Throughout the life of the X-20 Dyna Soar project, Boeing made every effort to show how the vehicle would be useful. Several times, this meant using portions of the Dyna Soar, and sometimes the whole vehicle, as a component of yet another, larger vehicle.
One such design project was the Model 832/879 launch vehicle, which became one of the Boeing Aerospaceplane (ASP) contenders. This design married two sorta-conventional booster rockets together at the nose, with a Larry-Craigesque “wide stance” at the tail, forming a large V-shaped vehicle. By skinning over the area between the boosters, a lifting body of sorts was made, somewhat foreshadowing the later – and equally unbuilt – Lockheed-Martin Venturestar launch vehicle. Since in 1962 the idea of a complex flyback booster without a pilot seemed kinda silly, the vehicle needed a cockpit. So, what better idea than to nail a Dyna Soar onto the nose of the vehicle? The Dyna Soar provided not only a cockpit, it also provided a secure, ejectable recovery system for the pilot in the event of a disaster… and the wings of the Dyna Soar would serve as canards for the complete vehicle during re-entry, flyback and landing.
Shown below is a color three-view of the ASP design, rendered by Giuseppe De Chiara for the ASP article I wrote for Aerospace Projects Review (APR issue V2N5 can be obtained here). It’s shown with a payload of a single smallish rocket stage carrying five unmanned SAINT Satellite Interceptors.
9 Responses to “Not Your Average Dyna Soar”
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I’ll say this for you – we disagree politically, but you can dig up the the most exotic things I’ve ever seen. 🙂
God, you’re like one of those carefully trained French pigs that can sniff out
$100,000 worth of truffles in a year, even though they might be ten feet underground.
Now, I’m not comparing you to a French pig by any means, but if you were to be compared to a pig of some sort, it would be some sort of near-magical speaking pig like “Babe”…or Orwell’s “Old Major”, that sets a revolution in motion.
Okay, that was kinda rough.. but I was having a ball writing it, and by my concept of “The Egocentric Universe”, to replace the Ptolemaic and Copernican universe*, my having fun is very important to the general order of things as they should be. 😀
*Ptolemaic Universe – everything revolves around the Earth.
Copernican Universe – everything revolves around the Sun.
Egocentric Universe – everything revolves around me.
You’re coming into it late, Pat. Every woman lives in an Egocentric Universe of her own making.
Well done Michael.
Wow, I’ll bet that would’a been quite some ride! (I “do” a lot of aerospace companies and have added the pic as one of my “occasional” desktop backgrounds.)
Thanks!
Is this thing aerodynamically sound? The span of the “canard” looks damn odd and unlike that of every other canarded a/c I know to have flown. Mighty wide wingspan too. Scott, would you ride one of the goddamn things?
That design looks much easier to build than the multi-lobe tank of the venture star design. I see 2 axially symmetric tank structures on either side of a joining structure. Something filament winding could handle well, though given the date of the design I expect a metallic structure. Looks like each tank is a chain of cone and cylinder segments that could be fabricated by rolling flat sheets. Each tank+engine cluster looks like a viable launcher stage by itself.
The big wings at the aft end would be needed to balance the engines.
If a similar design were to be built today I’d be tempted to have strap on boosters dorsal and ventral of an orbital lifting body.
I’m tempted to do a flyable model rocket based on this.
When empty and devoid of payload, it could probably fly well enough. The Dyna Soar was a dense little nugget of aircraft, being made out of nickel and molybdenum and whatnot; this would have helped pull the CG forward of what it would have been otherwise.
And yes, I would’ve flown one of these. Not the first one, mind you.
But what I *really* would have wanted to fly was the Boeing 922, a Saturn V first stage with wings, jet engines and a Dyna Soar cockpit nailed to the leading edge of the left wing. For some reason, that seems like it would have been a more impressive sight than if the cockpit was up front. The sight of the giant S-IC right next to you as you come falling back down from the edge of space… neato!
And why yes, you can read more about *that* in APR issue V1N2, with buckets of illustrations:
http://www.up-ship.com/blog/eAPR/ev1n2.htm
> I’m tempted to do a flyable model rocket based on this.
Keep in mind, APR V2N5 has better-rez drawings of this and other designs…