It’s a bird! It’s a plane!
No...it’s a spaceplane!
Image: Reaction Engines
Vocabulary
• Latitude: The number of degrees north (or south)
from the equator.
• Orbital Altitude: The height above Mean Sea Level
of an orbiting spacecraft.
• Orbital Inclination: The angle that an orbit makes
as it crosses the equator.
Narrative
Across the pond is an innovative rocket company
that toils away in relative obscurity designing a
revolutionary new space launch vehicle system while
being out-shined by comparable U.S. companies such
as SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. This launch vehicle
design is unique in that it looks and acts like an airplane
from takeoff to landing; it just so happens that this
particular airplane can remarkably fly all the way into
Low Earth Orbit (LEO)! And the best part? It’s reusable,
unlike those other expendable launch vehicles. Nice!
This futuristic rocket company is called Reaction
Engines, Ltd. out of the United Kingdom (www.
reactionengines.co.uk), and they want to build the
Skylon spaceplane that would fly from virtually any
airport on the planet, and incredibly, would not require
an expensive launch tower to perform a liftoff!
This spaceplane would operate just like any ordinary
airliner, except if you want to operate this bird, you’d
better call it a spaceliner! The REL Skylon spacepl -erspaceliner is designed to have a payload bay just like
what the US Space Shuttle had, albeit a bit smaller.
Can we derive the equation of the payload capability
of the REL Skylon? Sure we can! The students in the High
School Algebra 2 class at The Learning Community
Charter School (www.tlcnm.net) in Albuquerque, NM
certainly did!
Fortunately for us, REL has made public their extensive
data on the Skylon, including the lift capability. Using
this information, a graph can be created:
For a more in-depth treatment of this high
school project by Joe Maness & Rich Holtzin
visit www.stemfortheclassroom.com.
58
58
www.RocketSTEM.org