Aug 162011
A 1977 Johnson Spaceflight Center evaluation report on the Solar Power Satellite concept includes this optimistic outlook on the future of space launch:
A Shuttle-derived heavy-lifter with a payload of 230,000 pounds costing between fifty and a hundred bucks a pound by 1987 or so. A million-pound payload fully reusable TSTO by 1995, with a per-pound cost in the tens of dollars.
Hmmm.
Kinda missed out on those.
2 Responses to “Well *that* didn’t happen…”
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I’m trying to figure out what the booster in the middle example is. Maybe it’s just a funky placeholder, and not really indicative of anything. It “kind of” looks like a nexus first stage to me, but too tall.
One of the concepts studied during the SPS days was a reusable booster to replace the SRBs of the shuttle. It would go under the ET and was, IIRC, pressure-fed propane fueled. Designed for minimum cost and complexity, it was a cone much as shown here. The primary use was for personnel transport; the Shuttle bay would have a passenger module in the cargo bay. Cargo for the SPS program would go up on the *big* boosters. It would be an obvious extension to replace the Shuttle with a Shuttle-C for non-SPS cargo launches.