Oct 022009
An in-house NASA (probably Langley) concept for a Shuttle carrier aircraft. It looks fairly reasonable until you examine the central turbofan engine… and notice that its exhaust is directed squarely at the Orbiter’s vertical tail. Ummm….
4 Responses to “Shuttling the Shuttle: low-tech option”
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It’s amazing how often that WW II Daimler-Benz carrier aircraft’s basic layout and conceot kept resurfacing in later years:
http://www.luft46.com/db/dbbomba.html
http://www.luft46.com/db/dbbombb.html
I suspect that the blast of a hi-by-pass ratio turbofan wouldn’t do much against something designed to survive multiple reentries.
> wouldn’t do much against something designed to survive multiple reentries.
I disagree. The vertical tail is largely shadowed during the worst of re-entry, and only experiences supersonic flows for a few minutes. A ferry flight would presumably leave it in the exhaust of the turbofan for *hours* (unless the turbofan was only used for takeoff, which seem unlikely). Additionally, the exhaust would obviously be warm (or even truly hot, depending on mixing), plus fairly turbulent. Not to mention *noisy.* None of these would bode well for a surface covered with fragile tiles.
If they had built this, they might well have had some sort of removable cover that would go over the vertical fin on the orbiter, and shielded it during transport flights.
The streamlined boattail on the orbiter is sure large enough in this design.