Dyna Soar – Page 10 – Aerospace Projects Review Blog

Dyna Soar wind tunnel model diagram

Dyna Soar, hypersonic, spaceplane No Responses »

May 242012

A 1962 Boeing diagram of the Model 844-2050 Dyna Soar configuration (almost the final configuration) as a 0.0666 scale wind tunnel model. Nothing too spectacular, but it does illustrate one detail rarely seen: the heat shield actuator mast.

The forward-facing windows were covered with an ejectable heat shield on the Dyna Soar until well after re-entry in order to protect them from excessive heating. The actuator mast would be a piston that would raise the front of the heat shield after the spaceplane had re-entered and slowed to subsonic; the “wind” would then get under the shield and lift it away from the spaceplane. I’ve seen very little on this mast… I don’t know if it would then retract, or if it would simply stay in place through landing. None of the artwork I’ve seen has ever depicted it in any fashion… the heat shield is always there until it’s simply gone. Associated photos of the wind tunnel model do not show the mast.

Bell Hypersonic Rocket Transport in Hi-Rez

Dyna Soar, hi-rez, hypersonic, jetliner, rockets, space shuttle, spaceplane, transports 2 Responses »

Apr 032012

In 1960, Bell Aircraft released several paintings depicting a two-stage hypersonic passenger transport. The first stage was a multi-engined supersonic jet of fairly conventional configuration (though with very large 50,000 lb-thrust turboramjet engines), carrying on its back a rocket-powered second stage. The second stage was clearly influenced by Bell work on the Dyna Soar program.

The carrier would transport the second stage to an altitude of 20 miles and 5,300 mph. After release, the second stage would boost to 40 miles and speeds up to 15,000 miles per hour, permitting travel times from Los Angeles to Paris of one hour and four minutes for the thirty passengers on board. The vehicle was intended to enter service in the 1980-1990 timeframe.

Weight for the combined vehicle at takeoff would be 750,000 pounds. Span of the booster was 150 feet, length 200 feet. It’s unclear if this was a serious engineering design or purely speculative. Paintings and a display model show some notable differences.

You can download a 3 megabyte JPG file of the artwork; the link is HERE. To access it, you will need to enter a username and password. The username: the first word in the body of the text on page 6 of APR issue V1N3. The password: the first word in the body of the text on page 23 of the same issue. Note that both are case sensitive.

Martin Dyna Soar Details

Dyna Soar, space shuttle, spaceplane 1 Response »

Jan 302012

The 1959 Dyna Soar design from the Martin Company, designed by Hans Multhopp (formerly of Focke-Wulf). This was from when the Dyna Soar was a sub-orbital research vehicle meant to be lobbed by a modified Titan I ICBM. Note the inclusion of a turbojet engine for landing purposes, a common design element at this stage in the program.

Note that the cockpit of this little spaceplane was designed to be ejected in the event of an emergency. At this stage in the Dyna Soar program, the vehicle had lost its role as a bomber, and had been reduced to an R&D vehicle, thus the “cargo bay” stuffed full of equipment. Boeing’s final Dyna Soar design also had the instrument-filled cargo bay, but they fully expected to be able to ditch the instruments (which were mostly to measure and record pressure and temperature data all around the vehicle during re-entry) once the testing phase was over, and then proceed to fill the bay with useful payload, everything from anti-satellite hardware to passengers going to space stations.

The turbojet would very quickly be abandoned as weight climbed, meaning the Dyna Soar would glide to a landing much like the Space Shuttle.

A full-scale mockup of the cockpit was built… note that it appears to be made of cardboard. Cheesy, but perfectly adequate for preliminary layout purposes. Plus, some little kid may have gotten one hell of a spiffy Space Patrol Rocket to play in after its utility for Martin was finished. Note also the side-stick controller.

Bell-Martin Dyna Soar artwork 2 in hi-rez

Dyna Soar, hi-rez, space shuttle, spaceplane 1 Response »

Jan 302012

Full-color artwork photographed at the archive of the Ira G. Ross Aerospace Museum in Niagara Falls; this original piece was painted on thick matte board. Scanning was not an option, but photography worked pretty well. This is the second of two photos.

You can download a 3.4 megabyte JPG file of the artwork; the link is HERE. To access it, you will need to enter a username and password. The username and password are listed on page 2 of APR issue V0N0. Note that both are case sensitive.

Bell-Martin Dyna Soar artwork in hi-rez

Dyna Soar, hi-rez, spaceplane 2 Responses »

Jan 232012

Full-color artwork photographed at the archive of the Ira G. Ross Aerospace Museum in Niagara Falls; this original piece was painted on thick matt board. Scanning was not an option, but photography worked pretty well.

You can download a 3.8 megabyte JPG file of the artwork; the link is HERE. To access it, you will need to enter a username and password. The username: the first word in the body of the text on page 22 of APR issue V1N2. The password: the first word in the body of the text on page 23 of the same issue. Note that both are case sensitive (hint: neither are “Copyright”).

Jan 232012

I keep getting asked the same questions, so I guess I should have a Frequently Asked Questions page for my downloads. Well, here it is.
Q01: How does this work?

A: It’s not an automated system. The way it works is that when you place an order through Paypal, Paypal sends me an email notifying me of the order. I then reply to the email address listed in the order, providing you with the web address where you can find your document, plus the username and password you’ll need in order to access it.

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Q02: “I just ordered a document. It’s been a whole 2 seconds, and I don’t have it yet. Where is it?”

A: I’m asleep/out buying groceries/fighting off hordes of zombies. I’ll respond to your email just as soon as I can.

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Q03: “I just ordered a document. It’s been a whole 24 hours, and I don’t have it yet. Where is it?”

A1: Check your “spam bucket.” Some spam filters see response messages such as you’ll get from me as spam, since there is a web address listed in it.

A2: Are you using the email address attached to the Paypal account? The response email with all your download info will be sent to the Paypal-listed email address. If you are using someone else’s Paypal address, or something like that, then *they* will receive the reply.

A3: On rare occasion, the automated Paypal system that sends me order notifications fails to do so. Thus I don’t know you’ve ordered something. Feel free to send a “where’s my stuff” email to:

A4: Search your inbox. You might have gotten the message, but not noticed or recognized it. The header will be something like “Re: Notification of payment received” or “Re: Payment received from YourEmail@YourEmailDomain.com.”

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Q04: “I ordered a document for downloading, but the username and password aren’t working.”

A: By far the most common reason for this is either you’re typing the password wrong… or if you are using cut-and-paste, you are grabbing a spurious blank space. Try again, making sure to cut *just* the password.

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Q05: “I tried that, but it’s still not letting me in.”

A: The second biggest offender is your web browser. Something or other to do with cookies, or something. If you have another web browser (Netscape, Explorer, Firefox, whatever), try that.

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Q06: “I’ve downloaded a PDF file. What do I need to open it?”

A: Adobe Reader. It’s a free program.

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Q07: “I’ve downloaded a ZIP file. What do I need to open it?”

A: Any modern computer should have come with an unzipping program built in. If not, do a search for “unzip,” and download a program to your liking.

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Q08: “I ordered a drawing set, and can see the files named ‘XYZ halfsize.gif’ and ‘XYZ quartersize.gif,” but not the full size image. Why?”

A: Some of the full size images are quite large. Sometimes they are so large that operating systems and/or image viewing and processing programs simply refuse to show them. All of the full-size images I sell are viewable on *my* system, which is a bit antiquated… but that doesn’t mean that they will be viewable on *all* systems. This is why I include the “halfsize” and “quartersize” versions, so that everybody should be able to see the images. You do still have the full-rez image… try looking at it on another computer.

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Q09: “Ooops, I ordered the wrong thing. I wanted A, but I seem to have actually ordered B. Can I have A?”

A1: If the error is due to something screwy in the webpage – rare, but it has happened that a typo in the HTML coding can lead to this sort of thing – then I’ll fix you right up with a proper download of A. Keep the other item, free of charge.
A2: A slightly more common error is on my part… you order SDOC4, say, and I mistakenly send you the link to SDWG4. In that case, let me know, and I’ll fix you right up with what you actually ordered. Keep the other item, free of charge.

A3: If the error is due to you simply ordering the wrong thing… well… the problem with digital files is that you can easily make copies of them, and thus cannot really be returned. So if my policy was to automatically “correct” “mistakes,” then it’d be the easiest thing in the world to scam me right out of half my catalog.

So… no. If you wanted A but mistakenly ordered B, I’ll be happy to fill your *next* order for A.

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Q10: “I bought one of your documents, and want to extract the images from it for my own devious purposes. However, it’s password protected. Gimme the password. Gimme.”

A: The documents (air docs, space docs and APr’s, but not DCD’s) are password protected *solely* to try to minimise piracy of ’em. The documents will open just fine and will print just fine at high rez, but image and text extraction will present a challenge. I’ve had issues with people taking the data I’ve worked hard to find and prepare and then turning it around and reselling it (grrr). However, if you have a valid use for extracted images, let me know, and I’ll almost certainly fork over the relevant password.

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Q11: “I want you to add me to your mailing list.”

A: No can do. The system I use now requires that the person who wants on the mailing list add themselves (I can add you, or the system will think I’m a spammer). So, simply go HERE and add your email address.

I’ll update this FAQ as questions come in. Feel free to comment

Dyna Soar Models

Dyna Soar, hypersonic, launch vehicles, spaceplane 4 Responses »

Oct 292011

A few examples of models and mockups of different versions of the Dyna Soar:

A few years back I got to poke around a little bit in the NASM Garber facility. Lighting was not the best and some areas were photography-discouraged, but there were a few things that I got some photos of. One was a large model of an early Boeing Dyna Soar configuration. It may have originally been a wind tunnel model that was repurposed into a display model, or it may have been a display model from the get-go (kinda big, though).

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One of Boeings earliest Dyna Soar designs, the Model 814-1012, dating from about March, 1958. Terribly ’50′s in design, looks like a hood ornament. All angles and fins, including two ventral fins which would have had a hell of a time surviving re-entry. This image is made from two separate kinda blurry photos of presumably the same display model.

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Mockup and display model photos, circa 1960. Taken from a mockup review film.

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A photo of a Martin corp. display model showing an early Dyna Soar/Titan III configuration. The Titan III would lose the fins after testing showed that the thrust vectoring capability of the Titan III’s UA-1205 booster rockets was up to the task of countering pitch moments produced by the Dyna Soar.

Parts of this were originally posted HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Early Boeing Dyna Soar Concept

Dyna Soar, hypersonic, launch vehicles, spacecraft, spaceplane No Responses »

Oct 062011

Boeings initial concept for the Dyna Soar – meant to be an actual orbital bomber – bore almost no relationship to the final X-20 Dyna Soar. All sharp edges and fins like a 57 Cadillac, it wound up looking almost nothing like the Dyna Soar that almost got built. Irritatingly for Bell Aerospace, the final Dyna Soar design looked a *lot* like the Bell entry. The winning Boeing entry was just very, very wrong. The baseline launch vehicle for it, for instance, was a kludged-together monstrosity composed of Minuteman ICBM stages clustered together. Of course, Minuteman had the advantage of being a Boeing product, so there ya go.

Another oddity about the Boeing design is that even though it won, and you can get some pretty detailed drawings and wind tunnel reports and whatnot about many of the competing designs… the Boeing design is rarely depicted with much more detail than a bare three-view. It’s like they phoned it in, not expecting to win… and they won anyway.

The basic design of the initial Model 814 Dyna Soar was tinkered with repeatedly until it eventually turned into the well-known Dyna Soar (as shown in the Aerospace Projects Review Blog header image). One such early configuration is the Model 814-1012 is shown in model form here:

While the initial baseline launch vehicle was proposed to be a cluster of Minuteman stages with sizable fins to maintain aerodynamic stability, alternative designs were of course put forward. One such design is shown in these drawings of the Model 814-0002 launch vehicle + Dyna Soar. This design, from 3-13-1958, features a three-stage booster composed of clusters of XM-20 “Sergeant” rocket motors… seven on the first stage, three on the second, a single rocket on the third… and the biggest damned fins EVAR. Note that the concept is named “Early Bird.” Note that “Early Bird” was also a name for Intelsat 1, the first communications satellite. In the case of the Boeing Model 814-0002, Early Bird likely referred to the supposed ability of a cluster of Sergeant motors to be slapped together and made to fly quickly, sooner than a dedicated launch vehicle.

Portions of this were originally posted HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Martin Co. Dyna Soar, 1959

Dyna Soar, hypersonic, spacecraft, spaceplane 2 Responses »

Oct 042011

One of the final designs produced by the Martin Company was this blunt-nosed vehicle, designed by Hans Multhopp.

The paintings below were photographed at the Ira G. Ross Niagara Aerospace Museum archive; both of these were painted on thick matt board. Nothing beats a well-rendered hand-made illustration.

Note the inclusion of a turbojet engine for landing purposes, a common design element at this stage in the program. The vehicle was not intended to be orbital, but sub-orbital, lofted by a Titan I ICBM or derivative. As such, it was much less sensitive to weight issues.

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