German private spacecraft project

At the website of the german section of the Mars Society there is a short article reporting that the german Talis-Institute is going to develop a private rocket with swiss and austrian assistance.

The rocket beginning in 2007 will carry microsatellites of 10 to 100 kg to LEO of 200 to 400 km. It is intented to reduce payload costs down to 10% of former normal costss by using existing and sophisticated applied economic technologies.

The project will be financed by private sponsors and mentors.

The article doesn't say anything about reusability and the like.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

I saw a documentry on t.v not that long ago talking about these german dudes who had built this space plane roughly 6m long (not full size?) and they were doing the flight tests in May of this year. Its fully automated and looks truly awesome, they dropped it from a chinook and it flew itself to the runway and landed, all the guys were doing was monitoring it.
They had some funding from the ESA I think because the ESA is to decide soon whether to invest in making a reusable space plane,by next year I think.

If I recall right it was called the Pheonix and designed to take off under catapulte assistance and climb near vertically into orbit, release the payload and come back and land all on its own.

Iain

At the website of the Talis-Institute there is a photo showing a huge rocket similar to Ariane, Falcon and the like.

So I'm sure they are not talking of the Phoenix and the rocket isn't funded by ESA and not by any government too. The Talis-Institute is founded by the german industry. They are working on their rocket to provide cheap and easy access to space for universities and researchers. All known accesses to space are too expensive for these universities etc.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

EDIT: I just read the homepage of the Talis Institute again and found an article titled "project enterprise". In this article they say that the rocket, the carrier-system will be robust and partially reusable - costs per kg: 1000 to 1500 Euro. That is less than Scorpio of Microcosm - Talis-Institute is quoting that Scorpio will cost 2400 Euro per kg.

The article contains a link to www.xprize.org too - but when I use that adress I don't get nothing but an empty homepage...

1000 Euro/KG is excellent. If they can actually hit those numbers, they might be able to restart interest in LEO constellations again.

In their recent report from March 2005 they say that they can imagine suborbital touristic spaceflights by a modified single-staged version of the rocket they are developing. The rocket is called "Enterprise" - launch site are the United Arabian Emirates. They say that possible suborbital passenger flights would be launched there too.

As far as I can see the report is available in German only: www.tim-report.de/Project_Enterprise.pdf .

Currently they consider their project to have the focus at microsatellites and mention NASA's idea of microsat swarms (among other ideas). A study on that idea can be read at the NIAC site.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

EDIT: Three reports including december are available in English too under "Archiv".

The UAE seems a very strange place to launch a rocket. If you look at the pictures in the pdf file you see a launch from Dubai. It think there are some problems with this location. You would have to fly a retrograde trajectory to avoid flying over any inhabited regions and Oman, but then you would have to fly over the Persian Gulf. So you would fly over oil platforms, oil tankers and so on. And i don't think the world would appreciate it if you would stop the tankers for a day or two to launch your rocket.
It also would piss off Iran because the UAE claims some islands in the Persian Gulf who are occupied by Iran, so they would see a rocket launch as a threat.
I also don't think the US would like the idea. If the UAE gets a serious rocket, the other middle eastern countries would want one too. And so you get loads of rockets in the Middle East and the US would have to make sure they don't fall into the wrong hands and get launched at the US.
Dubai is also building tons of artificial islands before their coast, so you would have to build an island further in sea to avoid flying over these islands.
They could launch from the Gulf of Oman coast but then they couldn't launch form Dubai. And it's probably Dubai who's going to finance this.
They are looking at the right guys to finance there plans (Dubai seems to have to much money: see the Palms and the World) but they should look at another launch location.
If they are going to launch from Dubai this project seems to have a big chance to having the same problems as that other German rocket project: OTRAG.
But i have seen that a founder of SPL (who's building the rocket engine) is a member of this message board, so maybe he can give an response to my questions and worries.

I think that most of these problems aren't really there - the UAE are the launch site only but they are not the owners of the rocket. Iran, Oman and other countries in that region will be informed about this fact and the Talis-Institute will have closed agreements with all these countries then.

Probably at least some of all the countries there recognize the advantages provided for them if rockets of Talis are being launched from the UAE - they can order the Talis-Institute to launch their payloads if these payloads are micro- and nanosats. So they will be customers of Talis.

And the fact that Talis is an institute of the german industry is preventing the fate of OTRAG - the politicians will take very care not to act against the institute and its projects. In the opposite - the minister of state will help them at his visits to the governments of the countries in that region. Just because it's the german industry.

The Talis-institute will know of the danger to the traffic in the gulf and take very good care of safety of their rockets - that topic is of increasing meaning here in Germany. The density of inhabitants is of less meaning I suppose - the density of population is much less in that region compared to Europe west of Russia.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Seems like the Russians are getting involved with Thales's Pheonix spacecraft.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050422/39727856.html

I thought OTRAG was interesting--for what it's worth. What is the deal with the Orel (Ural) flyback? It sounds more like warmed over Baikal/Angara tech with anew name--or am I missing something? Besides Star Booster--that's all I have heard on the big flyback front.

As far as I know the Talis Institute and its Project Enterprise dohav nothing to do with Phoenix.

At their website I didn't find such connections - the Russians are no way involved in the microsat launcher Enterprise..

What's the reason to see a connection?



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Have I made a mistake in my earlier post? Is the attached article referring to a different Pheonix craft and not the one that Thales is producing? I'm a bit confused.

Perhaps someone should come up with some new names so they dont have to keep using the same ones:- this is not an oportunity to hii-jack the thread with a load of rocket names.

I can't remember having read of a Phoenix at the website of the Talis Institut but I will have another look at the site during the next few days. I remember that this was a question much earlier too and didn't find a connection then too. As far as I know Phoenix is a project of ESA or for ESA - but Talis Institut isn't working for ESA but for the german industry because it's an organization of the german industry.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

I have been looking for Phoenix now using the meta-searchmachine MetaGer and found asite about that vehicle at the site of the DLR - "Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt" (= "German Center of Aeronautics and Space").

According to that site Phoenix has been developed by a project led by EADS Space Transportation.

At www.talisinstitut I couldn't find such a spacecraft project.

A detail I perhaps didn't report here yet is that the modified version of Enterprise for suborbital travel will be single-stage...



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)