Space Flight

The world of space launchers is changing. It is not being revolutionised yet, unfortunately, but it is definitely changing. Just to name a few...Falcon, Antares, SLS, and close to home, my home: Ariane 5ME and Ariane 6.

The world of space launchers is not an easy one to move around in as an engineer and above all as a researcher. It's a challenging, conservative and highly political world. Sometimes when listening to debates as to which launcher is best for the future, it nearly comes across as clash of faiths - which payload, which configuration, which propellants, ....

It's easy to get carried away! But if reflected upon it becomes clear that when examined individually these issues generally have no right or wrong answer. They are not irrelevant but above them lie questions of overarching imporantance that can be and must be asked. Only when examined in the frame of these questions, do technical issues take on their true meaning and purpose.

So what are these questions? Well the first questions are simple:
- what is our aim?
- what missions do we wish and must we launch?
- where do we want to take the future?....

If humanity is to continue its enterprises in space, it needs launchers. And it will certainly need launchers, rockets, space vehicles, if Gaia is to reach out for Exogaia once we find her.

Thought Experiment

Let us indulge in a thought experiment, a sort of brainstorming, to help us understand what kind of launcher might be of use.

The date is today, 2013, and the aim is to be able to launch all range of payloads in all kinds of orbits, from low earth orbits (LEO) to escape orbits. So we want the mission capture of the launcher to be as wide a possible.

...more to come....

First launch of Ariane 4 on
June 15th, 1988 - credit: CNES/ESA/Arianespace




Ariane 5 launch
credit: ESA-CNES-Arianespace