A continuation:
Note that the cockpit of this little spaceplane was designed to be ejected in the event of an emergency. At this stage in the Dyna Soar program, the vehicle had lost its role as a bomber, and had been reduced to an R&D vehicle, thus the “cargo bay” stuffed full of equipment. Boeing’s final Dyna Soar design also had the instrument-filled cargo bay, but they fully expected to be able to ditch the instruments (which were mostly to measure and record pressure and temperature data all around the vehicle during re-entry) once the testing phase was over, and then proceed to fill the bay with useful payload, everything from anti-satellite hardware to passengers going to space stations.
The turbojet would very quickly be abandoned as weight climbed.
3 Responses to “1959 Martin-Bell Dyna Soar Inboard Profile”
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Huh, it’s got a escape capsule on it like the Soviet Spiral spaceplane.
I wonder if that was capable of shielding the pilot during a reentry from space like Spiral’s could:
http://www.buran.ru/htm/spiral_5.htm#strike
(The big cutaway takes some time to load, but it’s very interesting.)
The early renderings you posted of this made it look as though there was no forward view for the pilot, but this shows that there was a window in the nose. Was this a late addition? I wonder what material they had planned for that.
[…] of four photos. Same Martin Dyna Soar design as shown previously. Note that the mockup appears to be made of cardboard… cheesy, but perfectly adequate for […]