October 2002 - Nr. 10
German Space Technology on Display in Bonn
TWIG - A sleek, all-black, almost risqué-looking aircraft is poised not for take-off from a Cape Canaveral launch pad, but to receive the admiration of visitors to the Wissenschaftszentrum (Science Center) in Bonn. The ultra-streamlined model is the showpiece of an exhibit called "The New Way to Space - Space Shuttles of the Next Generation." As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, the show, which runs through October 11 and was organized by the German Research Community (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG), spotlights the new transporter and a host of other recent breakthroughs in German space engineering.
German rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun once prophesied that "Space travel will free humans from their chains." These days, however, such forward thinking is fettered by financial constraints. Projects such as the International Space Station (ISS), a multinational, cooperative, manned space lab in orbit since 1999, are exorbitantly expensive. Not only is it costly to keep astronauts in space, but getting them and their equipment up and back is, too. To transport just 1 kilogram (2.2 lbs.) of material into orbit costs US$11,000. For a light-weight satellite, this expense is manageable. But when tons of material need to be sent into space, as with the massive shipments sent up to the ISS to support the astronauts and their work, the expense eats up a big chunk of government space-travel and -research budgets.
These mundane financial concerns, paired with astronomical ambitions, have inspired German engineers to design new alternatives to currently available transport systems, which are all vertically launched rockets. For 14 years, the DFG has had three special research teams working with industrial counterparts in Aachen, Munich and Stuttgart to find a way to launch shuttles easily and cost-effectively. The result is the Huckepack (piggyback), a shuttle launch system now on display in Bonn. The transporter, the sleek black craft mentioned above, is designed to carry a shuttle some 22 miles above the earth. At that level, the transporter decouples from the shuttle, which climbs on its own to an orbit of 180 to 250 miles above earth, where it can be used to deploy satellites or to deliver astronauts or supplies to orbiting space stations.
The key advantage of the Huckepack model is that, in contrast to current systems, both the shuttle and the transporter are reusable. Once the maneuvers in space are finished, the manned transporter can be flown back to earth, as can the shuttle. "This way, there’s no ‘space junk,’" says Gottfried Sachs of the Technical University of Munich, referring to a concern that available orbit paths are growing cluttered with disused rocket fuel tanks, aging satellites and other jet-age jetsam. Since the shuttle-bearing transporter can both take off and land from standard jumbo-jet capacity runways, Americans and Europeans won’t have to build costly and elaborate space centers such as Cape Canaveral in Florida or Kourou in French Guiana. More importantly, because the transporter is winged, it can start from a horizontal position, and requires far less thrust and energy than a vertically launched rocket. This feature alone will cut 10% of total transport costs.
The DFG hopes the exhibit will make the public aware that space travel is a vital component of modern communication and technology, much of which is now based on satellites - and the space transport systems that put them there.
