AMSCI/ALSV - Air-launched mini shuttles from early 1980s

I think I have December 1987 Spaceflight.

Archipeppe, I do not have any better information than what I published years ago. I was referring to the fact that when I wrote the first article, some people who worked on some of these programs started commenting, and they also sent me some emails. That helped me with the other articles.

Unfortunately, this research was done with internal company R&D funding (what is often called IRAD funding), so it did not all become public. It is possible that some of the Boeing work still survives in their archives.
 
http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/
Updated 6/15/2001, by Marcus Lindroos
perhaps it would be of any use...
 
Bubba said:
http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/
Updated 6/15/2001, by Marcus Lindroos
perhaps it would be of any use...
Click to expand...

I managed to get a fair amount more on the ALSV/spaceplane for my Space Review articles a few years ago (although only in the form of people remembering stuff, not actual documents). Marcus only has the Boeing concept, but there were several others as you can see from some of the artist illustrations in this thread. The Boeing one was the only proposal that actually got published, and their artwork got distributed widely.

It would be interesting to learn what prompted these companies to do this work. They obviously thought that USAF was interested, but was USAF really interested? (I guess that the fact that USAF never put any real money into this subject answers that question--nope.) And this little effort demonstrates something that people have discovered anytime they looked at this concept, which is that this approach could deliver a small payload or a single human to orbit, but probably not both. To get any meaningful payload out of an air-launched vehicle, you have to go really big, like Stratolauncher. And that creates a whole bunch of other problems, like getting that monster off the ground.
 
One other thing that I just thought of--the AIAA paper about the Boeing-Rockwell International study mentions upgrading the RL-10 engines for the spaceplane. If I remember correctly, they refer to substantial increases in thrust. Here we are over 30 years later and the RL-10, which has been updated numerous times, still doesn't get near those power predictions. Now that could be partially because many of those updates over the years were for reliability, not thrust, but I get the sense that in 1980 they were hoping for performance improvements that simply were not possible for the RL-10. Either that, or they were over-promising.
 
Excellent, really !

Just asking in passing... was some kind of connection ever found, between this one and the outrageously similar MAKS ? Remember, that was long before 1989 - more like 1978-1983, when Cold War temperature got "cold" again, particularly in the fall of 1983... Fascinating to think that during that time, Lozino and Rockwell got similar concepts.
 
In the case of BOR-4, it was the US that reacted creating the HL-20.

In this case, I would guess it happened in reverse: the above picture must have been picked by the KGB in Aviation leak, which passed it to Lozino...
 

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Archibald said:
Excellent, really !

Just asking in passing... was some kind of connection ever found, between this one and the outrageously similar MAKS ? Remember, that was long before 1989 - more like 1978-1983, when Cold War temperature got "cold" again, particularly in the fall of 1983... Fascinating to think that during that time, Lozino and Rockwell got similar concepts.
Click to expand...

All of sudden, in TsAGI museum...))
 

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flateric said:
I think that you remember these tiny stuff that Boeing, Rockwell and GD proposed to USAF under family of programs - "Air-Launched Sortie Vehicle", ALSV/“Advanced Military Spaceflight Capability Technology Identification”, AMSCI and so on.

Don't you have higher-resolution scans of these proposals?
Click to expand...

3000x1979 high enough?

DF-ST-85-11979.jpeg
 
It's a fantastic document. Not least because it has weights and mass fractions for all three vehicles including RASV.
 
TimothyC said:
Final Report on Boeing Transatmospheric Vehicle (TAV) Concepts Definition (Phase I)

And so much more.
Click to expand...

This document I think really came late in the process for all three of those study projects. There are earlier versions that were less refined. For example, the Air Launched Sortie Vehicle (the one on the 747) was really the final version of that design. But I'm not convinced that it would have worked. I got the impression from the major changes in engine and fuselage for each study that it was not strictly engineering that was driving the decisions. It looks like the last version was Boeing trying to maximize Boeing's work and minimize the work of other contractors.

Note that the report recommends further study for the version with the new carrier aircraft and new vehicle. That was the one with the highest performance, but it also would have involved the most money.

The problem with all of these concepts--and you can really see it in the document if you go through it carefully--is that there was no clear requirement for this capability. They were really proposing vehicles that they wanted to build and not really designing to meet an existing mission. They were treating spacecraft like munitions, like they could sit around in a ready status for years and then just be put inside a rocket when needed. That's not how satellites worked back in the early 1980s and still is not how they work today.
 
The dates are rather unclear indeed. And the three vehicles studied are MASSIVELY different in capabilities. In fact I was quite surprised to see ALSV and RASV side by side in that document. They are as different as, say, MAKS and Buran: flexibility vs massive payload to orbit.

RASV existed long before 1979 and the (unclear) beginnings of ALSV.

RASV started in 1971 with Len Cormier's Windjammer;

...then moved to NASA Langley between 1972 and 1978;

Technology requirements for advanced earth-orbital transportation systems, dual-mode propulsion - NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

The application of dual-mode propulsion concepts to fully reusable single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) vehicles is discussed. Dual-mode propulsion uses main rocket engines that consume hydrocarbon fuels as well as liquid hydrogen fuel. Liquid oxygen is used as the oxidizer. These engine concepts were...
ntrs.nasa.gov ntrs.nasa.gov

...and then to SAMSO, 1976-1983.
www.google.fr

Critical issues in the history of spaceflight

www.google.fr

It has a very tortured story and a load of variants along the years. Basic concept was a for SSME-powered rocketplane taking off horizontally; except the propellants mass was so enormous, it had to use an expendable undercarriage: a jets-and-rockets powered trolley staying on the ground to save weight. HOTOL also used that trick later.

Undercarriage is usually 4% of the gross takeoff weight; and when the gross takeoff weight is already 1 million pounds or more (450 mt) a 4% saving helps... even more when 89% of a SSTO takeoff-weight has to be raw propellants, to get into orbit. The tanks around the props, the rocketplane around the tanks, and the payload on top have to fold into 11%; otherwise, bye bye orbit: 9400 m/s or bust...
 
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Spacejet allowed for even distribution of weight to prevent landing heat punch-throughs as I recall. A better use of the term “stage zero” in that it was not a solid rocket stage, nor pad infrastructure—as it did fly.
 
Archibald said:
The dates are rather unclear indeed. And the three vehicles studied are MASSIVELY different in capabilities. In fact I was quite surprised to see ALSV and RASV side by side in that document. They are as different as, say, MAKS and Buran: flexibility vs massive payload to orbit.

RASV existed long before 1979 and the (unclear) beginnings of ALSV.
Click to expand...

I think that part of the reason the dates are unclear is because a lot of these studies were partially funded with internal company R&D funding. So they may have started a study before they got any USAF funding, and they may have continued it after they ceased getting USAF funding. The ALSV looks like that--it looks like Boeing kept the idea warm after the initial work ended, and then they got a USAF contract to study it further.

Look at my article. I think I tracked down the beginning of the ALSV. That really started with a USAF lab.

As for the other ones, particularly the sled launch, that basic concept had been around for decades. So the question is when it shifted from some engineer just noodling on some paper to getting some government funding to do a bit more work.
 
Archibald said:
It has a very torture story and a load of variants along the years. Basic concept was a for SSME-powered rocketplane taking off horizontally; except the propellants mass was so enormous, it had to use an expendable undercarriage: a jets-and-rockets powered trolley staying on the ground to save weight. HOTOL also used that trick later.
Click to expand...

I think that the bigger problem is not the vehicles--which would have been difficult to build--but the satellites and the overall concept of operations. You really see it in the Boeing document when they discuss the requirements. There's this almost casual handwaving away of the actual payloads. It says things like they need to be able to launch a payload on 12 hours notice after the vehicle has been at readiness condition for a month. But what satellite is just sitting around ready to launch? What satellite is needed on such a short notice? And how does that fit into the ground systems for using that satellite? When even the simplest satellites back then cost tens of millions of dollars, nobody was going to build dozens of them and then put them all in storage. So what were these rapid response vehicles going to launch?

There's this misguided assumption that you can simply put a new satellite in orbit quickly and use it, and that's not how satellites worked in the 1970s (or even today). Satellites were never designed to be built and then placed in storage for years until needed (they have parts like seals and gaskets that expire). They were also not designed to be pulled out of a warehouse and then shot into space with little preparation. And once you do that, how do you use the satellite data? You have to have a ground station that is ready to use it and has software that can interface with it, and all during that time the software was designed for the specific satellite that was going to be launched, not something that had been sitting in a warehouse for five years.

So there's this big disconnect between designing a rapid-use launch system and how satellites were actually used and designed at the time.

That issue still persists to this day. In the 2000s there was a growing idea called Operationally Responsive Space. You can see it in the name, the concept that satellites would be responsive to the needs of current operations. And there were proposals for building satellites and putting them in storage and then launching them when needed. But it's been over a decade and that concept still has not really been implemented. There's still some push to design rockets to be launched quickly, but that's just one part of the much longer chain, and not all of the links in the chain have been developed.
 
blackstar said:
It says things like they need to be able to launch a payload on 12 hours notice after the vehicle has been at readiness condition for a month.
Click to expand...
They're actually talking about meeting the SAC bomber alert standard of being airborne in five minutes after a launch command! Twelve hours is the turnaround time from one sortie of the air-breathing stage to another - or to going back on alert. They're also talking about getting data to users within a couple of hours of the launch order.

Given that they also talk at some length about dispersed operations, they clearly had an idea that these things would have a SIOP mission. I'm guessing that the concept was to do post-strike reconnaissance after the initial ICBM exchange and ahead of the bombers going in - that would explain the alert requirement, the once-around mission profiles and the data response timeline. If the orbital vehicle is carrying a reconnaissance suite that remains with it, then some of the issues about satellite operations are mitigated or eliminated.

I think there's also something in there - can't find it right now - about generating the vehicle from alert, then holding the airbreather at altitude for several hours before launching the orbital stage. That also makes sense as part of a SIOP mission: survive long enough to carry out post-strike reconnaissance after the bombers have done their thing.
 
I remember a book clearly linking RASV with Grand Forks AFB - which was altogether
a) A B-52 SAC base
b) Safeguard ABM home place.
Makes one think.
 
RLBH said:
blackstar said:
It says things like they need to be able to launch a payload on 12 hours notice after the vehicle has been at readiness condition for a month.
Click to expand...
They're actually talking about meeting the SAC bomber alert standard of being airborne in five minutes after a launch command! Twelve hours is the turnaround time from one sortie of the air-breathing stage to another - or to going back on alert. They're also talking about getting data to users within a couple of hours of the launch order.

Given that they also talk at some length about dispersed operations, they clearly had an idea that these things would have a SIOP mission. I'm guessing that the concept was to do post-strike reconnaissance after the initial ICBM exchange and ahead of the bombers going in - that would explain the alert requirement, the once-around mission profiles and the data response timeline. If the orbital vehicle is carrying a reconnaissance suite that remains with it, then some of the issues about satellite operations are mitigated or eliminated.

I think there's also something in there - can't find it right now - about generating the vehicle from alert, then holding the airbreather at altitude for several hours before launching the orbital stage. That also makes sense as part of a SIOP mission: survive long enough to carry out post-strike reconnaissance after the bombers have done their thing.
Click to expand...

I have not looked at the document since the spring, but yeah, the ready-alert and turnaround times were nuts. They were essentially treating this like a B-52.


"Given that they also talk at some length about dispersed operations, they clearly had an idea that these things would have a SIOP mission. I'm guessing that the concept was to do post-strike reconnaissance after the initial ICBM exchange and ahead of the bombers going in - that would explain the alert requirement, the once-around mission profiles and the data response timeline. If the orbital vehicle is carrying a reconnaissance suite that remains with it, then some of the issues about satellite operations are mitigated or eliminated."

I don't think these requirements were officially established. They might have been established for the study contract (in other words, "contractor should assume that the requirements are...") but they were not established at a high level within USAF. And they really are kinda weird if you know anything about how the US did (and mostly still does) strategic reconnaissance. For instance, what were the cost-benefits of this approach as opposed to something else? Does it make sense to spend billions of dollars developing a system that really can only be used in a very limited scenario? You wouldn't fly this in peacetime, and you'd be very limited in training options. Doesn't something else make more sense?

Now yeah, it was only a study. And it did not get adopted. So the questions might seem sorta moot because obviously people in charge said "this makes no sense" and they never built it. But I just find the way that the thing was set up to be very odd. A better set of ground rules would have possibly served them better.

And this is something that sometimes happened with space systems, where somebody establishes an initial set of requirements that results in a study proposal that gets rejected, but a different set of requirements may have resulted in a better, and more realistic, proposal that could have been adopted.

One last thing: This reminds me a little bit about SAC interest ca 1965-1969 in a radar satellite to conduct post-bomb damage assessment. Their idea was that after the initial nuclear strikes on the Soviet Union, SAC would have radar satellites that would fly over the post-apocalyptic battlefield and figure out how well the nukes did in hitting their targets. Their requirements were pretty high and would have resulted in a very expensive system. Ultimately, they never funded it and it never got built. But I'm guessing that that kind of interest persisted for decades in Strategic Air Command.
 
A few more thoughts on this. (Caveat: when I was a kid I saw concept art for the ALSV in my local newspaper where it was billed as "the next space shuttle." Ever since then, I always thought this was a cool idea. That does not mean that I think it was practical, but the idea of launching a mini-shuttle off the back of a 747 just seemed and still seems neat.)

Something that occasionally happened during the Cold War was that the Air Force came up with space ideas without consulting with the National Reconnaissance Office. I get the sense that nobody involved in this thing talked to the NRO. But it also feels like the people behind these studies also did not talk to the Air Force space people. I get the sense that as soon as the proponents of this stuff sat down with the space experts, the experts would point out all of the problems with what they wanted to do. Like "X won't work, and you forgot to carry the 1 in your equation over here..." I'd really like to know if they had any baseline payloads in mind for this and if anybody thought about the mass and power requirements for those payloads.

It is kinda interesting that the ground-launched concepts (rails, wheeled sled, etc.) stuck around for so long in some form or other. That existed as a sci-fi concept in the 1950s, but there were studies of it in the 1960s. It strikes me as having such big inherent flaws (you really don't want to operate at sea level) that I'm surprised that they were still thinking about it in the 1980s. It's just odd.
 
From Aviation magazine 1973.
 

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Just bought on ebay, a print of the Boeing “Space Sortie” vehicle. So much for my “maybe I should spend less in these difficult times” idea. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.
 
“TAV program
The program that hired me was called TAV and headed by our project manager, John R. It was a development program that involved reentry vehicles, something I learned only after my clearance was transferred and I was read in on the program. We were a subcontractor to a Philadelphia corporation, and the managers there were outright bastards to work with. I often thought that they wanted us to fail, because they couldn’t have made it any harder for us to succeed. Working for Bob Hnat was pleasant, and the team he assembled was made up of talented, good people, which made the job more enjoyable. Many of them came from Burbank and Georgia. Working on the TAV program for two years, I was the design lead on two projects, one a material development effort and the second a development and limited production effort. The program was not what I had technically envisioned, but I needed to suck it up and do the best job possible.”

Excerpt From: Robert Retsch. “Luckiest Engineer."


“The analysis team issue started with one of our designers, who had been asked to create a two-dimensional curved surface that would provide the lowest possible radar cross section return. Keeping it general, the problem dealt with varying the radius of curvature and then sweeping that two-dimensional curve over x degrees of rotation, thus creating a three-dimensional surface looking somewhat like a section of a split bagel. My designer would create a configuration, and it would be performance-analyzed, then cycled back to the designer for tweaking. After a couple of weeks, they reached a performance plateau, getting bogged down short of completing an acceptable shape. I got involved when we started to run behind schedule, trying to determine the reason for the plateau.
It turned out that our designer, by the analyst’s direction, was changing the geometry or tweaking the shape by increments of less than 0.0001-inches, or what we called sub-mil dimensions. As this was a composite part, we didn’t have the capability at the time to fabricate the part, and the tolerance was so tight that we couldn’t verify the finished dimensions. It was the typical case of the analyst having[…]”

Excerpt From: Robert Retsch. “Luckiest Engineer.”

Note: This describes Lockheed Sunnyvale ~1990-1992 (!)
 
I seem to remember a JOURNAL OF SPACECRAFT & ROCKETS entry on micro and mini-shuttles that looked like tiny STS stacks…anyone have pix of those?
 
From a host of varied documents I'm getting a global picture of how NASP / Orient Express happened that day of 1986. Only days after STS-51L disaster, during Reagan State of the Union adress. And from 1983, when DARPA started COPPER CANYON.
There seems to have been a whole bunch of competing designs. Common feature was a requirement for a flexible, multipurpose manned spaceship.
Here is a short list

- 1 Boeing three concepts from that document
a) RASV
b) ALSV
c) TSTO

- 2 Tony Dupont outrageous (and a bit fraudulent) concept that had DARPA's Cooper support and carried the day

- 3 Paul Czysz own take at a multipurpose Mach 12 / scramjet vehicle - that lost to the above

- 4 USAF TAV concepts: Trans Atmospheric Vehicles (partially overlapping with Boeing's)

- 5 STAR / Space Cruiser
 
Legacy programs: Triton at post #42 has a good breakdown of the TAV designs from the participating manufacturers. Diagram of program relationships and a handout that has a few good relevant slides.
 

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A further breakdown of some of the hypersonic programs. It would be an interesting project to combine the flow charts to examine the relationship between projects and programs (e.g. showing merger of AMSC, Sci. Dawn, Sci. Realm, and Have Region into TAV with contractor names; ISINGLASS evolving into the CIAs Adv. Aerodynamic Recon System Aircraft and then into TAV; etc.). It would also be a neat idea to include the name of sponsors, i.e. DARPA/ARPA, CIA, USAF, NASA, etc. and possibly thumbnails of each design. A significant undertaking, however the flowchart would be a massive puzzle, that once together, would provide an insightful picture of the evolution of U.S. hypersonics.
 

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...
 

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