OK ya cheap mooches, here’s a great big diagram of the Space Shuttle as NAR saw it in 1971. Click on the pic to embiggen.
Note the four J-2 rocket engines rather than three SSME’s. Also note the airlock in the nose ahead of the cockpit and the RCS pods at the tips of the wings and the vertical tail.
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UPDATE: here’s a slighty larger black & white version of the above drawing.
4 Responses to “North American Rockwell Space Shuttle, 1971”
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_Four_ main engines on the original version?
I’d forgotten that detail.
Does the retrorocket on the nose of the ET mean they were going to carry it all the way into orbit?
As memory serves, that was juat to make sure it came down where it was supposed to.
…That’s all it was for. ISTR Henry mentioning something about this quite a number of years back on .shuttle.
[…] to the North American Aviation shuttle of 1971, here’s the McDonnell-Douglas Phase B “alternate approach” Orbiter layout. Note […]