why cant we use a plane that has been reinforced and has booster rockets to get to space?

Answer 1

Planes have a flaw that they don't carry an oxygen supply. Its not a simple thing of reinforcing. Planes are the wrong shape to cut through the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound.

People have thought about making special planes like HOTOL and Skylon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HOTOL

Answer 2

The wings of a plane are simply not designed to go through the High Altitude area of thin air and low Atmosphere. It's kind of hard going above 80,000 ft when you have nothing to push against. Wings are great when your lower but very useless higher up. In the case of a plane you need the wings to get the lift..but you wont get no lift from the wings way up there.
The other thing is..even with booster rockets you would rip the wings off the plane after a certain speed was achieved.

Answer 3

the space shuttleis basically what you suggest, but it doesn't make good economic sense.

Various other ansers suggest a two part arrangement, now they make sense. Use a pane to carry your space craft up and get it going, then complete the trip using standard rocket technology. The plane portion is completly reuseable and reliable and relatively cheap to operate as it uses air breathing engines. Therefore a whole lot less fuel is needed for your rocket as instead of starting at zero speed and ground level, it has some altitude and some speed already.

But to also carry those heavy air breathing engines into space and sheilding them and the rest of the plane for reentry, well thats just dumb, defeats the purpose.

Why not go one further and try either a sling shot, ie a ground based mag lev train designed to get the rocket started, nice ramp that ends verticle and a speed of 600-700km/hr. Ground based energy is a whole lot easier and cheaper! Or as per Jules Verne a cannon to accellorate the capsule and booster rocket. Base it somewhat on the Super Gun technology of Saddam. And unlike Verne include a rocket to get that final bit of speed.

Other suggestions for cheap space travel are using a ground based laser to accellorate a capsule to at least half way up by aiming it into a firing chamber on the space craft, that way you don't need to carry that huge startup weight, and again relying on ground based power. But these ideas are all old, just not been fully developed. The boys prefer their fire cracker rockets.

Answer 4

Its very possible, in fact it would be much cheaper to do it that way.
NASA has had designs for years similar to that, with a boost plane that flys the spacecraft to the upper atmosphere and then it rockets away, with massive fuel savings.
Nobody's made one yet, because of timidity and that simple booster rockets can be pretty cheap if you design them right. The Russian Vostok and Proton rockets can put stuff into space for a mere fraction of what the shuttle costs to do the same thing.

Answer 5

The more you reinforce it the heavier it gets, and the heavier it gets the more fuel it needs, so the more oxidiser it needs. Most planes just aren't the right shape, so you have to design from scratch. Also, the fastest planes were the X-series rocket planes, and they only got to about Mach 6, which is a few thousand mph. To get to orbit you need to get to 17,500mph, so they'd need a LOT more fuel.

And contrary to an earlier answer the shuttle was never launched from a 747. That was Enterprise, the shuttle test vehicle. It never flew in space. In fact it never even had any engines. It was designed and flown to test the shuttle's aerodynamic handling following re-entry. It was basically one huge glider that was cut loose from the 747 and left to glide.

Answer 6

Planes in general are designed to cope with a slight pressure differential; passenger jets flying at 40,000 feet 'pressurize' their cabins, but can only maintain a difference of pressure with the outside by about 10 pounds/inch^2.

Other craft - space capsules, the shuttle, the X-15 - are designed to be able to contain a cabin full of atmosphere while it's a near-perfect vacuum outside; It's not a question of 'reinforcing' a plane - because the entire body would need to be scrapped. It would be easier to build a new craft for the job.

Not to mention, you'd need a re-entry shield and special materials to withstand the high heat, not to mention the bitter cold, of space & re-entry.

Answer 7

The original tests with the X series planes tried this but were abandoned in the 60's-70's They were dropped from a high altidude bomber and then fired a rocket. I don't believe they ever achieved orbit but they did discover that at those speeds, friction becomes too great to accelerate any more and things start to burn up from friction.

I suppose It became clear that it requires much less energy to go straight up (or nearly) which is why they reverted to standard rockets.

Answer 8

to get a rocket into space it needs incredible power. Most space rockets are designed to be a light as possible so that the amount of power and fuel needed at a massive cost. The old apollo space crafts used to be made with materials as thick as a piece of tin foil!!

Also there are added things you need like heat shields air locks etc... Planes are not equipt and prob would cost a lot to be modified for space travel

Answer 9

Simply adding booster rockets to a plan is not simple task and areodynamic profile of the plane will not match for the rocket. Simply adding a booster to the plane can make it collapse.

Answer 10

That's pretty much what Burt Ruttan's SpaceShip One, was (as will be, SpaceShip Two).

The Pegasus rocket is a version of what you suggest (B-52; Pegasus rocket strapped below; launched from air to orbit).

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