Nov 042011
With the booster attached to the aft end of the external tank, it would be theoretically easy to switch boosters. Start with a simple large solid rocket motor, go to a manned flyback booster when it becomes available.
6 Responses to “1971 McDonnell Douglas Shuttle Concepts”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Were there ever any plans for a hypergolic filled External Tank of smaller size coupled with solid boosters? I remember seeing the very wide horizontal orbiter offered by Fantastic Plastic. With hypergolics, one would expect a more compact TSTO system (Martin Astrorocket IIRC) but an External Tank filled with hypergolics looks to be even simpler than TSTO, with truly disposible tankage that don’t need to by rated for cryogenics–Super Hustler style…
The closest I can recall are designs that used the Titan IIIL as the booster. I don’t recall any shuttle designs that used anything but hydrogen for the orbiter.
The second configuration is called the “Reusable Heat Sink Booster” design. Where does a heat sink enter into the picture? Does it have anything to do with the squarish protrusions at the top of the booster, or are they just odd-shaped canards?
> Where does a heat sink enter into the picture?
The skin. Instead of advanced, lightweight, expensive and fragile heat resistant ceramic or refractory metal tiles, simply clad the hot parts of the vehicle with thick aluminum skins (up to an inch or so thick). Weighs a lot, but it’s simple and cheap. Theoretically works great for things like first stage boosters that separate around mach 5-7… the aerothermal heating involved in decellerating from that speed down to subsonic can be absorbed by the aluminum skin without heating the skin overmuch.
> are they just odd-shaped canards?
Canards containing banks of turbofan engines for flyback.
Canards containing banks of turbofan engines for flyback.
I thought the cross section of he canard looked rather thick! I keep forgetting that (1) these things are big, and (2) the flyback boosters were designed to have human pilots.
Aluminum skin heat sink heat shields for a first stage… reminds me of recent SpaceX work for a reusable Falcon9 first stage.