IAR-111 Excelsior Supersonic Mothership

Posted by Afrogthatribbits@reddit | WeirdWings | View on Reddit | 49 comments

The IAR-111 Excelsior (originally E-111) was a supersonic mothership project designed by the Romanian ARCASpace to transport a rocket and for space tourism and was supposed to take off from the ocean.

To me there's a close resemblance to the YF-23, which is definitely an odd choice for such an aircraft. It was of course not built.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAR_111

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Competitive_Cheek607@reddit

If I had Elon Musk levels of money I’d find shit like this so at least one could be built

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Interesting_Pea_9351@reddit

If I was that rich I would brute force a working x wing

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Neutronium95@reddit

Arca is a font of terrible ideas. Their first rocket design had each stage towed behind the one before it on long ropes instead of the traditional method of having earlier stages below the ones that are used later in the flight.

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LurpyGeek@reddit

Why does ~~God need with a starship~~ a civilian space transport launcher need low observable characteristics for?

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Neutronium95@reddit

Because it looks cool in the promo video and might attract some gullible investors.

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domassimo@reddit

Well low observability is very nice when you’re running with investors’ money…

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Afrogthatribbits@reddit (OP)

Specifications from Wikipedia:

General characteristics

Crew: 2 Length: 24 m (78 ft 9 in) Wingspan: 12 m (39 ft 4 in) Height: 5 m (16 ft 5 in) Wing area: 100 m2 (1,100 sq ft) Empty weight: 7,200 kg (15,873 lb) Gross weight: 19,000 kg (41,888 lb) Max takeoff weight: 23,000 kg (50,706 lb) Powerplant: 1 × Executor liquid-fuelled rocket engine, 200 kN (44,000 lbf) thrust

Performance

Maximum speed: Mach 2.6 Service ceiling: 100,000 m (330,000 ft) Rate of climb: 250 m/s (49,000 ft/min) Wing loading: 230 kg/m2 (47 lb/sq ft) Thrust/weight: 2.316

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAR_111

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Dartonal@reddit

So uh, why does it need to be a sea plane?

Last I checked, salty sea air is pretty bad for rocket engines, let alone fully submersing it

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propsie@reddit

They claim it is a flying boat so that they can save the cost and weight of landing gear.

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dragos_av@reddit

It was not supposed to fly, just to attract funds. That's ARCA's way of operating.

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Dartonal@reddit

Yeah, that's usually the case with any of these baffling 3d model based 'proposals'. I just don't get why it needs to be a seaplane lol. Like, we don't relly see much use of sea planes outside of rural alaskan or canadian bush pilots, surely even the most dimwitted investor could tell that there's probably reasons even jet powered flying boats are so rare

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LeptonWrangler@reddit

Holy climb rate

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Virtual_Area8230@reddit

Faaaaaaaaake. They should have gone with RASCAL.

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Ent_1610@reddit

Now that looks exactly like a Tu-144 lol

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Virtual_Area8230@reddit

You mean it's got four engines and a pointy nose?

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MasterofPeridots@reddit

I wonder what is the designer's favorite fighter jet

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Afrogthatribbits@reddit (OP)

I do wonder how they thought it out that the YF-23 design would work, and whether or not it would. They did actually start building this, so it's not just some paper plane idea.

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Afrogthatribbits@reddit (OP)

Airframe

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Vairman@reddit

> think of this like Stavitti designs,

oh my.

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8Bitsblu@reddit

I do wonder how they thought it out that the YF-23 design would work

Cool looking plane attracts techbro investors. Hardly the first aerospace startup to try this. Their main mistake was trying to actually build it rather than infinitely grift money pigs like Stavatti Aerospace.

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CardinalOfNYC@reddit

I can tell you the designer's favorite spider, too

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sporkfu43@reddit

I feel like we’re being trolled and frankly I’m not entirely unhappy about this

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DarkArcher__@reddit

Every day I discover another batshit Arca project I had never heard of before

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Speckknoedel@reddit

I was hyped when they were in the US with their linear child aerospike rocket. But since then it's just one project announcement you won't ever hear about again after another. In retrospect the aerospike rocket must have been one of those projects, too and I was hyped because I didn't know any of the doa projects before.

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fabiomb@reddit

They had to flee the US because of debts to investors

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Afrogthatribbits@reddit (OP)

ARCA Space's website no longer works and it appears they've transitioned to a eVTOL/fashion "company"

https://www.youtube.com/@ArcaFashion

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fabiomb@reddit

ARCASpace is the same BS company that never delivers anything, just designs, mockups and nothing

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Merker6@reddit

Ahh yes, ARCA. A space company with a cancelled project list a mile long and has somehow surived since 1999 without ever launching anything to space

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Airwolfhelicopter@reddit

What in the Ace Combat is this

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cir-ick@reddit

“…intended to transport a rocket payload up to 18,000 m (59,000 ft) and … was to be designed for take-off and landing from the sea surface.”

🤨

Under-slung rocket body… water takeoff…

1) How do you load the rocket body under the belly when this thing’s already in the drink?

B) How do you avoid substantial damage to the rocket body during anything except smooth-as-glass conditions?

Thirdly) What happens to your client’s mission, both launcher and payload, when the transport suffers an anomaly and needs to touch back down in a hurry?

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iamalsobrad@reddit

1) How do you load the rocket body under the belly when this thing’s already in the drink?

You load it first and then crane it into the water. Or you recruit a small army of trained orcas. Either will work.

B) How do you avoid substantial damage to the rocket body during anything except smooth-as-glass conditions?

The tunnel hull design and large wing flaps will trap an air cushion underneath the aircraft which will lift it almost immediately the engines are lit. This will allow the water to neatly rip the payload pod off of it's hangers and leave it bobbing safely in the sea as the aircraft itself accelerates away.

Thirdly) What happens to your client’s mission, both launcher and payload, when the transport suffers an anomaly and needs to touch back down in a hurry?

This is why Prometheus stole insurance from the gods.

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BillyEyelash96@reddit

Wasn't this in ace combat 5 or zero? I distinctly remember this plane

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erhue@reddit

lol it reminds me of the Falken, from Ace Combat 5 i think. This is the most ace combat looking concept ive seen here so far.

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BillyEyelash96@reddit

My mistake it was the ADF-01. Totally fictional

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Significant-Camp-551@reddit

Romanian stealth Spacefighter years ahead of Russia or the Rest of the NATO

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attran84@reddit

This subreddit never fails.

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-nopeskis@reddit

I'm about to bust just seeing this

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ryanidsteel@reddit

"Take off from the ocean" sounds like the worst possible place to take-off fr9m and to land on.

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evilpsych@reddit

This is a bastard child of rutan 23/22 and some AI bs

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Gumb1i@reddit

It seems to me to be not well thought out approach for an airlaunch platform. Unnessary stealth elements, no accounting for engines, near straight ripoff of the YF-23 airframe that was designed to be an interceptor, unnecessary control surface complications . They would have been much better off building a SR71 copy which was designed or at least capable of airlaunch and carrying weight underneath at near its mach fuck top speed.

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