica recently, scientists said.

Narrowed down

The identity of the object that spawned the two meteorites may be elusive, but researchers have been able to draw up a basic profile.

They know, for instance, that the parent body had "differentiated" - that is, had been reprocessed into a layered object, usually with a core, a mantle and a crust. Stony meteorites which have undergone this reprocessing are known as achondrites.

"There has to be a finite number of differentiated parent bodies," said Dr Zeigler, who also thinks an asteroid was the likely parent body.

"It's got to be 200km across or so to make an achondrite - to differentiate into basalts and a core. We think we know where they all are, and - greater than 200km - there are about 25.

"Now, some could have been destroyed and so the number might be higher than that, but it's not like there's an infinite number of parent bodies in our Solar System where these could come from."

So far, just one asteroid has been tied to a class of meteorites on Earth. Spectral observations of the object 4 Vesta suggest it has about the same composition as the so-called Howardite, Eucrite and Diogenite (HED) meteorites.

Dr Caroline Smith, meteorite curator at London's Natural History Museum, who was not involved in the studies, commented: "The meteorite family tree is getting bigger and bigger."

She told BBC News: "Like a family tree for humans, when the tree gets bigger, you begin to see the various relationships between them."

The Graves-Nunataks space rocks do share some similarities with another rare class of meteorite known as the brachinites. But there are important differences which would preclude their easy inclusion in this category.

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Antarctica's unique space rocks

Published: 2008/03/13 17:59:40 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

 

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Huge ice deposits 'seen' on Mars
By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News, Houston

Large volumes of water ice have probably been detected below Mars' surface, far from the planet's polar ice caps, scientists have said.
The Sharad radar experiment, on Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft made the discovery in Mars' mid-northern latitudes.

The ice is found in distinctive geological structures on Mars' surface that are hundreds of metres thick.

The radar data suggest that some of these features consist mostly of ice.

The latest evidence was presented at the 39th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference here in Houston, Texas.

Sharad (SHAllow RADar) is able to probe up to 1km beneath the Martian surface to seek out liquid or surface water.


We would say, robustly, more than 50% ice by volume - but it could be much more
Dr Jeff Plaut, lead scientist

It sends out pulses of radio waves to the Martian surface and analyses the time delay and strength of the waves that return.
Analysis of those waves that penetrate the soil and bounce back can give information on transitions between materials with different properties, such as rock and liquid water, beneath the Martian surface.

Mission scientists used Sharad to probe Martian surface features known as lobate debris aprons (LDAs). These distinctive, dome-shaped structures are concentrated around mid-latitudes in the planet's northern and southern hemispheres.

Geological clues

The researchers looked at LDAs in the Deuteronilus Mensae region of Mars' northern hemisphere, where the features can be found at the bases of valley walls, craters and scarps of mesas.

Scientists have long suspected that LDAs were flows consisting of mixed up rock and ice.

The radar penetrated these geological features with very little attenuation (reduction in signal strength), suggesting they were predominantly made of ice.

"We would say, robustly, more than 50% ice by volume - but it could be much more," said Jeff Plaut, the chief scientist for Sharad.

If confirmed, the discovery could have important implications for the history of water and climate on Mars, because it suggests there were large reservoirs of subsurface ice when the lobate debris aprons formed.

Amazonian times

Scientists think these features formed in mid- to late Amazonian times - the Amazonian being the cold, dry period of Martian history which began around 1.8 billion years ago and lasts to the present day.

"In the mid-latitudes of Mars, there were large volumes of ice that were deforming, at least, during Amazonian times... and maybe they were in place during Amazonian times. And much of this ice is preserved today," explained Dr Plaut, from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

He suggested these thick ice deposits should be targets for future robotic or manned missions to explore.

"These are certainly intriguing targets for in situ exploration, conveniently placed at mid-latitudes," the JPL scientist told the conference.

The radar data complemented other evidence presented at the conference on the icy nature of these geological features on Mars.

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk


Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Huge ice deposits 'seen' on Mars

Published: 2008/03/13 17:49:02 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

 

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3.14 and the rest
By David Blatner

It's Pi Day, a celebration of the mathematical ratio that man has been trying to unlock for millennia. But why are we driven to find the answers behind it?
As we're all taught at school, pi represents the number you get when you divide the distance around a circle (its circumference) by the distance across (the diameter).

With just a string and a ruler you can quickly measure that pi must be just over three-and-an-eighth (3.125). With more precise measurements, you may be able to narrow it down to 3.14.


SLICE OF PI
3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971


However, if you ask a typical maths nerd, you'll get an earful of pi - 3.14159265 and so on. A surprising number of students have memorised 50 or even 100 digits after the decimal point.

The rough ratio of pi 3.14 gives us the date for Pi Day. March 14, or 3/14 in American dating style, makes sense for a celebration of this famous constant.

Coincidentally, Pi Day is also the birthday of Albert Einstein, who no doubt knew more than a little about pi. Pi Day celebrants, usually children with an enthusiastic teacher and a varying degree of personal interest in the subject, learn about pi, circles, and, if they're lucky, eat baked pies of various sorts.

Famous constant

Some classes offer prizes for memorising the most digits of pi, or for creating interesting mnemonic devices. Count the letters in each word of this classic poem:

Sir, I bear a rhyme excelling
In mystic force and magic spelling.

Pi, more commonly known by the 16th letter of the Greek alphabet, is the most widely-known mathematical constant in the world. Even long after people forget their school lessons, they still recognise the symbol.


Pi conjures a sense of mystery, so the symbol makes regular appearances in popular culture - it's the secret code in both Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain and the Sandra Bullock vehicle The Net.

And while pi is a number, its importance goes far beyond simple geometry. Pi represents a deep universal mystery - how is it that something this basic, this fundamental to maths and science, could turn out to be so incredibly difficult to pin down?

In fact, it's literally impossible to know what pi is, because its digits rattle off into infinity.

While there are many infinitely long numbers in maths, pi is the only one in which an infinitely simple idea - the circle - unfolds into an infinitely complex value. This paradox drives many people to distraction.

Life's work

One of the most endearing and enduring qualities of humans is that we're so often sure that we can find the answer to any problem if we just try hard enough. For 3,500 years, humankind has attempted to solve the puzzle of pi, also called "squaring the circle", calculating the exact ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. However, no matter how hard anyone tries, they find only a new approximation.

In ancient Greece, the great mathematician Archimedes worked tirelessly to discover the ratio, uncovering only a few digits of accuracy. When he tried to stop a Roman soldier from blundering over his work by shouting "do not touch my circles" he was unceremoniously murdered.


By the time Ludolf van Ceulen died in 1610, he had spent many years of his life tediously calculating pi, resulting in only 35 accurate digits. And in 1873, William Shanks announced he had found 707 digits over years of hand-cramping work; unfortunately, he had made a mistake after the 527th place. The following digits were all wrong.

The most recent attempt, by a Japanese computer scientist in 2002, found 1.24 trillion digits of pi. To put all this in perspective, even an astrophysicist, attempting to measure galaxies, would never need more than 10 or 15 digits of precision. But pi beckons us on further. Some mathematicians believe that if we could only find some pattern in pi, even some hint that there were more fours than sevens, it could lead to a huge breakthrough in our understanding of the universe.

The late physicist Carl Sagan, in his novel Contact, imagined a time when Earth scientists were sufficiently able to unravel enough of pi to find encoded messages from our creators-messages that would allow our primitive race to leap into a greater universal awareness. After all, if you were going to hide a long numeric message in the very fabric of our reality, pi would be a natural place to do it.

Fundamental equations

Nevertheless, pi continues to frustrate. In the late 19th Century, it was categorically proven that pi was infinitely long and could not be solved with any finite number of equations. That hasn't stopped modern-day circle-squarers, who continue to claim that mathematicians are wrong and that pi is really just 3 or 3.25 or some other finite-but-erroneous answer.


Pi Day is a time to honour not just a number and our fascination with it, but also the essential truth that there are some things we simply cannot know. We can only get close to knowing.


Pi shows up everywhere. In mathematics, pi appears in many fundamental equations that have nothing to do with circles. In science, pi is inextricable from measuring everything from ocean waves to economic statistics.

Pi is found in the very measurements of the Great Pyramid at Giza. And if you divide the length of a river from source to mouth across a gently sloping plane by its direct length "as the crow flies", you'll find pi.

Pi also appears where you least expect it. Religious scholars point to the Old Testament which, when describing the measurements of Solomon's Temple, implies that pi is only three. In the transcripts of the famed OJ Simpson trial, you can find arguments between the judge and an FBI agent about the actual value of pi.

For a time, Givenchy offered a men's cologne emblazoned only with the symbol. Nobel Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska wrote a poem about pi, and pop star Kate Bush sang 100 digits of pi on her album Aerial.

In this age of high-tech precision instruments, where we assure ourselves that perfection is attainable, pi is an ever-present, sometimes grating reminder that there are puzzles that can be solved and there are mysteries that, perhaps, can not.

David Blatner is the author of The Joy of Pi.


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Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | 3.14 and the rest

Published: 2008/03/14 11:47:55 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

 

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Beyond the keyboard and mouse
By Chris Vallance
Reporter, BBC iPM, in Austin, Texas

Earlier this week the front page of the Austin Chronicle featured a picture of the band the Guitar Zeros - a group of musicians who perform using hacked versions of the Guitar Hero video game controller.
It's an extreme example of how popular the game and it's guitar style interface have become.

"It's pretty amazing we took something that was real and made it fake and they took something fake and made it real" said Kai Huang, CEO of RedOctane who created the game.

But while games like Guitar Hero and the Nintendo Wii are exploring new kinds of kinetic interface, in our work lives most of us are stuck with the Qwerty keyboard and the computer mouse: inventions that date back 134 years and 24 years respectively.

At SXSW in Austin Texas, what comes next has been a hot topic of conversation across a range of expert panels.

For Huang simpler interfaces like Guitar Hero point the way to the future.


Guitar Hero "allows people to jump from point a to point b, it skips all of those hard years, the 10,000 hours it would take someone to learn a real instrument.. and I think that can be applied to just about everything," he told the BBC.

Outside the realm of games, Microsoft's Surface is another alternative to keyboard and mouse beginning to find a place in the consumer world.


Kristin Alexander, head of research and planning for Microsoft Surface, says interfaces will, in the longer term, move beyond table top screens to other spaces.


"That's why we called it Surface and not table.", she said, adding that the long term vision was both horizontal and vertical. Although she stressed Microsoft remained very committed to the mouse.

If that's the plan, then Microsoft may have a bit of catching up to do, Rick Barraza of Cynergy Systems was showcasing a home made "Minority Report" style gesture-interface made of a Nintendo Wii controller, a gutted computer mouse, and a pair of baseball gloves dotted with infra-red LED's, "the whole things is maybe around $150" said Barraza.

In spite of the homebrew feel, the results were impressive.

"It was unabashedly inspired by Minority Report... very much like Microsoft Surface without the surface."

Currently, the Surface costs several thousand dollars.



But Minority Report may not be the best answer.

The Make it So: Learning from Sci-Fi Interfaces panel at SXSW looked at how science fiction might influence the future of design.

Panellist Nathan Shedroff who teaches an MBA in design said: "If you talk to the people who worked on the film they had to keep taking breaks because Tom Cruise would get tired."

Barrazza and Shedroff might disagree about the physical demands of gesture style interfaces, no such problems face the Emotiv system which uses electrical activity in the brain to control computer systems; it was seen as a promising development by several speakers.

"In 20 to 40 years that technology is going to advance," said Huang.

But while the world waits for brain powered computing there was general agreement that in many ways the key to easily accessible computing wasn't necessarily only a matter of greater sophistication.

"The simple thing is to add a few more buttons. The really difficult thing is to simplify that down," Huang told the conference.

Fans of the Guitar Zero's would presumably agree.


Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | Technology | Beyond the keyboard and mouse

Published: 2008/03/14 10:46:19 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

 

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Chemical brain controls nanobots
By Jonathan Fildes
Science and technology reporter, BBC News

A tiny chemical "brain" which could one day act as a remote control for swarms of nano-machines has been invented.
The molecular device - just two billionths of a metre across - was able to control eight of the microscopic machines simultaneously in a test.

Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists say it could also be used to boost the processing power of future computers.

Many experts have high hopes for nano-machines in treating disease.

"If [in the future] you want to remotely operate on a tumour you might want to send some molecular machines there," explained Dr Anirban Bandyopadhyay of the International Center for Young Scientists, Tsukuba, Japan.

"But you cannot just put them into the blood and [expect them] to go to the right place."

Dr Bandyopadhyay believes his device may offer a solution. One day they may be able to guide the nanobots through the body and control their functions, he said.

"That kind of device simply did not exist; this is the first time we have created a nano-brain," he told BBC News.

Computer brain

The machine is made from 17 molecules of the chemical duroquinone. Each one is known as a "logic device".


They each resemble a ring with four protruding spokes that can be independently rotated to represent four different states.

One duroquinone molecule sits at the centre of a ring formed by the remaining 16. All are connected by chemical bonds, known as hydrogen bonds.

The state of the control molecule at the centre is switched by a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM).

These large machines are a standard part of the nanotechnologist's tool kit, and allow the viewing and manipulation of atomic surfaces.

Using the STM, the researchers showed they could change the central molecule's state and simultaneously switch the states of the surrounding 16.

"We instruct only one molecule and it simultaneously and logically instructs 16 others at a time," said Dr Bandyopadhyay.

The configuration allows four billion different possible combinations of outcome.

The two nanometre diameter structure was inspired by the parallel communication of glial cells inside a human brain, according to the team.

Robot control

To test the control unit, the researchers simulated docking eight existing nano-machines to the structure, creating a "nano-factory" or a kind of "chemical swiss army knife".


The attached devices, created by other research groups, included the "world's tiniest elevator", a molecular platform that can be raised or lowered on command.

The device is about two and a half nanometres (billionths of a metre) high, and the lift moves less than one nanometre up and down.

All eight machines simultaneously responded to a single instruction in the simulation.

"We have clear cut evidence that we can control those machines," said Dr Bandyopadhyay.

This "one-to-many" communication and the device's ability to act as a central control unit also raises the possibility of using the device in future computers, he said.

Machines built using devices such as this would be able to process 16 bits of information simultaneously.

Current silicon Central Processing Units (CPUs) can only carry out one instruction at a time, albeit thousands of times per second.

The researchers say they have already built faster machines, capable of 256 simultaneous operations, and have designed one capable of 1024.

However, according to Professor Andrew Adamatzky of the University of the West England (UWE), making a workable computer would be very difficult at the moment.

"As with other implementations of unconventional computers the application is very limited, because they operate [it] using scanning tunnel microscopy," he said.

But, he said, the work is promising.

"I am sure with time such molecular CPUs can be integrated in molecular robots, so they will simply interact with other molecular parts autonomously."


Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Chemical brain controls nanobots

Published: 2008/03/11 10:32:53 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

 

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Space planes 'to meet big demand'

By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News

Wind tunnel testing has proven the design's stability
Simulation flight
Aerospace giant EADS says it will need a production line of rocket planes to satisfy the space tourism market.
The European company's Astrium division, makers of the Ariane rocket, has plans for a commercial vehicle to take ticketed passengers above 100km.

Its market assessment suggests there would be 15,000 people a year prepared to part with some 200,000 euros (£160,000) for the ride of a lifetime.

Astrium anticipates it be will be producing about 10 planes a year.

"To satisfy the market you will need more planes than you think, because once there is regular operation, the price will decrease which means there will be more customers," Robert Laine, chief technical officer (CTO) of the pan-European company, told BBC News.


Today, we don't know how to do space cheaply
Robert Laine, CTO, EADS Astrium
Fantastic acceleration

"It will develop towards a classical aeronautical business model. Someone will build the planes; somebody will operate them; somebody will sell the tickets; somebody will provide the accommodation - like any tourism."
He was speaking in London at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, where he was delivering the 99th Kelvin Lecture.

Astrium does not intend to run a space tourism marketing operation itself. Rather, it intends simply to supply vehicles to those who will.

And although production numbers will not be in the same league as, say, Airbus or Boeing, they will be significant nonetheless.

Mr Laine said development of Astrium's rocket plane was proceeding apace.


Wind tunnel testing has proven the aerodynamic shape; and the vehicle's Romeo rocket engine which will take the plane above 100km has been ignited for burns that have run up to 31 seconds.
The engine will be using the combustion of a liquid oxygen-methane propellant to provide the more than 1km/s punch needed to break through the top of the Earth's atmosphere.

About 50% of the mass of the plane at take-off would be fuel.

The intention is to produce a vehicle that seats five individuals - one pilot and four passengers.

The production model will use normal jet engines to take off and climb to 12km.

From there, the rocket engine will kick the vehicle straight up, taking it beyond 60km in just 80 seconds. By the time the rocket shuts down, the craft should have sufficient velocity to carry it above 100km - into space.
Fly a simulated mission on the Astrium rocket plane
As the plane then begins to fall back to Earth, the pilot will use small thrusters to control its attitude, keeping the plane's belly flat to the Earth.
"If you enter with the belly flat down then you expose a very large radius to the aerodynamic flux and that contains the temperature to an acceptable limit," explained Mr Laine.

"We calculate the temperature will be less than 100C on the surface of the wings."

When the plane slows to subsonic speed in the atmosphere, it will use its jet engines again to return to the airport.
The total journey time will be about one-and-a-half hours.
Mr Laine said the planes would have about a 10-year lifetime. They would be designed for ease of maintenance, with an operational schedule of one flight per week.

Although the rocket planes could take off and land from any airport, Astrium believes it is likely that special spaceports - possibly 10 worldwide - will operate in a few, restricted locations.

Northern Europe probably would not host one of these, Mr Laine speculated, because of the high density of other air traffic and because cloud would too frequently obscure the view of Earth.

"In Europe, I'd say the most likely location is around the Mediterranean. Why? Because there are blue skies most of the time, and because from 100km you can see mountains, the sea and the coast."

Cheaper space

The Astrium CTO acknowledged that Virgin Group boss Sir Richard Branson would be first into the market with rocket planes based on the award-winning and record-breaking SpaceShipOne concept.

But Mr Laine was confident an Astrium-fed business would be second, with a commercial service that began exactly five years after the agreement of a one-billion-euro financing deal.

He even hoped Sir Richard would be an Astrium customer - just as his airline business is a customer of the EADS Airbus division.

The CTO would not say how soon the initial financing would be in place, or reveal details about the identities of parties that were in discussion.


Long-term, Mr Laine said, space tourism had a major role to play in reducing the overall cost of space access.

He sees rocket planes being used for homeland security purposes as "quick satellites"; and as forerunners of superfast intercontinental passenger transporters.

"Today we don't know how to go to space cheaply. Being able to climb on a regular basis to 100km will give us the motivation to develop the plane that goes, not just up and down to the same place, but from here to the other side of the Earth.

"When the Ariane 5 takes off, 15 minutes later it is over Europe; and 45 minutes later it is over the Pacific. The fastest way is to go outside the atmosphere and that will be the future."

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Space planes 'to meet big demand'

Published: 2008/03/17 13:38:28 GMT

© BBC MMVIII