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 photo of unfortunate quality showing a collection of supersonic transport designs from North American Aviation, circa late 1963. Note that this is about 50 years ago, and each of these designs still look futuristic.
In 1960, Bell Aircraft released several paintings depicting a two-stage hypersonic passenger transport. The first stage was a multi-engined supersonic jet of fairly conventional configuration (though with very large 50,000 lb-thrust turboramjet engines), carrying on its back a rocket-powered second stage. The second stage was clearly influenced by Bell work on the Dyna Soar program.
The carrier would transport the second stage to an altitude of 20 miles and 5,300 mph. After release, the second stage would boost to 40 miles and speeds up to 15,000 miles per hour, permitting travel times from Los Angeles to Paris of one hour and four minutes for the thirty passengers on board. The vehicle was intended to enter service in the 1980-1990 timeframe.
Weight for the combined vehicle at takeoff would be 750,000 pounds. Span of the booster was 150 feet, length 200 feet. It’s unclear if this was a serious engineering design or purely speculative. Paintings and a display model show some notable differences.
You can download a 3 megabyte JPG file of the artwork; the link is HERE. To access it, you will need to enter a username and password. The username: the first word in the body of the text on page 6 of APR issue V1N3. The password: the first word in the body of the text on page 23 of the same issue. Note that both are case sensitive.
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.
I put together a number of photos I recently took of Hill Aerospace Museums newly-restored F-104A into a free downloadable PDF booklet.
If you like this, feel free to distribute hither and yon. If you *really* like this, feel free to toss a dollar or three my way.
If there is interest, I will make more of this sort of thing… I have a vast collection of photos of aerospace and weapons systems that might be of interest.
In the mid 1960’s, Douglas produced designs for a Manned Orbital Research Laboratory. Much like the later Skylab, MORL was to be based in part on the S-IVb stage. Unlike Skylab, MORL was to be a much more fully integrated space station, with greater emphasis on functionality and less on low cost. It was to have included an internal centrifuge, and surprisingly large solar panels.
This design was featured in the F-23 derivatives article in the recent V3N2 issue of Aerospace Projects Review. This was an attempt by Northrop to adapt F-23 design elements to a Naval role, carrier-capable.
You can download a 1.4 megabyte GIF file of the diagram. The link to the JPG file is HERE. To access it, you will need to enter a username and password. These are available on the first page of the Aerospace Projects Review V3N2 Addendum (available HERE) Note that both are case sensitive.
