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The National Aero-Space Plane
| Article
# : |
11793 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1987 |
2,741 Words |
| Author
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Walter Froehlich
Walter Froehlich is vice president of the American
Astronautical Society and a veteran space writer residing in
Washington, D.C. |
The Earth seems to keep shrinking. The distances between locations remain unchanged, but the time required for travel is diminishing. The notion that transportation can become almost instantaneous is no longer fiction. The "magic carpets" of a former generation's fairy tales are taking on a new form. Developing the technologies that make possible global trips measurable in minutes is now an official national objective of the U.S. government. The research lies at the forefront of modern science and technology.
To achieve the objective, the U.S. government has established a development and demonstration program called the National Aero-Space Plane Program (NASP). The goal is to develop and demonstrate hypersonic and transatmospheric vehicle technologies for use early in the twenty-first century.
The NASP program is developing technologies for reusable vehicles that can take off on a conventional airport runway, fly directly into orbit, carry out in-orbit work, and then return to and land on a conventional runway. The program is also aiming toward technologies that will make it possible to fly from any large airport to any other large airport in less than two hours from takeoff through landing. No major cities would be more than 120 minutes of travel time away from each other.
Orbit - unreachable by any means until the second half of this century - would become as readily accessible as the air lanes are today.
Continents that were weeks or even months of tedious travel apart as recently as early in this century would be within reach in a time frame many suburbanites now consider commuting time. For many travelers, the trip from their home or office to the airport, and from the airport to their local destination, would take longer than their path through the sky on their intercontinental itinerary.
It would become possible to spend a weekend or even a day in a faraway place, perhaps on the opposite side of the Earth, with less time consumed for travel than many people now require for commuting for a weekend or day at a beach or mountain resort nearest their home.
Such civilian transports would presumably travel at altitudes of up to twenty miles and move at velocities six times or more the speed of sound. Military versions of an aerospace plane would be able to cruise through the atmosphere several times faster, perhaps up to fifteen times
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