Early nuclear-electric spacecraft

 nukes, rockets, spacecraft  2 Responses »
Dec 072018
 

A NASA model circa 1959 illustrating the general configuration of a nuclear-electric spacecraft for the exploration of Mars. While apparently not meant to represent a serious design proposal, the general configuration is much the same as those created decades later. It features a nuclear reactor at the nose, a long boom with a pair of radiators to get rid of the heat produced by the reactor, and payload at the tail. Payload includes crew areas and an indistinct lander. The ring at the rear is the “propellant accelerator,” which is not described; presumably it is a structural ring holding a bank of ion engines or the like.

Note that the radiators are tapered. This is common in such designs: the gamma ray and neutron shields behind the reactor only block a relatively small portion of the emitted radiation. The radiators fit within that shadowed cone; if the radiators projected out into the unshielded volume, not only could the radiation do some damage to the structural materials it would also heat them up… defeating the whole point of radiators.

This basic layout would still be applicable today, with the main difference being that the engines might well be located elsewhere, firing in a different direction. The reactor could well be at the tail; leaving the engines where they are would turn the long boom into a structure in tension, meaning that the reactor would be “hanging” down. This would be structurally more efficient… after all, the reactor could certainly hang from a string, but a ship could hardly push on a string. Or the engines could be located near the ships center of gravity, firing “sideways.” This would be trickier for the boom, but if the engines are indeed low-thrust ion engines, the forces involved would be almost negligible. Or with a similar arrangement the ship could be made to tumble end over end; with the engines at the CG they could continue to fire “sideways” while the crew enjoyed at least some measure of artificial gravity.

 Posted by at 11:53 am

PDF Review: “Neptun,” the German Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle

 launch vehicles, nukes, Patreon, PDF Review, rockets, spacecraft, transports  2 Responses »
Dec 042018
 

In the late 1960’s H.H. Koelle of the Technische University Institut Fuer Raumfahrttechnik in Berlin devoted considerable effort to studying a reusable heavy lift launch vehicle. A good, well-illustrated report was put out in 1968 covering the design:

Entwurfskriterien fur groBe wiederverwendbare Tragersysteme (Design Criteria for Large Reusable Space Transportation Systems)

Note that the Neptun was *gigantic.* It was a two-stage ballistically recovered design, unusual in that rather than being circular in cross-section it was hexagonal. The individual propellant tanks were each the size of or bigger than the S-IC first stage of the Saturn V.

 

 

 

A number of payloads were proposed. One was a sub-orbital intercontinental passenger transport, The passenger “capsule” would land separate from the Neptun itself.

One of the more interesting payloads contemplated was a large Orion nuclear pulse vehicle, transported in two pieces (propulsion module in one launch and payload/pulse units in the other). Presumably this would be a NASA Orion hitching a ride on a West German booster; I suspect politics would have negated the likelihood of the West Germans developing a mass production line for nuclear explosives.

 

This fusion-powered interplanetary spacecraft is also a NASA design, dating from the early 1960’s.

Support the APR Patreon to help bring more of this sort of thing to light!

 

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 Posted by at 7:27 pm

Saturn S-IV & Dyna Soar

 Dyna Soar, launch vehicles, rockets, spacecraft, spaceplane  No Responses »
Dec 032018
 

A magazine ad from 1963 showing the S-IV stage and the X-20 Dyna Soar. The Dyna Soar is shown without its adapter section and Transtage, indicating that it is approaching re-entry (note that it is shown with the canopy heat shield still in place). The Saturn S-IV stage, used on a few Saturn I launches, was smaller than the S-IVB that was used on later Saturn Ib and Saturn V launches, and used six RL-10 rocket engines instead of the S-IVB’s single J-2. Also note the three prominent “ullage rockets” sticking out from the base of the stage. These were small solid rocket motors that would impart a slight forward acceleration to the stage prior to the ignition of the RL-10’s. The acceleration would be high enough and last long enough to settle the propellants into the rears of the tanks. Otherwise the liquid propellants would float around in microgravity and might very well not feed properly into the plumbing system; if a turbopump swallowed a large bubble of gas rather than liquid, it could be destroyed.

The Saturn I/S-IV never launched an actual Apollo CSM, but only boilerplate test articles. Interestingly, the BP-16 test article, launched May 25, 1965, stayed in orbit until July 8, 1989.

 Posted by at 1:45 am

Early Lockheed Space Shuttle concept art

 launch vehicles, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane  No Responses »
Nov 292018
 

A design circa 1970 for a Lockheed lifting body space shuttle concept. This design was derived from the earlier STAR Clipper stage-and-a-half design from the late 1960s… the whole story of the STAR Clipper and its many derivatives is given in Aerospace Projects Review issue V3N2, available HERE.

Note that this vehicle is equipped with sizable internal propellant tanks. As a result the cockpit is separated from the payload bay; in order to access the payload, the crew would need to pass through a long, narrow tunnel not unlike that within the B-36 bomber.

 Posted by at 12:55 am

Bell STOL transport art

 hi-rez, Patreon, research, transports, US Recon & Research Projects, US Transport Projects  No Responses »
Nov 232018
 

In 1972 Bell designed a STOL jet transport, a concept that competed for the Advanced Medium STOL Transport role that the McDonnell-Douglas YC-15 and the Boeing YC-14 were built for. The Bell aircraft appeared to be largely conventional in layout, but it was actually quite different from every other transport: the engine nacelles were not only fitted with Harrier-like thrust vectoring nozzles to redirect the core exhaust, the flow could be diverted from the fans to augmenters in the wings. These, it was hoped, would greatly increase static thrust, allowing the aircraft to lift off from unimproved runways in a short distance.  As part of their proposal, Bell also designed a proof of concept demonstrator to be built from parts of a C-130. The demonstrator could itself be used as a fair cargo transport, though of course it would not be as well optimized as the all-new vehicles. Unfortunately, the augmenter-wing concept for vertical thrust turned out to be a major disappointment as it steadfastly refused to scale up well.

The  demonstrator was recently diagrammed and described in detail in US Recon & Research Projects #03, and the operational version in US Transport Projects #08.

USRP #3 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4.25:

USTP #8 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4.25:

I’ve uploaded the full rez versions of these scans to the 2018-11 APR Extras folder on Dropbox, available to all APR Patrons at the $4 level and above. If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

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 Posted by at 9:05 pm

Airport Spotting in the Era of SSTs

 jetliner, transports  No Responses »
Nov 222018
 

The SST designs of the 1960’s are hardly unknown. But what’s generally not well understood is that designs such as the Boeing 2707 were *huge.* This was considered necessary because SSTs with fuselage lengths in line with existing jetliners – such as the Concorde – would have small passenger capacities due to the need for the fuselages to be *very* narrow compared to their lengths. This, as Concorde showed, was a great way to build an extremely cost-ineffective fuel hog.

So the 2707 would be terribly long and pointy, with a geometry quite a bit unlike regular jetliners. A practical concern is “how do we deal with these things at airports?” If nothing else, the long pointed nose of the SST would put the passenger door considerably further aft than for a conventional rounded-nose jetliners. So, like the 747 and the A380, it was assumed that the larger airports would have to make some infrastructure modifications in order to deal with these new beasts.

The illustration below, from a 1967 issue of Aviation Week, shows American Airlines thinking about the airports of the future. Note that the 2707 is pulled in far closer than the other craft, with the tip of t’s very pointed nose just a few feet away from the building while the others are notably further away. The SST is being serviced by two extendable jetways at maximum extension, while most of the other planes seem to be getting along with just one jetway… though one of the 747s is using four. Note that even though the 747 isn’t pulled in quite as far as the 2707, the SST nonetheless projects much further out into the airfield. For some airports this could well have meant that the taxiways would have been a cluttered mess.

 Posted by at 12:45 pm

Neutral Particle Beam weapon mockup

 research, spacecraft  No Responses »
Nov 212018
 

A while back a 1987 press image was posted on ebay showing a McDonnell-Douglas full scale mockup of a Neutral Particle Beam weapon system. This would have been an experimental system, not an operational weapon; details on full-scale NPB weapons are *very* hard to come by, but the smallest NPB weapon system that I’ve seen anything remotely resembling hard data on would have required a non-trivial number of Shuttle-derived heavy lift launch vehicles to put into orbit a piece at a time. Some references – extremely vague ones – have even made mention of dimensions for the full-scale weapons being measured in kilometers.

The purpose of this system would likely have been to simply show that a neutral particle beam could be reliably generated and directed at an orbiting target some decent distance away. While it would likely be very unhealthy to be int he way of such a beam, it’s weapons potential would doubtless have been low… thus the need for vastly scaled-up operational versions.

 Posted by at 4:22 am

Lifting body as rescue craft

 rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane  No Responses »
Nov 162018
 

The 1969 movie “Marooned” featured an Apollo crew stranded in orbit and eventually rescued by a lifting body spacecraft,the fictional “XRV.” It has been noted that the vehicle and the basic setup look a *lot* like an illustration from a 1965 issue of Aviation Week depicting a Martin Co. lifting body rescuing the crew of an Apollo spacecraft:

 

There is clearly something a little strange going on in this artwork: what may seem like an adapter section or a propulsion module behind the lifting body is actually a docked Gemini spacecraft. There is no explanation for this, but I can speculate. The lifting body is meant to serve as a rescue craft, so it would need to have as much internal space as possible. Not just for three rescued Apollo astronauts, but three astronauts potentially in medical distress. So they might need to be laid out on stretchers, not just sitting in seats. Consequently, while they would need a pilot to get them home and “ambulance staff” to get them squared away, there might not be enough room for everyone. So *perhaps* what’s going on here is that the spaceplane is launched empty or with just a pilot, and the Gemini/Adapter has two EMTs in it. They get the rescuees  dealt with and sent home, and they come home in the Gemini. This way, three rescuers go up, but only one comes down taking up space in the lifting body. This is non-optimal, of course; better would be to bring everyone home in one large vehicle. But perhaps this was the best that could be done with the intended launch system, presumably a Titan IIIc.

The lifting body is clearly related to the X-23/X-24 geometry that Martin was beginning to study at the time. A mockup that is very similar, though with the central vertical stabilizer that eventually appeared on the X-24, is shown HERE and HERE.

 Posted by at 10:50 pm
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