Photos circa 1963-1964 show a full-scale NASA-Langley mockup of the forward nose section of the HL-10 lifting body shape. Incorporated into this was a framework showing a potential canopy configuration. This would clearly have been for a low-speed (non-orbital) test version, much like the HL-10 that was actually built.
Early to mid 1970’s NASA Langley photos of a hypersonic research aircraft configuration in a hypersonic wind tunnel, demonstrating the shock waves that would be generated at high speed.
This particular configuration was studied at some length. And while I seriously doubt that it led to an actual “Aurora,” I have little doubt that it inspire many in the journalistic and “conspiracy” communities, and became one of the stereotypical configurations depicted as “Aurora.”
A mid-1970’s graphic from the collection of a former NASA-Langley engineer shows the development schedule for “HTDA.” This I think stands for “Hypersonic Technology Development Aircraft,” and was to be a Mach 5+ airbreathing lifting body research plane that looks strikingly like the supposed “Aurora spyplane” that was so popular in the 1990’s. HTDA airframes 1 and 2 were most likely pure rocket vehicles, with a scramjet being integrated onto airframe 3.
… as seen from 1970. Note that while a good fraction of the non-manned-space stuff came to be, the decades after 1970 were a whole lot less full of new stuff than the decade prior to 1970.
Before watching the video, know this: a number of people are killed, dying in flames. When that happens, a bunch of the people who just killed the first group all start shouting the same thing. Can you guess what they shout? I bet you can. Anyone who has been awake and aware the past decade or so should by now have come to associate the two-word phrase repeated over and over in this video with the celebration of violent death.
[youtube v3bdOoZn8x4]
Dunno who here’s the bad guy, dunno if there’s a good guy. What I do know is that everyone keeps saying the same thing. Everyone over there seems to have the same appallingly joyful attitude towards murdering their fellow man, to the extent that they celebrate such things the *same* *way* *every* *time.*
(It’s possible this was done as a joke, but who can tell these days…)
Shuttle Endeavor being hauled through LA. While an impressive feat in its way, in essence it is dragging one of the fastest vehicles ever flown by man through streets at two miles per hour on its way to its grave.
[youtube XIRfTAq21ek]
A 1974 design by Teledyne Ryan for a stealthy remotely piloted vehicle While the general shape is certainly well within the norm for stealthy craft, the structure itself is quite different: it is basically a metal vehicle optimized for stealth, wrapped in a radar-transparent plastic skin optimized for aerodynamics. The only aspect of it that really seems to fail modern stealthy practices is the apparent straight shot in to the turbine face. From the Jay Miller collection.
The technology behind this was patented by Teledyne Ryan:
CORRECTION: This was originally posted as a TRW design, when in fact it was a Teledyne Ryan design. D’oh.
A very early X-15 configuration being tested in a supersonic wind tunnel at various angles of attack and yaw, Mach 6.86.
A 1959 Boeing concept for an airbreathing HTOL booster for Dyna Soar. Compared to the other pure-rocket VTO boosters, this would have been a monster… far bigger, far heavier, far, far more expensive. Which almost certainly explains why not only did such a booster not get serious study further down the line for Dyna Soar, it didn’t even rate detailed diagrams in the reports.
Staging would have been an interesting show.
NOTE: The isometric artwork for baseline concepts 4-7? Not available, sadly.