Dark Moon Rising: Archibald space TL

"Analysis of ballistic trajectories indicates that with a speed of 6 km/s and a launch angle of 30 degrees, a distance of 5,000 km is reached in one hop, with a maximum altitude of 250 km. Henceforth, London to New York (5700 km) can be accomplished in two hops with an insertion velocity of 6 km/s; while London to Tokyo (10 000 km) can be done in three hops with an insertion velocity 6.1 km/s.

Further analysis of a boost-glide-skip-glide flight path indicates that a 7 km/s (23,000 ft/s) capable transatmospheric aerospace plane could achieve a range capability of approximately 22,000 nautical miles over 12 complete cycles: global range. The trip would take 97 minutes: a bit more than one hour and a half."
 
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BYEMAN - CONFIDENTIAL

THE HYPERSOAR PROGRAM

Phase I NASA funding of DynaSoar drops from their NB-52B. Glided first, then powered by the NF-104A rocket engine. Unexpensive program similar to lifting bodies and X-15.

Phase II Suborbital flights using a Titan second stage: dropped from the same NB-52B. Optical sensor: KA-80A camera from the SR-71.

Phase III Return of orbital missions, with a specific goal: picking spysat film buckets and bringing them down to Andrews AFB, near Washington DC.

Only Phase I is presently ongoing. Phase II may get the go-ahead as a lower cost alternative to ISINGLASS and RHEINBERRY. Phase III represent a very desirable capability, albeit alternatives exists to bring back spysat pictures faster.
 
Archibald said:
BYEMAN - CONFIDENTIAL

THE HYPERSOAR PROGRAM

Phase I NASA funding of DynaSoar drops from their NB-52B. Glided first, then powered by the NF-104A rocket engine. Unexpensive program similar to lifting bodies and X-15.

Phase II Suborbital flights using a Titan second stage: dropped from the same NB-52B. Optical sensor: KA-80A camera from the SR-71.

Phase III Return of orbital missions, with a specific goal: picking spysat film buckets and bringing them down to Andrews AFB, near Washington DC.

Only Phase I is presently ongoing. Phase II may get the go-ahead as a lower cost alternative to ISINGLASS and RHEINBERRY. Phase III represent a very desirable capability, albeit alternatives exists to bring back spysat pictures faster.
Click to expand...
I don't see Phase 3 getting funded unless it is significantly cheaper than the other options for getting spysat film to the analysts faster.

Especially since spy sats were some of the first adopters of an equivalent to a "digital back" for a large format film camera.
 
And you are perfectly right. It won't happen, if only because by 1968 future belongs to ILRV...soon to morphe into the Space Shuttle.

As for Phase I : I'm wondering whether I could kill one of the three lifting bodies, perhaps HL-10 (Northrop already had M2F, first in the place - and X-24 was best of the three). And snatch the funds for early DynaSoar drops.
 
"Tony Dupont think it is possible to go hypersonics, airbreath and fly all the way to orbit. Scramjets can do it !"

"Which is utterly stupid. Ramon L. Chase noted that the colossal drag and gravity losses would double the delta-v tally to orbit: 60 000 ft/s ! This is for Mach 25, but Chase also explored earlier scramjet cutoff velocities: with a rocket taking over: between Mach 8 and Mach 20. He got values from 35 000 ft/s to 52 000 ft/s.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that, past Mach 10, hypersonics are no longer worth it, as the delta-v tally to orbit starts growing exponentially: drag losses. Another unconvenient truth is that from Mach 12 onwards – coincidence ? not so much - it is no longer possible to ignore centrifugal force; which already cancels one-quarter of the vehicle weight. And this phenomena is wholly unrelated to hypersonics or even flight: it is not a matter of wings and engines, lift and thrust. But very much the prelude to orbit: the suborbital realm."

"The transition area between flying and orbit, kinda. Fascinating."

"Yep. The place where hypersonics give ground to ballistics. By the way, flying past Mach 5 inside the atmosphere is already a thermal nightmare: then try imagining Mach 20 or beyond. Plus the trajectory issues, between airbreathers flying horizontally to suck the atmosphere, and the need to go in orbit at some point: semi vertical turns. Both tricky issues together would already justify the shift from hypersonics to suborbital. Centrifugal lift is just the cherry on the cake."
 
"When an A-12 or SR-71 hit Mach 3.4, it flies at 1 km per second.

"When the X-15 flew at Mach 6.7, it covered 2 km per second.

"How far from orbit is that ? Well since the X-15 did it a few times: how much does it takes just to pop up to 100 km ?"

"Ideally, it would be 1.4 km/s. But that's firing vertically, out of a canon and with zero atmosphere. The proverbial spherical cow..."

"And I suppose the real number is worse ?

"Of course it is. Remember how the space station circles the Earth at 7.8 km/s yet it takes a fucking 9.3 km/s ascent to get there ?"

"Yes: the usual losses: gravity and drag and steering."

"Those three, yes. Bad news: a suborbital vehicle to 100 km will also be burdened with all three. End result: an average 7500 ft/s to 100 km; talking metric, that's a bit less than 2.3 km/s.

"So 900 m/s of losses: quite similar to orbital rockets.

"Which is all too logical. Same rocket problems after all: needs to cross the atmosphere (that's the drag) needs to compromise its trajectory between vertical and horizontal (that's gravity and steering altogether).

"Ok then, 2300 m/s to 100 km. That's faster than the X-15 ever flew, yet it still made it to 100 km a few times. I think the high altitude launch from the B-52 probably helped a lot. Not only the bomber Mach 0.8 velocity, but also the wings and the related ascent trajectory."

"Makes some sense. And thus it would take four times the delta-v to 100 km, to hit orbit all losses included: 2.3*4 = 9.2. But how about the kinetic energy ? it is equal to the square of velocity.

"And thus: sixteen times the energy, starting from the X-15A-2 absolute record. Which in passing almost melted it."

"That's... awful."
 
Holloman AFB
New Mexico
April 17, 1958

The Lockheed X-7 was nicknamed the Flying Stovepipe. Its shape was superficially similar to a F-104; but everything else was different. It was a long tube with a powerful rocket inside, and a Marquardt ramjet slung underneath in a pod. X-7 was unmanned and in order to land, it would deploy multiple parachutes... before ramming its reinforced steel nose on the ground. Standing vertically like a giant billboard, it would wait the recovery teams.

But today there would be no recovery. The vehicle had just busted its own limits and disintegrated three seconds later; at the whopping velocity of Mach 4.31. Another flight had hit 106 000 feet, and both records were all important: as they would stand for the next few decades, for airbreathing vehicles. Of course the X-15, ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles were faster: but they were rocket powered.

And thus the Marquardt RJ59 ramjet now hold speed and heights records. It was time to use it to power the fastest piloted aircraft in history: faster even than the Lockheed A-12 OXCART and its extended family. That was exactly what Convair tried to do, from 1959 to 1964. In 1959 their FISH lost to Lockheed. Yet it returned in 1963: even faster and called ISINGLASS.

But there would be no coming back; ultrafast airbreathing planes had by this point lost too many battles. They had lost the space race against rockets and capsules; and they had lost the spyplane mission to the new Soviet SA-5 missile; and spy satellites.

The last hurrah was called Aerospaceplane, 1959-1965. It tried to bust the X-7 records and push to Mach 25 that is: orbit... from a runway, single-piece. That became astronautics holy grail. Accordingly, two key technologies were identified to airbreath faster than Mach 5 and enter the hypersonic flight regime: scramjet and air collection. But the technological state of the art could not keep up, and the dream was cast aside; as Apollo went to the Moon using expendable rocketry.
 
I'm exploring the limits and records as of 1959. Everybody heard of SR-71 and X-15, but it was actually the Lockheed X-7 that fixed the speed and height boundaries for the next few decades. Mach 4.31 and 106 000 feet, airbreathing. With a Marquardt RJ59 ramjet... also found on Convair FISH that lost to Lockheed A-12. Later the FISH returned as ISINGLASS.

X-7, FISH, ISINGLASS, SA-5, A-12 all converge toward airbreathing limits.

Long story short: Mach 3.4 or Mach 4.31, 95 000 feet or 106 000 feet: except the SA-5 deadlocked Soviet airspace, since it could hit targets faster and higher. In a sense, the Soviets definitively locked their airspace to any airbreathing vehicle, up to Mach 5 and 130 000 feet. One notable exception being the D-21B, but it had semi-stealth features.
Aerospaceplane tried to bust the X-7 "airbreathing limits" and press on to orbit, either with air collection or scramjet. It did not worked.

The winners of all this were ballistic rockets, capsules and spy satellites...
 
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December 17, 1968

Two-third of a century ago, the Wright brothers made the first sustained flight by a manned heavier-than-air; a powered and controlled aircraft.
Progress has been breathtaking.
Orville Wright himself lived long enough – January 30, 1948 - to see not only jet aircraft, but also supersonic flight.
And progress carried on unabated. Only twenty years later, airbreathing aircraft have pushed atmospheric flying to its extreme limits – 1 km per second and 100 000 feet.
Then, rockets took over. The X-15, now retired, flew twice faster and thrice higher: 2 km per second and 350 000 feet.
Then the space race kicked in: within the blink of an eye, American astronauts went from suborbital to the Moon: Apollo 8, to launch next week.
How far will the future carry us ? To Mars ? NASA plans are ready. So is von Braun !
 
I've just realized that, had Orville Wright lived 100 years, he would have seen the bulk of Apollo landings - up to Apollo 15. (August 19, 1971). Also pictures of Mars by the Mariner probes.
 
Defense Research Board
Canadian Armament Research and Development Establishment
January 1959

Starting in 1955 a serious effort to equip Canada with a useful anti–ballistic missile system was undertaken, along with research into the problems of detection and tracking, hypersonic flight, and fuels suitable for use in an interceptor missile. As part of this project a lengthy study of the upper atmosphere was undertaken from instrumented balloons. Another development from this era was the use of gun-fired models for high-speed testing, instead of using a wind tunnel. Led by Gerald Bull, the sabot–based system would go on to be used in Project HARP during the early 1960s. The early portions of the 1960s was taken up developing a series of increasingly powerful high-acceleration solid rocket propellants, and to test them they designed and built a test vehicle that would later become the Black Brant sounding rocket.
...
Bull vision was enthralling.
"Please welcome Project HELMET: fasten your seatbelt, it's a pretty wild idea. Thanks to my little self we, Canada, are pretty darn good at long range artillery. And this has granted us a ticket into the americans ABM effort.
The initial intercept approach employs a 240 mm smooth-bore gun firing a projectile containing 1.2 tons of steel pellets. The pellets will be released at a high altitude outside the atmosphere to collide with the incoming Soviet warhead travelling roughly at twenty-four thousand feet per second: generating sufficient kinetic energy to destroy the warhead either by destabilizing the warhead’s trajectory and causing it to burn upon re-entry; or by destroying the fusing and arming mechanism. It is estimated that 120 tons of pellets are needed for a 95 percent kill probability: hence: ten guns. This is perfectly doable, because: battleships. Such as the Iowas: eight guns on a single hull, and much larger than 240 mm, which would be more akin to cruiser guns – 203 mm. Then just think about all the light and heavy cruisers, battlecruisers and battleships in the US Navy mothball fleet. What a revenge that would be, for all those ships beaten by the aircraft carrier as the new centerpiece of task forces !"

"Brilliant. Next: you say ten guns for 95% a chance to kill a warhead. Maybe the Arrow, firing an rocket loaded with a similar mass of pellets, could plug the holes in your system. Whatever warhead that escaped the gun salvo, the aircraft would take care of. Since it has a man in the loop and is not ground based: good for flexibility."

Gerald Bull and Allan Gordon by 1959 both felt threatened. Bull had burned all his bridges at CARDE and McGill University. Allan was in a mostly similar position with Avro Canada. Their pig of a characters were all too similar... visionary with little patience for diots and bureaucracy. Before they left however they decided to try, one last time, to make Canada an aerospace giant.

They came with a bold vision for anti-ballistic missile defense.

Air defense had two components: ground-based missiles and interceptors. All right, then ABM should be similar. With Bull large guns, ground-based; and Allan's CF-105 air-launch system. They would be used together to thin the first waves of Soviet ballistic missiles coming from above the north pole; easing the job and minimizing the losses of the americans defenses south of the border. Bull knew that ARPA had a program called GLIPAR, a massive review of ABM related ideas, wildest ones included. ARPA and CARDE were already working together.

"The Arrow and Project HARP working side by side on a bold and daring mission... I like this."

Allan could not guess Bull bold plan had just send him and his brother on a collision course with General Harold Shoemaker.
...
 
I can just imagine how fun this would be at the treaty tables...

Russian: "You are making too many ABM systems, America!"
American: "What do you mean? We had absolutely no input on the creation of those Canadian systems. If you want to stop Canada from building them you need to bring Canada to this treaty."

=====
Also, please remember to have someone slap AVRO in the back of the head to drop the active radar guidance system as being impractically short ranged for the time, so that you can get a SARH missile roughly equal to Sparrow III. If not just using Sparrow III outright.
 
This is actually one of the (many) story pitches. In 1956 one smart guy from Canadair goes shopping for the Sparrow II in the USA (as per OTL). And he brings back not only the missile - but also the radar and the plane around them: the F5D Skylancer. And the Westinghouse APQ-64... son of the Skyray's APQ-50, and a close sibling of the Phantom APQ-72... with the Sparrow III.

Key to all this is Canadian Westinghouse. Which, OTL, was a subcontractor to RCA and Canadair... for the ASTRA and Sparrow II. Here they grow slightly more ambitious and bid their APQ-64 against RCA blue-sky ASTRA. In passing, they also propose Sparrow III / APQ-72 as backup, with a massive argument: Sparrow III is like the abandonned Velvet Glove: SARH. Canadair take notice of them, since Velvet Glove was their baby and they were pissed off by its cancellation.
How about a Sparrow II with the Velvet Glove SARH guidance system ? Wait, ain't that a Sparrow III ?
 
Someday in a distant future they would be called Irregular Mare Patch: IMP.

Volcanism on the Moon supposedly had died a few billion years before – but IMPs were the exception. Whether ancient or recent, volcanism on the Moon produced giant underground lava tubes. Meanwhile watery comets kept impacting the Moon, albeit at insignificant rates compared to the Great Bombardement cataclysm.

It was quite unavoidable that, sooner or later all those phenomenas combined. As dinosaurs ruled the Earth, at the Ocean of Storms a few erupting IMPs were the last hurrah of lunar volcanism. It was the moment when an icy comet slammed into that corner of the Moon near side with astonishing violence.

It left a weird scar the shape of a whirl, to be called the Reiner gamma anomaly: as the impact completely screwed the local magnetic field. Most importantly, the impact buried a few million tons of icy water... right into the extensive lava tube network created a few billion year before; and still expanded by IMPs activity. Compared to the thermal hell of the surface the buried water found an almost perfect environnement inside the tubes. And thus it wouldn't go anywhere.
 
After walking a thousand feet from the landing site near the skylight, the crew came to a large sign which read:

WELCOME TO MARIUS BASE
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
September 10, 2001

It was the largest engineering project in human history. Under the surface of the Ocean of Storms were hundred kilometers of giant lava tubes: interconnected all the way from Cavalerius near the equator, to Rumker halfway to the pole. The tubes interior were polished; mountains of regolith were thrown outside and processed into oxygen, silicon and aluminum.

From this, the thrieving lunar colony produced solar cells, telescope mirrors, single-stage-rockets, rocket fuel, rocket oxidizer and Space Based Solar Power.

By day the lunar colony was powered by vast areas of solar arrays on the surface. By night, power came from Solar Power Satellites set at EML-1.
 
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The above is a kind of exorcism. In May 2001 I turned 19 and was in my first year as a student a faculty - a welcome relieve from my previous life at home. I needed to put some distance with the family and a whole lot of issues that made my life, best case boring, worst case unhappy. Whatever.
So I got 2001 (the novel) as a present and loved it. Yet the real world space program was not as exciting, for sure (Shuttle was as boring as ever, and the seeds of STS-107 disaster had already been planted, unfortunately).
The real bummer however was Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Not an american, still horrified by what happened. Smelled like the end of the world, and truth be told, something has been badly amiss in this century since then. Even if the space program has finally got out of slumber.
If you wanna know, first 9-11 crash was at 8h46 N.Y times, and that's 14h46 in France. I spent that day here - https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cité_de_l'espace
So you can imagine how excited I was, as a space nerd. No smartphone back then and thus the horror struck when we returned home later in the afternoon. Scared the living shit out of me.
Oh, and by the way... I bought this Airfix kit at the gift shop https://uk.airfix.com/products/one-small-step-man-a50106

The sickening irony still baffles me to this day : I commemorated one of the USA brightest day, the worst day in their history.

And that's why I need an exorcism. To "repair" 2001.
 
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I was 35 on 9/11...and miffed that we got the Twin Tower strike instead of the monolith.

I wonder if Osama bin Laden had been inspired by the movie METEOR.

My Dad thought they used footage from 9/11 for that, before I explained that the movie came out in 1979.
 
"Each cubic metre of lunar regolith contains 1.4 tonnes of minerals on average, including about 630 kilograms of oxygen. NASA says humans need to breathe about 800 grams of oxygen a day to survive. So 630kg oxygen would keep a person alive for about two years.

"Now let’s assume the average depth of regolith on the Moon is about ten metres, and that we can extract all of the oxygen from this. That means the top ten metres of the Moon’s surface would provide enough oxygen to support all eight billion people on Earth for somewhere around 100,000 years. "
 
1998

"It just dawned on me: we have just entered the Thunderbirds age. Say what you want, but a ROLS or a MUST evenly brings together Thunderbird 1, Thunderbird 2 and Thunderbird 3: a hypersonic / suborbital / orbital mixed fleet; small and large. International Rescue, here we go.

MUST would makes an excellent Thunderbird 2. We only miss the VTOL and nuclear propulsion systems, but I'm not sure it is a great loss in the real world. Just like the Thunderbirds vehicles, we have a few different speed ranges: Mach 3 airbreathing, Mach 20 on rockets, orbit with a small refueling. Hence we can intervene all over the world within merely one hour.

Thunderbirds machines - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Sometimes, science papers look like a gift from the Heavens. Check that: it's almost too good to be true.


...

We propose a lunar cave network as a new idea. Terrestrial lava tubes also form a network like an anthill, so they can be fully applied to the moon. Seven lunar craters have been found to contain more than ten pits: King, Tycho, Copernicus, Lalande, Stevinus, Aristarchus, Crookes. We compared them with the Marius Hills Hole (MHH) area. A mass deficit was detected beneath the pits in the four regions of the Copernicus, King, Stevinus, and Tycho craters.

Tycho is located on the near side of the Moon and has a diameter of 80 km. Unlike the other three regions (Copernicus, King, and Stevinus), in the crater, all pits are distributed separately except for one region where five clusters are formed. We propose that there is a cave network in this region, indicated by the gravitation reduction in the impact melt pits region.

This study revealed the possibility of the existence of a cave network in shallow depth of the crust. Moreover, the possibility of the existence of a cave network is one of several reasons that can contribute to the mass deficit detected in the region. If a small lunar cave exists, it will form a network (akin to an anthill), with multiple entrances. If subsurface voids are entangled similar to a net in a certain area, such as the lava tubes observed on Earth, the change in gravity in the area having empty spaces can be sufficiently detected in current the gravity field model.
 
Lunar and Planetary Institute

Houston, Texas.

"Talking about lava tubes... they are more than 3 billion years old because that's the time the Moon has been as geologically dead as a door nail. Or so we believed, until a recent jaw-dropping discovery. At Rumker, north of Procellarum, a probe found tiny glass beads in a sample: usually the products of magma fountains. Scientists measured the glass amounts of uranium, thorium and related rare earth elements - REEs : potassium, phosphorus, yttrium and lanthanum.

One very important point: REEs and thorium usually hangs around together. Symbiotic to such point, we got a very detailed lunar map of rare earths just mapping thorium radioactivity. A major surprise then was Procellarum standing like a sore thumb : the place seemingly concentrates the bulk of near side thorium.

More surprises followed.

First, the glass beds are certainly not 3 billion years old... but merely a hundred million years. So much for the Moon being geologically dead: it was still volcanically active at least when dinosaurs roamed Earth. But how ? geologists came with one startling explanation. The REEs-thorium cocktail would trigger volcanic eruptions through radioactive decay; violent bursts of outgassing. Before anybody says it: yes, the Moon has nuclear flatulence.

That... mechanism is like a natural variant of NASA's RTGs powering many spacecraft; and Apollo science stations, the irony. Sticky point: no need for the entire Moon to be volcanic active, Earth-style with huge magma fountains as seen in Hawaii or Italy. Just local outgassing bursts.

But how recent those phenomenas ? Forget the dinosaurs era: could they still be ongoing ? And there, enter two bizarro lunar features: Irregular Mare Patches and Transient Lunar Phenomenas: short, IMPs and TLPs. The former are lunar geological features seemingly not heavily cratered by billion years of meteorit impacts: hence, very young. The later are unexplainable optical flashes observed for decades if not centuries. You can see where this is going: TLPs would be radioactive-decay-eruption flashes; and IMPs would be the result: fresh lunar terrain. We would lump together all three features: but that theory still needs to be verified.

Talking about Rumker, the nearby Aristarchus and Procellarum by large concentrates a large amount of geological weirdness. We have looked at Aristarchus through the infrared, gravity, magnetic, radioactive and optical spectrums: and found loads of anomalies in every single of them. On the optical spectrum alone, we have: not only the aforementioned IMPs and TLPs, but also: Copernicus rays, Reiner Gamma' swirl, also red spots and meniscus hollows... the list goes on : altogether, ten kind of anomalies !
 
Archibald said:
1998

"It just dawned on me: we have just entered the Thunderbirds age. Say what you want, but a ROLS or a MUST evenly brings together Thunderbird 1, Thunderbird 2 and Thunderbird 3: a hypersonic / suborbital / orbital mixed fleet; small and large. International Rescue, here we go.

MUST would makes an excellent Thunderbird 2. We only miss the VTOL and nuclear propulsion systems, but I'm not sure it is a great loss in the real world. Just like the Thunderbirds vehicles, we have a few different speed ranges: Mach 3 airbreathing, Mach 20 on rockets, orbit with a small refueling. Hence we can intervene all over the world within merely one hour.

Thunderbirds machines - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
Click to expand...
I regret to announce the David Graham who was the voices of Brains and Parker in "Thunderbirds" died on Friday 20th September 2024 at the age of 99.

He did lots of other voices for Gerry Anderson and (with Roy Skelton & Peter Hawkins) did the Dalek voices in classic "Dr Who" & the Peter Cushing "Dr Who" films. His recent work included the voice of Parker in the "Thunderbirds Are Go" CGI series and the voice of Grandpa Pig in "Peppa Pig". He has 137 credits on IMDB from 1952 to 2023, which in addition to the above include Big Brother in the "Apple Mac: 1984" advert.
 
Project SCOOP office
Vandenberg AFB
...
Syncom
Advent
Initial Defense Communications Satellite Program (IDCSP)
Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS)
...
"The third Orion fleet would be hiding behind the Moon"
...
Eureka !
...
The Soviets would use lunar flybys as an access door to geosynchronous orbit: to ruin american assets there, such as early warning satellites. They would launch Istrebitel Sputnikovs killer sats to the Moon under guise of Lunas, and then use Earth massive satellite's gravity field to bend the trajectory back to GEO. This would provide a lot more flexibility than launching straight to GEO - plus a covert story.

What's more, they could use lunar flybys to twist the trajectory of their killer sat into a retrograde one: east to west, barreling across geosynchronous orbit. The end result would be akin to contraflow driving on a freeway – while taking potshots at passing cars with an AR-15.
...
"Typical Crazy Ivan chaos.
"I really have to sell that to Teller; he will hit the roof.
"We need cislunar space awereness, and only a fleet of Agenas can do that.
 
en.wikipedia.org

Fractional Orbital Bombardment System - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Fun fact about FOBS : how the Soviets played dumb with Article IV of the Outer Space Treaty. That is : "no nukes in Earth orbit".

Case 1
1-Soviets test FOBS prototype on multiple orbits.
2-US reaction "aaaaaarrgh, you violated the OST, article IV."
3-Soviet answer "No, we didn't. Multiple orbits maybe, but it was a test vehicle so nuke onboard, be assured. So we didn't violated the OST".
4-(facepalm)

Case 2
1-US answer to Case 1 "you really think we are such dumbarses ? On the operational FOBS you will put a nuke warhead. And there, it will violate the OST, article IV.
2-Soviet answer "Well - no again. In case of war, the FOBS with the nuke will make an incomplete orbit: USSR to USA. And since an incomplete orbit is suborbital, and suborbital means ICBMs which are not banned by the OST... (and R-36 can do both missions, ha ha !), hell no, we don't violate Article IV."
3-(double facepalm)

Mercifully the americans could still answer "well screw you we don't care in the end. We have radars to waste your surprise attack coming from the opposite direction; plus FOBS lacks precision and greatly diminishes the R-36 payload, near-orbital compared to suborbital"
 
Thinking about the R-36 further, it could do both ICBM and FOBS missions. Accordingly, you can bet the Soviets would told the Americans
"Oh, common, FOBS is just ICBM moved a little closer from orbital velocity, but still suborbital. As long as it doesn't makes a complete orbit, it ain't violate the OST, article IV."
 
ELDO MULLS INTERIM AEROSPACE TRANSPORTER

"It is not possible to cut a bomb bay into a Concorde belly. Still, there is an interesting alternative: the forward baggage hold (number 40 in the cutaway). It could be turned into a rocket bay by extending the nearby nosewheel retraction area.
The baggage hold is approximately 6 * 1 * 1 meter in size. This is large enough for an Antares-Altair launcher, that is Scout upper stages; or a liquid-fuel Able.
Payload to orbit would be 700 pound."


maincutawayhires.jpg


4.jpg
 
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TOP SECRET

NRO, PROGRAM C *

SATELLITE RECONNAISSANCE FROM POLARIS LAUNCH TUBES

This is a capability we share with the british: a Polaris first stage with an Agena, launching a HIGH TOWN Mk.1 spy satellite. The satellite and the Agena however use storable propellants, which might be dangerous inside a confined submarine. A solution was found with the Bullpup missile; Lockheed seals and encapsulate HIGH TOWN and Agena; before mating them to a Polaris first stage. The Soviets uses a very similar process for their R-27 and R-29 SLBMs. The whole launch vehicle is then lowered into a submarine tube. Before firing it is safely ejected by the classic cold gas charge.

Main issues with that system are political: we don't want to panic the Soviets firing a Polaris; but we don't want either the spysat revealing the NRO. As such, a cover story has been imagined: involving Transit satellites. Basically we told the Soviets the Polaris-Agena system is use to replenish the Transit constellation straight off our surface ships, aircraft carriers... and submarines. After all Transit primary role is to provide accurate location information to our submarines. As part of that cover story we have one squadron of A-3 Skywarriors specially modified to carry an Agena semi-recessed in their bomb bays; same mission of responsive Transit launches; 500 pound to orbit off aircraft carrier decks.
As for the British – besides the main deal McMillan got two addendums to the Nassau Agreement.
One was public: Polaris on Vulcans as an interim deterrent. The other was classified: submarine-launched Polaris-Agena spysats.

...

*the Navy side of the National Reconnaissance Office. A- was the CIA, B- the Air Force, D- : whatever aerospace spy system not a satellite: SR-71 and drones and the kitchen sink.
 
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Such capability could be useful in the Falklands. OTL the british were passed KH-8, KH-9 and KH-11 imagery. Could be interesting to have a british boomer firing a Polaris-Agena-spysat system; hopefully HIGH TOWN Mk.2 (digital laser scanning), as the Mark 1 system would be antiquated by 1982 (Lunar Orbiter / SAMOS analog tech, vintage 1961).

The british could also use that Polaris launch to send a message to Argentina...
 
CONFIDENTIAL
CONTINUING DYNASOAR
-use HIGH TOWN Mk.2 launch vehicle;
-itself a cut-down Titan IIIB: no first stage but a B-52 instead;
-position DynaSoar as an experimental NASA program, similar to X-15 and lifting bodies;
-position DynaSoar as an operational vehicle: suborbital reconnaissance against RHEINBERRY.
-an orbital DynaSoar through a modified Titan IIIB ?

Titan-34B-Agena-D-Card.jpg
 
Paris Air Show
June 2, 1967

The static display was impressive. Story England was beaming: and in full sales pitch mode.

"The system is two-third reusable: B-52 and DynaSoar, but not the Titan booster between them. So we have, first, that NB-52C, modified with internal liquid oxygen tankage in the fuselage – as done on the X-15 mothership. Being so cold, liquid oxygen tends to boiloff, that's why we need replenishing that fat Titan rocket stage hanging below the wing pylon. Its hydrazine fuel is nasty stuff so it comes mostly sealed : we only activate the rocket plumbing in flight so that if anything goes wrong, we drop the silly thing like a big bomb. Hydrazine and liquid oxygen is a very potent propellant mix: together they can push that DynaSoar glider in the front pretty close from orbital velocity; so close it can almost circle the planet: an incomplete orbit.

"In the 1930's Lindbergh with his Lockheed Sirius went scouting air roads for PanAm. NASA wants to do something similar for suborbital point-to-point: as the next logical step beyond the supersonic transport. The key is to combine the B-52 immense range and DynaSoar once-around suborbital flights: for global reach. NASA is also exploring rocketplanes operations at airports. The B-52 is not only a launch platform: it also ferries the DynaSoar, its expendable booster stage and propellants from one airstrip to another: Beale, Hawaii, Guam, Okinawa, Diego Garcia...

"Two obvious limitations are DynaSoar carrying just a single pilot; and the expendable booster which reentry corridor has to be carefully calculated: away from populated areas. Future rocketplanes will solve those issues: with their own internal rocket and jet engines."

What Story didn't told the crowd, this exciting NASA stuff was merely a cover story for something even better: the NRO's RHEINBERRY. Suborbital strategic reconnaissance: the equipement bay immediately behind the DynaSoar cockpit would get an Itek optical bar camera. A very remarquable sensor also flown on the SR-71, U-2R, and Ryan stealth drones; also Apollo to map the Moon at 1 meter ground resolution.
 
CONFIDENTIAL

THE HYPERSOAR PROGRAM. The Air Force and NASA wants to answer an interesting question: how does one handle a spaceplane at ordinary airstrips: airports or air bases ? They have hired DynaSoar to get an answer; also Titan rocketry, and a trio of B-52C.

The bomber is the one assuming DynaSoar takeoff, before it rockets to the other side of the world. Thanks to its immense range the B-52 follow it to its landing site – albeit in hours rather than minutes. The rocketplane is then bolted to the bomber wing pylon for ferry flights: back to Vandenberg AFB, where the runway has been linked to Titan's SLC-4E via a new taxiway and apron. That way a passing B-52 can get a Titan rocket stage bolted to its wing pylon for air-launch.
Alternatively a B-52 flies to the DynaSoar landing strip where the spaceplane is bolted to the "fresh" booster and the bomber pylon: ready for a new suborbital hop.

NASA and the Air Force are using the bomber immense range to find ascent and reentry safe zones for suborbital DynaSoar flights; better not to drop the titan booster stage on any populated area. Also, rocket launches from a B-52 should rather not panic the Soviets - and blow the planet starting a nuclear WWIII. This is the reason why the Air Force enlisted NASA in the program.

The above however is merely a cover story for what we call RHEINBERRY missions. We, the NRO are considering emplacing a SR-71's optical bar camera inside DynaSoar equipement bay: immediately behind the pilot.
We want to fly suborbital hops above the entire length of the Soviet Union. A B-52 with its very long range could fly out of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station: cross the Atlantic and drop DynaSoar off the coast of Portugal. Special care would be taken for the Titan booster stage to impact in the northern Pacific ocean; as for the DynaSoar it could glide back to a transpacific landing at Okinawa, Guam, Hawaii or Edwards AFB.
 
If you ever wonder where were the absolute limits of airbreathing flight in the 1960's - they belonged to the Lockheed X-7 "flying stovepipe". It had flown to Mach 4.31 (April 1958) and 106 000 feet. In turn, this was also ISINGLASS performance target: the next step beyond OXCART Mach 3.3 and 95 000 feet.

Alas for them all, the SA-5 soviet surface to air missile already had set the bar higher and faster: up to Mach 5 and 125 000 feet. And beyond, ABM weapons were in the making: to defeat SLBMs (Mach 15) and ICBMs (Mach 22).
Which bring us to RHEINBERRY : also Mach 22, suborbital with a rocket engine.

This was the ultimate speed race, in the 1960's.
 

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Archibald said:
If you ever wonder where were the absolute limits of airbreathing flight in the 1960's - they belonged to the Lockheed X-7 "flying stovepipe". It had flown to Mach 4.31 (April 1958) and 106 000 feet. In turn, this was also ISINGLASS performance target: the next step beyond OXCART Mach 3.3 and 95 000 feet.
Click to expand...
Level flight and not ballistic trajectory, right?
 

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