Aerodynamic investigations of a Vertical Landing Launcher configuration by means of Computational Fluid Dynamics and Wind Tunnel Tests

In the RETALT (Retro Propulsion Assisted Landing Technologies) project critical technologies for two different vertical landing launcher configurations are investigated. For RETALT1, a Two Stage To Orbit launcher, only the first stage will be recovered using retro propulsion. A large number of wind tunnel experiments have been carried out at DLR in Cologne, while CFD simulations were made by CFS Engineering and DLR in Göttingen. This paper provides a detailed comparison of Wind Tunnel Experiments with CFD calculations in the hypersonic regime, with and without retro propulsion.