While this almost looks like the final Space Shuttle system, the boosters here are pressure fed liquid rockets rather than solids. Note that the boosters required a very wide base… the lower density propellants require larger cross-section engines for the same thrust levels.
The baseline Shuttle/External Tank atop a simple pressure-fed ballistically recoverable booster. Obviously very similar to THIS.
An “F-1 Glideback” booster… basically a winged Saturn V S-Ic first stage. Every major American aerospace corporation studied variants of this basic idea. Most used delta wings and a single vertical stabilizer, but a wide range of configurations was put forward. This particular design does not seem to have turbojet engines, which would make it very difficult for the booster to make it back to the launch site.
More on F-1 Flyback boosters can be found in issue V1N2 of Aerospace Project Review.
NASA Shuts Doors, Pulls Plug on Shuttle Discovery
NASA powered down the space shuttle Discovery for a final time Friday (Dec. 16), more than 28 years after the agency’s retired fleet leader first came alive. The vehicle was “unplugged” inside Orbiter Processing Facility-1 (OPF-1) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Awww.
I has a sad.
Hopefully the February launch of a SpaceX Dragon to the ISS will make things a little less hopeless-looking.
A North American Rockwell concept from early 1971 for a Space Shuttle using a cluster of five seven-segment 120-inch solid rocket motors for the first stage. Payload was 45,000 pounds; gross liftoff weight was 4,675,000 pounds.
An informational poster from Rockwell International showing the configuration of the Space Shuttle dating from, I believe, February 1983. Provides geometric data as well as coloration, mission profile and subcontractor data.
You can download a 9 megabyte ZIP file with 300 DPI scans of both front and back of this poster. The 1/200 scale drawings are particularly nice. The link to the high-rez is HERE.
Three basic liquid boosters for the Shuttle… a flyback booster based on the Saturn V first stage, a simple but heavy pressure-fed recoverable ballistic “lobber,” and ballistically recovered pressure-fed “strap on” boosters.
The “Lego” approach…
There has been repeated flirtation with the idea of using a common airframe as both orbiter and booster. Generally, though, it really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, since the requirements and environments are so different.
An interesting inversion of the final STS stack layout.
