by Justin Jelinek June 6, 2015 1 comment
SpaceX has been capturing headlines all over the place (including here on Techaeris) with their attempts at reusing the first stage of their Falcon 9 rocket. The idea is to lower the cost of space launches by reusing at least parts of the rockets needed to launch people/experiments/etc. into orbit. It seems that SpaceX isn’t the only one experimenting with reusable rockets, as Airbus, the French aeronautics company, has recently taken the lid off of Adeline – their own reusable rocket project.
Research on the Adeline – short for Advanced Expendable Launcher with Innovative engine Economy – project started over five years ago, as a direct response to the efforts of SpaceX. While the goal of Adeline is still to recover as much of the first stage as possible, the way they’ve gone about it is quite a bit different than SpaceX. Where SpaceX has attempted a controlled descent to land vertically on an ocean platform, Airbus has designed Adeline to land horizontally, similar to an airplane. It stands to reason that Airbus would have significant experience in this sort of design, as that’s been their bread and butter for years.
Adeline has a winged design. While it will still detach from the rest of the rocket (as does the Falcon 9) it will then glide using its wings, and propel itself using two rotary motors. It can then deploy landing gear
Article source: http://techaeris.com/2015/06/06/airbus-unveils-adeline-answer-spacex-reusable-rockets/
