HOTOL: Britain's Spaceplane by Dan Sharp

Progress update:

90,000w now written, eight chapters completed - covering the period 1982 to 1988. I expect that the final total word count will be in the region of 130,000w. So this isn't going to be a flimsy lightweight of a book.

I have 516 images, excluding new artworks by Chris Sandham-Bailey, but that's probably way too many - I'll likely have to pare it back to 300-400.

Still on track, I think, to hit the intended publication date of somewhere in September.
 
Nine chapters now completed - covering the entire existence of the airbreathing Hotol from 1982 to mid-1989. Total = 104,459 words.
That's without the introduction and preface, which I always write at the end, the appendices, which will add at least another 10,000w, the index, bibliography etc.
This could, in theory, be released almost immediately (I'd still need to do the captions) as a book in its own right with about 430-450 images.

Next up, however, is Interim Hotol. I'm hoping to fit this into a single chapter but I have a LOT of source material to go at, spread out over about five years, so it may end up being a lot more than that.
 
Never quite understood why did they added 2 more engines, total 8.
 
Archibald said:
Never quite understood why did they added 2 more engines, total 8.
Click to expand...

Engines - Interim HOTOL orbiter:
Variants of Interim HOTOL were designed with 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 engines. I think 2 was the last design studied.

Engines - An-225 'first stage':
In order to carry Interim HOTOL up to the required altitude and speed for launch, the An-225's thrust-weight ratio needed to be increased. There were two options for this: 1) directly replace the six D-18T engines with six Rolls-Royce Trents or 2) increase the number of D-18Ts to eight. Option 1) was the more expensive of the two.

The An-225 would've also needed a strengthened fuselage structure and a new flight-navigation system which could be integrated with the Interim HOTOL radio system and other integrated support equipment.
 
Ten chapters now completed - covering the entire existence of the airbreathing Hotol from 1982 to mid-1989 PLUS Interim Hotol from mid-1989 to mid-1991. Total = 118,651 words.

The Interim Hotol project was announced as 'completed' on June 21, 1991, but work continued well after that point before eventually being absorbed into RADEM.

Just one more chapter of chronological narrative to go, plus a chapter on 'competitors', the introduction, preface, captions, appendices (quite a lot of work already done on these), index etc. and it's done.
 
Well, I pre ordered on hamazon with delivery obviously and should get it 4th or 5th october.
 
Regarding images for the book, something that would be useful and cool would be a to-scale side or top view (or both!) comparison of all major HOTOL and Interim HOTOL configurations. Something like the attached but more complete, detailed, and captioned with the configuration letters. Would be an excellent way to visualize the design evolution.
 

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Tuomasn said:
Regarding images for the book, something that would be useful and cool would be a to-scale side or top view (or both!) comparison of all major HOTOL and Interim HOTOL configurations. Something like the attached but more complete, detailed, and captioned with the configuration letters. Would be an excellent way to visualize the design evolution.
Click to expand...

The configurations you have in your drawing are A, B, D, F and G. I'm not planning to do a side by side size comparison of all configurations as a single illustration - they would have to be really small to put them all on one page or even a spread as there are a lot of variants. What I am going to include, though, as in British Secret Projects 5, is a table showing the known dimensions of as many of the variants featured in the book as possible.
Included so far are Hotol 1984 (BAe press release), Configurations A, B, C, D, F, G2, G3, H, J, J4.5 and K, Interim Hotol (Feb '90), Interim Hotol Orbiter 61, Orbiter 61 (Soviet), Orbiter 66 (12.2.91), Orbiter 66 (7.3.91), Orbiter 68 (23.5.91), Orbiter 68d, Orbiter 68e, Hotol 2M, Hotol M, P150-302, WLC-2 rocket/ramjet, WLC-2 pre-cooled turbojet/rocket, WLC-2 SSTO, WLC-3 SSTO, RADEM Hotol-Variant and RADEM Hotol-Variant (Tripropellant). There may be some Skylons in there too. And definitely some ALVs. The ALVs are wild.
Not all of these have a full set of dimensions available but with the aid of the drawings it should be possible to work out some of the missing dimensions.
What about Orbital Swallow/Swallow? I have a 3-view of it but no dimensions. What about Hotol Configuration E? There wasn't one. What about Interim Hotol Orbiters 62, 63, 64, 65 and 67? Those did in fact exist - and I do have drawings of them (and Orbiter 68c, but not 68a or 68b) - but they're concepts rather than fully fleshed out vehicles, so no hard and fast dimensional data is available, as far as I could determine anyway. What are the ALVs? What are Hotol 2M and M? What are the WLC variants? What's P150-302 (and P150-202)? All will be explained.
There are also designs for which only partial drawings are available, such as the nose intake Hotol, the top-mounted intakes Hotol, the Hotol with fuselage-length TPS panels etc.

ConfigA-G.jpg
 
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Thanks, fair enough! Maybe I'll have to try to work out one for myself by myself once the book is out ;) Though I would be fine even with just the actual Hotol letter configurations, even in a tiny size.
Interesting to see that this second comparison drawing that I once found in web, probably originating from a magazine, is actually based on an official BAe one - they just removed all the useful information!
 

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