Beautiful video shows a failed hydrofoiling shuttle launch in the Soviet period
The Alexeyev/Sukhoi Albatros send off framework, proposed in 1974, would have sent off a Soviet space transport on the rear of a transporter spaceplane, sent off the rear of a hydrofoiling barge. It never worked out, yet this is what it would’ve resembled.
YouTube station “Hazegrayart” has made more than 100 perfectly delivered recordings envisioning the send off or activity of the absolute most abnormal airplane and space apparatus at any point proposed in all actuality or sci-fi.
The channel’s most recent video imagines a Soviet-period space transport send off proposition set up via airplane producer Sukhoi, known for its stream contenders, and hydrofoil/ground-impact vehicle expert Rostislav Alexeyev, likely most popular as boss fashioner of the Caspian Ocean Beast ekranoplan model.
The Alexeyev/Sukhoi Albatros, as indicated by Astronautix, was a three-stage transport send off framework equipped for sending a space transport heavenward without the requirement for a platform or even a runway. All stages would be recoverable and re-usable.
Proposed in 1974, the framework’s base was a 70-m (229-ft), 2,000-ton hydrofoiling barge called the “Albatros Energy Block.” On its back would sit the 91-m (298-ft) delta wing Albatros Transporter Airplane weighing 1,250 tons completely filled and flaunting a fluid oxygen/fluid hydrogen rocket fit for delivering 7.84 million kN (1,762,500 lbf) of pushed.
Also, on the rear of that would sit the a lot more modest 49-m (160-ft) Albatros Raketoplan space transport, weighing only 320 tons completely powered and with its own 1.96-million-kN (440,620-lbf) rocket.
The arrangement required the second-stage transporter airplane to fire its rockets, recharging its fuel progressing from a 180-ton save in the canal boat. This would speed up the canal boat to hydrofoiling speed, so, all in all the drag would be enormously diminished, and the flatboat would then arrive at a send off speed around 180 km/h (112 mph), under two minutes after the rockets were terminated.
As of now, there would be adequate lift under the wings of the transporter airplane for takeoff, so, all in all it would shoot the bus up to high height before it isolated and went on toward circle under its own rocket power, with the transporter airplane coasting down to Earth and landing.
This strikingly abnormal proposition was rarely approved – comparably well, in light of the fact that, as Alexeyev ought to have known, hydrofoiling turns into a very uncertain business above around 113 km/h (70 mph). At this sort of speed, the low-pressure zone over the “wing” of the hydrofoils drops to a tension low sufficient that the water starts to bubble.
This is known as cavitation, and makes pockets of fume in the water, which breakdown when the strain standardizes, causing shockwaves. Fast cavitation can twist, harm and weariness hydrofoils – presumably not ideal while you’re conveying precious space transports and send off vehicles on top.
