Hypersonic and LEO Spaceplane in the 70's

[Archibald]

Lots of concepts have been proposed for hypersonic or orbital spaceplanes, but none ever work because they always need complicated engines beyond current state of the art.

Unless you use some tricks...

First, give up orbital speed or mach 25; have an expendable upper stage (such as Centaur for example).

Two, use existing engines which already works, I mean turbojets and rockets.
No rajmets or scramjet or rocket/ turbin based-combined-cycle, nor liquefaction such as HOTOL. Way beyond state of the art....

Third, have a trick : introduce flight refueling for your spaceplane. The aim is not to transfert fuel (which btw is kerosene for both rocket and turbojet of your spaceplane) rather the oxidizer.

By doing that take-off is much easier (because rocket-engine oxidiser tend to be very heavy...)


The result is the Black Colt
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/blakcolt.htm

...or its enlarged variant, the Rocketplane Pathfinder.
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/patinder.htm
Two tons in LEO is quite a good result.

Alas the drawback is, you need to transfer LOX, which temperature is -200°C.

Maybe USAF could solve this problem with a reasonable amount of dollars...

Another interesting oxidizer is H2O2 or hydrogen peroxide. Guess what rocket used it in history ? the british Black Arrow!
Its Gamma-8 rocket gave 23 tons of thrust.
Now imagine instead of HOTOL a spaceplane with an enlarged Gamma, and two Olympus-593.
It take off just like a Concorde, then rendez vous with a tanker for transfer of H2O2.

(the tanker in itself would be something interesting to imagine : VC-10, KC-10, Victor K.4, KC-135, Airbus A300...)

Then it accelerate to mach 15 before opening its bay and releasing an HM-7 upper stage which carry the satellite in LEO.

But you can use this machine in other roles, such as ultra-fast bomber (ever heard of Prompt Global Strike?) or ultra-fast airliner...

All technologies needed to build that thing exist since, says, the late 60's.
Imagine building that instead of the Shuttle, Concorde, or Hotol...

[Archibald]

If only Saenger had lived longer (he died in 1964 at 59 years old only when European rocketry was still in infancy).

Great Britain really had all the elements needed to build a Pathfinder-like spaceplane in the early 70's

- Olympus 593
- H2O2 / Kerosene engine (the one in Black Arrow)
- In-flight refuelling experience
- experience in building big aircrafts (Vulcan, Concorde).

Imagine a ticket with Germany, which would bring ingeniers such as
- Saenger
- Von Braun,
- Lutz Kayser (father of the OTRAG ultra-cheap rocket)
- Klauss Heiss
(a strong advocate of private spaceflight, he studied the economics pro and cons of the Shuttle for NASA in 1971 and later atempted to bought one via Spacetran in 1983)

Great Britain would continue its space program after 1971, replacing the Black Arrow by a rocket air-launched from a Vulcan itself boosted to 70 000 ft by a Scorpion rocket motor.

[simmie]

The Black Arrow launch vehicle had had the posibility of an upgrade offered.  The possibilty of using the small chamber from the twin chambered Stentor rocket motor, as used in Blue Steel.

[Archibald]

The Stentor is an excellent idea. From what I've understand
- the Blue Steel Stentor had two chambers, a small for cruise and a big for target boost
- the small gave 6000 Ibs, the big 24 000 Ibs.

Seems the Gamma 8 of the Black Arrow had 8 small chambers clustered. H.S proposed to use four bigs, but funds had dried out so the Gamma 8 won.

A cluster of four big chambers would have given 100 000 Ibs of thrust, 8 would have given 200 000 Ibs... that the power I need for my rocketplane.

Btw here's the Pathfinder

[Archibald]

There had been lots of european two-stage-to-orbit studies in the 60's (among them my favorite, the BAC Mustard )
Had ESA or ELDO taken seriously the building of a winged-rocketplane, maybe they could have make a phased program.
the aim is to find the best combo between rocket and jet engines.

First step :
An Avro Vulcan launch the Black Arrow. Not too difficult to build, and you have all the elements of your future spaceplane (kerosene, olympus turbojets, rocket, and so on). The Vulcan climb at 65 000 ft and release the Black Arrow (eventually boosted by a rocket engine).  Then it is refueled by a Victor on the way back, sio you introduce in-flight refueling!

Second step
A Pathfinder-like spaceplane using Vulcan / Concorde / Black Arrow/ Ariane hardware. 
The machine take is H2O2 oxidiser from a dedicated tanker, for example a converted A300. 

Third step
HOTOL. Replace the H202 / tanker combo by in-flight oxygen liquefaction when technology is available (hmmm, still not yet!)

[Lawman]

I would go for a dedicated launch aircraft - it may sound more expensive than adapting an existing design, but in reality, it probably would be cheaper. I would be sorely tempted to go for something similar to the Myasishchev M-55, with a piggyback load, probably something along the lines of a Hermes shuttle, plus booster. The launch platform would aim to go up to about 60-80,000ft, and then separate, allowing the entire rocket and shuttle assembly to boost to orbit in the much thinner air. The total payload (i.e. the entire shuttle) to be boosted is probably 20-30,000kg, so not entirely sure how big the booster needs to be, but a lot smaller than for a single state to orbit...

[Lawman]

Don't shoot me for saying this, but:

Another option might be to go for a Hermes shuttle launched on the side of the Saturn II, especially after NASA moved towards the shuttle. The US approves the sale of Saturn IIs, as long as the components are built partly in the US. The Hermes shuttle would be built in France and the UK jointly, and launched from Woomera. The Saturn would be strictly an interim choice, pending the availability of a European built alternative. This would emerge in the form of a sort of Arianne V type, which would use SRBs to carry the heavy manned payloads, and it would be available with no SRBs for lighter payloads. The idea is to have a family of European launchers, but big enough to carry manned loads; as with Saturn, there could be different combinations of stages and SRBs.

It would, of course, also give the Europeans a true manned capability, and more reliably than the American Shuttle program, and notably with a lot lower costs.

[Archibald]

I won't shoot anybody, there's many different ways of building spaceplanes or reusable space vehicles.

Saturn II was something bizarre, the J-2s didn't worked very well at ground level so they couldn't lift the vehicle! They had to boost it with Minuteman solids 

[Lawman]

Hmm, well, Saturn IB was the other option, and it just wasn't quite up to it. To lift something in the Hermes class, we really need at least a 20,000kg to LEO capability, preferably more like 25-30,000kg. An interim borrowing of Saturns would make sense, and give the British and French rocket engine designers experience with using the high thrust engines (Europa looked like a toy rocket in comparison to the huge Saturns).


Heck, if the project were good enough, it might have been possible for the US to abandon the Shuttle we all know and love, in favour of continuing to build Saturns and using a European built shuttle (much smaller, and without the engines or cargo bay). There would then be a cargo module designed for the Saturn, which would then meet up with the Shuttle, allowing it to repair satellites, albeit without the ability to easily return with large internal payloads. If we just go with a slightly larger Hermes, then it allows for an openable cargo bay, though much smaller than that of the NASA shuttle. The extra weight allowance would allow it to keep the six man crew, and have the cargo bay - it could also be possible to have an unmanned cargo version.

The shuttle is proposed in 1975, and the British come on board almost immediately, as it is seen as a way to give Europe a bigger stake in the space industry. The prototype is ready by 1978, having been given a high priority status, and also to prevent the demise of the Saturn production lines. The test flights occur in 1980, and prove highly successful, and in light of cost overruns in the American shuttle program, it is decided to switch to a joint Hermes program, which offers much lower unit costs. It is decided that the new Saturn-Hermes combo will launch from the US, and have three of the six seats occupied by Americans, plus one French astronaut and one British astronaut, and a payload specialist depending on the mission type. The Hermes shell is built in France, fitted out in the UK, and then flown accross the Atlantic, and attached to an American Saturn rocket. The USAF might even choose to get involved by the backdoor, perhaps 'buying' their way to get one or two seats (i.e. 2 NASA, 2 USAF, 1 French and 1 British crewmembers), or even just buy entire flights (i.e. get all six seats, by paying for both the Saturn and the Hermes as needed). The extra seat would also be a good option for other European nations, notably Italy, allowing them to buy into the project on a per-flight basis, not needing to agree to pay development costs or guarantee a number of flights.

It is also worth noting that without the NASA shuttle's main tank and SRBs, there would be a much lower risk of either catastrophic failure of the boosters (Challenger) or damage to the craft itself (Columbia). Also, keeping Saturn in production would mean that development costs are already paid for, so the launches should be reasonably affordable; it would also allow for a much easier launch of a space station, i.e. Unity. Unity could have been built in the '80s, possibly even just being built in the same way as Skylab, but with more modules. It would resemble Mir more closely than the ISS, but would have been able to serve for a good number of years, before being replaced with the ISS. Similarly, it would make buying Soyuz and Progress launches unnecessary - by not funding these, Mir would probably have been de-orbited in the early '90s due to lack of funding.

[Archibald]

Bringing this back to life, because since then I've made a stunning discovery.

I liked the Black Horse / Black Colt lineage of space planes. In-flight refueling is a walk in the park when compared to, say, Skylon. Or a scramjet.
The little thing I did not liked was the machine didn't went into orbit (Black Colt) or, if it went (Black Horse) it was only with a small payload and all the issues with SSTO.

Now Burnside Clapp suggested another alternative - suborbital refueling ! A second Black Colt would fly in formation with the first and transfer propellant. Out of the atmosphere, there's no longer any supersonic or hypersonic turbulence, shock wave, heating...  no obstacle to another in-flight refueling.
Bonus: the second refueling, so high and fast (mach 15, 100 km) makes the payload to orbit just skyrocket, twelve time more !

The way I see it: a modified 747-8 could transfer 260 tons of H2O2 to a pair of Black Colt - 130 tons each.
Then the two Black Colt fly into a suborbital trajectory, where one refuel the other, which goes into orbit.

And there you are - a workable SSTO without the complications of Skylon, X-30, or Space Clipper.

Incidentally, in-flight refueling has existed since 1950 (or even before) and from 1959 they had the X-15s to test suborbital refueling.
Imagine if the "double refueling" had been applied to the shuttle, in 1968... the history of space flight could have changed forever.

[PR19_Kit]

Incidentally, in-flight refueling has existed since 1950 (or even before) and from 1959 they had the X-15s to test suborbital refueling.
Imagine if the "double refueling" had been applied to the shuttle, in 1968... the history of space flight could have changed forever.

Actually it was more like the 1920s, and by the late 30s it had been developed so much that Imperial Airways used IFR to cross the Atlantic westbound with their Shorts Empire Class 'boats.

[Mossie]

Good to see you again Archie!

On similar lines, there were the BAC Mustard and Convair T-18.  The idea was to strap several near identical spaceplanes together at launch, with the others acting as manned boosters.  Fuel was transfered to the orbital vehicle from the boosters which separated when the fuel was expended and then piloted back to earth.

Similar concept in that the main vehicle is being refueled, just the vehicles are launched together rather than separately.  Then you've got the pros and cons of suborbital hook-up versus separation of the boosters.

Another idea, rather than launching another spaceplane to rendezvous, how about lofting fuel tanks into orbit to be hooked up with at a later date?  For instance, if you have a low payload mission, take an extra tank with you and pop it into LEO on the way.  Getting enough up there might be a problem without it just becoming another expense.