Continuing. By stretching the ET and adding a segment to each of the SRBs, an additional 30 to 35 thousand pounds (!) of payload could be carried to polar orbit.
Next time: Stretching the Orbiter itself!
Aug 252019
Aug 232019
Continuing…
The notion of adding a “docking module” to the Shuttle to allow it to dock with another spacecraft. Here’s one that actually got built and used for docking to Mir and ISS.
Next time: a stretched External Tank & SRBs for increased payload.
Aug 212019
Continuing… An idea for added propellant tanks for the rear of the cargo bay. The propellant would feed not the SSME’s, but the orbital maneuvering system engines. This would allow the Shuttle to reach higher orbital altitudes.
Aug 182019
Continuing. This time, discussion of possibilities of swapping out existing Orbiter structures with graphite composites. The advantage would be lowered dry mass of the Orbiter, leading to potentially higher payload performance. this would, presumably, be of interest for USAF launches from Vandenburg, a possibility that Challenger put to bed.
If this sort of stuff is of interest or use, why not help support the project? A monthly subscription to the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program would not only help support the project, it would also provide you with a monthly package of rare aerospace documents and diagrams.
Aug 162019
Aug 162019
Around three years ago I posted some rather cruddy images of a saucer-shaped nuclear-powered spacecraft that the Chrysler corporation drew up in 1956. At this time a manned spacecraft was a perfectly normal sort of thing for Chrysler to design; their aerospace division was responsible for the Redstone missile and the Saturn I first stage. One of the images was a small scan of the cover of the August-September 1957 issue of “Saucer News.” I finally managed to score a copy of this “fanzine”on ebay a while back and have scanned the cover at high (600 dpi) resolution. The image quality is a bit regrettable, but what can you expect from a 1950’s UFO magazine.
As always, if anyone might happen to know anything more about this design, I’m all ears. Chrysler long ago got rid of their aerospace division and whatever archive it might have had.
I have uploaded the full resolution scan to the 2019-08 APR Extras Dropbox folder, available to $4 and up subscribers to the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
Aug 152019
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.
Jul 212019
Now available… the newest and biggest issue in the US Aerospace Projects line.
US Launch Vehicle Projects #6
Cover art was provided by Rob Parthoens, www.baroba.be
US Launch Vehicle Projects #06 is now available (see HERE for the entire series). Issue #6 is devoted to the launch vehicles proposed for the 1970’s Solar Power Satellite program. This required millions of tons of payload delivered into Earth orbit over a span of decades, with flight rates of several times per day for each vehicle. This program produced some of the largest and most ambitious launch vehicles ever designed, and was the last time that launchers of this size were ever seriously contemplated. Appropriately, USLP#6 is by far the largest issue of US Aerospace projects to date at over seventy pages, three times the size of a usual issue.
Topics in this issue include the Rockwell Star-Raker, several Boeing Space Freighters, the Boeing “Big Onion” Low Cost Heavy Lift Vehicle (antecedent and descendant designs), a Grumman two-stage HLLV, a Rockwell HLLV and “small” HLLV, NASA-JSC heavy lifters, a Boeing/Rockwell Personnel Launch Vehicle and a Boeing winged SSTO. Along with orthogonal views, a number of perspective diagrams are also included.
USLP #6 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $9:
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Jul 072019
While these may be originally spacecraft-specific, they apply not only to other areas of aerospace engineering, but to all areas of life. The canonical list is kept HERE.
1. Engineering is done with numbers. Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.
2. To design a spacecraft right takes an infinite amount of effort. This is why it’s a good idea to design them to operate when some things are wrong .
3. Design is an iterative process. The necessary number of iterations is one more than the number you have currently done. This is true at any point in time.
4. Your best design efforts will inevitably wind up being useless in the final design. Learn to live with the disappointment.
5. (Miller’s Law) Three points determine a curve.
6. (Mar’s Law) Everything is linear if plotted log-log with a fat magic marker.
7. At the start of any design effort, the person who most wants to be team leader is least likely to be capable of it.
8. In nature, the optimum is almost always in the middle somewhere. Distrust assertions that the optimum is at an extreme point.
9. Not having all the information you need is never a satisfactory excuse for not starting the analysis.
10. When in doubt, estimate. In an emergency, guess. But be sure to go back and clean up the mess when the real numbers come along.
11. Sometimes, the fastest way to get to the end is to throw everything out and start over.
12. There is never a single right solution. There are always multiple wrong ones, though.
13. Design is based on requirements. There’s no justification for designing something one bit “better” than the requirements dictate.
14. (Edison’s Law) “Better” is the enemy of “good”.
15. (Shea’s Law) The ability to improve a design occurs primarily at the interfaces. This is also the prime location for screwing it up.
16. The previous people who did a similar analysis did not have a direct pipeline to the wisdom of the ages. There is therefore no reason to believe their analysis over yours. There is especially no reason to present their analysis as yours.
17. The fact that an analysis appears in print has no relationship to the likelihood of its being correct.
18. Past experience is excellent for providing a reality check. Too much reality can doom an otherwise worthwhile design, though.
19. The odds are greatly against you being immensely smarter than everyone else in the field. If your analysis says your terminal velocity is twice the speed of light, you may have invented warp drive, but the chances are a lot better that you’ve screwed up.
20. A bad design with a good presentation is doomed eventually. A good design with a bad presentation is doomed immediately.
21. (Larrabee’s Law) Half of everything you hear in a classroom is crap. Education is figuring out which half is which.
22. When in doubt, document. (Documentation requirements will reach a maximum shortly after the termination of a program.)
23. The schedule you develop will seem like a complete work of fiction up until the time your customer fires you for not meeting it.
24. It’s called a “Work Breakdown Structure” because the Work remaining will grow until you have a Breakdown, unless you enforce some Structure on it.
25. (Bowden’s Law) Following a testing failure, it’s always possible to refine the analysis to show that you really had negative margins all along.
26. (Montemerlo’s Law) Don’t do nuthin’ dumb.
27. (Varsi’s Law) Schedules only move in one direction.
28. (Ranger’s Law) There ain’t no such thing as a free launch.
29. (von Tiesenhausen’s Law of Program Management) To get an accurate estimate of final program requirements, multiply the initial time estimates by pi, and slide the decimal point on the cost estimates one place to the right.
30. (von Tiesenhausen’s Law of Engineering Design) If you want to have a maximum effect on the design of a new engineering system, learn to draw. Engineers always wind up designing the vehicle to look like the initial artist’s concept.
31. (Mo’s Law of Evolutionary Development) You can’t get to the moon by climbing successively taller trees.
32. (Atkin’s Law of Demonstrations) When the hardware is working perfectly, the really important visitors don’t show up.
33. (Patton’s Law of Program Planning) A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.
34. (Roosevelt’s Law of Task Planning) Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.
35. (de Saint-Exupery’s Law of Design) A designer knows that he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
36. Any run-of-the-mill engineer can design something which is elegant. A good engineer designs systems to be efficient. A great engineer designs them to be effective.
37. (Henshaw’s Law) One key to success in a mission is establishing clear lines of blame.
38. Capabilities drive requirements, regardless of what the systems engineering textbooks say.
39. Any exploration program which “just happens” to include a new launch vehicle is, de facto, a launch vehicle program.
39. (alternate formulation) The three keys to keeping a new human space program affordable and on schedule:
1) No new launch vehicles.
2) No new launch vehicles.
3) Whatever you do, don’t develop any new launch vehicles.
40. (McBryan’s Law) You can’t make it better until you make it work.
41. There’s never enough time to do it right, but somehow, there’s always enough time to do it over.
42. Space is a completely unforgiving environment. If you screw up the engineering, somebody dies (and there’s no partial credit because most of the analysis was right…)
Jul 052019
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.
