The sum total of my knowledge on this craft comes from this single illustration, found in the Boeing Historical Archives. It’s a 1965 drawing of a rocket/scramjet vehicle that made use of a few X-15 bits and pieces. Clearly it was designed to test high-speed airbreathing systems in a stepwise fashion… get to high speed on rocket power initially, with the scramjet engine either removed or faired over, and only later fire up the scramjet. To get up to speed, the rocket would use propellants that would be stored in tanks that served as fairings for the inlets. Presumably this vehicle would be carried to altitude by another aircraft. It looks big for B-52 carriage, but that was probably the intent.
The inlets appear to be “inward turning” style inlets, recently made popular in the “Falcon” program. The liquid hydrogen tanks appear to be pretty small, so it clearly was not designed to test long duration cruise of the scramjet.
Once again, I’m offering valuable and priceless rewards: $40 in APR and/or Drawings & Documents downloads for whoever can provide source material that gives a definitive ID on this, along with dimensions and, preferably, more illustrations.
7 Responses to “Little known North American Aviation hypersonic design”
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I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a B&W illustration of that thing in flight.
I’ll se if I can figure out where.
I’m pretty sure this is the one…
http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/gg150/Blappy99/misc/x15scram1.jpg
Looking at the two side by side I see several differences. They do have a lot of similarities too.
Nope, not the same critter by a long shot.
Color art has downward wingtips (that may be folding tips). Drawing has bigger upward tips.
Color art has a central vertical tail; drawing does not.
Color art shows “rectangular” scramjet and inlets; drawing appears to show inward-turned “round” inlets and engines
Color art does not seem to have a main rocket engine
Color art has projecting cockpit canopy; drawing has a fully submerged cockpit
Color art *seems* smaller than drawing.
That was indeed the drawing; I just ran across it while cleaning out the swamp that was my saved picture files. I had it saved in a B&W version.
It looks like a earlier version of this concept though.
You can see the germ of the NASP design in these things, can’t you?
The drawing doesn’t explain how the pilot is supposed to see out of this thing to land it.
I assume he’s supposed to use a periscope or TV cameras.
Well I was hoping it was part of the HYTID project. I have an original inhouse painting of the NB-52 launching the X-15A-2. It has an overlay that covers the X-15 with a delta winged vehicle with a tail # 76095 which would mean a 1976 date i thought. i have an illustration of the HYTID by itself from Google, but the overlay is in my storage.
JP
I’m selling it when I find the overlay
There’s a poor copy of the HYTID artwork on the Secret Project Forum, here:
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,5460.0/highlight,hytid.html
Check it out.