Nov 262009
Two photos of the model on display at the NASM Udvar-Hazy center.
Looks like a pretty neato design, doesn’t it. So neat that you’d love to see more. Hell, you’d be willing to pay to see more. Well, today’s your lucky day! A whole mess of diagrams of this beautiful beastie are available HERE and HERE. Get ’em both at once HERE.
5 Responses to “McDonnell-Douglas Phase B Shuttle”
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I never could figure out how they intended to get the flyback booster up to speed with those godawful thick canards sticking out of the front of it.
The photo shows one cut away with some cylindrical things inside of it; any idea what those are?
> I never could figure out how they intended to get the flyback booster up to speed with those godawful thick canards sticking out of the front of it.
There are rather a lot of rocket engines in the back.
> The photo shows one cut away with some cylindrical things inside of it; any idea what those are?
Yes.
See here for details: http://up-ship.com/blog/blog/?p=4543
Oh, there are jet engines in them-there canards.
I would have stuck them in a pod on the top of the aft fuselage behind the orbiter to protect them from heat on the way back down.
Considering the number of them, it looks like they intended to ferry the fly-back booster around with empty propellant tanks between missions, which would be nice, as you could have it descend on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean and then fly back to the Cape under jet power rather than have to turn it around at high altitude and kill off all the speed it built up during ascent.
Imagine that….. An orbiter that can ferry itself around with jet engines!
http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/gg150/Blappy99/PlanetSpace/spat_dart_landing_base_02.jpg
http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/gg150/Blappy99/PlanetSpace/spat_dart_landing_base_rear_01.jpg
The orbiter can’t, the jets are on the flyback booster.
This orbiter though could be ferried around by sticking two detachable jet engines on it, as well as the two ones next to the vertical fin:
http://www.buran.ru/htm/bstend.htm