Suborbital Space Research Articles

THE LEGAL RATIONALES OF ENACTING MALAYSIAN SPACE LEGISLATION

The involvement of Malaysia in outer space activities is irrefutable. It had started long ago from 1960 with the construction of her first earth satellite station in Kuantan, Pahang. Apart from building the earth satellite stations, Malaysia also has involved in various space applications and activities. These include telecommunication and broadcasting, remote sensing, meteorology, navigation, satellite manufacturing and launching, astronaut programme, suborbital space plane, commercial space ports and so forth. Such activities in fact need proper regulations. Even though some of these activities are at initial stages of involvement, however, there is a great opportunity for further engagement. Since Malaysia has no specific law deals with outer space activities, thus this paper discusses the legal rationales why it is necessary to enact the Malaysian outer space legislation. It hopes it will justify the importance of outer space legislation in the context of Malaysia as an actor and a contributor to outer space activities.

The Legal Rationales of Enacting Malaysian Space Legislation

The involvement of Malaysia in outer space activities is irrefutable. It had started long ago from 1960 with the construction of her first earth satellite station in Kuantan, Pahang. Apart from building the earth satellite stations, Malaysia also has involved in various space applications and activities. These include telecommunication and broadcasting, remote sensing, meteorology, navigation, satellite manufacturing and launching, astronaut programme, suborbital space plane, commercial space ports and so forth. Such activities in fact need proper regulations. Even though some of these activities are at initial stages of involvement, however, there is a great opportunity for further engagement. Since Malaysia has no specific law deals with outer space activities, thus this paper discusses the legal rationales why it is necessary to enact the Malaysian outer space legislation. It hopes it will justify the importance of outer space legislation in the context of Malaysia as an actor and a contributor to outer space activities.

Разработка программы расчета параметров траектории суборбитального многоразового космического аппарата туристического класса

Разработка программы расчета параметров траектории суборбитального многоразового космического аппарата туристического класса

STUDY ON THE STATIC AND DYNAMIC STABILITY OF A MODULAR AIRPLANE SYSTEM

The purpose of this research is an analysis of the static and dynamic stability of the Modular Airplane System (MAS). The MAS is designed to perform suborbital space flights. The concept assumes that two tailless vehicles bonded together form a conventional aircraft where the wing of the second one is used as the horizontal tail of the whole system. The CFD calculations, and the stability and control derivatives were conducted by the PANUKL package, which uses a low order panel method for the aerodynamic analysis. The analysis of the static and dynamic stability was performed by the SDSA package. Only the selected part of the MAS mission was investigated. The results that will be presented have been divided into three parts: static stability, longitudinal dynamic stability and lateral dynamic stability. The MAS has a few possible applications. The first one is a suborbital space tourism flight. Moreover, it can be used as a lunching vehicle for micro satellites or as a testing platform for new space technology to improve their TRL level. Finally, in the far future, it could be used as a fast point-to-point travel system. The paper presents the results of the static and dynamic stability of a unique aircraft configuration which consists of two tailless vehicles. The research focuses on a situation where the vehicles are just before separation and their mass is similar. Moreover, the influence of the second vehicle’s position with respect to the first one is included.

Global Optimization of the Shape of a Suborbital Space Vehicle

AbstractThe determination of the global optimized (GO) shapes of flying configurations leads to extended variational problems with free boundaries. The author has developed special optimization strategies called optimum optimorum and iterative optimum optimorum strategies and have used them for the design of GO shapes of three models, which are of minimum drag at three different supersonic cruising Mach numbers. These optimization strategies can be used for the determination of new GO shapes of more performant supersonic transport aircraft and space vehicles. (© 2016 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Обоснование выбора материалов для крыла суборбитального многоразового космического аппарата туристического класса

Обоснование выбора материалов для крыла суборбитального многоразового космического аппарата туристического класса

Ups and downs of space tourism development in 60 years from moon register to spaceshiptwo CRASH

In human imagination, dreams and expectations, the sequence of “space tourism” has most likely been Moon tourism, Earth orbital tourism and then suborbital tourism. But the sequence in actual development is the reverse: first Earth suborbital tourism, then orbital tourism, and finally Moon tourism. In 1954, three years before the successful launch of the first human artificial satellite, the world's oldest travel company, Thomas Cook in Britain, initiated the “Moon Register.” Enthusiasts could sign an option for a commercial trip to the Moon and the company guaranteed to provide tickets at the earliest possible date. Sixty years later on 31st October 2014, the first SpaceShip Two (SS2) of Virgin Galactic developed for commercial suborbital space tourism (SST) and scientific research crashed at the Mojave Desert in California during test flight. Although the first privately paid space tourist had traveled to the International Space Station in 2001, this was only for millionaires and not the general public. In 2004, although SpaceShipOne won the Ansari X prize and shed the first light on SST, the commercial SST operations originally planned to be realized in 2008 are now long overdue. The SS2 has been just one of the reusable suborbital launch vehicles developed for SST and other purposes, with others including the Lynx, Spaceplane and Dream Chaser. However a tragedy in which the SS2 crashed and caused the sacrifice of one senior test pilot alerted tourists that the long overdue of SST might still be a few years away. The purposes of this paper are to review and discuss the ups and downs of space tourism development in the 60 years from 1954 to 2014, and to look forward to get more clear future from the unveiling of second SS2 on 19th February 2016 and the continuous development of Lynx Mark I. However in any case, there are still many constraints including economy.

Performances of a small hypersonic airplane (HyPlane)

In the present work a preliminary performance study regarding a small hypersonic airplane named HyPlane is presented. It is designed for point-to-point medium range hypersonic trip, within the “urgent business travel” market segment. The vehicle is also consistent with long duration suborbital space tourism missions, in the frame of the Space Renaissance (SR) Italia Space Tourism Program. The design of such a hypersonic airplane is based on the concept of integrating available technologies developed for aeronautical and space atmospheric re-entry systems.The vehicle, characterized by high aerodynamic efficiency and low wing loading and powered by Turbine Based Combined Cycle (TBCC) engines plus a throtteable Rocket, is able to produce a reduced sonic boom and to perform Horizontal Takeoff and Horizontal Landing (HTHL) on runways.Aerodynamic and propulsive performances for the different flight regimes encountered during the missions are studied. Aerodynamic heating effects are analyzed, in order to identify suitable structures and materials design to sustain the hypersonic flight conditions. Different flight paths are also investigated, including hypersonic cruise and suborbital parabolic trajectories, which provide Space tourists with the opportunity of long duration missions, offering short and repeated periods of low-gravity, in the high stratosphere where a large view of the Earth is ensured.

Status and Perspectives of Hypersonic Systems and Technologies with Emphasis on the Role of Sub-Orbital Flight

The relevance and the main features of Hypersonic Flight are shortly presented and discussed. A synthetic overview of the few realisations and of many studies, projects and technological demonstrators offers opportunity of point out many interesting aspects. Then the more actual realisations and studies are considered, with particular attention to the new sector of small suborbital planes for Space Tourism. That gives opportunity of proposing a Road Map for an affordable and logic development of Hypersonic Flight, passing through the development of a suborbital Space Tourism plane on the basis of an existing subsonic business jet. Then the suborbital plane will constitute the basis of developing an Hypersonic Cruise Business Jet and, as a next step, a TSTO.

The first decade of commercial space tourism

In order to provide a basis for assessing the future prospects and challenges of space tourism, this paper begins with a brief overview of the history of space tourism. This is followed by a discussion on market demand and current developments in the academic community, as well as the status of traffic tools, regulations and legalization. In market demand, although studies conducted in 1990s assumed the possibility of 500,000 per year in space tourists and several billion USD of annual revenue, in 2008 a relatively modest 13,000 per year was predicted. At this time traffic transport tools including the Soyuz system, CST-100, DragonRider and International Space Station (ISS) can only provide a few tens in spare seats for space tourists per year compared to the projected 20,000 plus seat capacity of the Lynx, Dream Chaser and SpaceShipTwo (SS2) fleets, which have the potential to conduct their first full suborbital test flight and first commercial flight within the coming decade. Added to this, the US government has only a regulatory regime that supports privately owned suborbital space tourism (SST) and no government funded orbital space tourism (OST). These evidences reveal a very high and advantageous potential for SST to form a space tourism industry in the coming decade, whereas the possibility of OST is relatively low. However, even though the prosperity of SST in the coming years is expectable, its maturity, reliability and safety still need to win the confidence of the general public. For examples, the announcement of changes to fuel used in the SS2 rocket engine in May 2014 and the crash of one SS2 while performing test flight on 31 October 2014 indicated the need for much careful preparation, as any accident in commercial operation could seriously damage or even kill its future prospects.

The Wax Rocket

Since spaceflight began, there have been fewer than 5,500 launches into orbit, and only about 300 of those have carried astronauts. These endeavors have always been risky. Indeed, failure rate for space launches over past five decades has hovered around 8 percent. Early aircraft were also subject to frequent accidents, but private industry invested billions in development, and these machines grew steadily safer over time. Without a mass market to drive a similar evolution, space travel has remained exceedingly dangerous. No wonder it still takes a good dollop of the right stuff to be an astronaut. Soon, though, advent of suborbital space tourism may finally do what decades of government-sponsored R&D could not. Companies such as Airbus Defence & Space, Armadillo Aerospace, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and Xcor Aerospace are planning to offer suborbital flights for prices that ordinary people- or at least ordinary wealthy people- can afford.

Suborbital Vehicles to Study Transition Adaptation to Spaceflight – Why Biologists Should Care About the New Suborbital Flight Opportunities

Abstract The advent of the new generation of suborbital space vehicles is opening up a new and exciting realm of space science that should be of great interest to biologists. These vehicles make it possible to explore biological responses and adaptations that occur in the first few minutes of entering spaceflight and also in the first few minutes after return from space. Historically these transition stages in spaceflight have simply not been available for research, especially within human-rated vehicles. Given that complex biological responses are seldom linear over time, and that essentially all current experiments on the International Space Station (ISS) are conducted after stabilization on orbit, biologists are missing the chance to understand the pathways that lead from terrestrial existence to successful spaceflight adaptation and back. Studies conducted on suborbital spacecraft can therefore be an innovative approach to filling a substantial gap in knowledge regarding the temporal dynamics of biological responses to successful spaceflight physiological adaptation.

Life-sciences research opportunities in commercial suborbital space flight

Commercial suborbital space flights will reach altitudes above 100km, with 3–5min of weightlessness bracketed by high-g launch and landing phases. The proposed frequency of these flights, and the large passenger population, present interesting opportunities for researchers in the life sciences. The characteristics of suborbital flight are between those of parabolic and orbital flights, opening up new scientific possibilities and easing the burden for obtaining access to 0g.There are several areas where these flights might be used for research in the life sciences: (1) operational research: preparation for “real” space flight, such as rehearsal of medical procedures, (2) applied research—to answer questions relevant to long-term space flight; (3) passenger health and safety—effects on passengers, relevant to screening and training; (4) basic research in physiological mechanisms—to address issues of fundamental science.We describe possible projects in each of these categories. One in particular spans several areas. Based on the anticipated suborbital flight profiles, observations from parabolic flight, and the wide range of fitness and experience levels of suborbital passengers, sensorimotor disturbances such as motion sickness and disorientation are major concerns. Protocols for pre-flight adaptation of sensorimotor responses might help to alleviate some of these problems, based on results from research in the initial flights. This would improve the passenger experience and add to the knowledge base relevant to space flight more generally.

Revision of the Manefish GeneraCaristiusandPlatyberyx(Teleostei: Percomorpha: Caristiidae), with Descriptions of Five New Species

The family Caristiidae, commonly known as manefishes or veilfins, includes several species of mesopelagic, oceanic fishes found throughout the major ocean basins of the world. We present herein the second part of our revision of the family, including all of the “large-mouth” species, which are distinguished from other members of the family by having a narrow suborbital space and a long upper jaw that extends to mid-orbit or beyond and which is visible externally, not covered by the thin bones of the suborbital series. This group, which is comprised of the genera Platyberyx and Caristius, is described in full, including descriptions of five new species. The genus Platyberyx, which includes six species, three of which are newly described, is distinguished from all other caristiid genera by the presence of a conspicuous lateral line with large scales. The genus Caristius, with four species, two of which are newly described, is distinguished from Platyberyx by the absence of a conspicuous lateral line and by ...

Commercial space travel: security and other implications

The newest and most expensive mode of transportation is commercial space travel which offers high-end suborbital flights to space tourists. Some consider it an extension of air travel, mostly on the basis that a spacecraft that operates suborbital flights would have to traverse airspace to go beyond it. This has encouraged some academics to suggest that this area of travel can easily be accommodated within the existing air transport regime, by incorporating the various safety principles that would be adopted for commercial space travel within existing treaty provisions with some adaptation and modification. Although there may be some commonality in both air travel and outer space travel, on the basis that a vehicle operating suborbital flights would go through airspace, it would be both unwise and impracticable to move a space travel regime lock stock and barrel into the existing air transport regime. This article touches on the main issues involved and addresses what is arguably the most critical aspect of space travel – security - which is the only area involving the most unpredictable aspect - the human factor. On the subject of sub-orbital flights space security has generally escaped the scrutiny of both academics and professionals. The article suggests the most appropriate regime for commercial space transport and discusses the elements that are the most critical in the development of such a regime.

Signal transduction in primary human T lymphocytes in altered gravity – results of the MASER-12 suborbital space flight mission

We investigated the influence of altered gravity on key proteins of T cell activation during the MASER-12 ballistic suborbital rocket mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Swedish Space Cooperation (SSC) at ESRANGE Space Center (Kiruna, Sweden). We quantified components of the T cell receptor, the membrane proximal signaling, MAPK-signaling, IL-2R, histone modifications and the cytoskeleton in non-activated and in ConA/CD28-activated primary human T lymphocytes. The hypergravity phase during the launch resulted in a downregulation of the IL-2 and CD3 receptor and reduction of tyrosine phosphorylation, p44/42-MAPK phosphorylation and histone H3 acetylation, whereas LAT phosphorylation was increased. Compared to the baseline situation at the point of entry into the microgravity phase, CD3 and IL-2 receptor expression at the surface of non-activated T cells were reduced after 6 min microgravity. Importantly, p44/42-MAPK-phosphorylation was also reduced after 6 min microgravity compared to the 1g ground controls, but also in direct comparison between the in-flight μg and the 1g group. In activated T cells, the reduced CD3 and IL-2 receptor expression at the baseline situation recovered significantly during in-flight 1g conditions, but not during microgravity conditions. Beta-tubulin increased significantly after onset of microgravity until the end of the microgravity phase, but not in the in-flight 1g condition. This study suggests that key proteins of T cell signal modules are not severely disturbed in microgravity. Instead, it can be supposed that the strong T cell inhibiting signal occurs downstream from membrane proximal signaling, such as at the transcriptional level as described recently. However, the MASER-12 experiment could identify signal molecules, which are sensitive to altered gravity, and indicates that gravity is obviously not only a requirement for transcriptional processes as described before, but also for specific phosphorylation / dephosphorylation of signal molecules and surface receptor dynamics.

Commercial suborbital space tourism-proposal on passenger's medical selection

Commercial human spaceflight has excellent economic and technical perspectives in the next decades. Passengers will be persons from a general population differing from culture, age, gender and health status. They all will have to withstand physical loads of spaceflight such as acceleration and deceleration forces, microgravity, vibration, noise and radiation. There is a necessity to mitigate all negative impacts on the passengers' health. Besides precautionary measures in construction and equipment, a diligent medical selection and pre-flight training is recommended. To ensure an easy and at the same time qualified selection procedure, it is necessary to define medical selection criteria and training methods. As experiences with suborbital spaceflight of private passengers are still few we recommend to implement in the beginning of this new era maximum safety standards. Having performed a satisfactory number of successful flights, some of the selection criteria and training sessions might be loosened or modified. This judicious approach is in the interest of the spaceflight participants as well as of the providing companies. As a guideline we propose a four step approach that allows a quick decision concerning the fitness of participants to fly as well as an intensive preparation of the passengers. For the first two steps positive experiences from medical screening and examination of professional pilots can be utilised. According to JAR-FCL 3 (Joint Aviation Requirements-Flight Crew Licensing, Chapter 3) a questionnaire with medical interview targeting the medical background of the respective person and including no-go criteria provides a first estimation for applicants and medical examiners whether there will be a chance to be accepted as a passenger. The second step of selection comprises the physical examination of the applicant adjusted to the professional pilot's examination procedure. As the physical challenges of the suborbital flight will exceed the impact of general aviation, the standardized diagnostic programme should be purposefully extended. The third part of the selection consists of an intensive training programme, preparing the passengers for the upcoming challenges. In detail this training should comprise lectures about aerospace physiology, countermeasures to g-forces and motion sickness, emergency practices (e.g. rapid decompression or hypoxia) and a centrifuge ride with g-forces adapted to the respective flight profile. An altitude chamber flight, hypoxia experience and participation in a Zero-G-Flight might also be included optionally. The fourth step of the evaluation is caused by a possible delay between medical examination and launch. In the interval, the health status might have changed and serious illnesses might have developed. So, a short re-evaluation should be performed 7–14 days before take-off. A brief check-out procedure for medical re-evaluation of passenger's health status is recommended. As launch of suborbital spaceflights will take place all over the world at so called “Spaceports”, the development of standards for medical examinations and the training programmes as well as a mutual acceptance of the participating medical test and training centres will be very helpful for development of this industry. Joint recommendations for the emergency equipment of commercial spaceships will also have to be developed.

Aviation or space policy: New challenges for the insurance sector to private human access to space

The phenomenon of private human access to space has introduced a new set of problems in the insurance sector. Orbital and suborbital space transportation will surely be unique commercial services for this new market. Discussions are under way regarding space insurance, in order to establish whether this new market ought to be regulated by aviation or space law. Alongside new definitions, infrastructures, legal frameworks and liability insurances, the insurance sector has also been introducing a new approach. In this paper, I aim to analyse some of the possibilities of new premiums, capacities, and policies (under aviation or space insurance rules), as well as the new insurance products related to vehicles, passengers and third party liability. This paper claims that a change toward new insurance regimes is crucial, due to the current stage in development of space tourism and the urgency to adapt insurance rules to support future development in this area.

The Possibility of Space Tourism in India: Issues and Concerns

Dennis Tito opened the eyes of world to the idea of orbital space tourism when he became the first private space traveler in 2001. Three years later, the Burt Rutan and Paul Allen led team of Mojave Aerospace Ventures won Ansari X-Prize by successfully completing two piloted sub-orbital flights of a reusable vehicle to 100 kilometers in altitude within a span of two weeks. This accomplishment demonstrated to the public and government managers the potential for entrepreneurial commercial activities to change the landscape of the space industry. And now we can see renowned organization like Virgin Galactic, Space X, Armadillo Aerospace, Blue Origin, Bigelow Aerospace and Xcor Aerospace has already not only joined the race of space tourism project but they are also making a remarkable progress. However we see Indian venture has not yet joined for space tourism project. Meanwhile it is believed that India can play a vital role in developing a very cost effective solution for space travel technologies, thus it imperative to investigate the possibility of space tourism in India. In this paper the potential and possibility of space tourism industry in India has been explored. It examines the potential market and cost structure for both suborbital and orbital space travel. Apart from this major issues with the development of the fledgling space tourism industry in India has been identified which need to be addressed in order to promote the growth of this industry. Keywords LEO: Low Earth Orbit, ISS: International Space Station, IRR: Internal Rate of Return, NPV: Net Present Value

Commercial Space Tourism and Space Weather: An Update

Commercial Space Tourism and Space Weather: An Update