Spiral / "50/50" TSTO

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Simon666

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When reading this RBCC Technology pdf I found the following very interesting remark:

They flight tested LAPOT and other lifting body reentry vehicles like our X-20 in the 1960's. Their 50/50: TSTO design looked almost identical to the French Star', but the lower stage is said to have flown to Mach 6 in 1975. They flew the Buran Shuttle unmanned in 1989, but may never bother to man it.
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The publication is from 1992, so has this been discredited yet or have the Russians really flown a Mach 6 aircraft back in 1975 (veeeery doubtful)?
 
Bullshit. Orbital plane aerodynamic prototypes ('105.11') were flight tested being thrown from Tu-95. Hypersonic first stage never left the drawing board. If you are interested, read this (in English) http://www.buran.ru/htm/molniya3.htm - you won't find more detailied description.
 
worth to look
http://orbicraft.livejournal.com/23487.html#cutid1
http://orbicraft.livejournal.com/23173.html#cutid1
http://orbicraft.livejournal.com/22867.html#cutid1
http://orbicraft.livejournal.com/22428.html#cutid1
http://orbicraft.livejournal.com/22064.html#cutid1
http://orbicraft.livejournal.com/19574.html#cutid1

photo (c) Nikolay Chekanov

last photo - last entry in 105.11 maintenance book
 

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flateric said:
worth to look
http://orbicraft.livejournal.com/23487.html#cutid1
http://orbicraft.livejournal.com/23173.html#cutid1
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Not being able to read Russian... what's the story with the two chicks in flight suits? Are they models, using the plane as a prop to sell something (Vodka? Hair spray? Smokes? it sure as hell ain't cheeseburgers)? Or just people fooling around?
 
My friends Nikolay Chekanov and Sofia Kovalenok. They are from Monino AF Museum volunteer restorers team, and their responsibility is 105.11. They are nuts in the finest sense of this word, finding and restoring missing cockpit equipment, real painting scheme with all the stencils (105.11 was repainted by some idiots in silver while having real life white/black color). For a long time museum territory was no guarded, with local yobs and vultures looking for artefacts, spinning around and robbing or destroying aircraft equipment. There are many things to do, in final Kolya and Sofya are eager to restore 105.11 to a look it has during terst flights.
 
Flateric...those Spiral pics totally blew me away, fantastic man. From what I understand the pivot fins allow for stable flight through the hyper/transonic and landing regimes. Now what era are the flight suits they somewhat remind me of early US X-plane program pressure suits with the inflatable bladders. Our Spiral derived X-38 used fly-by-wire and a parafoil in place of the pivot fins. Personally I would choose the sexier pivot wing concept.
 
X-38 was not Spiral-derived. NASA was studying Spiral orbiter -> BOR-4 shapes in WT (that can be clearly seen in PLS/HL-20), but finally come to PRIME/SV-5 derived shape for X-38. Some guess that they just didn't know that fins were movable, and could not get good results because of that, or can't get good enough weight/volume optomisation for multi-seat craft, but it's truly sepeculative.

Flight suits would be more appropriate for next bird for supersonic self-powered tests - 105.12, but with other helmets (GSh-6 or GSh-9?)
 
here also wounderfull graphic about Spiral Orbiter
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spiral_development.html
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spiral_orbiter_design.html

were any picture or graphic of 105.12 publish in west 1960's ?

i ask because there was a (fictional) Cousin back in 1968
the Dove from Movie "Doppelganger"
 

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Very interesting! In US it was known as "Journey to the Far Side of the Sun"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064519/

Need to show to Lukashevich.
 
for those don't know "Doppelganger"
its Gerry Anderson first Sci-Fi Movie with real Actors

DOVE is a VTOL SSTO (crew 2 men)
here as Landingcraft of interplanetary manned probe PHOENIX
launch by "European Space Exploration Council"

the design is from Derek Meddings

for the movie they build next to scale model
DOVE and its Hanger in PHOENIX in real size !

http://www.cloudster.com/Sets&Vehicles/Doppleganger/DopplegangerTop.htm
 
...already downloading the movie...
 
Michel Van said:
for those don't know "Doppelganger"
its Gerry Anderson first Sci-Fi Movie with real Actors

DOVE is a VTOL SSTO (crew 2 men)
here as Landingcraft of interplanetary manned probe PHOENIX
launch by "European Space Exploration Council"

the design is from Derek Meddings

for the movie they build next to scale model
DOVE and its Hanger in PHOENIX in real size !

http://www.cloudster.com/Sets&Vehicles/Doppleganger/DopplegangerTop.htm
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The UFO tv series was, actually, a spin-off of this movie.
Andersons wanted to recycle, as much as possible, the expensive sets done for the movie and...voilà, UFO series was born.
Considering that even Space 1999 was a sort of spin-off for UFO, the movie Doppelganger has generated at least two of most popular (in Europe) series ever done.
 
archipeppe said:
The UFO tv series was, actually, a spin-off of this movie.
Andersons wanted to recycle, as much as possible, the expensive sets done for the movie and...voilà, UFO series was born.
Considering that even Space 1999 was a sort of spin-off for UFO, the movie Doppelganger has generated at least two of most popular (in Europe) series ever done.
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...Not exactly. Doppelganger essentially proved to backers like Lord Lew "Cheapskate" Grade that the Andersons could do live-action production, where previously all the work they'd done was with puppets. UFO wasn't conceptually a sequel to Doppelganger, but it did use a lot of props and there was some minor set recycling. Space: 1999, on the other hand, was originally intended to be UFO: 1999, a sequel to UFO that was hastily thrown together when the initial reaction to UFO in the US was sufficiently high for US stations to demand another series be ready for the next season. However, by the time the ball got rolling on preproduction, UFO went through a ratings dropoff, and the US market stopped clamoring for a sequel. Rather than waste a ton of preproduction work, the Andersons recycled the concepts - most notably Main Mission, the Eagles and these unisex uniforms Rudi Gernreich had conceived based on the UFO uniforms - into Space: 1999.
 
And now,the competing:
The Soviet "SPIRAL".
 

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we had Spiral also here
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,2250.0.html
 
Source:
Vladimir Nekrasov (Restart+), Alexander Shlyadinsky (http://buran.ru/htm/spiral.htm)
Anatoly Zak (http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spiral_development.html)
 

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Seems the Russian were very much into the air launch or air drop concepts. To bad they came up short on funds I think they would have driven a transition to true access to space.
 
airrocket said:
Seems the Russian were very much into the air launch or air drop concepts. To bad they came up short on funds I think they would have driven a transition to true access to space.
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Starting off by working on just about the most difficult and expensive method possible of attaining orbit is not a good approach.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Starting off by working on just about the most difficult and expensive method possible of attaining orbit is not a good approach.
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...And as I have pointed out in years past, the irony is that this occurred in a country where money wasn't supposed to mean anything because everyone was working in a worker's paradise. So much for Communism :p
 
I think Rutan and WK1 and WK2 demo that its not that much harder or more expensive to do winged palnforms. Rutan has done it manned from the very start something I doubt booster based concepts would attempt. It certainly can be done if one brings the right expertise and experience together and keeps the project within existing technology capabilities. Of course NASP style SCRAM or monster-sized shuttle over-the-top projects would certainly drain the resources, budgets and time lines. Goal is to keep it mainstream, off the shelf and do the technology and flight test in small incremental steps. In that regard wing spaceship development can be very much the same as multi staged booster development.

Example the M-52 while large it appears as something the Russians could have developed had they wanted to. The Russians have demonstrated the capacity to field some very impressive heavy lift transports. Some 2-stage space launch concepts may have been way over the top others like M-52 sadly seem just within grasp. And I wonder what if?
 
To state the obvious, WK1/WK2 are suborbital - doesn't automatically follow that the concept can scale up to orbital. With a subsonic carrier plane still a lot of delta V for the space vehicle to achieve (without something like a conventional rocket booster) and a supersonic first stage raises a whole host of other issues.

I certainly agree that it's a great shame that RLVs have not yet been achieved orbitally. The romantic/techno-geek in me would love to have seen Sprial or some other design actually achieved.
 
airrocket said:
I think Rutan and WK1 and WK2 demo that its not that much harder or more expensive to do winged palnforms.
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The metric is to compare equivalent first stages. In other words, the WK can drag the SS to X altitude and Y airspeed. What sort of rocket booster could do the same job? No, if you then decides to up the performance of the system, what's easier... makign the WK bigger, or stretching the booster? Recovery of th3e winged vehicle is very likely easier. But a Kistler approach with Rogallo wings could narrow that gap.

Rutan has done it manned from the very start something I doubt booster based concepts would attempt.
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Many X-Prize competitors were going to try. Rutan picked a winged vehicle. Had he chosen a rocket booster, I've no doubt that he would have made the second stage manned, since that was the whole point.
 
airrocket said:
I think Rutan and WK1 and WK2 demo that its not that much harder or more expensive to do winged palnforms.
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But there's the simple fact that although a lot of winged spacecraft have been proposed, very few have been built. That seems like pretty strong evidence that they are difficult to do.
 
blackstar said:
But there's the simple fact that although a lot of winged spacecraft have been proposed, very few have been built. That seems like pretty strong evidence that they are difficult to do.
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And/or expensive.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Many X-Prize competitors were going to try. Rutan picked a winged vehicle. Had he chosen a rocket booster, I've no doubt that he would have made the second stage manned, since that was the whole point.
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Interestingly Rutan's original X-prize entry was Proteus for the first stage and a manned rocket (recovered by parachute) for the second stage. It was only later that he decided to make the second stage winged. So he'd always intended to go with air launch, which I guess isn't that surprising for an aircraft designer!

Update: see attached slide from a 1998 Scaled presentation
 

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Ok, a "quick-search" didn't find it but ONE way to reduce the overall costs of developing a "carrier-aircraft" is to...

(wait-for-it ;) )

NOT develop a "carrier-aircraft"!

Just develop the "engines" for the carrier aircraft and attach them to the Space-plane, then "drop" them to fly home on their own when you light off the rocket.

(Searched for the "Space Jet" concept but didn't find it)
http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=6010

http://selenianboondocks.com/2008/01/orbital-access-methodologies-part-i-air-launched-ssto/

Randy
 
I thought some might appreciate this poster I took a shot of, including the Spiral. I would appreciate any info on the P-2 (R-2) that is also shown on this piece.
 

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Thanks. Where did you photograph that?

I've always thought that one of the greatest values of forums like this is to take information that is available to only a few (like the people who can see this poster) and share it with many.
 
blackstar said:
Where did you photograph that?
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It was in Ukraine - specifically the Air and Space Museum named after Yuri Vasilievich Kondratyuk in Poltava. A small but interesting collection.
 
i love You Tube


about Buran Analog testfly at 4 minute BOR spiral orbital test

 
Orionblamblam said:
airrocket said:
I think Rutan and WK1 and WK2 demo that its not that much harder or more expensive to do winged palnforms.
Click to expand...

The metric is to compare equivalent first stages. In other words, the WK can drag the SS to X altitude and Y airspeed. What sort of rocket booster could do the same job? No, if you then decides to up the performance of the system, what's easier... makign the WK bigger, or stretching the booster? Recovery of th3e winged vehicle is very likely easier. But a Kistler approach with Rogallo wings could narrow that gap.
Click to expand...

It's all about velocity. Since the WK1 hits a maximum speed of Mach 3.09, 1051 m/s; and the speed for Orbit is about 7,200m/s, you are still missing about 6,000m/s of Delta-V for orbit. But since you are already at altitude, you have much less Delta-V loss due to drag, a little bit less due to gravity and you add the velocity of the carrier. Basically you need a rocket engine that has about the equivalent in Delta-V of the orbital speed; in a normal rocket there's massive (2-3,000 m/s) Delta-V loss due to the hassle of having to push through most of the atmosphere and fight each's gravity from a dead start.
 
ID those Spacecrafts

Hi,

I can't ID this spacecraft on that artist drawing (both) ?.

Авиация и космонавтика 2/2007
 

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Re: ID those Spacecrafts

Bears a strange resemblance to a certain Star Wars (prequel film) spacecraft.
 
Re: ID those Spacecrafts

Ha. Ok, I'll bite. It's a J-type 327 Nubian royal cruiser from "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace".

latest


http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/J-type_327_Nubian_royal_starship

The one on the left is a bit more difficult...

spiral-1.gif

spiral-2.gif


I found this though:
http://survincity.com/2012/01/gleb-lozino-lozinski-spiral/
 
It’s amazing how much it looks like Dream Chaser. But then there are historical reasons for that.
 

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