Method for use of external secondary payloads

Abstract

An experiment system with six different re-entry experiment locations for testing high temperature re-entry materials, creating new thermal protection systems, proving innovative new concepts for spacecraft exterior surfaces and the incremental development of next generation aerospace materials. A commercial transportation system to and from orbit provides a 24-hour return cycle for the experiments on a surface actually re-entering the earth's atmosphere. Now using existing doors, hatches and other points on the reusable launch vehicle's exterior, the actual re-entry environment is experienced by test specimens with quick turn around for a wide variety of different re-entry temperatures ranges for broad testing and development purposes. The reusable launch vehicle launches, remains in orbit for 24 hours and returns to provide an actual test environment for the exterior experiment system.

Description

NO GOVERNMENT RIGHTS No government funding, no government support or government contract or clause is related to this invention. COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material that is subject to copyright protection. The owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyrights whatsoever. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention (Technical Field) The present invention relates to transporting external test experiments to and from orbit on the exterior of a reusable launch vehicle. More particularly, the present invention relates generally to external vehicle experiments, integration, transport to orbit, exposure in orbit, exposure to the external re-entry environment from orbit including instrumentation and testing apparatus and the return of various support ha...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

In one embodiment, the attachment member is rotatably mounted to the interior portion of the aft skirt. In another embodiment, the attachment member is movably mounted to the interior portion of the aft skirt and the system further comprises a control system to control movement of the attachment member to move the attachment member and thereby position the experiment outside the interior portion of the aft skirt.

In one embodiment, the experiment may be an experimental control surface. In this embodiment, the control system provides steering control of the attachment to thereby steer the experiment while positioned outside the interior portion of the aft skirt. In this embodiment, the system may also comprise a sensor associated with the experiment to generate sensor data and a data storage unit to store the generated sensor data.

Problems solved by technology

The transportation of cargo to space is expensive.

The problem is the cost of the individual operations required to transport cargo to orbit.

The traditional approach to manifesting of space launch systems has been hardware intensive, safety driven and long duration scheduling activities.

Many previous space launch patents in prior art discuss reusable features, but none talk about external payloads designed to permit the testing of the materials required.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,133,517 to Ware, issued on Jul. 28, 1992, uses an access door on the external tank, but fails to associate it to any exterior tests designed to provide samples for thermal protection system (TPS) analysis in the patent.

This involves altering the space shuttle mission trajectory, the salvage of the ET in orbit, a space walk by an astronaut for removal of the TPS samples from the ET, the restowing of the samples aboard a reusable segment of the vehicle and the proper disposal of the ET, which involves significant-additional effort and expense.

The Express Pallet does not address either cycle through the atmosphere, however.

Astrocourier (USA) addresses a similar commercial market, but also does not offer either cycle through the atmosphere, however.

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