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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