| From: [email protected] (Larry Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Dyna-Soar
Date: 5 Mar 91 22:26:14 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (News Account)
Organization: Intel Corp., Hillsboro, Oregon
Greg Goebel writes:
>The Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar
>
> IEEE SPECTRUM / AUG 89 / P 18
> ...
> ... In 1957, three of those
>programs -- RoBo (for "rocket-bomber" [ED: which was Sanger's original
>proposal]),
RoBo (I like ROBO), was NOT the ORIGINAL Saenger/Bredt proposal.
ROBO was a USAF funded Bell study for a ROcket BOmber that grew out of
an earlier USAF/Bell boost-glide rocket/recon. bomber study called
BOMI (BOmber MIssile). The BOMI study underwent several reviews by
USAF and NACA, and it eventually evolved into the later USAF funded
Bell studies, called System 118P, Brass Bell, and ROBO. These very
critical Bell studies became the basis, and one of the main motivating
forces (from the USAF's standpoint), behind Dyna-Soar. There were
similarities though, between the original Bell military rocket planes
and the Saenger/Bredt concept. The Bell studies however were the first
to look at the realities of implementation of such a system. They also
helped drive further studies to promote the development of technology
for this type of system (HYWARDS, Dyna-Soar).
Many people, although knowing about Bell's X-1 and X-2 rocket
planes, have never heard of these military rocket planes studied in
the 1950s by Bell.
Also, it seems to me that Bell got screwed in the Dyna-Soar bid.
They were one of the 4 finalists (out of 9 I think). They were then
teamed with Martin for the final bid. Boeing was teamed with Vought.
They lost the final bid. Martin got the nod anyway for the Titan.
Vought and Boeing got the airframe. Bell, who was responsible for a
lot of the preliminary work that begot Dyna-Soar, got almost nothing.
Also, I understand that the final Boeing/Vought design, more resembled
the original Bell design, than their original winning design.
Just so people understand what kind of performance we are talking
about, a representative sub-orbital performance for Brass Bell (recon.
mission) was roughly 170,000 ft and Mach 16! ROBO (bomber/recon.
mission) was orbital.
Originally, these vehicles were all 2-3 stage vehicles. However,
unlike Dyna-Soar, they employed completely reuseable, manned, winged,
fly-back boosters (at least the 2-stagers did - not sure about the
intermediate stage on the 3-stagers). The stages were mounted
piggy-back, and had their own engines. I think the later Brass Bell
used a Titan booster.
Also, interestingly, on Dyna-Soar, the pilot was to have some
control, during boost phase, over the Titan as well! They were going
to develop ground based simulators and centrifuges to test the pilots
capabilities during this phase of flight, with emergencies, to see if
it was feasable.
In 1952, Kraft Ehricke, one of Von Braun's group (at ABMA), left
Von Braun for Bell to join Walter Dornberger (Von Braun's boss on the
V-2 program) on the BOMI program. At Bell, Ehricke worked on the Bell
military rocket planes for several years, before going to Convair to
work on what became Centaur.
Dornberger also tried to recruit Saenger and Bredt (Saenger's
wife) for the Bell military rocket plane projects as well. Saenger
refused the offer.
> Steven King writes:
> I'm afraid I'm going to disagree with Henry on this. DynaSoar had a
> mission; its the same mission that the Air Force currently uses aircraft
> for in the atmosphere...
Henry Spencer responds:
>And which the aircraft were, by and large, perfectly capable of doing. :-)
Mach 16 at 170,000 ft. was an EXISTING aircraft? Brass Bell was
Dyna Soar Phase II and sub-orbital. ROBO was Dyna-Soar Phase III and
orbital.
Dyna-Soar was killed by the bean-counters, and the budget. The
experts now know it was a mistake to kill it. Some experts say it set
re-entry physics back about 10 years.
Steven King writes:
> Its interesting that in some of the SDI literature, one sees a line
> drawing of a DynaSoar like vehicle atop a Titan like rocket...
Yes, the bean counters decided to replace Dyna-Soar first with the
ASSET vehicle, and then the PRIME (X-23) vehicle. Both unmanned
hypersonic lifting-body re-entry vehicles. Also the current NASA
Personnel Launch System (PLS) atop a Titan 4 looks similar to
Dyna-Soar poised for launch.
Don't believe the comments about "we don't know what we would use
a hypersonic orbital/sub-orbital system for". There were several high
ranking USAF generals at the time (Gen. Powers was one) who were quite
interested in these military rocket planes and wanted to see their
peers show a little daring in promoting the investigation and possible
development of these unconventional systems.
Also remember this was the time period of other interesting bids.
For example, the CIA/USAF funded high speed airbreathing recon.
platform that eventually gave birth to the Lockheed Mach 3+ A-12
Blackbird and the General Dynamics Mach 6 Fish/Kingfish concept. These
bids were being evaluated, we now know, in 1958-1959, by USAF-ARDC and
CIA. USAF-ARDC also supervised the Bell military rocket plane
programs. USAF-ARDC is now the USAF Systems Command I believe.
Steve King writes:
> Much of the vehicle was quite simple, even primitive by todays standards.
> There was a statement in one document to the effect that the cockpit
> enviromental control system would work better if the pilot kept his
> helmet visor closed.
> It was because of this simplicity that I was interested in the design. It
For simple ... how about the Sandia-SWERVE-like, civilian Space
Cruiser concept (Cislunar Space Corp.)?
Larry Smith
|
| Article: 141
From: [email protected] (Chris Jones)
Newsgroups: sci.space.tech
Subject: 2 reviews: _At the Edge of Space_ & _ICBM_
Date: 5 Jan 94 10:33:09 EST
Organization: Kendall Square Research Corp
Sender: [email protected]
After watching my kids write book reports during school vacation week,
I decided to join the fun. Herewith, reviews of two books I recently
checked out of the library:
_At the Edge of Space_ (subtitled "The X-15 Flight Program") by Milton O.
Thompson, forward by Neil A. Armstrong, copyright 1992, ISBN 1-56098-107-5.
Milt Thompson flew the X-15 from 1963 to 1965, and is the only pilot
so far to write a book about his experiences. He also was involved in
the Rogallo wing, lifting body, and Dyna-Soar programs, and writes
briefly about them. My capsule summary is: very good book, read it.
Thompson doesn't appear to have had a ghostwriter's help, and it
shows, but it's the story being told rather than the telling of it
which is interesting here. There are lots of anecdotes (did you know
that Joe Engle pulled an unauthorized 360 degree roll in an X-15?),
decent amounts of technical material, a flight by flight log in an
appendix, and a generous sprinkling of wry humor throughout (his
descriptions of ground test-firing of the big engine made me laugh, as
did his notes about Neil Armstrong in his "where are they now?"
section, which ended with, "He joined the NASA Astronaut Corps and
then I lost track of him.")
Speaking of Armstrong, he figures here in a couple of (to me) amusing
stories. He holds the world's record for the longest duration X-15
flight (12 minutes 29 seconds), achieved when he bounced the X-15 off
the atmosphere, sailed nearly 50 miles south of Edwards, and barely
made it back. Also, he tells of Armstrong damaging his plane while
checking out potential landing sites on a dry lakebed, then making a
landing at a nearby air force base which, due to his arresting hook
being out from scraping the lakebed earlier, tore up the emergency
arresting cable (he hit it going the wrong way), closing the runway
while the debris was cleaned up. Thompson was dispatched to pick him
up and managed to close the runway again when he blew a tire on
landing. A third NASA airplane was dispatched, which nearly overshot
the runway. "The ops officer was a nervous wreck by this time and
when Bill [Dana, the pilot of the 3rd plane] walked in later and told
him that he would take Neil home and that NASA would send another
airplane for me, he broke down. He said, 'Please don't send another
NASA airplane.' He promised that he would personally find me
transportation back to Edwards. I ended up riding back to Edwards
that night in the back end of a USAF C-47 that happened to be passing
through Nellis on the way to Los Angeles. I believe that ops officer
gave them some free gas to haul me away from Nellis."
(In case there's any question, I'll mention that I believe Thompson
respects Armstrong quite a bit, calling him technically the most
intelligent of the X-15 pilots.)
Like I said, I really enjoyed this book, and recommend it. I noticed
he called the Titan I a hypergolic fuel booster, and, somewhat
surprisingly for a book on the X-15, the F8F bearcat "the most
impressive aircraft that I have ever flown." Less than 20 pages later
he recovers and calls the X-15 "without question, the most impressive
aircraft that I have ever flown." These minor glitches, and any
others he managed to slip by me, didn't detract at all from my
enjoyment of the book.
_ICBM_ (subtitled "The Making of the Weapon That Changed the World")
by G. Harry Stine, copyright 1991, ISBN 0-517-56768-7.
Hmmm. I didn't like this book nearly as much as the other, and I
don't recommend it unless you must read everything about the subject.
What subject that is is somewhat hard to say: the book doesn't seem
that focussed. I think Stine is trying to tie together the science,
engineering, business, management, and political strands of ICBM
development, but the coverage is uneven. The first third of the book
is basically an extended introduction, covering ICBM basics and rocket
history up through the V-2. After that he covers the development of
both Soviet and US ICBMs, but I felt like he was just skimming the
surface. After spending so much time on von Braun in Germany, he
covers him more sparingly in the US. Even his descriptions of the
development of the Atlas and Titan I missiles seem hurried to me;
several times he mentions that there were many engineering problems to
be overcome without discussing any one them in enough detail to give a
feel for how the work was accomplished.
I'm surprised that the book's writing isn't better, given that Stine
has written over 40 books. I was also frustrated at the author's
prediliction to state his conclusions without evidence (like I'm doing
here) rather than presenting evidence which would allow us readers to
draw our own conclusions. All in all, I'd say this book fails to live
up to its jacket billing as "the definitive history."
All these negative comments are not to say that I found the book
worthless (or even bad), just disappointing. Good points about the
book are the amount of coverage on Soviet missile development and the
drawings and photographs.
If I were a teacher assigning grades, I'd give this book a C- (and
Thompson's an A-). (For those of you who are products of other
grading systems, A is excellent, C is average.)
--
Chris Jones [email protected]
Article: 219
From: [email protected] (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey)
Newsgroups: sci.space.tech
Subject: X-15 books (was Re: 2 reviews: _At the Edge of Space_ & _ICBM_)
Date: 7 Jan 94 20:03:28 -0600
Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Chris Jones) writes:
> _At the Edge of Space_ (subtitled "The X-15 Flight Program") by Milton O.
> Thompson, forward by Neil A. Armstrong, copyright 1992, ISBN 1-56098-107-5.
>
> Milt Thompson flew the X-15 from 1963 to 1965, and is the only pilot so far
> to write a book about his experiences.
Scott Crossfield, at least, wrote a book on his X-plane experience
which included the X-15... was it *Always Another Dawn?* There may
have been others.
--
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