In the past week, Space.com has posted two animated videos of Reaction Engines Ltd’s Skylon space plane. This huge spaceplane will take off from a runway like an aeroplane and – after completing its mission and descending from orbit – will then glide to a landing on a runway – much as the Space Shuttle currently lands. The first video here is a general introduction to Skylon. The second here covers Skylon’s passenger and logistics module. Reaction Engines claim Skylon could be flying to the ISS by 2020.
However, what I think is especially interesting about Skylon is that it is unpiloted. The same is true of the US military’s Boeing X-37, which has already flown twice – in fact, it’s still in LEO orbit now on its second mission.
Science fiction writers, futurists and space commentators have always imagined that spaceplanes – being, well, planes – would be crewed and piloted. Those currently in development for suborbital tourist flights – Scaled Composite’s SpaceShipTwo, or XCOR’s Lynx, for example – are certainly piloted. But the more traditional method of throwing people and equipment into orbit – ie, a giant rocket stack – never has been. The cosmonauts in a Soyuz spacecraft are passengers. The same will be true of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft.
In fact, now I think about it, pretty much all science fiction presupposes that spacecraft will be “flown” by a human crew. Right from the ground. But the actual history of space exploration suggests the opposite. If we send a mission to the moons of Jupiter, there won’t be an astronaut with a joystick in one hand sitting in a cockpit in the pointy bit at the front. The spacecraft’s flight will be controlled by computer. Any astronaut aboard will be there to either make sure nothing breaks en route, or to do some science when the spacecraft reaches its destination.
So it will be machines which sail the heavens. Humans will be merely passengers. Spacecraft will not have cockpits or bridges, pilots or navigators. Analogies with sea travel or air travel aren’t realistic.
Rocket Science News 