F-111 escape option for a light crew...especially coming back from the Moon. Here is the scenario: you have delivered your cargo. You make it into space, but Starship gets a tile damaged. This staged re-entry gets the crew back with the cone getting the worst of it. It parachutes back with rocks. The astronauts have a plane now that the storables are gone...and Starship stays in space for repair. Remember what Musk told the Everyday Astronaut about how NASA couldn't innovate because shuttle is what you come back in? Same here guys. This is why I liked Buran, because you didn't need the orbiter to test the rest of the Energia stack-which SLS can evolve into allowing large side mount winged test articles. Musk is killing the cause of winged spaceflight otherwise...thus my continued support for SLS-Americanized Buran concepts. Remember, Mars Starships will be coming back even faster...and I do remember a LockMart Lunar OSP that was a lifting body. Where the Blue Origin lander has good abort profiles going to the Moon, Starship coming back with the above described nested system would also give lunar astronauts a second chance...outside of docking with a Falcon Heavy launched Dragon and hoping it reaches you before the air leaks out the same hole in the tile that spaced you to begin with.
Have you met "
Hercules"?
I haven't actually watched the EDA series yet, probably won't as Musk's voice has gotten to the point it annoys me. I will note that in essence Musk is literally 'reinventing' the Shuttle in Starship specifically with all the 'tasks' he's piling on it and the supposed "advantages" and outcomes. While I understand the 'idea' you're having the "problem" (from Musk's POV at least) is that this vastly increases complexity and manufacturing costs for what he sees as little value. Having an abort system requires a lot of mass and added levels that could possibly go wrong. (Not likely as much as it might seem but again see Hercules above) Yes Musk is "killing" the "cause" of winged (I prefer the term "lifting" but that's me
) vehicles because they actually don't work anywhere but on Earth.
You can argue he has a point I supposed but that also presupposes that a vehicle launched directly from Earth to land directly on the Moon or Mars and then return to the Earth for another landing is actually the best and most economical way to do the whole mission. (Seriously questionable)
Lifting vehicle wise you don't need something the size of Buran or the Shuttle, (or arguably Starship) as it's not single flight payload that matters but flight rates. If Starship only flies rarely then it will be just about as expensive to operate as SLS or the Shuttle was. Reusability only works for a certain flight and usage rate. Hence why he keeps pitching "other uses" for Starship/SuperHeavy in order to get that flight rate up.
Getting back to Janus it makes some sense if we hadn't gone to the Moon and been more focused on regular orbital missions and LEO development in that it actually does play into the individual strengths of the separate systems. Kind of the reason the Soviets came up with the similar idea of the
Raketoplane. In context it might give you an early on-orbit working facility, (the lifting body lab) and a versatile landing craft in the aircraft portion. The concept still needed a lot of work though, (dear lord the length of the needed 'seal' and how much it would have leaked
) everything from the interface to the "moving seats" really shows a pretty shallow amount of work but it had potential I think.
Kind of wonder how the trade between Janus and something like the "
Propulsive Lift Capsule" would come out.
Randy
