Parts of the United States military have wanted very fast troop transport for a very, very long time. And it doesn’t get any faster than sticking soldiers or Marines into a rocket-powered vehicle and launching them ballistically from here to there. Somewhere around here I have a sketch drawn by von Braun during the war showing how many people he could pack into the nose of a V-2 (answer: 3). And in the late 1950’s, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency gave serious consideration to lobbing soldiers via Redstone and even Saturn rockets:
Every few years the idea crops up again, only to fade away as the technology and expense just don’t match the dream. But every time the idea comes up, the technology has advanced. And it has come up again, and just maybe, this time there’s a shot. From Flightglobal.com:
Pentagon seeks military role for space tourism technology
The National Security Space Office (NSSO) has invited companies such as Armadillo Aerospace, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and Xcor to a conference from 24-26 February in San Antonio, Texas to discuss how suborbital technology could be applied to military needs.
The conference follows the release of an official request for information for a new programme called the “rapid delivery of military capabilities via space”. The document seeks information from commercial firms about new technologies that could loft a 200kg (440lb) payload above 92km (57 miles) altitude to ranges up to 9,250km (5,000nm).
Compared to earlier studies, 440 lbs sent 5,000 miles is pretty small. However, it’s a good starting point for something like this:
The XCOR “Lynx,” a two-man suborbital “tourism” craft. While the Lynx in and of itself is much too small for this new transport role, where the Lynx would be useful is as a demonstrator: XCOR is not working on squeezing out every last smidgen of performance out of its rocket engines, but instead on making them reliable and cheap. And that is what would make rocket transport more likely to occur. Not bleeding edge fancy blingtech. Using rockets to throw troops hither and yon would certainly require that advanced be made in rocket transport… but advances that include such novel concepts as utility, maintainability and ruggedness. Fragile expensive unreliable eggshells need not apply. And the end result, if made to work, would open the door for cheap commercial rocket transport, cheap suborbital tourism, and relatively cheap orbital flight.
5 Responses to “Express elevator to hell – going down”
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There’s SUSTAIN/Hot Eagle scuttlebutt going on in regard to Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo at the moment: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/24/i_wanna_be_a_spaceborne_ranger/
The dropping of troops in reentry pods sounds freakishly like Starship Troopers.
From your link: “Virgin SpaceShip2 podule jetwing paratroops on cards?”
Ummm… *what?* That’s some damned fine journalismizationing, Lou.
hell, they have to build the UD4L Cheyenne ! (from “Aliens”)
put a Solid booster under the Dropship and launch it !
I’m still trying to make heads or tails of what the purpose is of building a system that only carries 440 pounds of cargo.
Unless you are going to airdrop in a nuclear weapon for the troops to use, that’s the most exotic way to deliver MRE’s that anyone has ever thought of. 🙂
A few ideas:
1) Just a technology demonstrator. If you can do it with 440 pounds, scaling up to 4400 shouldn’t be that hard.
2) 440 pounds could be a box of ammo for a besieged platoon
3) 440 pounds could be one well-equipped psychotic Marine with a parachute.