If any of you are fan of Better call saul / Breaking bad / El Camino universe...
Don't ask me, I've been catching up with the series recently. The gory violence is really not my thing, but truth be told, I can understand why people are so hooked to Vince Gilligan masterpieces.
And this bring us to Walter "Heisenberg" White. Born 1958, met Skyler near Los Alamos, circa 1992 went to Sandia nuclear lab and Albuquerque, ended as chemistry teacher there. And the rest is history.
And he loved lasers, and toasted to "Water on Mars" with the man he had just let her daughter die of overdose, but that's another story.
Long story short, I had fun with the character. Seems that Walt background - a chemist, lasers, nuclear labs - should have him working on Zenith Star (the US Polyus, if you prefer).
And this led to that memorable tirade, being slightly tweaked.
"Who are you talking to right now? Who is it you think you see ? Do you know how much I make a year at Los Alamos, or Sandia ? I mean, even if I told you, you wouldn't believe it.
Do you know what would happen if I suddenly decided to stop going into work? A space shield big enough that it could stop a nuclear WWIII - goes belly up. War breaks out and the world disappears! It ceases to exist without me. No, you clearly don't know who you're talking to, so let me clue you in.
I am not in lasers. I am the laser business - all by myself. A dead satellite or a meteorite or a ballistic missile gets threatening ? I am the one who knocks it down."
"In phase I we deferred the landing to the very last Lunar Modules in long term storage at Grumman; pending the creation of multiple propellant depots on the way to cislunar space.
"In phase II the plan is to send Orion itself to the surface; descending with the main engine, throttled; then touching down on the tail and wingtips. Except this will put the crew and payload in a rather uncomfortable position when dropping to the surface. Even if we put an elevator inside the cargo area it could only go from the cockpit to the payload bay rear bulkhead. Below (or at the rear) are the tail and the engine pack: jets and rockets altogether. It wouldn't be easy to clear a tunnel across the engine section to the lunar surface.
"Ideally, we would vastly prefer to land horizontally like an aircraft rather than vertically like a rocket. But go tell that to the Moon, which has no significant atmosphere ! We are already taking a lot of criticism for bringing wings, tail, jets and undercarriage to the Moon, all of them dead weight for all too evident reasons I've just mentionned. Yet hoorizontal landings might be doable even on Earth airless satellite; you just have to be creative.
"You know, with an empty mass of 18 metric tons an empty-tanks Orion ain't much heavier than plain old Apollo Lunar Modules. EML-1 to surface and back is 2610 m/s, twice: that's a 5220 m/s roundtrip.
That third refueling at L1 for the roundtrip also brings a propellant margin wide enough to add nine metric tons of payload to be delivered to the Marius Hills base; so total landed mass is 27 tons. Except that lunar gravity is just one-sixth of Earth's and thus Orion coming to land actually weights exactly 10 000 pounds: payload included.
Where it gets pretty exciting is, this is light enough we could add a handful of low-energy thrusters to touchdown horizontally – rather than vertically on the tail and wingtips.
Not only would that be completely awesome, Space 1999Eagle lander style. It would also makes pilot lives much easier and safer; it would immensely helps unloading of cargo. In fact it would be like unloading an Hercules or C-5 Galaxy on Earth solid ground: roll the payload out of a nose or side or rear door, onto a ramp and from there: to the surface. First lunar airport: how about that !"
"That's exciting indeed. By this lunar gravity metric, even the much larger NASA large beast of rocketplane burning hydrogen would barely weight 15 metric tons; again the weight of a lunar module. Of course it payload would be far heavier than that, so no idea how many banks of RL-10s we would need to perform the same trick."
"Should be 70 metric tons divided by six, so twelve tons in lunar gravity. And don't forget we can throw lunar oxygen into the lot for a fourth refueling on the surface; with or without hydrogen, but fact is lunox all by itself would be 84% of the propellant mass. Whatever, total mass of a fat NASA Orion coming to land would be 160 tons... on Earth gravity, cut that by six to get the lunar number and that's a bit less than twenty-seven tons; yeah, the numbers are matching, excellent. This is perfectly manageable by a few RL-10Bs. They are, what, ten ton thrust those days ? We would only need three of them ! Ain't that amazing ? We would put four of them in a rectangular pattern like the four legs of a table for maximum stability.
"By the same logic the Mark 1 Orion could use Agena engines, ironically Bell derived the LM ascent stage... from that very one. Drats, I would never, ever have thought winged rocketplanes could be made to land horizontally... on the airless Moon. That's ironic and mind blowing altogether. Like the 1950's VSTOL pioneers I thought we would be limited to tail-sitters; but you'd just proved we could get a lunar Harrier instead. There is no question it would be far more practical that landing on the tail under the tamed thrust of the main engine; even with the added weight of some Bell or RL-10 thrusters."
"Well you know what ? If might actually be a mix of both approaches. The bulk of the descent would be done tail first, braking on the main big engine. Yet at a safe distance from the Moon surface would be a gradual, cautious flip to horizontal for the final touchdown done on the thrusters.
"That's amazing. In passing, it just dawned on me we could use the main wheels ? Landing on the Moon with an aircraft undercarriage, except touching down like a Harrier; how weird, when you think about it. Yeah, it would be akin to a goddam Harrier or a Sikorsky Stallion big chopper. Except we would better armor the tyres against the lunar vacuum, dust... and boulders. It would be pretty unnerving to lose an Orion to a crash landing on Earth solid ground because its undercarriage had been screwed up on the freakkin' Moon !"
"You hit the nail on the head, for sure. There might be a way to protect or swap the wheels and tyres, you know, as done on Arctic or Antarctic Hercules; the cargo planes that have to land on ice or snow at McMurdo. Or Thulé, for that matter; note that B-52s had no special undercarriage mods, and they were damn heavy."
"One thing is sure in the end: if we pull out all these smart tricks, then we will have created a cargo and passenger spaceline from Earth surface to Moon surface and back. A Fedex to Luna !"
"That thing – suborbital refueling & docking – is counter-intuitive for sure. But once it gets rolling then nothing can stop it; and it is presently like a Cambrian explosion. It is just a matter of tweaking identical rocketplane missions; flying alone or mating together during ascent, with expendable upper stages and propellant depots to refuel and go further. Make your choice, a la carte: and then, WE DELIVER.
"Wants to lift 400 metric tons across the Atlantic ocean is one hour ? We deliver.
"Wants to takeover the comsat market from the Protons and Arianes classic rockets ? We snatch their upper stages, and we deliver to GTO; including the heaviest ones such as TerreStar-1.
"Need cargo or modules to a space station ? We deliver.
"Probes to Mars or Venus ? We deliver.
"Big telescopes or spysats ? We deliver.
"Looking for a new SR-71 invulnerable spyplane ? We deliver.
"Need an ultra-fast space bomber or airlifter ? We deliver.
"Need a spaceline to the Moon ? With three refuelings along the way: we deliver.
"Need a 747 size airliner to the other size of the world ? In one hour, and with zero-emissions hydrogen fuel ? We deliver.
"How about space tourism: taking a large load of people to the edge of space ? We deliver.
"Need loads of propellants to an orbital depot ? We deliver, we refuel, and from there: into the solar system.
"Need to test an advanced airbreathing engine up to Mach 5 ? we deliver.
"Runaway to orbit ? Airline to the Moon ? It's happening. Right now. "
"That thing – suborbital refueling & docking – is counter-intuitive for sure. But once it gets rolling then nothing can stop it; and it is presently like a Cambrian explosion. It is just a matter of tweaking identical rocketplane missions; flying alone or mating together during ascent, with expendable upper stages and propellant depots to refuel and go further. Make your choice, a la carte: and then, WE DELIVER.
"Wants to lift 400 metric tons across the Atlantic ocean is one hour ? We deliver.
"Wants to takeover the comsat market from the Protons and Arianes classic rockets ? We snatch their upper stages, and we deliver to GTO; including the heaviest ones such as TerreStar-1.
"Need cargo or modules to a space station ? We deliver.
"Probes to Mars or Venus ? We deliver.
"Big telescopes or spysats ? We deliver.
"Looking for a new SR-71 invulnerable spyplane ? We deliver.
"Need an ultra-fast space bomber or airlifter ? We deliver.
"Need a spaceline to the Moon ? With three refuelings along the way: we deliver.
"Need a 747 size airliner to the other size of the world ? In one hour, and with zero-emissions hydrogen fuel ? We deliver.
"How about space tourism: taking a large load of people to the edge of space ? We deliver.
"Need loads of propellants to an orbital depot ? We deliver, we refuel, and from there: into the solar system.
"Need to test an advanced airbreathing engine up to Mach 5 ? we deliver.
"Runaway to orbit ? Airline to the Moon ? It's happening. Right now. "
But you got the point. The gist of the idea is to make orbital trips as routine as airline business or air cargo business. A space Fedex. An orbital UPS.
Runaway to Earth orbit first, with one refueling along the way.
Runaway to cislunar space, with two refuelings.
Runaway to lunar surface and back, with three refuelings.
I've just realized one could land a rocketplane "horizontally" on the Moon, a bit like Space 1999 Eagle lander. It is a matter of putting enough thrusters in the right place, with gravity six times lower than on Earth... a 60 000 pound lander ends weighing 6000 pounds.
I've just realized one could land a rocketplane "horizontally" on the Moon, a bit like Space 1999 Eagle lander. It is a matter of putting enough thrusters in the right place, with gravity six times lower than on Earth... a 60 000 pound lander ends weighing 6000 pounds.
Those days I've been reading about SpaceX miseries with the FAA. It is quite obvious while the FAA is worried. Thousands of Starships shooting vertically across airspace and airliners air roads... no surprise they are a little nervous.
It is essentially a matter of sharing the sky harmoniously between airliners flying horizontally, and ascending rockets crossing it vertically.
Also the issues of explosions and debris if something goes wrong.
Now I have this gut feeling that airliners and FAA might be a major PITA to rockets high flight rates... unless of course rockets adapt and become airliners by themselves. Something like the below.
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What rocket pioneers often do not realize is how much the FAA could be a giant pain in the ass. But they have some good reasons to be such annoyance. You know the story, to make spaceflight affordable enough, launch rates have to go upward, exponentially. Main issue with that approach is that before going into space rockets have to cross airspace: basically shooting vertically across airliners airways. Now imagine if there was a collision while ascending; or if an exploding rocket peppered airliners with debris. That's the main reason why the FAA can be a pain to rocket ventures, including the basic airspace closures during rocket launches.
According to this logic, my reasonning is as follow. If you don't bother airliners then you get FAA on your side, and eliminates one big worry. But in order not to bother airliners, you have to behave like an airliner.
That is: horizontal takeoff, but that's not enough. You need turbofans or turbojets at worse, for takeoff and landings not to be too noisy. The gist of the idea is to use turbojets to carry all the rocket hassles – disliked by the FAA – to a remote corner of the sky where they won't bother anybody. By hassles, I mean: the noise, the explosion risk which also concerns the ground: things like that.
With jet engines you can tell the FAA: give me a quiet corner of the sky, away from air ways, where I can lit my rocket and ascent whithout endangering any precious airliner. That's paramount, because it removes the FAA roadblock on the way toward high flight rates.
And yet that reasoning was never done before because quite simply, jet engines are giving up at Mach 3, so the most they can remove of an ascent to orbit is 2000 m/s out of 9000 something: 22% of the tally. Unfortunately that's not enough, because what really matters when ascending to orbit is not delta-v but potential kinetic energy; and since the rocket energy is exponential, it ain't 22% that is removed, but much less than 10%, and at the end of the day the propellant mass fraction still screws the party.
Except if suborbital refueling is used near the end of the ascent, somewhere above 5 km/s: where the bulk of the energy is stacked. You hit the rocket equation exponential nature right in the testicles, and turn that logarithm from a major pain into a positive thing.
So in a few words: we can afford jet engines to keep the FAA at arm's length, because we have suborbital refueling to help the final push into orbit: the "last mile" between 6 and 9 km/s.
"Takes those new C-141B, you know, the stretched variant of Lockheed military cargo. It can now carry 90 000 pounds of payload. Well if you dropped a solid-fuel Agena booster package of similar weight then you could get 5000 pounds to Earth orbit. Right between a Delta and an Atlas.
Just think about it: a cheap-and-dirty orbital launch system that could be packed into a military transport and deployed on any secondary airstrip. It also applies to the smaller C-130, half the payload is still a rather respectable throw weight to orbit. And of course if you went full C-5 Galaxy then the numbers would get really impressive, although the law of diminishing returns quite inevitably applies at some point. In passing, all three transports - small, medium and big - plus the Agena are Lockheed products. As for solid fuel boosters, they have their extended family of SLBM, all the way from Polaris to Trident. Can you believe that ? Lockheed could create plenty of combos. Things like:
Hercules – Polaris – Agena.
Starlifter – Poseidon – Agena
Galaxy – Trident – Agena
Digging a little further, Trident I plus Agena would be an excellent match for the new C-141B. Yeah, now that's interesting. A hundred percent Lockheed launch system; made of off-the- shelf components and delivering 5000 pounds to orbit. I've even found a name for it: Spacelifter. However the Agena propellants might be annoyingly toxic and perhaps dangerous. But you could shift the fuel back to kerosene, same as the C-141B and plentiful at military bases. And then look for a gentler oxidizer than N2O4."
An early breakthrough in access to space happens in the 1960's, with air-launched, solid-fueled-boosted Agenas. Every single large aircraft (subsonic or supersonic) is a potential candidate for air launching these rockets. The solid-fuel booster is used as a weight variable according to the mothership lifting capability. Lockheed realizes that going that way, even C-130s can throw small payloads into orbit.
The second space access breakthrough is the big one, and came out of Langley in the early 1970's.
NASA Langley Research Center
John Bird, Eugene Love and the rest of the gang were gradually refining their idea. And the more they dug into it, the more they liked it. It was Houbolt Lunar Orbit Rendezvous all over again.
"Continuous staging. That's the big deal. The problem has been conceptual; no engineering ideas have seemed tenable that could achieve this ideal. Until today, that is: we are gonna make it happen.
The fuel scaling law derives from the rocket equation which appears to be exponential; however, the situation is actually worse. Indeed the dry mass fraction cannot be made arbitrarily small. It is useful to regard the ratio of fuel to payload mass as a figure of merit. Its clear that in reality any finitely staged rocket is actually governed by a limit equation. Let's call that a limit velocity: it requires an infinite amount of fuel. With current technology, the limit velocity for a single stage rocket is less than required to achieve orbit - at least around planet Earth. One rocket solution that can defeat the fuel limit law is continuous staging or infinite staging. This idealization calls for the inert mass of the tanks and engines to be jettisoned “continuously” as it is no longer needed.
It starts with an orbiter experiencing a succession of refuelings. This “sustained fueling” requires binary staging, but leads to a system that realizes the theoretical benefits of continuous staging. The fuel scaling law is favorable, approaching the theoretical ideal of continuous staging, enabling very large payloads.The fuel scaling law – and resulting payload – both end relatively insensitive to dry mass fraction of the individual boosters. This means that a rocketplane can be designed to life cycle costs instead of performance.
Note how slowly the maximum possible payload decreases with increasing dry mass fraction – 0.90, 0.80, 0.75... This is a scaling law that can make access to space truly affordable. High dry mass fractions offer many new engineering tradeoffs, which can benefit cost, safety, reliability, maintainability, turnaround times, small ground crews, etc. Since all stages and inter-stage interfaces are identical, significant economies of scale can be realized as well. Cost per kilogram to orbit should be at least an order of magnitude less than for conventional systems, and payloads can be several times larger too.
Bottom line: it is like Triamese or MUSTARD, with two notable differences. First, the vehicles are not mated on the ground separating during ascent, but actually the other way around: launched separately, docking or refueling in flight for brief propellant transfers. Because they are only briefly mated after launch and outside the atmosphere, not only can the vehicles be identical, their number is not fixed to two or three: but as much as needed to make payload rise exponentially. The more vehicles mating however, the more gravity losses: but the system insentivity to the fuel scaling law largely overwhelms that issue.
We made calculations for eight 2 million pounds rocketplanes, and even when delta-v to orbit rose well past 10 000 m/s, payload evenly resisted: it did not collapsed nor eroded. Plus we have the SST big and fast GE4 turbojets to help cutting into the needed rocket delta-v. Delta-v to Earth orbit with classic ascent losses – gravity, drag and steering – is 9400 m/s. The jets cut into that but any suborbital manoeuvering add to that number by adding gravity losses. What really matters is the system resistance to higher delta-v, up to 15 000 m/s. It cuts into the payload of course, but does not anihilates it SSTO style. It is a matter of a fleet of rocketplanes giving legs up to identical rocketplanes, on the way to orbit."
...
"That system is... phenomenal. Whatever gravity losses' additional delta-v we throw on top of the usual 9400 m/s ascent to orbit, payload diminishes only very slowly. Heck, we pushed ascent to orbit delta-v to 11 000, 12 000 and even 15 000 m/s: payload remained as high as ever: no collapse, as we feared. It eroded only gradually. That's massive effect really kicks in at four vehicles, and with eight large rocketplanes we lift astonishingly large payload to Earth orbit: more than any Saturn V variant, which is completely mind-blowing. Cherry on the cake: once perched in earth orbit, hitting escape velocity into the solar system is like a walk in the park. On that segment we have concentrated so far on pairs of rocketplanes refueling each others. But thanks to a stable orbit it would actually be easier to get four or eight of them docked around a payload of epic size and weight. Big problem would be to haul that enormous payload from Earth surface in the first place: that's remains the biggest bottleneck, although we have much flattened it.
...
John Houbolt was born in 1919 and would live until 2014: ninety five years, no less. His colleague Bird had not been so lucky, having passed away way too young, in the late 1970's. As the year 2000 dawned, Houbolt now lived in a rather exciting future.
"Thanks to you the sky is the limit, really. Well it is actually no longer the limit." a young Langley fellow told him. "Imagine one rocketplane, two million pounds of weight: if refueled to the brim in low Earth orbit then it could throw
-700 tons to Earth escape velocity
-500 tons to EML-1
-400 tons to lunar orbit
-200 tons to the Moon surface.
"Boom, awesome numbers. And that's only one rocketplane, fully refueled. Remember those large birds have been designed for suborbital docking or refueling; in flocks of two, four or eight. Compared to suborbital mating, docking on a stable orbit is like a walk in the park: hours or days or weeks of time. Now imagine if we docked two, four or eight rocketplanes, all of them fully-fueled, around a common payload. With the delta-v to the Moon surface being ridiculous, compared to an ascent to orbit... you can see where this is going. We could deliver to the lunar surface a payload of truly epic weight, not hundred but perhaps thousands of tons. At this scale, it is no longer a case for a lunar base, but a colony. And remember, lunar lava tubes, too, are gigantic: with the regolith inside crammed with oxygen.
"End result: sprawling lunar colonies inside lava tubes, sustained out of Earth runaways by a steady flow of identical rocketplanes refueling thrice along the way. This, my friend, is the future. Just think about it. No need to go as far as Mars to get a second homeworld: plain old Moon can fit the bill. Which doesn't mean we should abandon Mars, in passing."
"I suppose you remember that Domodedovo airshow, back in July 1967 ?
"The one where you disclosed in a not very subtle way, both MiG-23 and MiG-25 ? How could I forget that ? You do know you Soviets made a huge splash, sending every single major western aerospace country in panic. F-X, presently the F-15, was a go. And soon thereafter the F-111B obese pig of a naval fighter was buried for the Tomcat..."
"My point exactly but beside the two stars of the show was a truly ugly duck, you know... the Yak-36. Does that rings a bell ?
"Geez, yes, that abomination... oh, sorry for that." Alan had just remember his fate was hanging to his work for the very Yakovlev. He'd better not bullshit the hand that was to feed him. But his Soviet fellow engineers did not took it too badly.
"We worked on lift jets, like all of you western aerospace powers. Lift jets..." Alan could hear some scorn - or was it amusement ? - in the Yakovlev engineer voice. "Yes, lift jets. You western engineers seems to consider them as some kind of magic lift devices. Noise, fuel consumption, ground erosion, hot gases reingestion ? No problem. We at Yakovlev let Mig and Sukhoi whack their brains and put some of the silly things into a MiG-21, a proto- MiG-23, and what became the Su-24. Needless to say, the resulting aircraft were complete shit and they soon moved to variable geometry and STOL rather than VTOL. As for us, we developped the Yak-36 a bit further into the Yak-38 prototypes you may have seen outside; but we soon concluded any lift jet concept would be a hopeless piece of junk. This however was only "Plan B" to get Gorschkov favors.
"Gorshkov ? What does the Soviet navy has to do with..."
"Well they pour so much money into submarines, there is no money for supercarriers like yours. The Kremlin however keep pestering Gorshkov with Project 1143, which is the generic name of the Soviet Union long term carrier development project – yes, we have something like this, also called Orel. Starting from the 1123 (Moskvas) a decade ago it has recently moved into the Kievs, but the real deal would be catapults and arrestor gear and 80 000 tons tonnage and eventually, nuclear power; a Nimitzsky, if you prefer." his host said with blatant cynicism. "But our naval doctrine is not like yours, and Soviet carriers so far have failed to find a decisive role. Who needs them, when we have thousands anti-ship missiles and some hundreds submarines ? And so Project 1143 has been repeatedly stalled by Gorshkov. Until they cornered him and we Yakovlev stepped in and handled him a tentative solution. An aircraft able to kick a Tomcat ass and evade even its Phoenix missiles while flying out of a Moskva rear platform or a Kiev deck. Let me present you... the Yak-41."
Lights flashed, the hangar doors rolled, and a truly unmistakable shape was revealed. It had a MiG-21 like frontal air intake in the nose, a boxy body with a two men cockpit and... that was it: the whole fuselage sat on the familiar "flying saucer" system. Alan was aghast: it was John Frost's Radial Flow Gas Turbine, came true; back from the graveyard. "WS-606A, Configuration B" was all he could said. The Yakovlev engineer smiled. "Damn right: that very one. I was quite sure you would not deceive me. And I can see your memory is working well. For your information, just as WS-606A borrowed from the Arrow, that baby benefited a lot from MiG-25 engines and structure. Make some sense, considering it amounts to a VSTOL MiG-25. Unlike you in the mid-1950's, we Soviets are gathering Mach 3 flight data on a daily basis."
"You really intend to fly that beast out of... Kievs ?"
"The plan, exactly. I can tell you it already flew, and not too badly. Noisy as fuck, pretty hard to control to be honest: it truly scares the shit even of our bravest test pilots. But the potential is there: good old John Frost intuition was correct. And you, Alan Gordon, will help us taming that monster."
“There so many exciting combinations. We could launch a Big Gemini on top of a Titan IIIM just like NASA intends to do; except the cargo module would be stuffed with powerful spysat cameras from the NRO. But there are others alternatives that are equally fascinating. We could launch the same camera module without a crew capsule on top, saving 12 000 pounds of weight. The module could be fully automated, or it could be man-tended, that is a crewed capsule could visit it later and from time to time.
"But what crewed capsule ? Could be of course another military Big Gemini adding its cargo module to the first; but Titan IIIM are pretty expensive boosters. There are cheaper and much more flexible alternatives. Remember how we build five Gemini-B in the MOL days ? Well, NASA has seized them to flight test some Big Gemini stuff as early as 1974. In turn this gave us some interesting ideas.
"Gemini B is pretty light, barely 6000 pounds. So light that it is very close from the upper bound of our B-52, B-58 and B-70 air launching systems. Remember those use a mix of Minuteman and Agenas and, lets face it, it is not enough to push a Gemini B in orbit. Yet there is an alternative: Titan stages, liquid-fuel; they are very much like scaled up Agenas. But their LR87 and LR91 engine performance sucks, except if we mix Titan I and Titan II propellants: LOX from the former, hydrazine from the latter. That combo happens to have a tremendous specific impulse, even out of antiquated gas generator cycle rockets. Now, if you think a 50 000 pounds X-15A2 is the heaviest a NB-52 wing pylon can support, you are wrong: we could hang twice as much.
"And so we did the maths: an hybrid Titan stage 2, maxing out the NB-52 wing pylon... and surely enough, it could boost a Gemini-B in orbit, if barely. Can you believe that ? We could launch a Gemini capsule out of a B-52: runway-to-orbit. Once high there it would pick an Agena on its nose, NASA style for large in space manoeuvering. That Gemini-B could be used as our crew vehicle, since it has a hatch in the heatshield. It could be used for rescue of a stranded military Big Gemini; or it could fly alone, with a single crew and a camera sitting on the second seat.”
AGENA & CLASSIC ROCKETS
-Atlas
-Thor (=Thorad)
-Titan IIIB, no boosters
-Titan III with big boosters
-Saturn IB (209 to 216, minus ASTP 210)
-Ariane 1 to 4 (think Aestus)
-Diamant
-Blue Streak / Europa (to Canada, via De Havilland - Convair - GD - Canadair)
-Japanese Delta / Thor: N-1
AGENA MISSIONS
Agena & spysats
Agena & ASAT & ABM
Agena & Lunar Orbiter
Agena & Gemini
Agena & rocketplanes
Agena space tug, space station
Agena from submarines (from a Polaris launch tube)
Agena from a tall mountain (15 000 ft)
Agena from balloons
Agena refueling in LEO from a space station
Agena missions around earth
Agena in cislunar space and to the Moon surface.
“Well if you want to go to the very deep end of air-launch, in theory at least a C-5A could carry, and drop, a S-IVB: 120 metric tons is both stage weight and a Galaxy maximum payload. Put a XLR-129 in place of old J-2 to get the best possible specific impulse; then get the cargo plane to the optimal altitude and angle of attack, drop, fire the stage. That way you could get up to 27 000 pounds to orbit. Next, Philip Bono told us you could recover a S-IVB at a cost of 7000 pounds of payload... so there you are: 20 000 pounds to orbit from a runway, fully reusable, two stages. Impressive no ?”
“Except it won't work. S-IVB diameter is way too big for a Galaxy, and you don't want to hang such an enormous thing on a wing pylon: waaaaay too much drag. So I'm afraid we have to scale down that concept, at the expense of throw weight to orbit...”
“Damn.
“Good news: while S-IVB is way too big, plain old S-IV not only had smaller diameter, fitting inside a Galaxy cargo hold: 5.49 m vs 5.76 m. It also used RL-10s, which still hold all time specific impulse record at 466 seconds for the B-2 variant with the huge nozzle. Cherry on the cake, S-IV was pretty light, barely 100 000 pounds in weight. You could thus stretch it to the Galaxy heaviest dropped load ever: four Sheridan tanks on a pallet, total 190493 pounds: 86 tons. So strech the S-IV to that weight, air-drop the huge thing at the optimal parameters, and you still get 20 000 pounds to orbit in exendable mode. Add that Bono recovery kit, and that's 13 000 pounds, fully reusable.”
There are four major components in the ALA system: the aircraft mothership, a solid fuel booster, the Agena, and a payload. From there are endless numbers of combinations.
1-AIRCRAFT MOTHERSHIPS
After exploring a wide numbers of platforms the Air Force has settled on five of them. They are: the B-58 Hustler, the Valkyrie two remaining prototypes, the B-52, and the two new colossuses: Lockheed C-5 Galaxy and Boeing's 747.
2- ROCKET BOOSTERS
The Air Force rejected the Polaris early on, for all too obvious reasons; they actually wanted to repurpose the Skybolt program as an air-launch booster, since it was, after all, already flying out of a B-52 wing pylon. The Scout Algol and Castor stages were also reviewed, but in the end it the Minuteman was prefered to all of these. The last addition to the stapple has been the Titan liquid-fueled second stage, offering much higher performance than any solid fuel rocket. Aerojet LR87 and LR91 are rugged, cheap, and essentially propellant agnostic: they are adaptable to many combinations. Still, nothing beat LOX-LH2 performance-wise, and there the key engine may be Pratt's RL-10, with stretched Centaurs or perhaps plain old Saturn S-IV. Dropping deep cryogenic stages however may be tricky.
3-AGENA
All in the name. Lockheed swiss knife of upper stage packs very high performance in a compact shape. It is also versatile: a target for NASA Gemini, a booster stage for countless satellites and probes, and a “bus” to many military satellites, including reconnaissance platforms.
4-PAYLOADS
Initially they were unmanned ones mostly related to the classic Agena many existing missions – see above. In stark contrast the Air Force felt manned spaceflight was not possible, as most piloted spaceships are well past 10 000 pounds of weight: busting air-launch limits. Recently a dark horse has changed that opinion: the MOL Gemini-B, which is merely 6000 pounds heavy. Crucially it has been found that the large motherships – B-52, 747, C-5A - with Titan propulsion could do the job. Providing the Air Force with a cheap-and-dirty runway-to-orbit manned system !
The combination of all those building blocks has resulted in a proliferation of names and accronyms. It is first and foremost a matter of air-launched spysats, Agena boosters and their motherships.
ALA – conveniently, the spanish word for wing - means Air Launch Agena. MAGE is a Minuteman-Agena launch vehicle. It then combines with an aircraft name: for example VALMA uses a Valkyrie while HUMA is mostly similar except with a B-58, SALMA being the B-52 variant - and on. STAGE is the B-52 Stratofortress-Titan-Agena-GEmini runway-to-orbit manned system. ALCOR would be an air-launched CORONA reconnaissance satellite; ALGA stands for Air Launch GAMBIT.
It is a true ecosystem of aircraft, boosters, Agena and payloads living in symbiosis.
I have been making a crapton of meaningful accronyms with all that stuff. Must have been NASA influence LMAO.
I'm presently stuck, related to a return of the MOL in 1973, post Shuttle cancellation. Initial plan was to turn Big Gemini into Helios, and then get a military variant - Blue Helios - stuffed with MOL residuals in storage since the summer of 1969. Whole thing launched single piece by a returning Titan IIIM. But now I have a Gemini B launched from a B-52 wing pylon (X-15 / ISINGLASS / RHEINBERRY style), and I'm wondering about what to do with that... rescue ? crew taxi ?
“So the plan would be to hang a stretched Titan second stage to a B-52 wing pylon, X-15 style. Takeoff, climb to 50 000 ft, Mach 0.85 and 30 degree angle of attack; before dropping the booster.
“My point exactly. And this can deliver 7000 pounds to orbit with a recovery kit, or 8000 pounds without it; quite respectable numbers. Philip Bono once noted a 250 000 pounds S-IVB could be retrieved from orbit at a cost of 6000 pounds of additional weight – what he called a recovery kit, but he included landing legs in the tally. Any Titan stage is far smaller than that, hence the kit is accordingly much lighter.
“A recovery kit ? “
“Yes. And off-the-shelf with that. Made of a Gemini heat shield (350 pounds), and Apollo parachutes - 140 pounds each, count three of them. Total mass of such recovery system would thus be less than 1000 pounds. Not that much of a weight penalty, when you think about it. So the stage would reenter nose-first, ablate its heat shield, pop its chutes...
“... and land downrange or at sea, which would make it tedious to recover.”
“No. There is an elegant and practical solution to that issue. We could snatch the stage midair with a big Sikorsky Skycrane, you know, that CH-54 beast they use in Vietnam to recover downed aircraft and drop huge BLU bombs to clear landing areas in the jungle. Hell, we could even fly that big chopper from a barge or an old carrier at sea - if that reassures precious FAA our booster won't crush a family home when hitting Earth solid ground. Whatever: end result would be a runway-to-orbit, two-stage, fully reusable system. Or: providing an orbital delivery capability to the Strategic Air Command B-52 fleet. And payload is nothing to sneeze at. In expendable mode we could almost orbit a MOL Gemini-B. Throw one Agena as the Gemini service module, adding one staging event and thus improving the system payload to orbit... and: there were are. Runway-to-orbit Gemini: from a B-52 wing pylon to a MOL space station. With only off-the-shelf building blocks: B-52, Titan, Agena, Gemini. Ain't that exciting ? “
"A payload gap has long been identified between Titan II / Thorad / Atlas on one end, Titan III and Saturn IB on the other. America very much lacks a 15 000 pounds to orbit launch vehicle. Now a rather straightforward solution is being implemented to bridge that gap.
"The gist of the idea is to use Titan building blocks and infrastructure at CCAFS, and reshuffle them to process a brand new medium booster. Its processing starts at the SMAB with a 7-seg, 120 inch solid rocket motor. The booster then moves to Titan's Vertical Integration Building where a LR91 stage 2 is added. Eventually, an Agena or a Centaur third stage can go on top of the stack. Once completed the rocket moves to the brand new LC-47, corner of no and where between the northern tip of ICBM road, Saturn IB and Titan III respective areas.
"The new vehicle is called SOLSTICE, standing for: SOLid Stage TItan Centaur; or STAGE: Solid Titan AGEna. It is the last addition into an overarching plan to turn CCAFS into the so-called Agena Launch FActory (ALFA).
"Agenas are first processed at a new facility near Titan's Vertical Integration Building. This facility has been strategically emplaced and then road linked to many launch areas. They are: the aforementionned LC-47, LC-25 & LC-29 (Polaris), LC-31 & LC-32 (Minuteman), LC-17 (Thorad), ICBM road (Atlas, Titan II many pads), I-TL (Titan III's pads 40 & 41), LC-34 / 37A / 37B (Saturn IB), or... the Skid Strip: for air launch.
"Somewhat interestingly, the Polaris, Minuteman and Titan pads can send their own rockets "backwards": to the Skid Strip, where they are used as intermediate boosters between aircraft motherships and Agenas. In a sense, the rocket and air-launch sites across CCAFS can feed each others, trading boosters and Agenas between them. An Agena processed at the VIB with its payload can now picks whatever ride its payload needs to hit orbit: all the way from 1000 pounds - out of a B-58 belly pylon - to 40 000 pounds riding a Saturn IB or Titan IIIM.
I can't help with the lost aircraft pornfest... as if the Arrow wasn't enough.
Middle River, Maryland
"We stored them at the D building, since it has a ramp straight to Cheasapeake bay, you see."
And indeed, impeccably lined up were massive and gracious silhouettes, pretty futuristic-looking... and there were a lot of them. Wait...
"How... how many of them were build ? Flown or not, I don't care."
"Well... sixteen, in three variants. The first two prototypes were lost in rather damning and murderous crashes; then we build six P6M-1 and lost none, except they were unfit for service: the Allison J71 is a piece of junk, plus there were some other issues. The real deal was the P6M-2 with Pratt's J75s, and that one was pretty awesome.
"Everybody knows you flew three of those, but how many were actually finished but never flown ?
"Five more, for a total of eight.
"So in the end, you have fourteen Seamasters in storage there ?" Owen's mind was blown.
"Yes, absolutely. Quite a fleet, huh ? Seaplane Striking Force was closer than most people realizes. We essentially had ironed out most of the P6M-2 bugs with the first three and we had five more in the pipeline when Polaris prevailed. Oh well.
"You nailed it. Wonder if we could use the P6M-1s for training ?
"Nah, the engines are different and complete shit. Better to keep them grounded and perhaps butcher a couple of them to validate the modifications you intend to bring to the P6M-2s... geez, are you seriously considering fitting a Polaris-Agena launch tube in the rear fuselage ?
"Of course. Remember there was a hare-brained scheme to mount a Regulus II on a Seamaster back. Even with the vertical T-tail standing in the way, plus the enormous drag and weight of that big cruise missile. And there was another plan to fire Grumman air to air missiles out of a tail-mounted launch tube, hence we just enlarged the concept. A Polaris A3 stage 1 with an Agena is a rather simple cylindrical shape, much less complex than an winged, airbreathing Regulus II. And the same weight, 35 000 pounds, as the present P6M-2 bomb load. So we first roll the missile into the tube, close to the P6M center of gravity that is near the wing. Once in flight we climb steeply at Mach 0.95, high angle-of-attack; and let the rocket roll "backwards" and "downwards" on internal rails. Then it pops out of the launch tube sticking out of the tail; sprouts a braking chute, fire, go to orbit to deliver a Transit satellite. Now let me ask you: are there some aircraft still flying with the Allison engine ? Just for spares..."
"Well, not many of them; two, actually. There is the Air Force Skywarrior, you know: the B-66 Destroyer. And on the Navy side: the McDonnell Demon. And that's it. Note that the Seamaster had the afterburning variant, like the Demon and unlike the B-66. So you'd better borrow F3H engines, really.
"Good to know, if we ever want to fly P6M-1 again."
"Gentlemen, you've been selected for Orion flight test program. Over the next few months we will gradually open the flight enveloppe – subsonic, supersonic, and up to the edge of the hypersonic flight regime with MIPCC. After what : higher and higher, including suborbital parabolas. Our initial objective is to fly high (400 000 ft) fast (6000 m/s) and long (five minutes) zero-G parabolas. Because that's the place where we will perform oxidizer transfers later, through a companion rocketplane. That's paramount."
"Excellent. So, let the fun begin. What are the records to be broken ?"
"There is, first, the SR-71 sustained horizontal flight record – 26 km. And then are the SR-71 and A-12 own speed records: mach 3.3 and something, up to Mach 3.35. Note that these aircraft were too heavy for zoom climbing, hence the records there belongs to different airplanes. Such as the MiG-25 - with no rocket - or the NF-104A - with a rocket in the tail. Both zoomed as high as 120 000 feet. Of course all this is peanuts compared to the X-15 own records: 354 000 ft high in '63 and Mach 6.7 four years later.
"And you think we can flatten them all ?
"Absolutely, well, we will have to if we ever want to get in orbit ! I would say we will certainly break the SR-71 / A-12 records going on MIPCC alone – our objective is to hit Mach 4 on the airbreathing engines. As far as the rocket engine and its oxidizer are concerned, this will save them 2500 m/s out of 9000-something to orbit.
"Next we start to lit the rocket: and we should rapidly flatten the X-15 records even with no suborbital refueling nor going to orbit. Remember how RHEINBERRY was to hit Mach 22 on rocket power alone and fly as high as 200 000 ft ? Still a touch too slow for orbit, and way too low too. Well, we intend to make our refuelings there. Main difference with the X-15 speed runs is: we won't do them at 100 000 feet, because we are going to orbit and this is way too low and would melt our steel structure. Instead we have enough rocket power to break both X-15 records of speed and altitude using the same ascent trajectory: shooting out the atmosphere and into space; and screw the heat barrier, in passing.
"This will be one hell of an exiting flight test program. How much delta-v Orion has ?
"Up to 6300 m/s worth: that's 14 000 mph; 23400 km per hour; or Mach 18.
"Impressive. And once we pushed the vehicle to its... fly-alone limits, we send a second one on the same ascent trajectory, for a brief oxidizer transfer high there: allowing the final push into orbit with a reasonable propellant mass fraction."
"That's the point, yes."
(About the SR-71 references: couldn't help thinking about that scene.)
The Boulevard Room at the swanky Conrad Hilton Hotel in downtown Chicago offers delicious steaks, a lavish stage show, and a curious peek at the future. At the front of the grand hall is what is billed as the “largest hotel ice rink in the country”, on which troops of tutu-wearing girls dance for the crowds of diners. It is here, in the summer heat of August, 1958 that black-tie wearing customers were given the first teaser of a legend that survives to this day: Hilton Hotels was going to the Moon.
On stage, the final scene for the dancers was called “out of this world”. Although details of the performance are scarce, a Chicago-area newspaper called the Suburbanite Economist wrote that it was set in a “plush” hotel called the Lunar Hilton. The lavish show caught the writers’ imagination and he took it to its logical conclusion. As the 27 August 1958 edition put it: “this could mean that the Hilton chain is dickering with the idea of opening the first hotel on the Moon.”
“I want a Hilton on the Moon; that’s where we are headed,” says “Connie” Hilton at one point.
There’s no evidence that Conrad Hilton is behind the vision of a hotel on the Moon. It is actually one of his son, Barron Hilton, who appears to have been the true evangelist for a Hilton on the Moon. He, like everyone else is very captivated by the space age. And he has a strong dream to capture one of the last great milestones in aviation—flying non-stop around the world in a balloon.
Barron was elected as vice-president of Hilton Hotels in 1954, serving behind his father. Soon was the beginning of space fever in the United States, as the Russians had launched Sputnik in October of 1957, kicking off the Space Age - a period of tremendous fear and wide-eyed hope for what was to come. Throughout later years, the idea appears again and again in popular culture. In the 28 October 1962 episode of The Jetsons, The Good Little Scouts, George brings Elroy’s scout troop to the Moon and in a quick, fleeting shot we see the Moonhattan Tilton, a clear reference to the Manhattan Hilton hotel. And in Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey” there is an office marked “Hilton Space Station 5” on the glass exterior, where people could presumably make reservations for the Hilton hotel on the film’s orbiting space station.
Though it wasn’t Conrad’s idea he certainly didn’t discourage the idea of a hotel on the Moon. The March 1963 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine ran a long and glowing profile on Conrad Hilton as the hard-nosed businessman who understood what people wanted and would stop at nothing to give it to them. Though not a quote from “Connie” himself, the article nonetheless ends with a space age promise from the writer: “it won’t be very long before our astronauts land on the Moon and immediately behind them will be Connie Hilton with his plans for his Lunar Hilton Hotel.”
Those plans began to take off and accelerate in 1967. Barron, who was then president of Hilton, told the Wall Street Journal that he was planning to cut the ribbon at an opening ceremony for a Lunar Hilton hotel within his lifetime. He described the Lunar Hilton as a 100-room hotel that would be built below the surface. Guests would gather around a piano bar in an observation dome that allowed them to gaze back at earth.
Barron’s desire to build a Hilton on the Moon - whether it was merely clever PR or something more sincere - struck a chord with people all over the world. The hotel group even printed promotional “reservations cards” for customers to reserve a hotel room on the Moon. "We’ve got hundreds, if not thousands, of letters of people writing in to him,” says Barron Hilton. “They’d seen the picture of the reservation form and they wanted to get their name on there. You read the letters, from all around the world - I always remember the one from Pakistan for some reason it stands out in my mind -- but people really wanted to know that sometime in [their] lifetime we’ll have hotels on the Moon. We have made promotional Lunar Hilton hotel keys which are distributed as promotional item in hotels. The Lunar Hilton key looks like an old fashioned hotel room key, except it’s sleek.
Just days before the first Moon landings in 1969, the Hilton lunar vision has reappeared. Barron addressed the American Astronomical Society where he once again pressed that Hilton would soon be on the Moon. “I firmly believe that we are going to have hotels in outer space, perhaps even soon enough for me to officiate at the formal opening of the first,” he told the assembled crowd. With the world gripped by Moon fever, it is an obvious story for newspapers recorded every twist and turn of the space race. For example, an article in the 15 July Lowell Sun in Lowell, Massachusetts picked up on the speech and painted a picture of the hotel of the future. Their story relies heavily on images of food and alcohol pills.
“Imagine yourself in the Galaxy Lounge of the Lunar Hilton - the first hotel on the Moon. In place of a ceiling, a transparent dome allows you to view the heavens as you never could see them from beneath the thick atmosphere covering Earth, Mars looks bigger and redder, the star do not twinkle, and you are just in time to watch an Earth-set. You order a martini. The bartender pushes a button and out comes a pre-measured, pre-cooled mixture of pure ethyl alcohol and distilled water -- 80 proof. Into the mixture he droops a gin and vermouth tablet. As you sip the result, the huge bright-blue Earth slips below the stark, brown horizon and you begin to think about a freeze-dried steak for dinner. The Lunar Hilton is designed with three levels: a mechanical one at the bottom for all the equipment and engineering; a middle one with two 400-foot corridors containing 100 guest rooms; and a top one for public space, including a cocktail lounge. The bartenders will have an easy job. They will push a button and out will come a pre-measured, pre-cooled mixture of pure ethyl alcohol and distilled water. Into the mixture the bartender drops a tablet -- martini, Manhattan, scotch, gin -- you name it. Instant drink !" The rooms would look remarkably like those on regular Hiltons.
To better sell the idea, Hilton is consulting with Don Douglas, chairman of the McDonnell Douglas aircraft manufacturer, with a feasibility study done by students at Cornell University - who comes complete with some interesting sketches and props.
"The entrance would be at surface level, with the rest of the structure 20 to 30 feet underground, to keep a constant temperature more easily -- surface temperature on the moon can vary from a scalding 260 F to a freezing -280 F." Barron Hilton says. "And then we learned NASA's Lunar Orbiter 5 has discovered giant underground caves on the Moon, and it seemed too good to be true. Nature has done the excavating job for free, and grand scale: 100 miles long, 3 miles in diameter – go figure. So, what are we waiting for ?"
...
GERARD O'NEILL - "We have discussed with Barron Hilton, who is pretty excited by the prospects of a lunar hotel. One has to realize that, since 1954 at least he has proposed to go underground the lunar surface, reasoning regolith would be the best shield ever against temperature shifts, dust, radiations, and meteorits.
He renewed his proposal in 1967, and the same year – bingo, NASA found a huge opening in the roof of a big lava tube. Hilton instantly realized Nature had dug his hotel for free, and grand scale: miles wide in scale. He nows very badly wants to do it, but he reasonned the present Apollo ships, born out of JFK, Houbolt, and LOR, are grossly inefficient and insanely expensive.
What is needed is a lunar shuttle, as seen in 2001 a space odyssey. So Barron Hilton came discussing the matter with us and we pondered how we could improve the present Apollo system – as a clean sheet design would be insanely expensive. It was Philip Bono that ultimately provided an anser. LASS: Lunar Application of a Spent S-IVB. Bottom line: screw the Apollo and screw the Lunar Module: land the S-IVB by itself on the Moon. But the J-2 can't throttle back for a smooth landing, while its performance sucks: there are much better engines out there, and how about pushing the mass fraction from 0.89 to the S-II 0.92 ? How about a XLR-129 with some RL-10s on the sides ? Landing horizontally ? That was the way to go: a S-IVB lunar shuttle. Orbited by a Saturn INT-21, S-IC plus S-II, with a small "cabin" and cockpit to suport a few astronauts. Could such vehicle, from a low Earth orbit: a) fly to Earth escape velocity then b) drop directly to a lunar surface landing and after that, c) rocket to lunar escape velocity, to aerobraking or Apollo capsule direct return ? That's a whole lot of delta-v to assume, but to our surprise an optimized... S-IVC could do it, with an Apollo Command Module attached to it for crew return and reentry.
You have to imagine a S-IVB lunar shuttle with an Apollo capsule as its tip, like a cockpit; descending to the lunar surface on an XLR-129 retro-thrust. When a few miles from a landing, its flips to the horizontal, on banks of RL-10s; sprouts landing legs and lands a bit like an helicopter, thus with the crew in "front" in an Apollo Command Module in the guise of a cockpit. After what it is only a matter of deploying a ladder or stairs – not unlike an airport.
And then we realized we could drop yet another element from the Apollo collection of rocket ships. How about using the S-II and drop the S-IVB entirely ?
The S-IC could deliver a S-II to a 2700 m/s suborbital trajectory (conservative number), and then the question was – how far could a S-II go from there ? First, it needed to finish its ascent to Earth orbit, that is a push from 2700 to 9400 m/s. Next step is earth escape to the Moon, 3100 m/s. Followed by descent to the Moon, 2400 m/s to a touch down on the dusty regolith. And then there is the return leg. From zero speed on the Moon, escaping its gravity takes 2700 m/s. What follows – returning Earth – can be done with no propulsion nor any propellants, but its means hitting the atmosphere and reenter from a daunting 11200 m/s, the so-called second cosmic velocity. Well, the Command Module was build just for that job: so better to separate, let the returning S-II burn, and land the classic Apollo way. Hence the final delta-v tally is a whopping 14900 m/s.
So the question boiled down to: could a very optimized S-II – its mass fraction pushed above 0.93, its propulsion a mixed pack of a XLR-129 in the centerline surrounded by RL-10s – do such delta-v trip all by itself: from S-IC to lunar escape velocity ? Carrying an Apollo reentry capsule ? To our surprise, the answer was positive. Margins were slim, but it could be done. The math was on our side. And thus Barron Hilton – back to him at least – could have a lunar shuttle derived from the existing S-II. The same vehicle could also be left on the Moon and configured as an habitat of epic size, even on the surface. Perhaps the right way to go, we reasonned, would be first to drop such habitats on the surface near the Marius Hills Hole. Later a crew could go the bottom of the hole and start polishing the inside to make a real lunar base there. Or, even better, a S-II could be directly landed at the bottom of the pit, although it might be a rather risky landing, with rocks and dust ricocheting on the pit flanks.
"I have had some correspondence which was stimulated by an article which appeared in the July 8 issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology which indicated a curtailment of the Aerospaceplane."
"In regard to the current and planned support of the Air Force aerospace plane technology program, the fiscal year 1964 budget which the President submitted to the Congress included a total of $19 million for the Air Force for this pur-pose. This estimate was to support continuing research on a number of items aimed at exploring the feasibility of various proposed aerospace plane concepts. When the House voted a 3 percent cut in our research, development, test, and evaluation appropriations, following the recommendations of the House Defense Appropriations Committee, it became necessary to denote those items in our re-search program which might be reduced or eliminated without adversely affect-ing timely military capability. Accordingly, the aerospace plane component support was reduced to $8.5 million by curtailing effort on space-oriented propulsion projects, while maintaining a reasonable level of effort on those projects which might eventually be utilized in the design of a very high speed airplane. Since there are currently no expressed or implied military requirements for such an aircraft, this level of effort would be justified solely as advancing the state of the art in very high speed aircraft."
...
AEROSPACEPLANE POST MORTEM
A critical look at Reusable Launch Vehicles present state of the art – or dogmas.
"There are way too many doxas and dogmas related to Astronautics Long Sought Holy Grail: Affordable Access To Space.
One is: expendables can't be affordable because, well, they are expendables.
Another: that trying to turn expendables into recoverables via simple methods is not viable at high flight rates. This conveniently ignores past history of mass-produced vehicles, from steam locomotives to... V-2 rockets, the irony.
Hence, Reusable Launch Vehicles should prevail. But there are not many ways around Reusable Launch Vehicles.
And there is my main critic, related to the now cancelled Aerospaceplane. It seems to have frozen the RLV debate around exactly four concepts: "two-stages", "single-stage all-rocket", "single-stage sucking and burning the atmosphere through a scramjet", and "single-stage sucking the atmosphere by sucking its oxygen".
And the final two brought one final doxa: that wings are necessary, because sucking the atmosphere means flying before shooting into space. Going horizontal inside the atmosphere before jumping out of it, as if trajectories were friendly – they are not, actually: in fact they are most incompatibles.
At the end of the day – and the end of Aerospaceplane, too – my gut feeling is, the combination of all five doxas and dogmas has essentially stalled the quest for affordable access to space.
The obsession with reusability and wings has combined with the irritating fact that all four major RLV categories - as frozen by the Aerospaceplane final reports - are all doomed, one way or another.
Two-stages is doomed by the FAA, which truly hates the idea of a flyback booster flying among precious airliners and threatening populations below its ascent path - if it ever crashes.
Single-stage all-rocket is doomed by truly insane propellant mass fractions: 0.93 as a bare minimum. Seven percent of the takeoff weight can be allocated to the tanks, vehicle and payload. Everything else shall be raw propellants: fuel and oxidizer, the latter oxygen and an enormous percentage of the total weight tally: 66% with kerosene, and 80% with hydrogen.
Clearly, we need some smart trick to cut into that crushing mass of liquid oxygen. And there, Aerospaceplane blindly focused on just one trick, which might be actually flawed.
"How about sucking some atmosphere for oxygen oxidizer, while crossing it on the way to space ?"
To be honest, nothing beat a jet engine, a turbojet or a turbofan. Bottom line: jet engine work and rockets work. Alas, one major issue creeps right there. Which exactly explains the above question, as postulated by Aerospaceplane. Which had jets, rockets... but not only.
Some kind of Miracle Intermediate Atmospheric-Sucking-Engine is needed - otherwise the design cannot close. The exact reason is: jet engines cannot fly faster than Mach 4; but ascent to orbit is a daunting Mach 27... and orbital velocity, "only" Mach 22; the difference being ascent losses: gravity, drag, and steering – just to make matters worse.
Improved ramjets still capitulate at Mach 6, which is not enough of an improvement to make a real dent into a rocket huge oxidizer mass.
And thus Miracle Intermediate Atmospheric-Sucking-Engines are badly needed. Yet, despite going all out Aerospaceplane could only identify two such engines.
Single-stage sucking the atmosphere through a scramjet - means an hypersonic aircraft with supersonic combustion inside. Plus the weight of wings.
Single stage-sucking the atmosphere by collecting its oxygen - needs a rather magical device that includes a mighty heat exchanger. One that is able to almost instantly turn tons of room-temperature, gaseous air into pure and liquid oxygen. Because that's what's a rocket wants for oxidizer: and definitively not nitrogen, as it is good for nothing since it can't be burned. Bad news: it is 79% of air contains all by itself.
Plus the weight of wings.
Unfortunately, heat exchangers and supersonic combustion ramjets have been rather elusive devices.
So, back to the drawing board. Who said expendables are bad ? That they cannot be made cheap through mass production or recoverability - or both ? Who said plain old expendable rocket building blocks – Titan, Agena – cannot be used for Affordable Access To Space ? And finally, is there a different path involving wings, jets and rockets yet without the not-so-miraculous intermediate engine ?
Put otherwise: what is presently cheap ?
Solid-fuel boosters, for a start. They are very much steel cans loaded with fertilizers; splashing down at sea, or snatched midair by helicopters for the smallest of them. Also Agenas, if they are mass produced by Lockheed like T-33s or Starfighters. We could eventually bolt a Gemini heatshield in front and pack chutes in the back for recovery. And then there is the case of the Titan boosters. They have impressive mass fractions and, if Titan I oxygen is mixed with Titan II hydrazine, impressive performance without too much complication. Finally is air launch, with plenty of candidate large and fast airplane.
So maybe that's the way to go: the use of existing rocket building blocks, mass production and recovery. One major advantage of such low tech effort would be its small cost.
Meanwhile we should be looking at a different take at that ascent oxidizer scooping. It remains a valuable trick to cut into the enormous mass of liquid oxygen oxidizer and bridge the gap between jet engines and rockets: Mach 4 and Mach 27 respectively.
But what kind of... different take ?
S. T Demetriades' PROFAC is a different kind of atmospheric oxygen scooping. Even if only works in orbit and thus not applicable to RLVs, it is one example of very innovative thinking. Which will be all too necessary if we ever want to crack the related issues of Affordable Access To Space, Reusable Launch Vehicles, and Single Stage To Orbit."
More and more fun. Here is what happens when Cold War absurd paranoia (Bomber gap, cough, missile gap, cough, Buran origins through Keldysh - eeeerhm) meets the Murphy law.
[Nota Bene: if you think the below doesn't makes any sense, go looking for the why and how the Soviets decided to build Buran as a close analog of the Shuttle, in 1974-1976.
Hint: reputed Soviet matematician Keldysh do the SLC-6 / Vandenberg / Shuttle / polar orbit trajectory calculations. Instead of KH-9 launches for the NRO, he comes with the pretty wild idea that a Vandenberg Shuttle is the ultimate B-52 / Minuteman hybrid and nuclear delivery system. That it could nuke Moscow with a Minuteman warhead in the payload bay, in just a single orbit. He panics, go tell that to cranky and senile Brezhnev - who is equally scared, and then Buran plus Energiya to launch it are a GO GO GO. Yeeeeaaaaaah. And if my grandma had wings and flew in space, I would call her a Shuttle.]
And thus, behold: the "nuke the Moon" absurd paranoia...
1-1963 Scary Cold War General Harold Shoemaker is frustrated by USAF megalomaniac space plans being canned by that SOB McNamara. He is also frustrated by the PNTBT cancelling Project Orion.
2-Shoemaker meets Teller and together, they bet on Ronnie Ray Gun Reagan over the long term (1968-1980).
3-Teller tries to sabotage the PNTBT by saying the Soviets may hide nuclear testing behind the Moon or into the solar system. The VELA satellites are then perched 100 000 miles high to keep track of such tests - you never know.
4-Teller and Shoemaker create the "nuclear decoupling" theory: nuke blasts hidden in lunar caves.
5-This brings back memories of A119 and Ye-3, its Soviet counterpart.
6-Fast forward to 1967 when the Marius Hills Hole is randomly discovered by Lunar Orbiter V.
7-Shoemaker and Teller are elated: lunar decoupling is "real" - or so they say.
8-The Soviets are baffled by their outrageous idiocy - yet put a KGB agent on the case of A119 and Ye-3. You never know.
9-The agent discovers that Kuiper, Pickering, Sagan and Reiffel (ALSEP) were part of A119
10-The KGB and Kremlin nonetheless (rightly !) dismiss the absurd idea that Apollo is a cover for a return of A119...
12-"I told you so !" - the KGB agent is livid, and the Kremlin even more: as NASA says they will use Agena cargo landers to support the J-class missions.
13-The Soviets decide as a result to keep an eye on the MHH and elsewhere, just in case. You never know.
14-Babakin's robots can do the job for cheap.
15-But it is also an opportunity to hide - and quietly liquidate - the stock of N1-L3 manned moonships plus Zond.
16-And bother the Americans at a time when Nixon wants to liquidate Apollo – he won't be able to do that.
17- Core element in that strategy: the Babakin – Barmin alliance through the Ye-8-5 drill.
The Air Force is actively creating its first space squadrons. Since Cold War has ended and as a kind of gesture of peace, candidates units are Reconnaissance Wings: tactical and strategic, from the present and from the past. Bottom line: RB-57, RC-135, SR-71, U-2 and former RB-47 Strategic Reconnaissance Wings; plus some tactical ones presently flying RF-4C Phantoms. The so-called Reusable Orbital Launch System (ROLS) could revolutionize aerial strategic reconnaissance.
-Much like a SR-71 it can get past Mach 3 on jet power alone. Except it doesn't stops there.
-With MIPCC it can go past Mach 4.
-With the rocket it can reach Mach 20 all alone.
-And finally it can hit Mach 27 – orbital velocity including the ascent losses – if accompanied by a companion rocketplane configured as tanker; with a buddy-buddy refueling pack in the payload bay.
Of course the last two flight profiles can only happen on a suborbital trajectory taking ROLS out of the atmosphere; otherwise thermal heating would melt the steel structure past Mach 5. The new rocketplane is definitively not cut for sustained hypersonic flight; but it actually doesn't need it to perform its missions.
List of past and present candidate Strategic Reconnaissance Wings includes
-5th SRW (RC-135s)
-6th SRW
-9th SRW (U-2s, SR-71s)
-26th SRW
-28th SRW
-55th SRW (more RC-135s)
-68th SRW
-70th SRW
-71st SRW
-72d SRW
-90th SRW
-91st SRW
-99th SRW
-100th SRW (RB-57D)
-4080th SRW (RB-57F)
"So we have now a full and entire squadron of NF-120s – make no mistake, that's a bogus designation straight out of Lockheed advertisement room. They wanted a round number in the F- series, which had just been restarted to F-1 in September 1962 – but they didn't cared. Seems they have a die-hard fan of William Holden there; who remembered the movie Toward the unknown. Where a doomed Martin XB-51 prototype bomber got a bogus designation as a fighter.
And so - Lockheed NF-120 it was.
Those new Aerospace Trainers are very much hybrids of varied Starfighter breeds. The center body is straight out of Fiat F-104S line in Torino but both ends have been tweaked. The Italians never bothered developing a TF-104S for the simple reason other European countries can supply almost unlimited numbers of TF-104G. We took them to that word and grafted a TF-104G cockpit on a F-104S center body; that way we got our Starfighter hybrid minus the tail section.
"We knew from NF-104A (bad) experiences that the plane... rear end needed serious rework, particularly that treacherous T-tail whose pitch-up and spins killed so many pilots. And since we were putting an even larger rocket in that tail assembly we reasonned it was better to create a brand new unit. And there, another strand of Starfighter came in handy: the CL-1200 Lancer studies and mockup. Where the wing had gone up and the tail had gone down: the result akin to a Mirage F-1. "We ultimately settled on a compromise by putting the horizontal surfaces midway of the vertical fin: as per another Dassault aircraft, the Etendard naval tactical fighter. That immensely improved the NF-120 stalls, spins, and pitch up characteristics, compared to vanilla Starfighters.
"And now we are moving into the next step: toward the unknown, as in the movie. The eggheads at NASA Langley got that crazy idea in their bald heads – of a refueling stop on the way to orbit to try and help the RLV-SSTO vexing issue. A refueling stop by a twin rocketplane with a buddy-buddy refueling pod in the payload bay; connected to its own tanks, hence some surplus propellants would be pumped from one bird to another.
"When I heard about Langley's idea I immediately thought of the Navy way of making aerial refueling. Since they can't land KC-135s on their carriers, they have to refuel with tankers no bigger than A-3 Skywarriors, and even that... whale takes a lot of hangar and deck space onboard any carrier. So instead Douglas created the D-704 refueling pod, very much a 300 gallon drop tank with a refueling kit inside. And this can be bolted to any fighter bomber in the fleet, from Skyraider to Phantom.
"All right then, I truly loved the idea and suggested a very simple way of testing Langley's idea viability. I said – why don't we borrow some D-704 pods from the Navy and bolt that to our NF-120s ? Either one under the belly or one under each wing. And then we boom-and-zoom to 100 000 feet in close formation, settle in a zero-G parabola for three minutes, and there we try transfering either kerosene from our J79 jet, or N2O oxidizer from the tail-mounted rocket. Neither propellant is a deep cryogen, and it will help a lot. Because, you see, those deep cryogen tends to clog in the plumbing; the only way of getting them flowing is through ullage rocket motors to shake them into motion. In passing, they wouldn't work with Navy hose: they would need Air Force KC-135 like rigid booms. But we don't care about all this, because kerosene and nitrous oxide are not deep cryogens; and so they will flow smoothly through Navy hoses. Ain't that cool ?
"And then we threw yet another piece of F-104 history into the fray: the F-104C and what they call a fixed-but-removable inflight refuelling probe; attached to the port side of the fuselage. It is quite ugly, but rather convenient for our NF-120: as the guy in the backseat can monitor it as it is pretty close from the canopy. Not a bad thing when trying to refuel high and fast."
"Wait - you want to coast while refueling ? I can see why you want to throttle down or even shut down the rockets: they are so voracious, they may sip oxidizer faster than your tanker unload it ! But once you start throttling down, you coast: and beware of gravity losses then. In fact they could very much ruin your entire scheme. Any suborbital manoeuvering or coasting will cost you mounting gravity losses, and there is no way around this. Ascent losses and trajectories are as unforgiving as, say, hypersonics, ballistics or the rocket equation itself. There ain't such thing as easy spaceflight.
"That's an excellent point, but we may get some help there. Indeed as orbital speeds are approached, vertical thrust can be reduced as centrifugal force - in the rotating frame of reference around the center of the Earth - counteracts a large proportion of the gravitation force on the rocket. Hence more of the thrust can be used to accelerate rather than fighting gravity and its losses. At liftoff 80 percent of a rocket thrust is lost in overcoming gravity. Fortunately, this loss decreases rapidly as the vehicle continues along the trajectory since it is getting lighter as it consumes propellants. Also, as the trajectory begins to curve over part of the gravitational pull of the Earth is counterbalanced by the centrifugal force of the vehicle. And when it reaches orbit, the entire gravitational pull of the Earth is balanced by the centrifugal force. Now, did I said "curve" ? And that's the neat thing with air-launch and rocketplanes. Guess why their gravity losses are lower than the classic vertical launching booster ? Flying horizontally, from the beginning they are kind in the right direction to screw gravity losses as soon as possible; with the help of centrifugal force.
"So - centrifugal force ? That's the ace in your sleeve ? "
"Yes. Took me a while to figure it, but gravity losses can be described as the integral of gravity minus the centrifugal force; irrespective of the vector of the rocket. Using this perspective, when a spacecraft reaches orbit, the gravity losses continue but are counteracted perfectly by the centrifugal force. The two evenly balance each other ! And on the contrary: since a rocket has very little centrifugal force at liftoff, the net gravity losses per unit time are very large. Most important point in the end is, while gravity losses never stop from the ground to orbit, centrifugal force gradually grows stronger and ultimately balance them, until they evenly match: orbit !
"I see the point. But the immediate conclusion is: you'd better refuel way above 5000 m/s, for centrifugal force to help. Below that, it is peanuts compared to dominating gravity losses.
"Spot on. Still, there is a way of limiting gravity losses even at lower speeds. The gist of the idea is not to spend more than 1 minute coasting: hooked and refueling. I readily agree that one minute ain't much of a time. Could still be useful nonetheless, but only with the most innocuous oxidizer to transfer: N2O. Not even sure H2O2 would be up the challenge."
...
"Well that centrifugal force vs gravity losses breakthrough is kind of good news – except perhaps for larger flocks of rocketplanes. A good case can be make that unfortunately 8-FLOC is dead and buried. We already felt that synchronizing all these vehicles across a suborbital ascent might be a nightmare; the sky is already vast, and space is even larger. But gravity losses are a far more serious concern. Best way of putting it is to imagine suborbital propellant transfers as a pyramid with multiple stages. With only two rocketplanes in the dance there is only one refueling step; with four vehicles: two steps; and with eight: three levels.
Now the real issue is pretty simple; back to that pyramid to orbit. At the pyramid bottom gravity losses are very strong because centrifugal force is too weak to balance them. Fortunately as you ascend the pyramid it gets better: and at the tip the two forces evenly balance and - you are in orbit !
All right then. With two rocketplanes we evidently push the lone refueling event as close as possible from the pyramid tip. Because, whatever the cost in payload we'd rather transfer less propellant at higher velocity to get maximum help from centrifugal force. That's the key. Alas ! As mentionned before, with four or eight rocketplanes the additional refueling events can only be lower on the pyramid: where gravity losses dominates and centrifugal force is not strong enough. According to this logic, a 4-FLOC with two refueling events may eventually survive by fighting gravity losses through faster and shorter refuelings; but of course the oxidizer must... cooperate in the first place ! And we all know LOX sucks there because as a deep cryogen, it refuses to flow smoothly across hoses or even booms: it would rather freeze and clog the plumbing, the silly stuff. So I'm tempted to say: as far as 4-FLOC is concerned then screw LOX and screw the NASA vehicles. Only the smaller Air Force rocketplanes with different oxidizers – N2O, H2O2 and nytrox – will play the 4-FLOC game. And you what ? maybe NASA simply doesn't need it: after all, their 2 million pounds giant hydrolox rocketplanes have so much energy and delta-v, even a single refueling at 7000 m/s can deliver an enormous payload to orbit. With enough flight experience and improvement to the vehicles they could eventually lower their refueling speed to 6500 or even 6000 m/s; and I can guarantee the payload gains would be very large.
Whatever. The small military vehicles with gentler oxidizers are better candidates to try 4-FLOC refueling or docking, and that's not a bad thing as they need the trick to haul larger payloads in orbit – things like 45 000 pounds KH-11 spysats... But who knows, maybe someday they could try a 8-FLOC with fast pumps able to transfer the desired amount of oxidizer in less than one minute. Provided refueling or docking hookings are limited to that brief span of time, then we can screw gravity losses without the help of centrifugal force. But – make no mistake: that will be tricky business. In the end I think we should not lament about the loss of 8-FLOC. We still have a rather straightforward runway-to-orbit launch system that works borrowing a familiar Air Force trick: in-flight propellant transfer."
As orbital speeds are approached, vertical thrust can be reduced as centrifugal force (in the rotating frame of reference around the center of the Earth) counteracts a large proportion of the gravitation force on the rocket, and more of the thrust can be used to accelerate. Gravity losses can therefore also be described as the integral of gravity (irrespective of the vector of the rocket) minus the centrifugal force. Using this perspective, when a spacecraft reaches orbit, the gravity losses continue but are counteracted perfectly by the centrifugal force. Since a rocket has very little centrifugal force at launch, the net gravity losses per unit time are large at liftoff.
"The Air Force is presently creating his first rocketplane squadrons. The Reusable Orbital Launch System (ROLS) will bring a revolution not only to space operations but also air combat. The Air Force has merely scratched the surface of seemingly endless new capabilities provided by the system. One recent study has considered rocketplane deployment options... and then ballooned into ROLS as a tanker for the fighter and bomber fleet.
When squadrons of fighters or bombers are deployed across the world, they do it with massive subsonic tanker support: KC-135s and KC-10s. ROLS turns this upside down. A brief examination of its deployment options shows why it is revolutionary.
With its big jet engine on the back and its refueling gear a ROLS squadron could trail subsonic tankers for deployments across the planet. But that idea makes no sense and has been discarded almost immediately. Why fly long hours behind a tanker when you have much faster options ?
ROLS could deploy by cruising at Mach 3 using its GE4; or Mach 4 with the MIPCC system – although in the latter case the stainless steel airframe may reach its thermal limits sooner rather than later. At the beginning this deployment mode was considered for space launches flying out any air bases in the world. The Air Force however soon realized that ROLS squadrons when not flying into space could instead be used as what they call a Fast Tanker Fleet. A Mach 3 tanker fleet could speed out to a new theater of operations much faster than any KC-10 or KC-135 - and meet a fighter or bomber squadron there.
But there is more, and soon the above was discarded for even more exciting concepts. As with subsonic flight, why bother with supersonic or even low hypersonic flight when you can jump ballistically to the other side of the world in merely one hour ? Again it started for space launches out of, say, Diego Garcia AFB in the Indian ocean; and then it found its way into the Fast Tanker Fleet. And there it relates closely to ROLS as a superfast or suborbital transport and bomber; and a SR-71 successor reconnaissance platform. Also under way are preliminary studies of a ROLS space fighter: with a Tomcat long range radar in the nose and a load of Phoenix missiles in the payload bay. To wipe out ennemy fighter forces and gain air superiority on the other side of world in merely minutes: falling from space at extreme velocities.
The Air Force also noted that the ROLS fleet could bring a secondary subsonic refueling capability a backup to the current KC-135 and KC-10 squadrons. While ROLS is not aerodynamically optimal in that flight regime, neither are the USN fighter bombers carrying buddy-buddy packs. With the KC-135s growing old and only a limited number of KC-10s procured, any additional tankers are welcome.
And this bring us to ROLS worlwide deployments to air bases for space launch. While kerosene fuel is not an issue for obvious reasons, the real deal is oxidizer. Classic aircraft just don't care as free air provides oxidizer, but ROLS flies into the vacuum of space with a voracious rocket in the back. The Air Force early on carefully considered that issue and immediately discarded liquid oxygen as unpractical: deep cryogens are a pain to store and transfer in flight. ROLS instead is running on nytrox: a blend of LOX and N2O. The thing is, large amounts of oxidizer would have to be stored at air bases across the world, which is not very practical. The Air Force initially thought of ferrying large tanks by C-141B or C-17s or C-5 transports, but, back to square one: why going subsonic ? Instead, ROLS squadrons could be self reliant: carrying their own loads of oxidizer to the launching place. This, either at Mach 3 or Mach 4 or ballistically.
Interesting detail there: the supersonic option while... slower has one big advantage (hard to realize we are discussing Mach 3 as slow: SR-71 drivers would have kittens hearing this). It doesn't burns the tanker precious rocket oxidizer since the jet engine runs on atmospheric air ! This once again underlines ROLS absolute flexibility. If going ballistically nonetheless, then the payload would be the oxidizer in the tanks or additional tanks in the payload bay. In that regard even the small military vehicles can carry a large load at a speed of 5500 m/s. For the sake of comparison, an Atlas-F missile had a very similar velocity; its trajectory peaked 900 miles high and that way it could strike a target 8000 miles away: about one-third of Earth circumference. A ROLS tanker on such trajectory could deliver 100 000 pounds of oxidizer-payload to its siblings. Or a similar amount of kerosene-payload to a squadron of fighters or bombers at the same base.
And all this is just a beginning; ROLS potential is seemingly endless.
There will be a lunar corporation pragmatically exploiting the few resources from the lunar regolith
- lunar oxygen (as rocket oxidizer)
- silicium (solar arrays and telescope mirrors)
- aluminum (fuel and SSTO manufacturing)
Presently having a lot of fun designing the company logo. Which one do you prefer ?
Must be my subsconscious at work - some of these have "Breaking Bad" credits vibes...
There will be a lunar corporation pragmatically exploiting the few resources from the lunar regolith
- lunar oxygen (as rocket oxidizer)
- silicium (solar arrays and telescope mirrors)
- aluminum (fuel and SSTO manufacturing)
Presently having a lot of fun designing the company logo. Which one do you prefer ?
There will be a lunar corporation pragmatically exploiting the few resources from the lunar regolith
- lunar oxygen (as rocket oxidizer)
- silicium (solar arrays and telescope mirrors)
- aluminum (fuel and SSTO manufacturing)
Presently having a lot of fun designing the company logo. Which one do you prefer ?
A THOROUGH STUDY OF BASING AND LOGISTICS FOR THE SEAPLANE STRIKING FORCE.
"The Martin study regards the SeaMaster as a "revolutionary strike weapon," in concept analogous to the modern carrier task force and sharing with it the attributes of mobility and dispersion. At the heart of the Martin scheme is the task of knitting together an echelon of mobile bases, radiating from the interior to far-flung strike zones, each segment of which needs a different level of logistic support. Martin estimates that the complex can support thirty-six aircraft.
Around the Eurasian land mass are more than 250 potential sites for the "frontier bases," not including inland areas that might also be suitable for water-based aircraft. Located within 500 miles of the potential target, the bases are intended primarily for retaliatory missions, servicing up to four attack aircraft, armed with nuclear weapons, which rotate in and out at five-day intervals. At each frontier base are a submarine tanker, two P6Ms with tanker packs, and a Model 307 SeaMistress transport aircraft to provide crew quarters, fuel, and supplies.
The "secondary base," about 1,000 miles from the target, is more elaborate, supporting twelve aircraft for up to twenty days. Extensive maintenance and rearming took place there, in wartime including aircraft cycling back from strike missions mounted from the frontier bases. Martin estimates that twenty sorties can be generated in less than two days from the secondary base. In support there are LSTs with twin service booms to supply the aircraft on the water and carry out minor repairs, in addition to providing crew accommodations.
Also at the base is an oiler modified to carry jet fuel and aviation gasoline, assisted by more SeaMistress transports. Much more elaborate is the "major base," located more than 1,500 miles from the objective and well out of range of enemy tactical aircraft. For up to ninety days these bases can serve twelve aircraft and are complete with the equipment needed to remove them from the water for major maintenance and repair. Typically, each major base would have two seaplane tenders (AVS), three LSDs, four LSTs, and two oilers. Portable rubber service dry docks would be available, carried by the LSDs. The plan estimates that up to eighty strikes can be mounted from the base over a three-week period.
Last is the "advance support base." Mobile, like all of the base facilities within the striking force, but much closer to home, the advance support base is to carry out major aircraft maintenance and overhaul and supply all of the forward strike bases. Twenty-four aircraft can be accommodated-although half that is the usual number in peacetime-for up to six months. At the advance support base only a command ship is needed for berthing and work spaces, along with eight specially designed rubber U-docks to lift the aircraft out of the water for repairs."
(from this excellent book)
Attack from the Sea: A History of the U.S. Navy's Seaplane Striking Force [Trimble, William F] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Attack from the Sea: A History of the U.S. Navy's Seaplane Striking Force
www.amazon.com
…
"Brilliant, isn't it ? Shame carriers and Polaris nixed this into oblivion. Now imagine we transpose that bold plan into space. "Frontier bases" could be all those Sun-Earth and Earth-Moon libration points: there are ten of them within Earth sphere of influence. Plus lunar orbits, high and low; and geosynchronous orbit: total a dozen of places.
The submarine tanker, two P6Ms with tanker packs, and Model 307 SeaMistress transport flying boats that provide crew quarters, fuel, and supplies; they could be a mixed fleet of rocketplanes, small military ones and large NASA vehicles.
As for the secondary, major and advance bases; they could be in geosynchronous orbit, low Earth orbit, or on the lunar surface. There, space stations and a Moonbase would provide support to the Spaceplane Striking Force – "Spaceborne" might be more politically correct, as the Outer Space Treaty expressly forbids military operations on the high frontier.
...
ATTACK FROM THE SKY: A HISTORY OF THE SPACEPLANE STRIKING FORCE
"To project an expeditionary force to the other side of the world in merely one hour..."
The smaller Air Force rocketplanes – ROLS - that run on kerosene quite logically take the attack, fighter and reconnaissance roles. For attack and bombing they are armed with classic air to ground weaponry like cruise missiles. In the fighter role they got late generation Tomcats APG-71 radar and improved Phoenix missiles. The latter speed, range and kinetic energy gets a massive boost when fired from such a fast platform. In the more classic role of strategic reconnaissance assets the ROLS rocketplanes replace the SR-71s with the same Mach 3 cruise capability... plus Mach 4 dashes on MIPCC; plus suborbital and orbital capabilities.
Because it burns kerosene a ROLS fleet can be supported by any classic air base across the world; oxidizer however is trickier. Rather than stockpiling propellant at every air base, an alternative has been found which is pretty elegant. Identical rocketplanes can act as oxidizer tankers; propellants are then pumped from one ROLS to another. The vehicles also have an airbreathing cruise capability up to Mach 4 that leaves their oxidizer tanks untouched. In the cargo role ROLS payload matches that of a C-130: except almost 10 times faster. A point to point ballistic flight can deliver Hercules size payload over 3000 miles.
Which bring us to the true support fleet of heavy transports, tankers and... troopers. There the military has accepted to borrow NASA enormous rocketplanes even if they run on deep cryogens never found at military bases. Again, the solution has been straightforward: liquid oxygen and hydrogen are pumped from one vehicle to the other. The MUST rocketplanes also have a non-oxidizer, airbreathing cruise capability. Their payload is also far greater: thanks to their size and high energy propellants. In fact they carry twice the payload of a 747 or C-5 Galaxy... ten times faster. This payload can be their own oxygen and hydrogen propellants to refuel a twin; or ROLS oxidizer; or cargo or troops. The latter mission is called SUSTAIN by the Marine Corps.
Even when they burn kerosene, rockets still have an oxidizer supply issue: which doesn't exist for aircraft at they burn atmospheric oxygen. And of course deep cryogens are unknown - and rather unwelcome - at airports and air bases. The solution found to this issue is elegant and straightforward: just dispatch twin rocketplanes to the air strip and use them as ground or airborne tankers; pumping oxidizer, propellants or deep cryogens from one vehicle to another. In that regard, the rockeplane airbreathing dash capability to Mach 4 is pretty interesting; as tankers can be dispatched to forward bases very quickly yet keeping their internal oxidizer supply intact. Alternatively, a suborbital dash burning only a fraction of the oxidizer supply is also available; in the case sonic booms are an issue or the need for a tanker is urgent.
While the oxidizers in their internal tanks are not the same, MUST can nonetheless carry ROLS nytrox as payload: in the shape of an enormous tank in the payload bay. Once landed at the forward base, either the tank is unloaded or nytrox is simply pumped from it into the Air Force vehicles. Quite remarquably, this refueling mode can also happen in subsonic or... suborbital flight. ROLS and MUST, small and large, cryogens versus room temperature propellants: despite these major differences NASA and military rocketplanes can work as a team to maximize flexibility of what is now called the Spaceplane Striking Force.
"There are 72 nations on this planet that use C-130 Hercules. Can you believe that ? Now imagine we pack a boosted-Agena into a sealed container with parachutes, the whole thing on a rolling pallet. Total weight maxing out the C-130 payload.
Just load that into the Herc', climb to 22000 ft and throw the damn thing overboard through the rear ramp with a drag chute. The container is build to split open and boom - there goes the space launch vehicle.
Do you know how much we could send to low earth orbit that way ? Almost 3000 pounds. Plenty enough for, say, a remote sensing satellite. Or almost 1000 pounds to GTO: that's only a small comsat of course; but still that's cover the early Hughes 300 series."
"Time to replace both Saturn IB and Titan IIIM for the 1980's, hmm ? So it starts with just one stock Titan booster: 5-segments. With plain old S-IVB and J-2 on top. The solid, we recover it with parachutes and a splashdown at sea. We call this ARES: Advanced REcoverable Solid. Such a cool name, don't you think ? And we may even throw a "1B" after that, as a nod to both Saturn and... 2001.
"Ares 1.... Ares 1B; I kind of like this name."
"As for the Saturn stage: Philip Bono demonstrated it can be recovered through the addition of a 7000 pound kit; this eats into the payload for sure, but not that much.
"And thus – this would be the first ever fully reusable TSTO – Two Stage To Orbit. The simplest way, and out of existing building blocks: that's amazing."
"Yes. Also as a hybrid of Saturn and Titan, which is quite funny when you think that back in 1961 the Air Force and NASA each developed their own heavy rocket – out of Saturn I and Titan II. came Saturn IB and Titan III. Not only did they launched from the same corner of the Cape, but they ended with the same payload to orbit of 38 000 pounds."
"And next we have Big Gemini... sorry, Helios, landing on a runway at the end of its mission; the capsule at least. Or maybe I should say: the cockpit ?"
"Wait... a cockpit ? On a fully reusable manned TSTO ? With a reusable booster and hydrogen propulsion on top ? Landing on a runway for reuse... Does that sound familiar ?"
"Holly cow. We have reinvented the lost Space Shuttle. Out of the Saturn, Titan and Helios that slained it some years ago."
"Unbelievable. And then that vehicle can evolve: more ARES boosters, 7-segments and clustered; and a more advanced engine that plain old J-2".
"You think of... the XLR-129 ?"
"That one - yes."
"What a joke – again. You realize this is the closest we ever came from a Shuttle engine ?"
"Oh geez. I feel like we are torturing the Shuttle... ghost."
"And it's not over. Still want that 65 000 pound payload to orbit ? No problem. Two or three ARES boosters below a XLR-129 should do it."
"Please stop."
"Nah. I'm not done yet. Bellcomm did some cost studies for such system. Wanna know the number they found ? $260 a pound to orbit if either launched a lot or... reusable. Or both. The Shuttle very cost target. Can you believe that ?"
"Sure. The whole damn thing ends looking like a Shuttle - except done the right way; on the cheap and from off the shelf components. So many ironies, it's hardly believable."
"Except it has no wings and can fly unmanned. For these two reasons alone, NASA Marshall and Johnson would hate the guts of that very concept. Even if Nixon OMB and PSAC hammered them it was the right way to go. But no. They would have to blow it up, those maniacs. This is not our winged Shuttle... not our precious winged Shuttle. Can't land on a runway. Can't bring down a big payload. And they get to be engineers ? What a sick joke."
"We have landed Agenas on the Moon horizontally since the mid-1970's; presently that experience is applied to much larger S-IVBs. Which size is close from the Air Force rocketplane – ROLS*.
That continuity is very welcome as the manoeuver remains the same whatever the vehicle size. Most of the descent is done on the throttled-down main engine and, when a reasonable distance from the lunar surface, the rocketship flips to horizontal, deploys legs and lands on banks of thrusters. Agena uses an extension of its nitrogen cold gas reaction and control system; the S-IVB got a few RL-10s running on the same props as its XLR-129 main engine.
For ROLS we will use monopropellant nitrous oxide thrusters since we have plenty of the stuff as the main engine oxidizer; thanks to that third refueling in cislunar space.
The real deal will be MUST*: NASA monster rocketplane. Same propellants as plain old S-IVB; so why reinvent the wheel ? Go RL-10s ! And of course the Moon weak gravity help our case immensely. Mass remains mass of course, but weight is divided by six. Considering how heavy is a MUST rocketplane, that's very welcome... "
...
*ROLS: Reusable Orbital Launch System. The Air Force small size suborbital refueling rocketplane. Kerosene fuel, nytrox oxidizer (a blend of N2O and LOX trying to get the best of both worlds).
*MUST: MUltipurpose Space Transport. NASA enormous vehicle, maxing out runways: 30 wheels, 30 tons each, 2 million pounds MTOW (908 tons). MIPCC & tripropellant rocketplane, airbreathing to Mach 4 on kerosene, then kerosene rocket, then hydrogen rocket - the latter two with LOX oxidizer. The said LOX replenished by a twin tanker MUST at 6500 m/s - before the orbiter final push into orbit.
"An engineer at Ames center, near San Fransisco. The former NACA – the aeronautics side of the agency; now OART, here at NASA headquarters – pointed me to a couple of studies they have done last year. He is involved in both. And because of these two technical papers, that fellow has, between his hands a potential blueprint for our non-Shuttle future. Can you believe that ?
George Low dropped two thick reports on Fletcher desk.
STUDY OF AN EVOLUTIONARY INTERIM EARTH ORBIT PROGRAM.
DETERMINE COSTS OF SOLID ROCKET MOTOR BOOSTED S-IVB STAGES
"The two studies are related beyond Dalton; there is some logic behind the whole thing. Long story short: last April we asked Douglas and OART for more Skylabs, because of that Soviet Salyut station. Then the study grew in a rather interesting direction: find the cheapest crew and cargo transportation system. Cheap enough to bridge the gap between Apollo-Skylab around 1974 and, well, Shuttle-Spacelab after 1978. It is all in the title: interim. Little could we guess that Shuttle-Spacelab would end axed; whatever, now the interim may become the core program. Go figure. Short summary here.
"McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Company submitted the final report on a study to determine the costs of a "near-term" launch vehicle concept involving a Titan Solid Rocket Motor -boosted Saturn S-IVB stage.
The object of the study was in part to investigate a means of filling the hiatus in manned space flight which would exist between the final Saturn/Apollo launches and the first flight of the Space Shuttle. It was heavily influenced by the need to achieve an extremely low cost system. Baseline payload concepts included an Apollo Command and Service Module, an unmanned cargo module, the Centaur-Viking upper stage, an S-IVB with docking adapter, and a manned reusable "glider" based on a Lockheed lifting body design.
The report summarized the viability of the concept in the following terms:
The viability of an SRM/S-IVB launch vehicle program depends on its ability to supplement Space Shuttle and unmanned missions programs in a cost effective manner within tight budget limitations. Hence, the launch vehicle configuration and program structure evolved in this study were strongly influenced by the desire to develop a low cost program. It has been concluded that such a program could provide a 150,000 lb to low earth orbit payload capability launch vehicle on a 20 unit buy. With program authority to proceed given in July 1972, the first flight date could he October, 1975.
"Wait, did you just said – a glider based on a Lockheed lifting body ?"
"Yes, absolutely. They considered it a far more efficient crewed vehicle than plain old Apollo blunt body capsule. That seems to rings a bell with you ?
"Sure. I know that one. It is Carl Ehrlich and Paul Czysz baby: the FDL-5 shape straight out of Wright Patterson Flight Dynamics Laboratory: FDL, hence the name. They even build a half size mockup called FDL-5MA: a true aerodynamic wonder. The reason they refined such a tortured shape is simple. They want a large crossrange to land in America with no orbit phasing delay, for maximum flexibility in case somebody gets badly hurt at a space station. As for getting it to orbit, their plan is pretty straightforward. First it would ride a Titan III, but later it would get a pair of fat drop tanks to haul itself alone: a 1.5STO if you prefer.
"Like the Lockheed Starclipper and its V-shaped tank ?
"Bingo. The two are closely related; both are FDL-5 shape with only the size differing. Where it gets really interesting is that Douglas competitor with Starclipper in the pre-Shuttle ILRV studies back in 1968, also had a FDL shape and drop tanks: Douglas called the whole thing tip tank".
"More FDL shape legacy there, too ?"
"Absolutely. Long story short, Wright Patterson a decade ago churned four major lifting body shapes: FDL with a number. Lockheed went with FDL number five and the result was Starclipper plus Czysz and Ehrlich smaller baby you mentionned: Titan III, drop tanks... and you tell me it also got a new ride: that SRM/S-IVB Titan / Saturn hybrid ?"
"Larry Alton rocket, yes. Apollo or Centaur or... that Lockheed lifting body you seems to know so well. What were those others FDL shapes then ?
"FDL-6 went nowhere, but FDL-7 became Douglas own prefered design, and Tip Tank ILRV sprung for there. Also Douglas very own FDL-5MA they call the Model 176: Douglas works absolutely parallels Lockheed's, for good reasons. Model 176 launch options to orbit are the exact same as Lockheed vehicle: tip tanks or... Titan III."
"Unbelievable. Any other FDL shape I never heard about ?
"Yes: FDL-8. That one is not classified, and went first to Martin. From there it found its way into NASA lifting body program, against Northrop M2F and HL-10 series."
"Wait, do you mean - Martin X-24A ?"
"Close, but not that one. Martin is presently reworking one of these into a FDL-8 shaped dart; quite logically called X-24B."
"So X-24B, Tip Tank and Starclipper are loosely related ?
"Yes. They all sprung out of Wright Patterson classified lifting body program. Long story short: NASA unclassified lifting bodies are as round as bread loaves, but they suck at crossrange and landing. To do better you have to go from rounded to pointy dart: and well, this is exactly what Martin is presently doing when going from X-24A to X-24B.
"Does this mean that Lockheed and Douglas are locked in a race to build a classified, tip tank FDL rocketplane ? FDL-5A versus Model 176 ?"
"Unfortunately... no. Air Force has no money, it is – was – essentially: NASA Space Shuttle or bust."
"Well, it bust. But you're telling me those FDL rocketplanes can easily switch from Titan to tip tanks ? In the second case this mean they must have some kind of engine and a bit of internal tankage. From what I remember Lockheed besides the droppable V-tanks tried to cram as much as internal tankage as possible into the StarClipper.
"Yes, they have rockets and a few internal tankage. Which makes for an even more interesting story – related to Model 176 and FDL-5A. The military are seemingly unable to chose between three propellant combinations: storables, hydrogen-oxygen; and the same with fluorine.
Storables is the most practical once in orbit: doesn't boil itself off. But performance sucks: as usual. Hydrogen-oxygen is the all time classic: and there... hello, XLR-129. Making the two heirs of RHEINBERRY and ISINGLASS. But even at 450 seconds isp, any vehicle with that engine needs tip tanks to make it to orbit: because the mass fraction remains as insane as ever. And that's the reason why they are rolling in fluorine: to gets past 500 seconds of specific impulse: and there you go: Single Stage To Orbit without goddam drop tip tanks. Except XLR-129 can't handle the horrible stuff. So, back to a smaller FDL rocketplane with a brand new engine they call the AMPS: Advanced Maneuvering Propulsion System."
"Fluorine ? Nastiest stuff ever burned in a rocket engine. Even boron fuels were nicer."
"No question about this. But remember, thrown lithium into the fray and you get chem rocket all time specific impulse record: 542 seconds."
"Lithium, eh ? Oh geez. As hot as hydrogen is cold, to get in liquid shape; their tanks would be more than 400°C apart; with goddam fluorine between them trying to kill everybody. And even with such horrible mix, you won't get the mass fraction to 0.80 or below; nope. Try 0.80 prop mass fraction and it still falls short of orbit: 542 seconds only gets you 8500 m/s worth of delta-V."
"Good point. Not worth the hassles. Lithium is a flammable bastard just like fluorine is a poisonous bitch, plus liquid hydrogen own quirks... density, explosivity, temperature... sweez geez. Three propellants, three giant pain in the arse."
It is an incredible, hidden story I may eventually write for The Space Review.
Remember Ares 1 miserable failure ? there are so many ironies around that rocket, I don't even know where to start.
Long story short: late 1971 NASA interim plan - to bridge the gap between "1974-75 Skylab ASTP" and "1978 earliest Shuttle IOC" - was: Titan 1207 SRM with S-IVB on top.
A rocket pretty rather similar to Ares 1 - except without the Shuttle poisoned legacy (air started SSME ? what a sick joke !).
So Ares 1 could have been a hero by coming BEFORE the Shuttle, not AFTER. In 1971 rather than 2006, kind of. 35 years too late... !
A SRM/S-IVB booster could have been all what the Shuttle failed to be: including 65 0000 pounds in orbit for $20 million a launch, so $308 per pound to orbit.
A 1968 Bellcomm memo estimated a 260-SRM+S-IVB launch cost to be $260 per pound to orbit. Frack me, this is the exact number touted for the Shuttle in 1969-71 !!!
Plus, if the SRMs are dunked in the sea (like the Shuttle) and the S-IVB recovered from orbit (as detailed by Philip Bono as early as 1966: through a 8000 pounds recovery kit)
-then, guess what ?
Fully reusable TSTO.
Boom, like the 1969-70 Shuttle.
And with a Lockheed FDL-5 lifting body standing on top... more Shuttle capability.
Can you believe that ? the most realistic way of getting NASA fully reusable TSTO
would have been a combo of - 3*UA1207 SRM, straight out of Titan III
- 1*S-IVB, straight out of Saturn IB
- 1*FDL-5, straight out of Lockheed Starclipper studies.
And they very much considered exactly this in December 1971: merely one month before Nixon started the Shuttle. As an INTERIM vehicle in the 1974-78 era.
NOT as a Shuttle "Plan B", nope: just as an interim crew and cargo system.
And by the way: even without SSME, XLR-129 is still there, tested to component level for RHEINBERRY in 1968. Wait a minute... RHEINBERRY was to be dropped from a B-52, X-15 style. Hence: unlike Ares I SSME, XLR-129 was designed to be air-startable, just like plain old J-2 as found on the S-IVB.
Bottom line: upgrade the S-IVB - now recoverable Bono style - with an air-startable XLR-129... hey ho, Ares 1 deadly problem solved, 35 years before 2006.
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