Thursday, May 26, 2016

Rotovator help with re-entry

There are proposals for rotovators to catch payloads in low earth orbit and then throw them to higher orbits.

It occurs to me that rotovators used for throwing comm sats to GTO could also help the upper stage re-enter earth's atmosphere at a lower velocity.


1) Rotovator catches upper stage and payload in LEO.
2) Rotovator throws payload to higher orbit.
3) Rotovator drops upper stage into a suborbital orbit.

Step 3) accomplishes two things:

a) It restores some of the orbital momentum the tether lost in catching and tossing the payload.
b) It reduces re-entry velocity of the upper stage. Slower re-entry velocities make recovery and reuse of the upper stage less difficult.

Is this a good idea? Or another hare brained scheme? I'm tossing this out in several venues hoping knowledgeable folks will review it.