Sep 052011
ATK artwork showing the Boeing/ATK “AirLaunch” concept from a few years back. Started around 1999, petered out a few years later. It called for a winged solid rocket booster similar in outlines to the OSC Pegasus, but larger and carried on the back of a 747. Upon release, the 747 would be obliged to dive out of the way, lest the rather dense booster bonk back into it. As shown below it is equipped with a Space Maneuver Vehicle for payload… a slightly earlier iteration of the X-37 spaceplane. The first two stages would have been Castor 120’s (Peacekeeper first stages, also the Athena booster), while the third would be a new design. Total payload was to have been about 7,500 pounds.
6 Responses to “Boeing/ATK AirLaunch”
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That’s a neat concept, I’m looking for the Transport Wings 1/72 747 kit, they are OOP right now, and if I can get one I’ll be able to use the same Pegasus booster that I’m working on for the 1/72 NB-52/X-43A stack.
> I’ll be able to use the same Pegasus booster that I’m working on for the 1/72 NB-52/X-43A stack.
Ummm… not for *this* design. It’s rather bigger than Pegasus. The wing is, IIRC, quite a bit bigger, for the obvious reason that it had to produce a lot of lift to keep it from dropping faster than the 747 could dive away.
Yea, I thought it looked bigger
I attended the launches of all the X-43A’s at Dryden. When the stack was released it droped real fast, it’d be impressive to see a 747 get out of the way.
If the booster design is just a scaled up Pegasus I might get lucky and be able to use the 1/72 model with a 1/100 or 1/144 747
> If the booster design is just a scaled up Pegasus
Nope. It looks a whole lot like the Pegasus… the body is a simple cylinder and the delta wing is, IIRC, very much like the Pegasus wing, but the tail is *entirely* different. It’s a pretty simple configuration, and would likely be easier to build from scratch than try to modify from a Pegasus.