GIGANTIC Aviation Week story, Pentagon has been flying 2-stage orbital spaceplane throughout 1990s&# Options

[tasp]

Footnote: the Titan 2 second stage weighed 29,000 kg. I can't find any information on the velocity of the first stage at burnout on a Gemini launch -- but clearly, unless the B-70 was moving at MUCH higher velocity than the Titan first stage and/or the second stage used much more efficient propellant than that in the Titan 2 second stage, there is no conceivable way a 40,000-pound second stage would be adequate to put a Dyna-Soar in orbit.

Heck, I have no professional reputation to protect, so let me have a go at this intersting wee beastie . . .

Back in the early days of the Atlas program, an entire assembly (less the double annular booster engines) was put in orbit. Seems like an empty Atlas is quite large and weighs 7 or 8000 pounds IIRC. That was nearly an SSTO vehicle back in 1960.

Lets spring forward and pare down the 'bloated Atlas carcass' (no offense to any of it's designers here, rhetorical exercise underway, after all) to something small enough to sling under and XB-70. Lets make it out of carbon fiber material like the recently demised SSTO vehicle. That might get my dry weight down to 2500 pounds or so. My mass fraction with a full fuel load is getting close.

Lets bump up the performance of the XB-70 'six pack' engine module (IIRC, back in the sixties it had a total thrust of <200,000 pounds) to 500,000 pounds since engine performance has improved (not as fast as Moore's law) in the 40+ years since. That will give us maybe Mach 4, 4 1/2, or 5 at 100,000 feet.

We can bump the ISP a tad for a scramjet on the deployed vehicle. Maybe it's an air breathing wave rider of some kind. Let's fuel it with slush hydrogen, with a small tank of lox for the final press to orbit.

Maybe we can make it now!

Think all that would have run 25-30 billion $.

How big is my black budget again?


{thanx, that was fun, I don't think Bruce is making an error backing off the story}

[Bob Shaw]

We can bump the ISP a tad for a scramjet on the deployed vehicle. Maybe it's an air breathing wave rider of some kind. Let's fuel it with slush hydrogen, with a small tank of lox for the final press to orbit.

The AW&ST article speaks of a Boron-based fuel, with a density similar to toothpaste.

That's almost trivial, though. The real problem is obviously handling the Dilithium Crystals!

Where does the undercarriage go?

doesn't "look" right

Nick

Nick:

I agree - imagine an aborted launch, with a fully fuelled bird slung under the mothership. It'd be bad enough with SpaceShipOne, which at least has 'safe' fuel, but landing with a flying fuel tank under the belly of the beast and a fuel you probably don't dare dump within 200 miles of land...

...think how *strong* the landing gear would need to be, too...

Bob Shaw

[Bob Shaw]

One *possible* vehicle which may form part of a somewhat conflated 'new' tale over at AW&ST is the putative X-24C design, not to mention the Lockheed FDL-5A and L-301 air-launched vehicles - all of which are either more-or-less credible depending on who you read - but are certainly not orbital!

Various images below are from: http://www.geocities.com/stratomodels/blackprojects.html or as credited - protype.jpg is slightly retouched, in the best tradition of these matters!

Bob Shaw

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[tty]

Well, I’ve been doing some more figuring and I must beg to disagree with Jeff Bell. It’s not impossible, not quite. If the carrier aircraft can reach Mach 3.3 and 100,000 feet (which after all is only slightly more than the SR-71 did routinely 40 years ago), and if it is possible to reach an Isp of 400 s or a little better using high density fuel (boranes?) then a SSTO vehicle with a mass ratio of 6 or 7 is possible. This last should be feasible for a vehicle in the 50 000 – 100 000 lb class (which could be carried by B-70 sized launch aircraft) using modern structural methods and materials. However the payload would be very limited. In a manned configuration probably virtually zero.

tty

[dvandorn]

Just a little gedankenexperiment, here -- anyone care to ponder the ramifications, if the NSA had a manned SSTO vehicle, capable of detailed reconaissance from low orbit, operating at the same time that NASA had an injured bird in orbit?

I grant you, NASA failed to realize that their bird was injured... and failed to even request the kind of NSA imaging that Blackstar might have been able to provide. Much less been *aware* that such imaging, or such a potential rescue vehicle, might even be available.

But, if Blackstar *does* exist, *was* able to fly into orbit, and *was* capable of being manned -- that opens up a whole new can of worms when it comes to decisions made affecting Columbia's condition and the perceived lack of options the NASA managers thought they had in the event their bird *was* injured.

-the other Doug

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Just a little gedankenexperiment, here -- anyone care to ponder the ramifications, if the NSA had a manned SSTO vehicle, capable of detailed reconaissance from low orbit, operating at the same time that NASA had an injured bird in orbit?

I grant you, NASA failed to realize that their bird was injured... and failed to even request the kind of NSA imaging that Blackstar might have been able to provide. Much less been *aware* that such imaging, or such a potential rescue vehicle, might even be available.

Interesting thought. Not to be pedantic; however, I'd probably replace "NSA" above with "NRO," the National Reconnaissance Office.

[dvandorn]

Good point, Alex -- NRO probably would run such an asset, not NSA.

-the other Doug

[Bob Shaw]

Just a little gedankenexperiment, here -- anyone care to ponder the ramifications, if the NSA had a manned SSTO vehicle, capable of detailed reconaissance from low orbit, operating at the same time that NASA had an injured bird in orbit?

I grant you, NASA failed to realize that their bird was injured... and failed to even request the kind of NSA imaging that Blackstar might have been able to provide. Much less been *aware* that such imaging, or such a potential rescue vehicle, might even be available.

But, if Blackstar *does* exist, *was* able to fly into orbit, and *was* capable of being manned -- that opens up a whole new can of worms when it comes to decisions made affecting Columbia's condition and the perceived lack of options the NASA managers thought they had in the event their bird *was* injured.

-the other Doug

oDoug:

Congratulations! You've just invented a *new* internet conspiracy theory!

And it's *better* than most of the rest... ...we could maybe get Mel Gibson to play you, after you get madeover as a taxi-driver by some three letter agency or other!

Bob Shaw

[dvandorn]

I'm not trying to imply conspiracies -- though it seems to me that AW&ST has already done so, in saying that such a thing as Blackstar may have existed for as long as 15 years and *no one* has said anything serious about it until now.

All I was trying to do was invite y'all to consider the consequences if Blackstar was a manned SSTO that actually worked, and that was in operational service during the final flight of Columbia. I suggest nothing except that y'all use your own imaginations as to what kind of recriminations could come out of something like that...

-the other Doug

[JTN]

Congratulations! You've just invented a *new* internet conspiracy theory!

Not that new, I'm afraid: West Wing spoiler.

[dvandorn]

I have to admit, when I saw the Blackstar story, that West Wing plot line came to mind. Amazing, how sideways-prescient some pieces of fiction end up being...

It's really a moot point, since everyone at Houston had convinced themselves that Columbia just couldn't have been seriously injured by a little foam -- and since, even if the bird was damaged beyond a safe return, they didn't think there were any options. I just wonder how much more careful they might have been if they thought there *were* options...

-the other Doug

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

According to the article, not even the nation's "top military space commanders" knew about Blackstar -- the implication is that only the NSA and (maybe) the President and the Men In Black knew about it. Come to think of it, that's another reason to doubt the story; but if it was true, then certainly NASA wouldn't have known about it -- and the NSA or whoever would have been unlikely to catch any word from NASA that they might have need of such a capability unless NASA actually had taken the foam problem very seriously.

What strikes me about the whole Columbia story is what a cruel twist of fate it was that it happened to one of the few remaining Shuttle missions that wasn't supposed to visit the ISS. If it had, that hole in the wing would certainly have been seen, and -- with some judicious juggling and hastily increased funding of the Russian space agency -- we would probably have gotten everyone down safely (while still losing the Shuttle).

[GregM]

So let’s see here. To start with we have the Valkyrie: an aircraft that is the product of late 1950’s technology built and flown in the early 60’s. It is the size of a jumbo jet. It comfortably cruises at a speed of 2,000 mph at an altitude of 13 miles, would likely have a max speed of 2,300mph and a max ceiling of 17 mi. It has a range of 7,500 miles. It weighs 400,000 lbs AND has an additional payload capacity of 50,000 lbs.

No one would ever believe those numbers if there weren’t an actual vehicle attached to them. Not even today. For an aircraft of several generations ago it is astonishing.

All of this 45 years ago. Remember for a moment that World War 2 had only been over for 15 years at this time. 15 years. Yes, the Valkyrie prototypes were problematic, but by God – the fact that such a vehicle even existed and operated is nothing short of one of the greatest aerospace miracles in history. If given the time to mature and go into production, I have no doubt that it would be one of the most famous aircraft in history.

Now, jump to today….

The naysayers say that there is no way that even with 30 years of additional technical development, can the best and brightest of the aerospace world with a huge budget construct a small spaceplane that can leap into space from a vastly upgraded version of a Valkyrie. Nope, can’t be done.

Now, I do greatly respect the knowledge of posters here. With all due respect however, the naysayers on this subject are the same ones that would have said in the 1970’s that it would be impossible to construct an operational combat aircraft with the shape of an inverted bathtub that would be all but radar invisible.

The logic of “I can’t figure out how the world’s most high-tech ultra black programs might invent something revolutionary – therefore it simply can’t be done” is both a little silly and pretty arrogant. I’m sure that no one here can figure out how to make a submarine the size of an office building invisible to detection underwater either – but it is something that exists today nevertheless.

The “Valkyrie on steroids” aircraft has in fact been seen by numerous credible observers in multiple widely separated locations over the past decade. These are not “Area 51 the aliens are in the freezer” crowd either. These are credible observers. It cannot be dismissed by naysayers as mass hallucinations, or mass hysteria, or something of that nature. There is a very high probability that this aircraft does exist. The more relevant question would to me be “WHY would such an aircraft exist?”

There is solid historical precedent for this type of high performance mated aerospacecraft operation in the black intelligence community as well. In the early 1960’s, the SR-71 was launching high speed (Mach 5) unmanned recon drones into “hot zones” in the same manner as this new system is described to do. They stopped doing it when they ran out of the disposable drones and the replenishment cost was considered too much. Blackbird flew solo after that.

When they did shut down the Blackbird a decade ago, did anyone really believe that there would be no replacement?

The details in the AW&ST article are fairly specific and from multiple sources. It is not terribly ambiguous. Lots of specific facts and figures. If this article is not to be believed, is the author making this stuff up? Is he a liar? Let’s be blunt here: many of the details given are said to be from multiple individuals who worked directly in this program. Either the author spoke with such individuals and got this very specific and descriptive information that is true, or the story is a fabrication by the author, or author spoke with these multiple sources and they are all liars.

I would argue that even if this article is not 100% correct – I would bet it has some sort of a solid basis in fact. Maybe the spaceplane is not orbital, maybe it’s suborbital, or skip-glide like the Sanger Bomber. Maybe it’s unmanned instead of manned. However, to outright dismiss it is in my mind displaying cynicism and a lack of an open mind about an area where things thought to be impossible have been made possible before. Mr.Bell is example number one without exception. He is an angry, cynical man IMO.

They don’t call it Dreamland for nothing.

[tty]

Also remember that there is a school of thought that contends that "black" programs are actually more efficient since the security restrictions mean that the number of people involved is minimized and the bureaucratic superstructure largely eliminated.

Having 30 years of experience in the aerospace business I must say it sounds plausible. Whew! Just imagine getting rid of most of those meetings, reviews and milestones....

tty

[paxdan]

Lots of info about the XB-70 What an aircraft!

Worth repeating:

GregM
No one would ever believe those numbers if there weren’t an actual vehicle attached to them. Not even today. For an aircraft of several generations ago it is astonishing.