Aerospace-Plane Flights and Stratospheric Ozone: Review and PreliminaryAssessment of the National Aerospace Plane (NASP) Operations

摘要

The United States is now engaged in a major National Aerospace Plane (NASP)effort keyed to the goal of achieving low earth orbit using an air-breathing single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) vehicle, the X-30. This goal requires meeting many sensitive technology and integration challenges. The NASP program management office fully recognizes these challenges and has mounted numerous concerted projects to achieve the required technology advances, in many instances accelerating progress substantially in fields several decades old. RAND undertook a study under sponsorship of Air Force's Directorate of Program Planning and Integration (SAF/AQX) to provide an integrated overview of the benefits, cost, and technical risks of potential NASP-derived vehicles (NDV). One task of this larger study was to examine some of the critical environmental aspects of the NASP program, specifically the effect of operational NDV's on stratospheric ozone and on noise intensity from sonic booms. The stratospheric ozone research and first-order estimates of the possible perturbation of water vapor and NOx content induced by the operation of the National Aerospace Plane (NASP) is reviewed. The primary purpose of this analysis is to assess the effect on stratospheric ozone from an operational fleet of NDV's.