USAF/NASA RLV programs from the past - AMSCI, Science Dawn, Have Region, etc

Archibald said:








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Dwayne A. Day ALSV series at The Space Review (1 2 3 4)





ISINGLASS by the same author, same place

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My new article will appear in the next couple of weeks (probably April 19). I complied several of the previous articles, but then added in a bunch of new stuff from a slightly later study on the ALSV. The ALSV was proposed by somebody at the Air Force, then studied by several contractors, including Pratt & Whitney with Boeing as the subcontractor.
Archibald said:








Click to expand...

Dwayne A. Day ALSV series at The Space Review (1 2 3 4)





ISINGLASS by the same author, same place

Click to expand...

My article is going to appear in a couple of weeks. Based upon my research (some of which you can also figure out using the above links), it looks like the ALSV was the initial proposal, coming from the Air Force itself. So the ALSV was studied in several forms around 1982. It then appears that the Air Force asked several contractors to look at the broader issue of "Trans Atmospheric Vehicles," which seems to have been a slightly obtuse way of saying horizontal launch of a reusable space vehicle. So various contractors then looked at several options under the TAV banner:

-new carrier aircraft and rocket-powered orbiter
-existing carrier aircraft (either 747 or C-5) and rocket-powered orbiter
-horizontal rocket-sled launch of a rocket-powered orbiter

Although the records are incomplete, the similarity of the different contractor studies strongly implies that USAF asked for these studies and defined the concepts. Otherwise, it's not clear that all of the contractors would have looked at rocket sleds.

I'm primarily interested in the ALSV proposal because that seems to have received the most attention, and it was the most near-term proposal. Some estimates indicated that they could go operational about 8 years after the go-ahead, meaning around 1991 or so. The other proposals would require a lot more development time, making them operational in the mid-1990s. (Note that the proposed development time for the ALSV would have been about equal to that for the space shuttle.)

Something that I discovered with some new research is that although Pratt & Whitney did the initial ALSV study with Boeing as a subcontractor, it appears that Boeing later got a prime contract to study it. That's because the initial study assumed that the engines drove the design, so they put an engine contractor in charge. But when it came to the TAV, there was no way that P&W could have done all those studies, so it made more sense for Boeing to do that. Somewhat ironically, the Pratt & Whitney study envisioned a lot of engines--an SSME on the tail of the 747 and 9-10 RL10 engines in the ALSV orbiter. But once Boeing took over the study, the number of engines went down.
 
https://thespacereview.com/article/4161/1

Higher burning: The Air Launched Sortie Vehicle of the 1980s
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, April 19, 2021

A recent episode of the AppleTV+ series “For All Mankind” featured a big reveal: an advanced space shuttle launched off the back of a C-5 Galaxy, headed for space on a military mission. It is a concept that has been around since the beginning of the shuttle program. In the early 1980s, the United States Air Force sponsored studies of what was initially designated a Space Sortie Vehicle, then renamed the Air Launched Sortie Vehicle, or ALSV. The ALSV would have launched into space off the back of a 747. In one early concept, the 747 would have been equipped with multiple rocket engines in its tail to boost it to launch altitude. Now, newly-acquired information indicates that Boeing conducted several studies of “Trans-Atmospheric Vehicles” in 1983, including a revised variant of the ALSV. This Sortie Vehicle, looking somewhat like a space shuttle orbiter that had been (lightly) stepped on by Godzilla, would have fired its own rocket engines while on top of the 747 and pushed both vehicles higher before separating the spacecraft to head into orbit.

The Air Launched Sortie Vehicle never progressed beyond the study phase, but it would have been a wild ride to space. 4161a.jpg 4161c.jpg 4161d.jpg 4161f.jpg 4161h.jpg
 
Archibald said:

1979-80 AF HQ (RDSL) mission analysis and cost benefit studies - Air Launched Sortie Vehicle
1980-82 Air Force Advanced Manned Space-Flight Capability study
1980-82 Air Force Transatmospheric Vehicle study
1982-84 Air HQ (RDSL) Science Dawn program
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My info indicates that the TAV studies may have continued until at least late 1983. The ALSV first appears in December 1980.

My guess is that these various studies had overlapping dates, or at least some of the responses to them by contractors overlapped--so a contractor may have been studying an ALSV concept in response to the Advanced Manned Space-Flight Capability study, and then continued studying that as part of the TAV study.

And some of my information indicates that the contractors spent some of their internal R&D money on these studies, meaning that the work continued even if a USAF contract to support them ended.
 
The GRM-29A looks a perfect fit for one of my stories.
Scott, there's a paypal in the post: No urgency...
 
An afterburner modification for the 747’s engines was already
available and would not require changes to the fan, compressor, burners, or turbine.
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An afterburning JT9D ??!!

Gimme a break... who on Earth would ever think (and need) an afterburning 747 ? even more with hydrogen afterburners ? :eek::eek:

was it related to NASA SCA ? or to the air-launch MX 747s ?
 
And it seems that RASV, ALSV and TAV were (at least) loosely related. Not very surprised.
 
from @Dynoman post in AMSCI/ASLV thread
 

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Color (but small) RASV cutaway
 

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Let's call this "the flying chassis".
How about a MIPCC variant that could push the spaceplane on its back (Space Fighter ?), to Mach 3 and beyond ? That makes a 2000 m/s dent in ascent delta-v to orbit: the dreadful 9300 m/s.
Once at Mach 3 or faster, the Space Fighter drops the flying chassis and goes to Earth orbit.

Hence now the RL-10 powered, 466 seconds isp rocketplane above has a low mass fraction: 0.80

BOTE calculation: 9.81*466*ln((60)/(12))+2000 = 9357 m/s

For the record, the Shuttle stack propellant mass fraction was 0.83

So it could be done.

The small rocketplane would glide land... and thus it would be stuck to its landing strip like the Shuttle Orbiter.

Unless the "flying chassis" was send to the landing strip to be mated to the Space Fighter... providing wings, tail, undercarriage, MIPCC jets and kerosene fuel. A C-130 or a C-141 could tow the "flying chassis" to help its guidance system finding the airstrip.

@RanulfC - your opinion ? sounds like a variant of that old POGO concept.
​
 
Archibald said:
Let's call this "the flying chassis".
How about a MIPCC variant that could push the spaceplane on its back (Space Fighter ?), to Mach 3 and beyond ? That makes a 2000 m/s dent in ascent delta-v to orbit: the dreadful 9300 m/s.
Once at Mach 3 or faster, the Space Fighter drops the flying chassis and goes to Earth orbit.

Hence now the RL-10 powered, 466 seconds isp rocketplane above has a low mass fraction: 0.80

BOTE calculation: 9.81*466*ln((60)/(12))+2000 = 9357 m/s

For the record, the Shuttle stack propellant mass fraction was 0.83

So it could be done.

The small rocketplane would glide land... and thus it would be stuck to its landing strip like the Shuttle Orbiter.

Unless the "flying chassis" was send to the landing strip to be mated to the Space Fighter... providing wings, tail, undercarriage, MIPCC jets and kerosene fuel. A C-130 or a C-141 could tow the "flying chassis" to help its guidance system finding the airstrip.

@RanulfC - your opinion ? sounds like a variant of that old POGO concept.
​
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I think this was a RASV design and if I'm not mistaken (odds are I am :) ) the same company pitched a similar idea for getting fighter/bombers off a cratered runway with a similar sled. IIRC the idea WAS to get the spaceplane up to some supersonic flight speed before it lit off it's own engines, similar idea to the Langley "SpaceJet" concept on a bit smaller scale. (SpaceJet was the size of a shuttle orbiter and a bit more)

The turbofan's likely use duct-burning instead of MIPCC I'd suspect.

Randy
 
RanulfC said:
I think this was a RASV design and if I'm not mistaken (odds are I am :) ) the same company pitched a similar idea for getting fighter/bombers off a cratered runway with a similar sled. IIRC the idea WAS to get the spaceplane up to some supersonic flight speed before it lit off it's own engines, similar idea to the Langley "SpaceJet" concept on a bit smaller scale. (SpaceJet was the size of a shuttle orbiter and a bit more)

The turbofan's likely use duct-burning instead of MIPCC I'd suspect.

Randy
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You're thinking of the F-15 hoversled thingamajig?
 
Any info or better images on these designs?
 

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