Performances of a Small Hypersonic Airplane (Hyplane)
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Politecnico di Torino Porto Institutional Repository [Proceeding] PERFORMANCES OF A SMALL HYPERSONIC AIRPLANE (HYPLANE) Original Citation: Savino R.; Russo G.; D’Oriano V.; Visone M.; Battipede M.; Gili P. (2014). PERFORMANCES OF A SMALL HYPERSONIC AIRPLANE (HYPLANE). In: 65th International Astronautical Congress„ Toronto, Canada, 29 September - 3 October 2014. pp. 1-13 Availability: This version is available at : http://porto.polito.it/2591763/ since: February 2015 Publisher: International Astronautical Federation (IAF) Terms of use: This article is made available under terms and conditions applicable to Open Access Policy Article ("Public - All rights reserved") , as described at http://porto.polito.it/terms_and_conditions. html Porto, the institutional repository of the Politecnico di Torino, is provided by the University Library and the IT-Services. The aim is to enable open access to all the world. Please share with us how this access benefits you. Your story matters. (Article begins on next page) 65th International Astronautical Congress, Toronto, Canada. Copyright ©2014 by the Authors. Published by the IAF, with permission and released to the IAF to publish in all forms. IAC-14-D2.4 PERFORMANCES OF A SMALL HYPERSONIC AIRPLANE (HYPLANE) Raffaele Savino Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy Gennaro Russo Trans-Tech srl and Space Renaissance Italia, Italy Vera D’Oriano*, Michele Visone Blue Engineering, Italy Manuela Battipede, Piero Gili Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Polytechnic of Turin, Italy In the present work a preliminary performance study regarding a small hypersonic airplane named HyPlane is presented. It is designed for long duration sub-orbital space tourism missions, in the frame of the Space Renaissance (SR) Italia Space Tourism Program. The vehicle is also consistent with a point-to-point medium range hypersonic trip, within the “urgent business travel” market segment. 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, is able to provide aerodynamic stability and manoeuvrability along the flight path and to produce a reduced sonic boom during cruise and supersonic descent approach, ensuring a very limited environmental impact. HyPlane, powered by Turbine Based Combined Cycle (TBCC) engines plus a throtteable Rocket, is able 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 sub-orbital 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. I. INTRODUCTION The company is presently test qualifying an enlarged version of the SS1, named SS2, which is In recent years some private enterprises have been intended to carry passengers for a short-duration approaching Space flight with a relatively low-cost Space flight at a fare of about 250 k$ per seat. This philosophy, in antithesis with the one followed by sub-orbital flight should allow space tourists to government agencies in the past years. In fact, some experiment weightlessness for a few minutes and to examples of small reusable airplane-like vehicles see a large area of the Earth, along with its curvature7. have been developed to perform sub-orbital missions, Other projects which are included in this frame which could represent a first step towards a safer, are the BSP Ascender, the EADS spaceplane and the more comfortable and less expensive access to Space XCOR Lynx7-9, all of which could be used even for in the near future. technological flight test10. Main idea is to merge part of technological Recent survey studies assessed the potential solutions developed for aeronautical and atmospheric market for sub-orbital vehicles9,11. The one performed re-entry purposes in order to design such vehicles, as by EADS and IPSOS9 shows that there is a sizable also discussed in 1-4. market for sub-orbital tourism and that people willing Scaled Composite launched for the first time the to pay around 200 k€ for that could be in the order of Space Ship One (SS1) in 2004. The vehicle reached 50000, just 16 years after the market start. 100 km altitude on a sub-orbital trajectory 36 years This market is of course much larger than the one after the X-15, developed by NASA at the turn of 50s related to orbital Space tourism missions on the ISS. and 60s. In this case, in fact, only 7 people had the opportunity, up to now, to perform this experience *Ph.D. student at University of Naples "Federico paying from 20 M$ to 40 M$. It is obvious that these II" IAC-14-2.4 Page 1 of 13 65th International Astronautical Congress, Toronto, Canada. Copyright ©2014 by the Authors. Published by the IAF, with permission and released to the IAF to publish in all forms. fares can be paid only by the so called Ultra High Net trip in the frame of the "urgent business travel" Worth Individuals (UHNWI). market segment. Previous supersonic or hypersonic Sub-orbital Space tourism may also be seen as an commercial designs tended toward large aircrafts, intermediate step towards a novel concept of orbital characterized by hundreds of tons of mass and Space tourism, based on reusable winged vehicles. hundreds of passengers. This has resulted in great Indeed, the employment of reusable components difficulty in determining a valid and sustainable could strongly reduce the cost per seat up to 2 orders operational concept, because of the system high of magnitude, depending on the number of flights complexity, requiring very long time to reach the scheduled. In addition, the development of a winged sufficient technology readiness level. re-entry vehicle could represent a safer and more A small passenger hypersonic plane may take comfortable way to cross the atmosphere11-15. advantage of previous experiences and represent a Secondary markets directly linked to the first step towards the development of larger and more commercial sub-orbital flights may include complex systems, but at the same time it may open microgravity research, high altitude aerospace new markets and applications. technological testing and development, astronauts The paper is organized as follows. In Section II training, remote sensing, and so forth. the vehicle configuration and mission profiles are A longer term perspective is also characterized by summarized. The aerodynamic database (obtained by point-to-point hypersonic transportation. In this means of numerical analysis) is discussed in section frame, up to now, Skylon seems to be the most III. Section IV discusses the expected surface promising project16. It uses the hydrogen-powered temperatures and possible materials for the structural Combined-Cycle SABRE engines to reach a cruise components; a preliminary mass budget is also altitude around 26 km and a Mach number around 517. reported. Section V shows in detail the turbo-ramjet For this vehicle reaction Engines Limited (REL) supersonic inlet design, carried out by means of CFD predicted a preliminary development cost of around analysis and the computations of the complete 12B$, including airframe and engine development14. configuration, including engines. Main flight In addition, the company foresees to lower payload performances for different mission scenarios are costs per kilogram from the current 18000 €/kg to 750 presented and discussed in Section VI. Conclusions €/kg. are presented in Section VII. University of Naples “Federico II”, in the wider frame of the Space Renaissance (SR) Italia Space II. SYSTEM CONFIGURATION AND Tourism Program16 and with the support of other MISSION REQUIREMENTS universities and small and medium enterprises (including Polytechnic of Turin, Blue Engineering HyPlane is a new concept of hypersonic and Trans-Tech), is investigating a new vehicle transportation system designed by the first two concept for long-duration space tourism missions and authors to offer access to stratospheric and space hypersonic transportation over transcontinental flights as safe, convenient and commonplace as distances. today's commercial air transportation, by integrating SR Italia is a cultural association of individuals, state-of-the-art aeronautic and space technologies. whose main purposes are focused on two fundamental The HyPlane conceptual design is defined by the concepts: push toward a more efficient, economically complex interplay of aerodynamics, atmospheric sustainable, routine-type access to Space and make heating, materials and structures, propulsion, fuel use of Space not only for scientific activities. The selection, cabin, tank and subsystems sizing. association promotes Space Industrialization starting HyPlane analysis team includes experts from from Space Tourism, which seems to be the only universities, small and medium enterprises, involved industrial and commercial activity having the in system engineering, aerothermodynamics, potential to grow up on itself, generating from market propulsion, trajectory and performance