Lockheed Space Tug, 1960

 drawings, projects, rockets, spacecraft
Jun 182011
 

Needed to help build the numerous artificial gravity space stations that would soon bne orbiting the Earth…

 Posted by at 9:27 pm

  4 Responses to “Lockheed Space Tug, 1960”

  1. Pat Flannery says:
    June 19, 2011 at 1:28 am

    It’s even got a zero-gravity toilet, like all the best spacecraft do.
    Airlocks seem pretty cramped though, particularly if you wanted to take large tools outside with you.

  2. Robin says:
    June 19, 2011 at 1:49 am

    >It’s even got a zero-gravity toilet,….

    Yeah, but do they *have* to show it in use ??…….

  3. Pat Flannery says:
    June 19, 2011 at 5:02 pm

    I found a painting of what the space station the tug is shown building was supposed to look like:
    http://www.astronautix.com/craft/location.htm
    It looks too small in diameter to be spun for artificial gravity, and is interesting because it obviously has a nuclear reactor at one end of it for power.
    Crew would be taken to and from the station by the Lockheed “Astrocommuter” shuttle:
    http://www.astronautix.com/craft/astmuter.htm
    All elements – station parts, tug, and shuttle, were to be launched using Saturn 1B’s.
    There seems to be some disagreement about whether this concept dates from 1960 or 1963.

  4. Pat Flannery says:
    June 19, 2011 at 11:35 pm

    The “Infrared Illuminator” on the Space Tug is an odd touch; that’s normally only used for military purposes where you don’t want something that’s being illuminated and viewed with an IR vision device to know what’s going on*, otherwise optical wavelength floodlights will work just fine…did Lockheed have some military uses for this design in mind also?

    * The Soviets loved these things, sticking them on all their tanks and APCs from the 1950’s through the 1970’s.

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