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1972: NASA hell of a year (17)
"Admittedly, Big Gemini will never match some projected shuttle abilities - for example, it will never bring massive payloads back to Earth surface. Another, more subtle loss is the ability to fly ordinary citizens in space - which mean, low accelerations at both take-off and landing.

Winged spacecrafts, unlike capsules, provided lift during reentry, because they fly like airplanes. The more the lift, the more comfortable the re-entry, the more ordinary citizens can be flown in space...

Apollo 7, for example, subjected its crew to three times the strength of gravity. The shuttle, however, would have cut that by fifty percent, a mere 1.5 G, so weak that crews could have stood on their feet during re-entry !
Under test pilot insistance, round chutes and retrorockets were recently discarded.

Pilots will actually land Big Gemini on a runway by steering a parafoil - an aerodynamic chute very different from the troublesome paraglider as tested in 1964. The capsule will glide to a gentle touchdown on outriggers and bicycles, a true undercarriage akin to a light aircraft."

NASA has now a robust program, probably for the next two decades. So what will happen in the near future ?

If all went well, the next two years will see two launches of Gemini B capsules atop Titan II launchers. These capsules were build for the Manned Orbital Laboratory, a military space station cancelled in 1969. These capsules will test a critical piece of hardware: the hatch through the heatshield.

Next step will be Big Gemini itself. There will be a pair of unmanned flights in 1975 before the first manned launch early 1976.

Meanwhile the Agena space tug has its own flight manifest. After 1975 and until 1978 there will be a handful of tests flights.

The Agena will be mated to Diamant L-17 first stage. The L-17, also called Amethyste, is an interesting vehicle.

First, it is the only pressure-fed rocket in service in the world. L-17 mean that the stage use liquid propulsion and contain 17 tons of ergols. When riding a L-17 the Agena will have to haul itself into orbit, with little propellant remaining in the tanks. The Diamant-Agena, for example, couldn't desorbit Skylab.

A more powerful rocket is needed anf there, the Agena versatility is playing handy. The Agena could be launched either by a Thorad, an Atlas, or a Titan IIIB. The Thorad however is on the brink of retirement, leaving only the Atlas and Titan.
In order to build the Agena space tug Lockheed enlisted the decade-old network of European F-104G contractors notably in Germany and Italy, but also in Belgium.
(excerpt from Aviation week, August 3 1972)



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Secretary of the Air Force and former NASA Deputy administrator Robert Seamans, announced that General Joseph S. Bleymaier has joined the space agency headquarters in Washington DC. Bleymaier will have the rude task to repair a much damaged relation embittered by the shuttle fiasco.

Bleymaier credentials are interesting. A decade ago he successfully managed the Titan III program, a booster that NASA will be forced to use in the next future. After that he went to to lead the Manned Orbital Laboratory project that was ultimately cancelled in June 1969.
Rumours have been heard that the MOL could return via Big Gemini, the Air Force flying a handful of sensors or cameras placed in storage since the program cancellation in June 1969.
For the anecdote, General Bleymaier is also involved in the much discussed Project Harvest Moon – an atempt by a private consortia to buy one of the cancelled Apollo lunar landings to jumpstart human colonization of space...



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SHUTTLE OR X-24: WHICH WAY TO FUTURE SPACE PLANES ?

Cancellation of the space shuttle, the end of the X-15 research and the winding down of the lifting body programs have left a huge void in aeronautical research. The development of a new hypersonic vehicle has wide appeal within both the Air Force and NASA.

The situation is considered serious enough that consideration has been given to return the last X-15 to service (the other X-15 crashed, killing Michael Adamas, while the X-15A2 is no longer flyable, since Pete Knight historic mach 6.7 flight damaged the structure).

But the X-15 is old technology; newer, more capable vehicles would be preferable.

The Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory (FDL) recently proposed a delta-wing test vehicle that would fly at speeds between Mach 3 to 5. Another proposal is called the Incremental Growth Vehicle, so named because it would initially fly at Mach 4.5, but then be upgraded to reach Mach 6, and finally Mach 9.

At the same time, Langley Research Center engineers have ideas of their own.
In October 1970 their initial vehicle concept was the Hypersonic Research Facility (HYFAC) which was designed to reach a top speed of Mach 12 – twice the X-15’s maximum speed.
This was followed by a proposal for a less exotic vehicle, called the High-Speed Research Aircraft (HSRA), with a top speed of Mach 8.
None of the concepts have received official support to begin development.

With the X-24B to make its first flights soon the Flight Dynamics Laboratory engineers, recently began studying a hypersonic version called the X-24C.
Two different vehicle concepts have been proposed – one with cheek inlets for an airbreathing engine, and a second powered by an XLR-99 rocket engine. The target speed would be Mach 5. X-24C program costs are estimated to be around $70 million.

The advantage of the X-24C proposal is that it is largely an “off-the-shelf”
design in terms of shape, equipment, and technology. This makes it a much more practical design than the more complex FDL and NASA proposals. The X-24C recently gained the support of Gen. Sam Phillips, the head of the Air Force Systems Command and a former senior official in the Apollo program.

During the year however the design has gradually grown more ambitious - somewhat returning to HYFAC / HSRA level of performance.

The vehicle would now have a modular configuration, with a removable
center section of the fuselage, to accommodate the different experiments. With the connection to the original X-24C vehicle now gone, the program has received a new name.

The traditional X-plane designation has been abandoned and replaced with the awkward “National Hypersonic Flight Research Facility,” (NHFRF, but pronounced “nerf”).

The planned performance of the NHFRF is impressive. After launch from the B-52B mothership, the vehicle could reach a maximum speed of Mach 8 under rocket power. It would be also designed to cruise at a speed of Mach 6+ for 40 seconds, an extremely demanding requirement. The project engineers envision construction of two NHFRF vehicles, to be used in a 200-flight research program beginning in 1983, and spanning a decade. This effort is estimated to cost $200 million.

It remain to be seen whether the cheap X-24C or the much more ambitious NHFRF will be build... or perhaps the dispute could be settled by a new, unexpected competitor born on the space shuttle ashes.

While Langley engineers hesitated between X-24 derivatives or more advanced vehicles, in 1971 Dryden engineers proposed construction of manned, flying, 11-meter versions of the Space Shuttle to study the most critical area of its flight, the deceleration from mach 5 through the landing.

Mach 1, 2, and 3 models were to be powered (respectively) by one, two, and three XLR- 11 engines of X-1 legacy; or a mach 5 model could be powered by an XLR-99.

Such research aircraft, air-launched from a B-52, could have flown in direct support of Space Shuttle development, especially by validating wind-tunnel predictions of stability, controllability, and performance at hypersonic, supersonic, transonic, and subsonic velocities. They could be used for astronaut training and for investigating launch abort maneuvers.

Even with the shuttle cancelled, this role remain attractive.

As with the earlier lifting bodies, Dryden advocates of the subscale shuttle planned on using components from a variety of existing aircraft, including the M2-F3, F-4, YF- 12, F- 15, and X- 15, as well as some Apollo hardware. It was hoped that, using this approach, costs could be kept down. An XLR-99-equipped mach 5 subscale shuttle was estimated to cost $19.7 million.

If NASA’s Office of Advanced Research and Technology (OART) and the Office of Manned Space Flight were to authorize immediate go-ahead, the mini-Shuttle could fly toward the end of 1975.

A major push for a subscale shuttle recently came [in July1972], with preparation of a well defined and detailed proposal. Following this, Milton Thompson, Joe Weil, and other mini-Shuttle proponents have traveled to the Manned Spacecraft Center and NASA Headquarters to make presentations for the vehicle.

It now has some high-level support - Robert Gilruth of MSC is a strong advocate - but critics have argued that the projected costs are far too low, that a realistic cost estimate would be more like $150 million. That would place the subscale shuttle exactly between of the X-24C $70 million and NHFRF $200 million.

So one can see that Langley X-24C and Dryden shuttle are on a collision course.
It is interesting to note that both subscale shuttle and X-24C would be powered by the proven X-15 rocket engine... an interesting factoid is that, while the X-15 is long, Tony Dupont Hypersonic Research Engine is still undergoing ground tests in hypersonic tunnels. The podded scramjet is still alive ad well, and the subscale shuttle might be a unique opportunity to fly the thing in the end, avenging the October 3, 1967 disaster... needeless to say, HRE father and maverick engineer Tony Du Pont is lobbying hard for a HRE flight test program." But what is the HRE exactly ?


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There are a lot of persuasive arguments for committing Pioneer H to an out- of -the- ecliptic mission. The relatively low cost of such a mission, since the Pioneer H spacecraft is a spare for Pioneers 10 and G, and the considerable scientific value to be derived, argue very strongly in favor of the mission.
In fact, this kind of mission vas describedto the Space Science Board 1971 Woods Hole Summer Study by our Science Advisory Group.
Moreover, on 15 June 1972 our Outer Planets Science Advisory Group presented to NASA management their recommended strategy for exploring the outer planets, in which the Pioneer H out-of-the-ecliptic mission was an important item. The Pioneer H spare spacecraft, equipped with instruments identical with those carried on Pioneers 10 and 11, would make a polar pass through Jupiter's magnetosphere and then pass over one of the solar poles at a distance between 1 and 2 AU.

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