Adeline (''Ad''vanced ''E''xpendable ''L''auncher with ''In''novative engine ''E''conomy) was a concept for a reusable
rocket
A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely fr ...
first-stage that would fly itself back to Earth after a launch using
drone
Drone most commonly refers to:
* Drone (bee), a male bee, from an unfertilized egg
* Unmanned aerial vehicle
* Unmanned surface vehicle, watercraft
* Unmanned underwater vehicle or underwater drone
Drone, drones or The Drones may also refer to:
...
technology for horizontal landing on a runway.
Airbus Defence and Space conceived the design concept.
Overview
The concept envisions a rocket booster that includes propeller engines and avionics to allow for its recovery by a soft landing on a runway. The boosters would then be refurbished and reused on another
flight
Flight or flying is the process by which an object moves through a space without contacting any planetary surface, either within an atmosphere (i.e. air flight or aviation) or through the vacuum of outer space (i.e. spaceflight). This can be a ...
.
After the stage is exhausted during launch, the engine module is jettisoned for reentry. At a certain point in the descent, Adeline would deploy its small winglets and steer itself towards a runway whilst gliding. As it approaches the runway, landing gear and two small pusher configuration propellers would be deployed to perform a powered horizontal landing. The concept would allow for reusing 80% of the stage's economic value: the engine, avionics and propulsion bay.
The engines could be re-flown about 10 to 20 times.
The approach could have several advantages over the successfully proven SpaceX technology which regularly returns its first stage rockets.
Specifically, it avoids the high stresses their booster engines experience during deceleration for a vertical landing and for a geostationary flight it would only require around 2,000 kg of fuel to return safely to the ground against an estimated 35,000 kg that Airbus has estimated are needed to return a SpaceX booster to the launch site. Fuel is only a minor cost in the value of the overall launch, however to achieve a 21-40% reduction in cost of the launch the Falcon 9 payload is reduced from 8,300kg to 5,500kg pushing cost per kilogram back up by a third and negating much of the savings, the true cost advantage would be when carrying customer payloads significantly below the rockets lift potential where the otherwise unused lift capacity could be used for extra fuel to recycle the rocket.
The concept may be used in future evolution of
Ariane 6
Ariane 6 is a European expendable launch system currently under development since the early 2010s by ArianeGroup on behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA). It is intended to replace the Ariane 5, as part of the Ariane launch vehicle famil ...
,
or any liquid-fuel rocket.
The project engineers think it could recover 20-30% of the cost of a flight at an added weight penalty cost of about 10%.
Airbus started this program in 2010 and has invested about by May 2015 on the reusable technology programme; scale models have been flown.
Ariane 6
Ariane 6 is a European expendable launch system currently under development since the early 2010s by ArianeGroup on behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA). It is intended to replace the Ariane 5, as part of the Ariane launch vehicle famil ...
is currently a development priority for Airbus Defence and Space, Adeline comes afterwards.
In 2018 an official in the CNES launcher directorate declared the concept "not financially interesting".
See also
*
Ariane (rocket family)
Ariane is a series of European civilian expendable launch vehicles for space launch use. The name comes from the French spelling of the mythological character Ariadne. France first proposed the Ariane project and it was officially agreed upon at ...
*
Comparison of orbital launchers families
This article compares different orbital launcher families (although many launchers that are significantly different from other members of the same 'family' have their own separate entries). The article is organized into two tables: the first tabl ...
*
Liquid fly-back booster
Liquid Fly-back Booster (LFBB) was a German Aerospace Center's (DLR's) project concept to develop a liquid rocket booster capable of reusing for Ariane 5 in order to significantly reduce the high cost of space transportation and increase envir ...
, a cancelled DLR project to develop reusable boosters for Ariane 5
*
Reusable launch system
A reusable launch vehicle have parts that can be recovered and reflown, while carrying payloads from the surface to outer space. Rocket stages are the most common launch vehicle parts aimed for reuse. Smaller parts such as rocket engines and boos ...
*
Winged Reusable Sounding rocket WIRES (WInged REusable Sounding rocket) is a Japanese project developing a winged single-stage reusable suborbital rocket as a test bed for a reusable orbital launch system or a crewed suborbital spaceplane. The full-size prototype, called WIRES-X, ...
(WIRES)
*
RETALT, reusable launch systems
*
SUSIE, another concept for introducing reusability to the Ariane 6
References
External links
Adeline: Airbus Defence and Space's solution to reuse space Launchersvideo
Airbus is testing concepts to reuse rocket parts - article including a diagram of mission profile
Rocket stages
Airbus Defence and Space
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