Space Launch Initiative (SLI)

[hesham]

Hi,

the NASA was looking after the space shuttle,the requirements
for a second-generation reusable launch vehicle.

http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/2002/2002%20-%202994.html

 

[abheiden]

the first picture look like what now darpa want to launch again as the XS1 spaceplane.
Seems like they doing things in US every 10 years again and stop half the way.

 

[hesham]

Yes Abheiden,very close.

 

[TomS]

There's a second fly-back booster shown in that first picture. It looks like a revisit of the Siamese launcher concepts before the Shuttle.

 

[robunos]

There's a second fly-back booster shown in that first picture. It looks like a revisit of the Siamese launcher concepts before the Shuttle.

I don't think this concept uses two boosters, rather the second booster is illustrating the manner in which it returns following it's mission, note the deployed canards near the nose...

cheers,
Robin.

 

[TomS]

No, it's definitely the first stage. The text description of the LM system reads:

Lockheed Martin's Preferred architecture is also a two-stage-to-orbit vehicle, combining a kerosene-fuelled first stage with a hydrogen-fuelled second stage. The fly-back first stage returns on jet power to the launch site while the second stage continues to orbit. Cargo is carried in a fairing on the back of the second stage, which opens to release the payload. The vehicle then reenters and glides back to a runway landing.


Alternatively, an orbital space plane (OSP) can be mounted on the second stage in place of the cargo fairing. The spaceplane would detach itself, operate in orbit, then re-enter and glide back.

So the image is showing the second stage with an OSP attached, while the first stage flies back.

 

[robunos]

Ah, yes, now I see it, you can see the contrails from the first stage's wingtips trailing back under the second stage...

cheers,
Robin.

 

[flateric]

...

 

[publiusr]

Andrews' GRYPHON was similar as I recall

 

[Rhinocrates]

Another view of that Lockmart one.

 

[Rhinocrates]

Boeing's entry.

 

[Rhinocrates]

Some Northrop Grumman - Orbital Sciences concepts.

 

[Archibald]

Great ! Love those old pictures. I remember seeing them in Air&Cosmos... 22 years ago. In the interlude between X-33 cancellation (March 2001) and the STS-107 disaster (February 2003).
At the time the "son of HL-20" lifting body was called the Space Taxi. Initially it would ride an EELV yet soon it was to shift to a TSTO.

All this became moot after the Columbia disaster, February 2003. By April, for the first time since the end of Apollo in 1975, a capsule made a timid return among the Orbital Space Plane proposals. They even had surviving Apollo greybeards, led by Dale Myers, dusting off Apollo to see what could be done. By November 2003 the capsule started to prevail among the OSP proposals. This, for good reasons: three months later President GWB started Constellation, and Orion along it.

 

[FighterJock]

And then president Obama cancled the Constelation program which I think at the time was a stupid thing to do.

 

[Archibald]

Nope, Constellation was going nowhere. Ares V was as bad as SLS, Orion, well took until the 2020's to fly. Ares 1 was a piece of junk, LSAM was paperware. And NASA was starved of funding. See Augustine Committee, August 2009. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

 

[flateric]

Great ! Love those old pictures. I remember seeing them in Air&Cosmos... 22 years ago.

Nostalgic mode on

 

[Archibald]

Yes ! May 17, 2002 : I turned 20... the day before. I probably still have that magazine in my mom attic.

 

[publiusr]

I was 36 then.

The one from LockMart is amusing--I thought it was lifting bodies all the way down

Boeing's was mom and dad--with a fanny pack.