STORT Hypersonic Flight Experiment Forebody Temperature Results

Abstract

The objective of the DLR project STORT was to investigate key technologies for flight at hypersonic Mach numbers of approximately 8. The reason is, that a cost reduction of future space transportation systems is required while keeping them reliable. Therefore, also the stages of a launcher system need to be fully reusable. For first stages, a Mach number of around 8 seems to be a suitable staging velocity, for which technologies for the return flight need to be developed and validated. Consequently, STORT aimed at achieving such operating conditions to support the optimization and validation of technologies and simulation tools for the development of future space transportation systems. The present paper briefly describes the design, manufacturing and integration of the forebody assembly which required a ceramic matrix composite thermal protection system made from C/C-SiC structures built in-house by DLR. Mainly, the flight results in terms of measured temperatures on the forebody structures are presented in detail and some of the data is processed to achieve more information about the thermal environment, in particular the heat flux as the driving force for the temperatures.