The Unwanted Blog

The Dyna Soar is often described as a single-seat spaceplane, and that’s true to an extent… the X-20 research vehicle seated one, and had a sizable instrument bay packed with recorders hooked up to a multitude of sensors scattered around the vehicle. However, Boeing always assumed that once the Dyna Soar had proved itself and the research phase was over, all that instrumentations would be removed. The result would be a substantial payload bay. The bay was sized to carry any number of things… small satellites, anti-satellite weapons systems and passengers. It had room for four passengers in space suits; they would be fairly tightly packed, but unlike a Gemini or Apollo capsule or the Space Shuttle orbiter, the passengers would not have to stay in their vehicle for very long. As a passenger carrier, the Dyna Soars role would be to simply haul people to and from space stations.

The photos below are of a display model at the Boeing historical archives. Not only was the model made, but so was a full-scale mockup; an astronaut wearing the Dyna Soar space suit tried it out and found that it was perfectly servicable. The Dyna Soar would attach to the space stations airlock by way of a docking tube leading from the rear boattail through the adapter. In one concept, the boattail itself would be emptied out and yet another seat installed, increasing total crew capacity to six.