NASA HL-20 lifting body

[Archibald]

Mostly right, except for THIS

It was from the USSR Cold War era space interceptor, the Uragan ("Hurricane")

This never existed, and has been long debunked as a blunder by the CIA, that single-handedly invented a spacecraft and a mission (space interceptor) that never existed in the first place.
The BOR-4 and Avion 105 were the offsprings of the Spiral program (1965 - 1977) where the lifting body was stuck to an expendable NK-33 powered rocket booster, itself attached to a mach 5 airbreathing piloted aircraft. The later was later dropped for an An-124, then the An-225, and evolved into System 49, Bizan, and finally MAKS, the tripropellant air launched mini-shuttle.

 

[John Frazer]

"Spiral" was the early name, for what they later resurrected as Uragan, correct? For them, it never progressed beyond that, before the succession of other planes up to the Buran and then MAKS as the intended survivor.
What mistake did the CIA make? Calling it a space interceptor in the '60s instead of a single-orbit bomber in the '80s?
Small matter of difference. They envisaged it with nuclear missiles for targets in the North Atlantic for instance, so it could presumably have functioned as either.

The fact remains that the USSR early-on did work on a small manned military spaceplane for which the MiG-105 flew tests, and the BOR-4 was a remainder of it, later flown to test TPS for the Buran. That test was the origin of the HL-20 and Dream Chaser


http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spiral_development.html

 

[flateric]

"Spiral" was the early name, for what they later resurrected as Uragan, correct?

Not. It never 'resurrected as Uragan'.

 

[XP67_Moonbat]

Uragan rears it's ugly head again.

 

[NavarchNicias]

From the August 1992 issue of Popular Mechanics.

 

[publiusr]

I seem to remember one in a parachute test where one came down on a dirt road.

 

[mjmackowski]

Many years ago, modeler Ben Guenther made a handful of resin kits of the Langley HL-20 mock-up. I finally got around to assembling and painting it.

 

[NMaude]

Retro Space has just uploaded this 1991NASA video concerning the HL-20:

Restored NASA 1991 short film about the HL-20 Personnel Launch System (PLS). Objectives of the PSL in relation to Space Station Freedom are described, and the HL-20 concept is shown in detail. Models and wind tunnel studies are shown, along with a mockup and mission simulator.

The video was remasted to improve color balance and stability. AI upscale (Topaz AI) was used to upscale the video to HD resolution. While it works in most cases, some artifacts are present in some sequences. Sound and image cleanup, AI upscale and color restoration by RetroSpace HD. Some music segments were replaced by background sounds to generic themes.

The HL-20 Personnel Launch System was a NASA spaceplane concept for crewed orbital missions studied by NASA's Langley Research Center around 1990. It was envisaged as a lifting body re-entry vehicle similar to the Soviet BOR-4 spaceplane design. Its stated goals were to achieve low operational costs, improved flight safety, and a possibility of landing on conventional runways. No flight hardware was built.