McDonnell Douglas MD-2001 "Orient Express" Hypersonic Transport

[Antonio]

In the 90's exoatmosferic hypersonic airliners seemed near to enter production. 15 years before nobody talks about it. All that technology has been vanished after the NASP demonstrator program was cancelled?

 

[KJ_Lesnick]

Does anybody have lots of pictures of the McDonnell-Douglas Orient Express design that was conceived during the mid to late 1980's which was to carry 305 passengers and use LH2 for fuel for trans-pacific routes?

Does anybody have any statistics on the design, and/or what it's designations were?


KJ

 

[KJ_Lesnick]

Nobody?

 

[Antonio]

KJ, I think I have some pics and I'll try to post it as soon as possible

 

[KJ_Lesnick]

Thank you

 

[Lee]

KJ_Lesnick, quoted: "Does anybody have lots of pictures of the McDonnell-Douglas Orient Express design that was conceived during the mid to late 1980's which was to carry 305 passengers and use LH2 for fuel for trans-pacific routes?
Does anybody have any statistics on the design, and/or what it's designations were?"

All I could find definitive was the National Aerospace Place (NASP) filled the bill for what you described. That would have been the 80's design in the time frame you mentioned.
NASP pictures and specifications are still available from several sources, but the JSTOR British archival service indicated in an article preview or abstract that NASP was what was to be envisioned as the Orient Express.

 

[flateric]

President Reagan announced the [NASP] project in his 1986 State of the Union message, calling for development of "...a new Orient Express that could, by the end of the next decade, take off from Dulles Airport and accelerate up to twenty-five times the speed of sound, attaining low earth orbit or flying to Tokyo within two hours...".

Czysz: Well when Scott Crossfield, Gus Wyss, and myself were sitting over at the aerospace club in Washington DC, we put together a chart for Sandy McDonnell that talked about the demonstator that we were proposing for the Air Force – this came well before Copper Canyon ever started. Now at Mach 6, it could carry about 40 people, a Mach 7 capability to carry military goods, and it could be used as a demonstrator to show that with the right equipment – a rocket boost inside of it plus the air-breathing engine – we could get it to orbital speed.
Now we weren’t going to take it into orbit – we were going to take it up to nearly orbital speed and then glide around back on the other side. So a full-sized version of this would fly at Mach 4.5 across the Pacific. So we were sitting there talking about what this concept, and that’s when Scotty came up with the name “Orient Express”….so that’s where that name originally came from.

I remember a series of MDC produced promotional drawings of 'Orient Express' hypersonic liner, pushed after Reagan speech in late 80s, that looks well alike MDC NASP designs, but can't find any as my HDD went to the Walhalla.

"As the prominent contractor in the consortium during the late eighties, McDonnell Douglas Corporation (or MACDAC, in the biz) cranked out a series of full-page magazine ads, brochures, and official-looking reports about its proposed "X-30" experimental plane-"forerunner of the Orient Express."
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-11009293.html

"Orient Express--the nickname the industry uses for the hypersonic, high-altitude transport that would serve the Pacific market-- couldn't use expendable rockets; they'd be too expensive."..."Says Roger Schaufele, leader of McDonnell Douglas's Orient Express research effort, "Foreign competition is a very serious issue for the U.S. commercial transport manufacturing business. Our market share has continued to shrink in recent years, and we can look forward to more and more serious competition in the future.'
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_v7/ai_4081551/print

 

[Antonio]

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,181.0.html

Isn't that MD-2001 on Reply#14 related to Orient Express?

 

[Lee]

pometablava, quoted: "Isn't that MD-2001 on Reply#14 related to Orient Express?
Yeah, that's the general external design of the late 80s NASP. The later scramjet demonstrator(X-43A) accelerated by the Pegasus launch vehicle looked slightly different, having the engine unit area-ruled-mounted amidships and particularly a 2 dimensional blunt nose.

flateric's description comes from Aurora and Beyond, a 13pp .PDf available from 'Americanantigravity' by GOOGLing the title and I also agree with the interviewed author of the article, Paul Czysz. I consider it highly likely there are aerodynamic devices in existence that make the SR-71 Blackbird flying look like a real 'oxcart' being pull by team of oxen.

 

[KJ_Lesnick]

Lee,

The X-30/NASP and Orient-Express aren't exactly the same thing. The X-30 was a proof-of-concept LH2-powered spaceplane which would be used to develop the NASP, the replacement to the Space-Shuttle -- The Orient-Express was a nickname for a McDonnell-Douglas LH2 or LCH4-powered hypersonic trans-pacific aircraft-design that was largely pitched at Northwest Airlines. Reagan's speech-writer apparently mixed the two of them up.

pometablava,
Yeah I think that's it, the MD-2001.


Does anybody have any specs, statistics on the design?

 

[flateric]

From NASA Ames collection
Art by McDonnell Douglas National Aerospace Plane (NASP) Md Donnell Douglas MD-2001 (artist: Horonzak)

 

[Lee]

KJ, quoted: "...Reagan's speech-writer apparently mixed the two of them up."

I didn't hear that about Reagan's speech writer. Politics being *politics*, I'm not surprised. I would expect someone like them(politicians) to leverage a civilian design to give it military capability and employ people in the process. Good for *politics*, regardless of party. Cost isn't exactly a factor to the military. It isn't really their money, anyway.




KJ: "pometablava,
Yeah I think that's it, the MD-2001."

That's exactly what it is. The same exact artwork is rendered on the NTRS site as a .PDF that I got the following report from. flateric is right about that.





KJ: "Does anybody have any specs, statistics on the design?"

There isn't a lot available, but I did find this:
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19940020603_1994020603.pdf
59 pp.
This paper goes into only one design and uses a particular type of computational software package to achieve results. It does, however, include a fair number of physical dimensions and weights, so it's better than nothing. It's just not the same as the first RBCC + scramjet design.


Here's a wide-ranging treatment of both air breathing and rocket SSTOs using software written for that purpose:
http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA453934
Variables include engine type, fuels used, nozzle type, and of course: planform, which will be evident after viewing the file in its entirety.

BTW, another paper I saw briefly had in the abstract that a TSTO was later seriously considered as possibly more feasible because CFD routines came up with insufficient thrust at very high speeds and very high altitudes.
I kind of liked the GTX with JP-4 at takeoff and in the ramjets with only H2/O2 for orbital insertion. Smaller vehicle that way.

 

[KJ_Lesnick]

Lee,

To the best of my knowledge it was due to the speech-writer. Whether deliberate or by accident I don't know, but either's possible.

The MD-2001 is the Orient Express, you're right. Slick-looking jet. Any idea regarding
-Roughly how long the plane is?
-What it's wingspan is?
-What kind of engines it used (turboramjet, TBCC, RBCC?)
-Any idea what it's takeoff or landing speeds would have been?

Also, it was Mach 4.5 capable? Mach 5 capable or Mach 10 capable since I've heard all of 'em. Just to clarify.

 

[airrocket]

MCD Orient Express

 

[Matej]

This is the way, how the Orient Express should look like. This concept is not directly NASP related, its civil passanger version, so probably the thing, that you are looking for. I will try to find the PDF from which this illustration originate, but it is horrible work :-/

 

[flateric]

Guys, you are talking of paper airplane, even more, ad airplane.

 

[Lee]

flateric, quoted: "Guys, you are talking of paper airplane, even more, ad airplane."

Possibly both. 2 generalized 'Web pages devoted to the NASP/X-30:

http://www.fas.org/irp/mystery/nasp.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/x30.htm

There were certainly drawing board designs concerning the NASP, but when the Gov't pulled funding for the programs, companies lost interest and usually destroyed the data and drawings---with one exception: The Staraker HLHL(Horizontal Launch, Horizontal Land) SSTO launch vehicle was discontinued by the company that started the study, but a son of an original engineer on the project still have plenty of plans for it because the company doesn't care. They quit support it and don't think it's economically viable. This information was gleaned from www.space-talk.com (a competing 'Web blog site devoted to aerospace and astronomical issues exclusively).
If someone has detailed plans, I'll give a hunch that they have them at home in the attic. NASA has some information on NTRS and STINET, but not much that's publically viewable. What they have locked up or squirrelled away in a back room is anyone's guess.

KJ asked what the size and speed of the NASP was.
Like Paul Czysz indicated in his hypersonic interview, and I imply here, that depends on your intended application. Particular engines are available that require certain fuels and that will determine how fast it will go and how big it'll be. Czysz generally implied, and I state in an offhand way here, for something like an F-15 application for Mach 5 would have to be the weight of the F-111 and maybe a little larger than that. A 2-3 man B-58 application might have to be the weight and wing area of a B747. In that size range, mostly. I used different analogies for my examples, just so you know
As for the NASP, to me, logic would dictate a smaller craft like the X-43A would be good for starters and after they got that design down right, scale it up to something 10-15 times the weight and see if it flies just as well.

 

[airrocket]

NASP grew out of the Copper Canyon project. I think Copper Canyon had a more realistic objectives and overall better management. NASP was doomed from the start as had it been successful it would have resulted in massive layoffs at NASA. And poised a threat to the politically entrenched Shuttle support infrastructure. Which remains intact for the most part today and far into future.

 

[Lee]

airrocket,
You might be correct in what you say, since these guys also say pretty much the same thing:

http://projectaces.proboards33.com/index.cgi?board=XP&action=display&thread=1092171602

I like many of the things written by the 2 correspondants in the blog page above. Clearly, scramjets will require extremely large, heavy intakes or a very heavy active airframe cooling system to be effective as an SSTO.
Still, Paul Czysz said in his hypersonic interview, Aurora speed Mach 6-8 aircraft had been built(highly classified) and he was told about it by telephone at about 3 in the morning by a man who claimed to be standing next to the plane at the time.

 

[starviking]

There were certainly drawing board designs concerning the NASP, but when the Gov't pulled funding for the programs, companies lost interest and usually destroyed the data and drawings---with one exception: The Staraker HLHL(Horizontal Launch, Horizontal Land) SSTO launch vehicle was discontinued by the company that started the study, but a son of an original engineer on the project still have plenty of plans for it because the company doesn't care. They quit support it and don't think it's economically viable. This information was gleaned from www.space-talk.com (a competing 'Web blog site devoted to aerospace and astronomical issues exclusively).

Marcus Lindroos' excellent space pages, before they went down, had a piece on the Rockwell Starraker. It was earlier than the NASP, a HLHL SSTO that had a 100 ton payload. It was designed in the mid-70's era of solar power stations.

Starviking

 

[KJ_Lesnick]

I like many of the things written by the 2 correspondants in the blog page above. Clearly, scramjets will require extremely large, heavy intakes or a very heavy active airframe cooling system to be effective as an SSTO.
Still, Paul Czysz said in his hypersonic interview, Aurora speed Mach 6-8 aircraft had been built(highly classified) and he was told about it by telephone at about 3 in the morning by a man who claimed to be standing next to the plane at the time.

How is it that Scramjets would require a heavy inlet structure and active cooling? They wouldn't have to slow the air as much as a ramjet.

 

[Orionblamblam]

How is it that Scramjets would require a heavy inlet structure and active cooling? They wouldn't have to slow the air as much as a ramjet.

A ramjet goes no faster than Mach 5 or so. A scramjet for an SSTO must go Mach *25.* That's five times faster... with 25 times (5 squared) the dynamic pressure, not to mention the aerothermal heating. As well, in order to make useful levels of thrust about 200,000 feet, your inlet needs to have *huge* capture area.

So: Large + Nuked + Slammed = Heavy.

 

[Lee]

starviking, quoted: "Marcus Lindroos' excellent space pages, before they went down, had a piece on the Rockwell Starraker. It was earlier than the NASP, a HLHL SSTO that had a 100 ton payload. It was designed in the mid-70's era of solar power stations."

I was looking for that 'Web site. Now I know what happened after I copied off the parts most pertinent to me. You're right, starviking, he had a terrific site.
As for Starraker, I complained on a competing board(space-talk.com) that HTHL SSTO's were limited in payload by merely that they took off horizontally. Vertical takeoff eliminates fuel weight on runways; horizontal landings are easier to manage without fuel and oxidizer. That's my 2 cents on the subject.

Orionblamblam has just posted the same implication I made above: huge capture area(combined with drag) = lots of weight. I second the motion.





KJ, quoted: "How is it Scramjets would require a heavy inlet structure..."

Air at 180,000--250,000 ft is so thin, even at Mach 18-22, the intakes have to be immense and high in drag to be effective. Too much drag, in fact. Not to mention weight. Research engineers reached that in computations and I remember it very well. It was a bubble-bursting show stopper. Only by active cooling could H2 fuel be heated enough to increase speed, but only about Mach 17 or so max. Another show stopper. They quit serious consideration of scramjets for a while after that. The X-43A came along, but I haven't kept up with it. The last test wasn't exceeding successful, as I recall. Moderately successful is more like it.




KJ: "..and active cooling?"

Skin temperature on either ascent and descent usually requires active cooling. The Space Shuttle is one noteable exception, but it's heavily insulated as well. Active cooling might weight less then passive, insulated designs, but I haven't researched it with all the new technology that's often kept in the dark by manufacturers and the Gov't.

 

[flateric]

RTFM (Read This For More). All's there

http://www.americanantigravity.com/articles/589/1/Model-176-Hypersonic-Shuttle/Page1.html
http://www.americanantigravity.com/documents/Aerospace-Design-Notes.pdf
http://www.americanantigravity.com/documents/Hypersonic-SpacePlanes-History.pdf
http://www.americanantigravity.com/documents/Paul-Czysz-Hypersonic-Interview.pdf

 

[flateric]

KJ, answering a question how old are you will make my behaviour...

 

[KJ_Lesnick]

KJ, answering a question how old are you will make my behaviour...

I'm 26


KJ Lesnick

 

[airrocket]

MCD MOL lifting body toss-back booster concept... glimpse only.

 

[shockonlip]

The NASP low-speed concept has been declassified. It's on page 215 of Heppenheimer's history of hypersonics, available here:

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20070035924_2007036871.pdf

However, I do have confirmation from a senior NASPer (a P&W guy) dated 1995 that "it was one of the most secret parts of the program."

Thanks again LO for the T.A. piece !!

I heard the same thing about the NASP low speed cycle as well. Back in those days I was interested in the
PDE angle as far as the explanation for the sausage-linked contrails published in the first AW&ST
Vista piece (Dec. 18/25, 1989; pg. 42) that showed that interesting "UAB" patch (I have a photograph
of the actual patch sewed onto a jacket - somewhere aroud here). I was very curious if the "Aurora"
"sausage-maker" cycle and the NASP low speed cycle were related due to the possibility of making a
light weight low speed cycle for NASP out of a PDE. That work eventually ended up with AW&ST publishing
some of my PDE research in 1991.

I still think a PDE is an interesting cycle for a hypersonic airplane.

Speaking of T.A. Heppenheimer.
I've also always wanted to talk to T.A. about that November, 1988 Popular Science "Mach 5 Spy Plane"
cover story! Where the heck did he get that launch it out of a C-5A angle? Actually I saw a paper
on an ICBM launch out of a C-5A some time ago. I was wondering if that is where he was coming
from. But I digress.

 

[XP67_Moonbat]

IIRC, Dennis Jenkins' Space Shuttle book had a small bit about Robert Salkeld's design study for a small shuttle launched by C-5. Things that make you "hmmm".

the Moonbat

 

[mz]

Moonbat, since Marcus Lindroos' site is now at archive.org, here are Salkeld's tripropellant designs. Some have C-5 carrier.

http://web.archive.org/web/20020220085307/www.abo.fi/~mlindroo/SpaceLVs/Slides/sld039.htm

 

[KJ_Lesnick]

PDE, not PDWE's are actually highly efficient

 

[XP67_Moonbat]

thanks. ;D

 

[shockonlip]

IIRC, Dennis Jenkins' Space Shuttle book had a small bit about Robert Salkeld's design study for a small shuttle launched by C-5. Things that make you "hmmm".

the Moonbat

Thanks Moonbat and mz for the recollection!
Yes, that was it. I saw this somewhere. Could have been Jenkins.

 

[shockonlip]

PDE, not PDWE's are actually highly efficient

Yes, the 'constant volume' combustion being more efficient than 'constant pressure'
(theoretically) combustion.

When I was doing my PDE research, a PDWE was for all intents and purposes the same
as a PDE, because these engines all used a detonation wave to initiate combustion
and even to impart momentum to the combustion products (at least in some versions)
(like a shock tunnel).

So yes they were more efficient than 'normal' combustion cycles and could be made
out of rather inexpensive components and were light, and the thrust seemed to scale
with frequency, and even would work in 'rocket' mode with the inlets closed. So it seemed
like it would be rather obvious that a ramjet/scramjet accelerator designer would take a
long hard look at this cycle for his or her accelerator.

In fact there are the obvious questions of developing PDE for SSTO itself. Sometimes in
engineering, you make big progress by just getting the right people tegether in a room and
'facilitating' and hopefully watching magic happen!

So with that in mind, around the same time my PDE piece came out in AW&ST, I organized
a meeting between one of the DC-X visionaries and one of the PDE experts. The goal was
to get a PDE in DC-X for something, anything. The meeting did occur, but I wasn't allowed
to be there to 'facilitate', unfortunately, so nothing significant happened. But PDE's were too
early (at least in my world) for that anyway I guess.

So KJ, are PDEs and PDWE's different these days? How?

Thanks!

 

[KJ_Lesnick]

PDWE's I think involved spraying fuel out onto the plane's skin which then traveled through a shaped passage and was detonated. Which people claimed was responsible for them doughnuts on a rope.

PDE's basically created a deflagration (subsonic burn), and rapidly built it up into a powerful high-speed supersonic detonation which as it blasted out the rear, drew air in through the front "sucking" in air as I remember it.


Kendra Lesnick

 

[sferrin]

PDE, not PDWE's are actually highly efficient

Yes, the 'constant volume' combustion being more efficient than 'constant pressure'
(theoretically) combustion.

When I was doing my PDE research, a PDWE was for all intents and purposes the same
as a PDE, because these engines all used a detonation wave to initiate combustion
and even to impart momentum to the combustion products (at least in some versions)
(like a shock tunnel).

So yes they were more efficient than 'normal' combustion cycles and could be made
out of rather inexpensive components and were light, and the thrust seemed to scale
with frequency, and even would work in 'rocket' mode with the inlets closed. So it seemed
like it would be rather obvious that a ramjet/scramjet accelerator designer would take a
long hard look at this cycle for his or her accelerator.

In fact there are the obvious questions of developing PDE for SSTO itself. Sometimes in
engineering, you make big progress by just getting the right people tegether in a room and
'facilitating' and hopefully watching magic happen!

So with that in mind, around the same time my PDE piece came out in AW&ST, I organized
a meeting between one of the DC-X visionaries and one of the PDE experts. The goal was
to get a PDE in DC-X for something, anything. The meeting did occur, but I wasn't allowed
to be there to 'facilitate', unfortunately, so nothing significant happened. But PDE's were too
early (at least in my world) for that anyway I guess.

So KJ, are PDEs and PDWE's different these days? How?

Thanks!

Whatever happened to the strut jet? It's another zero to orbit propulsion system.

 

[shockonlip]

PDWE's I think involved spraying fuel out onto the plane's skin which then traveled through a shaped passage and was detonated. Which people claimed was responsible for them doughnuts on a rope.

PDE's basically created a deflagration (subsonic burn), and rapidly built it up into a powerful high-speed supersonic detonation which as it blasted out the rear, drew air in through the front "sucking" in air as I remember it.


Kendra Lesnick

Hi Kendra.

You might be confusing the term PDWE (Pulsed Detonation Wave Engine)
with ODWE (Oblique Detonation Wave Engine), also known as a detonation
wave ramjet.

Detonation wave ramjets use an appropriately designed shock to ignite a
premixed fuel-air mixture, such that the combustion couples with the shock
causing a detonation wave. The detonation wave will do the compression
and the combustion of the fuel-air mixture more efficiently, at least in theory,
making the detonation wave ramjet possibly more efficient than a scramjet.
There are challenges, as always.
See AIAA's "Scramjet Propulsion" Ch. 13 for a good paper. Or find papers
by Sislian on this subject online.

A PDE (Pulsed Detonation Engine) and PDWE (Pulsed Detonation Wave Engine)
are really the same thing. A detonation shock is generated and propogates
through a premixed air/fuel mixture causing high chamber pressures. The
shock helps to blowdown the combustion products generating thrust, after
which it all begins again. As you said, high efficiency.

 

[shockonlip]

Whatever happened to the strut jet? It's another zero to orbit propulsion system.

Hi,

Good question !

 

[KJ_Lesnick]

What's a strut-jet?

KJ_Lesnick

 

[XP67_Moonbat]

Ah yes, Strutjet. From Aerojet, I believe. I remember that. Hadn't heard that one in a while. IIRC, Strutjet was a type of RBCC where the engine had struts in the flowpath that containing built-in rockets. But I digress, before I shoot myself in the foot and look like a fool here.

The search engine is our friend. So say we all.

This might help clear things up a little.


http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/1997/TM-107422.pdf