In the late 1970’s Rockwell international studied the “Star-Raker,” a large airbreathing horizontal takeoff and landing SSTO designed to support the Solar Power Satellite program. This 2,268,000 kg gross weight vehicle would have a payload of 89,200 kg; the claim was that this vehicle could fly roughly daily and very cheaply. Of course, at about the same time Rockwell was claiming that the Space Shuttle would have a two-week turnaround and would be the cheapest ticket to space…
While Star-Raker was far from the biggest or most powerful launcher studied for SPS, it was certainly one of the more interesting concepts. While a number of SPS reports have described the Star-Raker, to my knowledge a dedicated Star-Raker design report has not come to light. If anybody knows of such a thing, by all means let me know.
Star-Raker garnered a bit of press back in the day, likely due in part to the fact that Rockwell released a number of pieces of concept art, like the one below showing the vehicle in orbit.
I have uploaded the full-rez version of this to the APR Patreon “Extras” folder for 2015-08 on Dropbox. It is available for all $4 and up APR Patrons.
Beautiful! Thank you, Scott!
guess you already have the AIAA paper on the star raker? Link here: http://www.alternatewars.com/SpaceRace/Star_Raker/Star_Raker_Original_Raw.pdf
There are apparently a few papers from that website:
https://www.alternatewars.com/SpaceRace/Star_Raker/
My only question is, are the costs per unit mass as low as they claim? $22-$33 per kg quoted on various websites is extremely low. By comparison, SpaceX’s are about $4,700/kg for the Falcon 9 and $1,700 for the Falcon Heavy. Granted, inflation means the $22-$33 per kg would actually be $90-$135 per kg today, but that’s an order of magnitude less. I would think a company like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, or somebody else would have started building space planes like that by now if that really is correct.
Very cool – and thanks!
are those images in the public domain? If they are, how can you in good conscience charge for them? if they are not in the public domain, publishing them is against copyright law.
wtf?
I’m not charging for them.