Continuing…
In 1985 Rockwell considered the business case for a small unmanned research vehicle to be released from the Orbiter payload bay. It would be *something* akin to the X-37, though of an utterly different lifting body configuration.
Also note: this vehicle re-appears later in the report, including a nice three-view of an “operational” version.
One sizable document I’ve scanned for preservation is a Rockwell presentation package from October, 1985, showing a large number of space programs that the company could capitalize on. These included everything from minor mods to the Space Shuttle to major changes… stretching the orbiter, stretching the tank, adding additional boosters. Heavy lift boosters to put SLS to shame; heavy lift SSTOs; small experimental spaceplanes; manned military spaceplanes; space-based weaponry; space stations; space based nuclear power. Figured this stuff might be of some modest interest. So why not, I’ll post little bits of it from time to time.
McDonnell Douglas spent much of the 1970’s trying to get NASA, the Marines and the Navy to fund the development of a lift-fan-based VTOL aircraft concept, the Model 260. This general concept showed up in a number of different forms, from strike bomber to carrier onboard delivery transport to Marine troop transport. Shown below is a”Research Technology Aircraft,” a proof of concept prototype to be assembled from existing aircraft components, much as Rockwell did with the XFV-12.
I’ve made the full resolution version of the diagram (equivalent to 37 inches wide at 300dpi) available to above-$10-subscribers of the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program/Patreon.
If this sort of thing is of interest, consider subscribing. Even a buck a month will help out; but the more you subscribe for, the more you get… and the more you help me get from eBay and save for the ages.
A sketch of the 1980s/90s SP-100 space-based nuclear reactor, designed to provide 100 kilowatts of electrical power continuously for years on end. It would have been just the thing for applications where solar panels would not have been practical, such as deep space probes or military systems that need to be somewhat maneuverable. One might thing that replacing vast PV arrays with a small reactor would have made the satellites less visible… and on radar and likely visible light, that’s probably true. but that reactor and its radiators would have been quite visible in infra-red, apparent to any IR sensor pointed int its general direction. The sketch below shows not only the tests and progress that had been done on the SP-100, but also a conceptual payload of an undefined sort. It seems to be festooned with sensors.
Two pieces of Boeing concept art for mid-1960’s zero-gravity, single-Saturn V launched spacecraft. The first one looks like an interplanetary spacecraft, complete with drop-probes in the aft skirt.
I have uploaded the full resolution scan of the illustrations to the 2019-06 APR Extras Dropbox folder, available to $4 and up subscribers to the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
On May 31st, APR Patrons and Monthly Historical Documents program subscribers were sent emails containing links to the May, 2019, rewards. This months set of documents and diagrams included high-rez copies of:
Document: “Manned Lunar Vehicle Design,” a General Electric paper from 1962 describing a direct-landing Apollo concept
Document: “AP-76 Project 1226,” a highly illustrated Republic Aviation report from May 1955 describing their design for the X-15
Diagram: “DNI-27C, VFX Design Study Fixed Wing/Buried Engine,” September 1968 North American Aviation fighter design
CAD Diagram: three-view of the Dandridge Cole/Martin Aircraft “Aldebaran” giant nuclear powered launch vehicle notional concept
If this sort of thing is of interest and you’d like to get in on it and make sure you don’t miss any of the forthcoming releases, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
All prior “back issues” are available for purchase by subscribers. Recent months rewards have included:
A small magazine article from 1963 describing and depicting a MOL-like “space lab” equipped with a SNAP 2 nuclear reactor. This would have provided something along the lines of 3 kilowatts, plus an added bonus radiation environment. As show in the art, the reactor would be separated from the lab by a fairly long extendable rod, provided a reduction in radiation flux. The reactor would be the small object at far left; immediately next to it would be the “shadow shield,” typically made of tungsten (to stop gamma rays) and lithium hydride (to stop neutrons). This conical frustum is typically the most massive part of space reactors like this, and was used to shield a relatively small conical region, in this case centered on the space laboratory. If someone were to do a space walk from the lab and drift too far away to the side, entertaining things could well be done to their DNA. Extending beyond the shadow shield is a black cone, the thermal radiator for the system. Contained within the radiator would be tanks of mercury, pumps and turbogenerators; liquid sodium metal would flow through the reactor then through a heat exchanger, boiling the mercury. The mercury vapor would then either directly flow through the radiator, being cooled back to liquid, or through a heat exchanger, some other fluid being passed through the radiator.
Numerous ideas were floated through the mid 1960’s for attaching reactors such as this to MOL-like space labs. The main problem with this was that these labs were typically planned for only a single use; in that case, hydrogen/oxygen fuel cells or solar panels would almost always make more economic and mass budget sense.
(I thought that I had posted something about this before, but an exhaustive five-second search didn’t pull it up)
In the mid-1960’s the US Air Force became interested in solid rocket motors that you could not only throttle on command but also stop and then start again. Motors like this would, it was assumed, be quite useful for ICBM upper stages, varying the range of the missiles as well as tinkering with the otherwise ballistic – and thus predictable and interceptable – trajectories of the warhead-carrying bus.
The usual accepted wisdom hold that solid rocket motors cannot be stopped once started. This is quite wrong: yo can stop them by flooding them with an inert fluid such as water, but this of course requires a pretty substantial mass of an otherwise useless substance. or you can “blow them out” by suddenly greatly increasing the total throat area. If you can drop the internal pressure by several tens of thousands of PSI per second, the combustion zone will lift off away from the surface of the propellant far enough that the propellant will cease to boil and combust, and the motor will shut down. It can then be restarted by firing off another igniter, similar to the one originally used to get the motor going.
Several US rocket companies responded the the USAF. Shown below are two small Aviation Week articles describing the motors designs put forward. Both operated using an adjustable pintle: basically a plug that *almost* fills the throat. When closed down the throat area is low, and the chamber pressure is high; as the pintle moves away from the throat, the throat area very quickly gets far greater and chamber pressure drops. Done quickly and with full contraction, the combustion should cease; done slowly, with shorter strokes, the throat area will change less drastically and the motor can be throttled up and down. Testing showed that the idea worked as advertised. But the motors had all the performance of a solid rocket with all the cost of a liquid, with all the weight of a forklift added on; it simply wasn’t a practical solution. Storable liquid propellant rockets are more typically used on the upper stages of ICBM for fine trajectory control. Pintle nozzles are, however, often used on solid propellant kinetic kill vehicles.
The Air Force Research Lab has released a half-heartedly CGI animated video showing the X-60A hypersonic research vehicle designed by Generation Orbit. This is a small unmanned missile to be carried to release altitude underneath a modified Gulfstream III corporate jet, where it would fire its own throttleable liquid rocket engine and climb to cruise altitude (~130,000 ft). The vehicle is fitted with an unconventional set of wings and control surfaces; it’s not immediately clear just what it’s supposed to do other than go fast. One would imagine that high-Mach airbreathing propulsion systems would be of interest to the USAF these days, and scramjet technology is mentioned as part of the proposed payload, but how such equipment would be integrated into the vehicle is unclear.
2018-12 Rewards are now available for downloading for APR Historical Documents subscribers. This month the rewards include:
1: A large document: “Sea Launch and Recovery of Very Large Rocket Vehicles,” a 1962 Aerojet report on the sea Dragon concept
2: “Ryan Aeronautical Company Plane Portraits,” information, photos and three-views of a sizable range of Ryan aircraft, manned and unmanned
3: “Nova,” a blueprint of the NASA “Saturn C-8” launch vehicle with 8 F-1 engines
4: CAD diagrams: Star Raker scrap views
If you are interested in signing up, you can do so either at Patreon or directly through PayPal. Signing up now makes you eligible for rewards starting with the *next* months rewards. The directly-through-PayPal system is new; it would probably be best to sign up after the first of the month.