Lockheed L-7000 Hypersonic Concept - October 1959

I was given the following years ago by Joe Jones.
Since this forum appreciates older design concepts, I thought I would post it.

The caption behind the press photo (attached here) says:

"NEWSBUREAU
LOCKHEED, BURBANK
TR 7-2711, EXT 1815 FOR RELEASE: PMs, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6

4700-M.P.H AIRLINER -- Amsterdam and New York would be only 98 minutes'
flight time apart with this wingless transport, described by Hall L. Hibbard,
Lockheed senior vice president, as possible "in the forseeable future."

Hibbard said the airliner, traveling at an average speed of 62 miles a
minute, could house passengers in a central cabin. The entire nose would
serve as an inlet for the propulsion system and deflected airflow would
permit vertical takeoffs and landings. The Lockheed executive said the
all-body vehicle could offer "clearly attractive" payloads resulting in
practical and economic operation." His predictions were made at Delft in
the Netherlands, when he presented the third annual Dr. Albert Plesman
Memorial lecture, established to honor the founder of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.


Note:
This conference was on Oct. 6, 1959
Hall L. Hibbard's paper was entitled: "Supersonic Flight"
Any copies out there?
This concept does portray an airframe integrated propulsion cycle.
The reference to "all-body" is interesting.
And VTOL via "deflected airflow" (I take this to mean the exhaust
jet can be deflected) is interesting.

This is pretty cool Xmas present, thanks a bunch!

Look up the patents of Nathan Price, a designer for Lockheed. Among others, you'll find patents 2973921 and 3148848, which are for similar (though clearly not identical) VTOL wingless supersonic craft. These are, however, not attributed to Lockheed.




Still, the resemblance to the CL-500 is undeniable...

Cute, if completely silly. I particularly love how VTOL is to be achieved with no apparent forward lift engines/nozzles.

Howedar said:

... no apparent forward lift engines/nozzles.

Click to expand...

Apparently you missed several important details which were clearly called out in the diagram.

Le Fana de l'aviation recently talked about this one... the tone of their article looked similar to Howedar opinion.

I don't see what's silly about it at all, or why "Le Fana de l'aviation" should
mock it.

The author of the Fanà article, Roland de Narbonne, in known for out of hand use of sarcastic comments on airplanes he thinks are not appropriate to his view of what is aeronautically appropriate. In turn, I don't think appropriate to speak out what he could well do with his comments...

Hi,

WOW!

Thanks Hesham for digging up Hall's paper!! This site is just awesome!

Thanks Orion for your slide and patent updates!

Thanks Skybolt and Archibald for the info on Fana!

The same project, but attributed to Prof. Hertel ???
Source: "Junkers nannte es "Die Fliege"" by Hermann Pohlmann, 1983.

Hi,


here is a clearer artist drawing to Lockheed L-7000.

Just to get this clearly: What makes this project any less "speculative" than the Limocopter from the same document and posted in that section?
Both emanate from Lockheed, were designed in the company's offices and were advertised as ongoing projects at the time.
The way I see it, the L-7000 was totally theoretical and highly speculative!
And so there really is a dire lack of coherence on this forum when it comes to the terms "speculative", "theoretical" and so forth are concerned.
At some point it seemed sensible to consider designs from the major companies and engineers as "real" projects, while the designs of lay people and artists were "speculative". It doesn't seem to be so nowadays.
Either we decide that all projects ARE by essence theoretical and speculative as long as no full-scale article gets built, or we try to find a more coherent way of categorizing projects: Projects from the industry, Projects from individuals, Projects from magazine artists...
But perhaps it's just me being finnicky again. If no-one else sees a problem here, fine.

Skyblazer said:

Just to get this clearly: What makes this project any less "speculative" than the Limocopter from the same document and posted in that section?
Both emanate from Lockheed, were designed in the company's offices and were advertised as ongoing projects at the time.
The way I see it, the L-7000 was totally theoretical and highly speculative!
And so there really is a dire lack of coherence on this forum when it comes to the terms "speculative", "theoretical" and so forth are concerned.
At some point it seemed sensible to consider designs from the major companies and engineers as "real" projects, while the designs of lay people and artists were "speculative". It doesn't seem to be so nowadays.
Either we decide that all projects ARE by essence theoretical and speculative as long as no full-scale article gets built, or we try to find a more coherent way of categorizing projects: Projects from the industry, Projects from individuals, Projects from magazine artists...
But perhaps it's just me being finnicky again. If no-one else sees a problem here, fine.

Click to expand...

There is something to this.

1) Actual designs that reached or came close to hardware levels

2) Designs which had considerable structural engineering work done

3) Designs which had considerable aerodynamics work or performance estimates done as part of a specific project

4) Designs which had considerable aerodynamics work or performance estimates done as part of broader research (e.g. developing specifications)

5) Promotional artwork (e.g. for ads and magazine illustrations)

B) Projects that were created outside the industry (dreamt up by forum members or private individuals).


The way I look at it - the big problem is #5. Why? Because many advertisements and illustrations contain drawings of real projects. So some threads would naturally have a mixtures of #1-4 and #5.

Perhaps there should be a rule that illustrations are treated as promotional artwork #5 and put in their own forum until such a time as a thread exists showing that they actually belong as part of a thread in #1-#4 (and then the threads get merged at that point).

Thanks,

-Avi

P.S.
It might also be nice to have a dedicated forum for #B. I posted a very plausible design for a bush-plane that I wanted feedback on at one point - but I was unsure whether to put it in the art or speculative sections.