Another one from Lockheed Horizons, a rare color photo of a later STAR Clipper configuration. This one-and-a-half-stage-to-orbit design dates from the early days of the Space Shuttle program. Much, much more on the STAR Clipper and its Shuttle descendants can be read about in issue V3N2 of Aerospace Projects Review.
One of the pleasant surprises from my recent trip to D.C. was obtaining a scan of a color version of an illustration I’ve only ever seen in B&W… the Goodyear “METEOR” spaceplane design from about 1956. This was part of a truly audacious plan put forward by Goodyear’s Darrel Romick and others to develop a “city in space,” a giant space station with artificial gravity and giant hangars for spacecraft.
The color seems to be off, due, likely, to the fading effects of half a century. But even after some “fade correction” processing, it’s clear that the spaceplane was painted red… an interesting choice.
And it’s a little difficult to tell, but a closeup focusing on the crew seems to either show that the heads were pasted on, or are surrounded by some sort of bubble helmets.
Much more on the METEOR plan is available HERE.
A piece of NASA promo art, dating to around 1964 (plus or minus), showing the Saturn I, Saturn Ib and Saturn V to scale.
A high rez of this can be downloaded here:
The latest AIAA-Houston newsletter Horizons, January/February 2012, has a brief article by me on the Phoenix-E tourism SSTO. Free to download!
A painting from an old issue of “Lockheed horizons” depicts a STAR Clipper 1.5-stage-to-orbit early Space Shuttle design lifting off from a desert launch facility (probably White Sands or Vandenberg).
Much, much more on the STAR Clipper can be found in issue V3N2 of Aerospace Projects Review.
A Rockwell handout card (late 1980’s to 1990 or so) showing an artists impression of their early NASP configuration. This is the same design as shown HERE, but in painting rather than model form.
You can download 7.9 and 1.1 megabyte JPG files of the illustrations. The links to the JPG files are HERE and HERE. To access them, you will need to enter a username and password. The username: the first word in the body of the text on page 5 of APR issue V1N1. The password: the first word in the body of the text on page 11 of the same issue. Note that both are case sensitive.
A late 1950’s NASA concept for utilizing Atlas launch vehicle systems to send a sizable payload to the moon and the planets. While this never came close to being built, it was vaguely similar in concept to the actual Saturn I.
Another PR card showing an X-30 NASP configuration, this being a 1990 Rockwell configuration. It’s similar to but noticeably fatter than the earlier generic configuration (shown HERE).
You can download 6.7 and 2.2 megabyte JPG files of the illustrations. The links to the JPG files are HERE and HERE. To access them, you will need to enter a username and password. The username: the first word in the body of the text on page 5 of APR issue V1N1. The password: the first word in the body of the text on page 11 of the same issue. Note that both are case sensitive.
Another PR card showing an X-30 NASP configuration, this being an early design modeled off of the original du Pont configuration.
You can download 3.15 and 2.2 megabyte JPG files of the illustrations. The links to the JPG files are HERE and HERE. To access them, you will need to enter a username and password. The username: the first word in the body of the text on page 5 of APR issue V1N1. The password: the first word in the body of the text on page 11 of the same issue. Note that both are case sensitive.
In the days before the web came to domination, aerospace companies and government organizations would stamp out glossy propaganda/PR informational cards by the truckload. The X-30 NASP (National Aero Space Plane) program was no different. Below is one such card released by NASA. Note that first flight was expected by 2000 or so… just slightly behind schedule at this point. The design shown here is the final publicly revealed configuration, with the wide flat “spatula” nose. Not shown in this – or pretty much any – illustration are the rocket engines needed to put the spaceplane into a circular orbit.
You can download 2.7 and 3.5 megabyte JPG files of the illustrations. The links to the JPG files are HERE and HERE. To access them, you will need to enter a username and password. The username: the first word in the body of the text on page 5 of APR issue V1N1. The password: the first word in the body of the text on page 11 of the same issue. Note that both are case sensitive.
