Throughout the life of the X-20 Dyna Soar project, Boeing made every effort to show how the vehicle would be useful. Several times, this meant using portions of the Dyna Soar, and sometimes the whole vehicle, as a component of yet another, larger vehicle.
One such design project was the Model 832/879 launch vehicle, which became one of the Boeing Aerospaceplane (ASP) contenders. This design married two sorta-conventional booster rockets together at the nose, with a Larry-Craigesque “wide stance” at the tail, forming a large V-shaped vehicle. By skinning over the area between the boosters, a lifting body of sorts was made, somewhat foreshadowing the later – and equally unbuilt – Lockheed-Martin Venturestar launch vehicle. Since in 1962 the idea of a complex flyback booster without a pilot seemed kinda silly, the vehicle needed a cockpit. So, what better idea than to nail a Dyna Soar onto the nose of the vehicle? The Dyna Soar provided not only a cockpit, it also provided a secure, ejectable recovery system for the pilot in the event of a disaster… and the wings of the Dyna Soar would serve as canards for the complete vehicle during re-entry, flyback and landing.
Shown below is a color three-view of the ASP design, rendered by Giuseppe De Chiara for the ASP article I wrote for Aerospace Projects Review (APR issue V2N5 can be obtained here). It’s shown with a payload of a single smallish rocket stage carrying five unmanned SAINT Satellite Interceptors.
