Oct 042011
ATK artwork showing the Boeing/ATK “AirLaunch” concept from a few years back. Started around 1999, petered out a few years later. It called for a winged solid rocket booster similar in outlines to the OSC Pegasus, but larger and carried on the back of a 747. Upon release, the 747 would be obliged to dive out of the way, lest the rather dense booster bonk back into it. As shown below it is equipped with a Space Maneuver Vehicle for payload… a slightly earlier iteration of the X-37 spaceplane. The first two stages would have been Castor 120′s (Peacekeeper first stages, also the Athena booster), while the third would be a new design. Total payload was to have been about 7,500 pounds.
Just as an FYI this has come up again with a recent (June, 2011) report from an 2010 NASA RFI on “Horizontal Launch Systems”
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110015353_2011016245.pdf
As a “note” though, Gary Hudson mentions here:
(http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26812.0, specifically this message:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26812.msg809433#msg809433) that the study seems “rigged” to end up with an advanced version of the Pegasus only top-mounted similar to this concept.
Randy