“Code One” is the in-house magazine put out by Lockheed-Fort Worth. They have been adding a lot of good stuff regarding projects to their website over the years, and now have a page devoted specifically to diagrams of unbuilt aircraft:
Only a few just now, but they say that there are a lot more coming.
In 1977, General Dynamics produced the “Sneaky Pete” design for a stealthy fighter or attack aircraft. The design was quite similar to that of the later McDonnell-Douglas A-12 Avenger II, a delta flying wing with underslung inlets and a straight trailing edge. There were notable differences: an additional inlet on the upper surface, the exhaust was on the upper surface and there was a single pilot. It also appears that the Sneaky Pete had vertical stabilizers on the upper surface that would fold flush during cruise. Performance, weights, dimensions are all sadly unavailable. Sneaky Pete was part of the design evolution leading to the ATF (eventually won by Lockheed and became the F-22), though it seems very unlikely that it would have been capable of supersonic flight, much less supercruise.
Previously shown but not understood HERE, in 1961 GE proposed modifying a B-52G to serve as a testbed for a single XNJ140E-1 nuclear turbojet. The very large engine would be contained in a nacelle attached to the port rear fuselage. With eight conventional J57 chemical turbojets, the testbed aircraft would be capable of putting the engine through the altitude and airspeed paces that would be expected of it in the NX-2 nuclear powered bomber demonstrator (35,000 feet and Mach 0.8). This configuration would be capable of sustained nuclear flight.
Another configuration would have a second XNJ140E-1 nuclear turbojet on the other side of the fuselage, and only four J57’s. This aircraft would be capable of pure nuclear flight from takeoff to landing, with the J57’s as emergency backup.
Approximate isodose lines around the nuclear B-52G in powered flight
In 1954 General Electric studied a nuclear powered unmanned aircraft for a photo recon role. One design considered was the ACA-8, a fairly conventionally configured airbreathing supersonic configuration with small canards and unswept wings mounted well aft. For propulsion the ACA-8 was equipped with a single ACM-1C-Mk II nuclear turbojet with a chemical afterburner. With 9,000 pounds of chemical fuel, 3000 pounds of guidance and control equipment and 3000 pounds of photographic equipment, the gross weight was 50,000 pounds. While the design seems to have some similarity with the Pluto nuclear ramjet, it was a nuclear turbojet, and thus restricted to slower speeds. Maximum nuclear-powered speed at 35,000 feet was Mach 1.57; at design cruise altitude of 40,000 feet, speed was only Mach 1.40. By using the afterburner, at 45,000 fee the max speed was Mach 3.6; at 57,000 feet, Mach 2.5. This could only be maintained for a relatively brief period, however. Note that the design is equipped with landing gear, indicating that it was to be recovered and presumably reused.
At nuclear cruise speed, it was quite interceptable, but the opposing country would have to think long and hard about just how much they wanted to shoot a nuclear reactor out of the sky over their own territory. The best option would be to follow it out and down it over the ocean.
NASA artwork of the Orion space capsule system:
NASA rendering of the Space Launch System Block 2 concept.
NASA rendering of the Block 1 Space Launch System concept.
A chart from a NASA briefing from May of this year giving a quick look at three planned configurations of the Space Launch System which some/many in NASA hope to get built and flown in the coming years.
When transitioning from the Block 1 to Block 1A configurations, the plan is to replace the Shuttle-derived five segment solid rocket boosters with all-new advanced boosters, either liquid or solid. But history has shown that if what you’ve got *now* more or less works, replacing it with an expensive new rocket is a somewhat politically dubious prospect.
A pretty simplistic schematic diagram of a possible Nova launch vehicle, circa 1961, very similar to the “Chemical Nova.”
A Boeing (or possibly North American Aviation) artists concept of what appears to be a space station, but may be an interplanetary spacecraft. While overall it appears to be a Saturn V derived space station (using, apparently, the S-IVb tanks as a basis), on the right there appears to be a bay holding several Viking-style entry capsules. Numerous interplanetary spacecraft designs of the 1960’s had these. The capsules would hold not people, but unmanned landers and rovers. The relatively small size of the solar panels might indicate that this craft was designed for a mission to Venus; the apparent lack of much of a propulsion system might indicate that this was a flyby mission rather than a capture-and-orbit mission.
Note also the centrifuge that takes up the second deck from the “bottom.”
