A Great Flying Machine The Rockwell Automation | Star Raker

The Rockwell Automation – By Militrayfacts.com

Today, we are going to discuss the story of “A Great Flying Machine The Rockwell Automation |Star Raker” which is a space aircraft that is used for Satellite Power Station called the SPS program for solving the energy problem of United States.     

On a cold February morning in 2000, the Californian skies have been cleared for a very special flight. The A Great Flying Machine The Rockwell Automation of Star Raker with 12 supersonic turbo jets rolls out onto the desert runway. The crew double-checked its urgent cargo is secure components for a 70000 Tons solar power plant destined to skim the atmosphere in low orbit above the earth.

For this colossal monster, this mission would be the first of many flights this year. One of 25 years of operations planned to build a ring of 60 orbital power stations to solve the United State’s energy crisis. At 8:36 am, President Al Gore has approved the flight and the tower has authorized take-off. The captain gives the command to go with throttle up and the Rockwell International Star Raker takes to the sky.

This alternative history never happened, breaking the sound barrier at Mach 6. This 12 engines turbo turbojet’s spaceplane would have ushered in a new age of space exploration and made even the most impressive SpaceX rocket obsolete, but the legendary star plane would never be built. Today, its possessor the space shuttle is no more. what was the star raker? how did it fly? and why did the United States decide to never build it grab your oxygen?

Now we move to low earth orbit, In the 1970s United State faced increasingly worst energy shortages, according to news “when the demand grows greater than the immediate supply and the circuits break tension passengers flight-307 is cancelled, until further notice”. Its main source of petroleum had ground to a halt, thanks to the international crisis in Iran and the Middle East and nuclear had been ruled out after two high-profile nuclear meltdowns. 

By 1977, the threat of running out of energy had gripped, the U.S nation with President Carter declaring “then we must start now to develop the new unconventional sources of energy that we will rely on in the next century” and the solar power plant would they come up with something that would tick the unconventional box. NASA pitched a series of 60 gigantic geosynchronous satellites orbiting the planet beaming down refined energy for the world's use. It was called the satellite power system (SPS) and would be comprised of a global network of giant photovoltaic arrays. The Solar plant in Space was huge with two long solar panel structures five kilometers long by four kilometers wide or 3.1 miles by 2.4 miles for a total of 11.73 kilometers long or 7.2 miles in imperial units, weighing the small amount of 10.42 million kilograms or 22.97 million pounds.

Satellite Power System (SPS) – By Militrayfacts.com

Now you are thinking that doesn't make any sense. How can we imagine the size of these satellites more realistically?  Well, here's an excellent graphic from Scott from the aerospace projects review that shows off the solar power satellite over New York City. It's bigger than Manhattan and easily crushes part of the outer burrows as well. 

By being in orbit whether dust and day and night cycles would be eliminated allowing the power station to produce energy 24 hours in 7 days. The electricity generated would be sent down via microwaves to a thin receiving mesh that could be built pretty much anywhere even over oceans. This project would take 30 years to realize all 60 units, but it would spawn an incredibly lucrative industry planeside in the United States. The SPS (Satellite Power System) is an attractive challenging and worthy project which the aerospace community is well prepared and able to address.

Satellite Power System (SPS) – By Militrayfacts.com

Physicist Robert G. Jahn wrote in support of the project, but the problem was how would NASA even get all of the materials personnel solar panels and more into orbit to build these power stations? so far, they had only launched the 77 metric ton or 85 ton Skylab into low earth orbit using a huge Saturn V rocket left over from the earlier Apollo moon missions.

The new solar power station weighed a hundred times more than even the modern international space station that we have orbiting today and rockets wouldn't cut it, it would need over a thousand Saturn V launchers to even get one SPS (Satellite Power System) into earth orbit. So, NASA turned to the market for the solution, the first to reply was Boeing. Boeing had a variety of different ideas, but the key one that they provided was called the Space Fighter. The space fighter was Boeing's pitch to solve the earth to orbit problem of the SPS program. As its name may infer it was a rocket system/space plane that would act like a lorry for space station components for assembly in orbit.

Physicist Robert G. Jahn - By Militrayfacts.com

The rocket would be comprised of two stages:

1. Booster-Stage of Boeing Space Fighter:

In the Booster stage, it would sit on the launch pad and launch to the east once the propellant was expended in its main fuel tank. The booster section that it separated earlier would have also done the same using onboard jet engines to become more plane-like and land on a very wide runway approximately 200 miles away from the launchpad. When the booster and the orbiter were reunited back at the launch site. They would be reassembled and loaded with new goods on another plane and this would just stop for a moment because this back in the launch area is detailed that many sources kind of glossed over but it's far more complex you see the booster would land approximately 200 miles downrange of the launch site. This would mean that if it took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida it would land in the sea thus engineers decided that this space freighter would need to leave from either Nevada or Arizona, landing in a successive state to the west such as New Mexico or Texas, then the booster would be put on a train and sent back to the launch site. 

Cape Canaveral Florida Star Raker – By Militrayfacts.com

So not only would the rocket need to be built, but a new airport 200 miles downrange and a railway line connecting them both make the project very expensive. For the goal of two SPSS built per year, the system would require a stunning 240 space launches a year or a turn around every 36 hours with a fleet of 94 space freighters they expected to have each one flying every five days reaching the retirement milestone quickly in only four years this was only one of many other Satellite Power System launch crafts proposed in the era.

Boeing Space Fighter | Image Source Google - Image by aerospaceprojectsreview.com

 2. Orbiter-Stage of Boeing Space Fighter:

The Orbiter stage, aptly named the orbiter would continue to orbit which I think is self-explanatory once the orbiter had reached, its destination it would rendezvous with the station scaffold dock and unload its materials each mission would have a payload of 424000 kilograms or 934 thousand pounds. The space fighter would then use the remaining fuel to de-orbit and return to earth landing via a runway much like the shuttle.

Later in 1981, NASA made the very interesting observation the magnitude and sustained nature of this advanced space transportation program concept requires long-term routine operations. Somewhat, analogous to commercial airline and air fight operations. It's those last words, that is very telling what if this system did have more in common with air fight operations than rockets like the Star Raker.

With the ideas in the late 70s for a space fighter, Rockwell international realized several areas could be substantially improved. They came up with this the air breather rocket-powered horizontal take-off Tridelta flying wing single stage to orbit transportation system, today is The Rockwell Automation of Star Racker.

It was a spaceplane that was 103 meters long with a wingspan of 93 meters and would have carried a maximum of 89.2 metric tons of cargo into low earth orbit around 300 nautical miles above the equator or 555 kilometers.

In total, this would allow firms to receive payloads in orbit at a cost of about $15 per pound of $55 per pound., today in metric this is $25 US dollars per kilogram. For comparison's sake ElonMusk with the SpaceX rockets costs around about $2720 per kilogram to put something into orbit. So, this dream of low-cost orbit delivery is ridiculous and would be a total game-changer. Thanks to this vast Tridelta wing blended design.

Rockwell International Star Raker Design – By Militrayfacts.com

There was a great deal of eternal volume not only for cargo but fuel as well. The cargo deck was modelled after the C-5 galaxy and it was 20 feet high and 20 feet wide in a square shape and 141 feet long, that's 6x6 (6 by 6) and 42.9 meters for those living outside the USA. The craft would have two engine systems:

First, was a conventional jet engine specifically a hydrogen-fueled high bypass supersonic turbofan air turbo exchanger ramjet engine each with and 40000 pounds of thrust. The space plane also had three hydrogen-fueled rocket engines each with 1.06 million pounds of thrust and an ISP (International Space Plant) of 455

Seconds, enough to get it into that high orbit. This is, how it would all come together? The Star Raker would start its mission with a conventional runway take-off with conventional turbo-fan power, its ramjets would also act as supercharged alpha burners to help it get into the air. It would then jettison its landing gear that would land softly via parachutes and be used for the next mission. It would then head to the equator from Florida flying much like a normal plane. This would burn up fuel and mean less for the trip into orbit but Rockwell international countered that future versions would have in-flight refueling.

This is where it gets crazy, the aircraft would then rise to an altitude of 45000 feet before diving directly down to 37000 feet to build up speed and break the noise barrier and then turn upwards to reach 95000 feet or 29 miles before it operates, rocket engines speeding up to Mach 7.2. It then shuts off the wind turbines while closing the air intake ramps. Once, it reached the high enough orbit point, it would then shut down rocket engines and execute a Ho-man transfer to 556 kilometers above the earth.

The Rockwell Automation | Star Raker Nose – By Militrayfacts.com

The Star Raker or should I say, spacecraft now in orbit it would open its nose to release the payload directly or if meet the vast space station scaffold building the solar power plant dock. It would have a system of rails on board that could quickly mate with the rails of the space station and funnel out cargo. The nose that would swing out would have a two-level crew compartment with a flight deck and seating on the upper level than electronics life support and emergency supplies on the lower deck.

There weren’t any sleeping quarters as the missions were not expected to take very long as opposed to the Boeing space freighter that would be over 24 hours. There was also an airlock on the back of the section to allow access to the cargo bay either in flight or once it got up to space. Leaving orbit would be fairly typical of the same flight path of the shuttle that we have today.

The Star Raker would perform a low gamma flight path angle and high alpha angle of attack re-entry de-acceleration profile at approximately Mach 6. Then lower the alpha attack angle to the appropriate angle to get the maximum drag to ride at the highest speed and the direction of the width to the lowest speed, that is about what a plane flies out at Mach 0.85. It would then open its inlets and start some of the air breather engines and then perform a powered flight to a landing field land on a runway and taxi to the ramp.

The Star Raker would have enough fuel for a 300 nautical mile subsonic cruise or 555 kilometers as well as two landing attempts just in case, the first one wasn't successful in terms of the SPS program we outlined before. They would need 1100 flights each year to support the SPS program or about one launch of the star raker every 8 hours from a fleet of 30 aircraft which is pretty insane.

Advantages of Rockwell Automation - Star Raker:

The Star Raker had several advantages over the space fighter including the ability to land at any airport that could hold a 747 or C-5 galaxy, it only needed a runway of about eight thousand to fourteen thousand feet long, two thousand four hundred and forty meters to four thousand two hundred and seventy meters for landing and take off respectively. This would mean that it could pick up cargo by itself at some regional airport before heading to the space launch site no special intermodal transport is needed.

Disadvantages of Rockwell Automation - Star Raker:

Industry experts expressed that, the Rockwell Star Raker represents the direct thrust of future aerospace development. It is necessary that important technologies being developed in the past diligently, yet the world will never see further development. Why was this miracle machine never built? 

In the end, the star raker never really came close to the development.  It was a change in political power in the United States to the REAGAN administration and the price of oil plummeting that made. This expensive SPS satellite ring concept seems very silly and very expensive without the need to start manual work.

Design Issues in the Rockwell Automation - Star Raker:

There also were some issues with the Star Raker design:

For one it could carry less than other SPS launch systems and relied on future materials technology that wasn't possible back then as cool as a single stage to orbit plane is even today, there hasn't been a successful spaceplane design with the United States only coming close with rockets launched from flying aircraft. Therefore, it is confusing if even the concept itself could work

Another issue with the Rockwell Star Racker design was the fuel. The Star Raker had to be powered by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Two things you don't find lying around at many airports if any across the United States. Tons of infrastructure would need to be built to support the refueling of these giant space planes but engineers proposed that the creation of this lucrative industry would come with its supportive infrastructure build it and they will come so to speak.  

Multi-cell fuel tanks – By Militrayfacts.com

In addition, as an insult to injury, the actual space plane had a geometrically complex multi-cell fuel tank a series of conventional cylinders that were put together side by side to make a boxy fuel tank. They were held together by a web of internal tension to keep them together whilst in flight. This concept would have meant greater volume and be incredibly lightweight but such a fuel tank had never been built and there were many questions if it was even possible to design such a thing.

Flash forward to the year 2021, we can't help but think that such a mission for an alternative fuel source would have been very useful in the age of global warming and the climate emergency. If we had near-infinite power in orbit around the planet it would have been incredible for transporting energy around the world and made fossil fuels obsolete overnight. America would have shared the SPS power network with its allies around the world if not the rest of the world to prevent further climate calamities.

Conclusion:

Although, perhaps that idea is a little bit utopian and it's more than likely they would have just turned the satellites into some sort of orbital microwave cannon. The Rockwell international star raker would have been the ideal craft for many other missions and a fleet of them being available for various tasks at a moment's notice is eye-watering for this space fan. Imagine the other orbital stations we could have built the use for deep space mining or even a passenger version to take us to the stars. For all the never-built concepts that I have covered in this article, this one hurts the most and makes me the saddest of them all. We hope you people would like and enjoy this amazing information about “A Great Flying Machine The Rockwell Automation | Star Raker" of  space plane. If you people have any problem with this written material then you people must tell in the comment box or can also contact me on my email.

 

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Acknowledgment:   

A special thanks to foundandexplaine, wikipedia, Google, and aerospaceprojectsreview which helped me in collecting the relevant data.