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Europe in space (2)
ESRO / ELDO and NASA future plans.
“…Representatives of ELDO and several European aerospace companies visited Nasa's Marshall Space Flight Centre last week for a two-day conference on the proposed space tug project.
Preliminary design studies have been carried out for ELDO by European space consortia, and the results of these were presented at the meeting, which was held primarily to discuss the technical aspects.
The tug, a vehicle intended to operate purely in space as a general workhorse and possibly as a trans-lunar shuttle, is receiving most attention in Europe as a possible contribution to America's future space transport system.
European companies are advocating development of a chemically propelled unmanned tug which could be used to carry into higher orbits satellites launched by the shuttle… One alternative for providing an interim space tug capability is to use one or more of the existing launch vehicle upper stages in an expendable mode.
This approach has been the subject of a detailed investigation over the past three years at the Lewis Research Center (LeRC).
The activity included two contracted studies to establish the feasibility of the existing upper stage alternative, six additional contracted studies by the manufacturers of the Burner II, Scout, Delta, Agena, Transtage and Centaur stages to define in detail the modifications required for Shuttle compatibility, and a comprehensive in-house evaluation.
The baseline upper stages considered in this study are versions of existing propulsive stages modified only as required to make them space tugs. Those configurations considered as baseline stages are: Agena Burner II Scout (Castor II/X259) Centaur Delta Transtage Agena..
The Agena uses a single Bell Model 8096 engine capable of multiple restarts.. Centaur. - The Centaur D-1S is the largest of the baseline stages studied, and offers the highest performance. The Centaur D-1S is a modification of the present Centaur D-IT which is currently being flown on the Titan booster. Two pump-fed hydrogen-oxygen RL10A 3-3A engines with multiple restart capability provide the propulsion for Centaur.
Delta. - The Delta space tug is based on the second stage of the current expendable Delta launch vehicle. It carries the Delta Inertial Guidance System and uses a single pressure-fed LM descent engine capable of multiple restarts. The Delta stage is the smallest of the liquid propellant stages studied, and carries about 10,000 pounds of propellant.
Transtage. - The C-26 Transtage considered in this study, is the final stage of the.Titan IIIC expendable launch vehicle. Propulsion is provided by two AJ-10-138pressure fed engines which are capable of multiple restarts. Transtage carries the most propellant of the Earth storable stages and it is the shortest of all the liquid propellant stages considered. Its total length is 15 feet.