alternatehistory.com
Owen Gordon (2)
March 21, 1976
Owen Gordon aerospace career was progressing nicely, still he was plagued with contradiction and misunderstandings. There was some entrenched hate directed against the Big Gemini program he was managing, if only because of the lost space shuttle it replaced. He somewhat felt that resent, and suffered from it. He masked that working as hard as he could; next month would mark a milestone, the rollout of the first manned Big Gemini. He actually enjoyed his work; he had learned a lot of things, and there had even been some big surprises on the way.
For example, that day at a remote military area in the desert.
There, the Air Force had a vault were they stored a variety of things they didn’t wanted leaking to the outside world.
To Gordon frustration there had been no alien bodies nor Ark of he Covenant nor fake Apollo film stage; and, unfortunately, no Arrow that got away. Instead were three little spaceships the shape he immediately recognized. Three Geminis ! The ships had been build for the military, for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory that had been canned in ’69. For Douglas they were precious assets; launched by Titan II the refurbished capsules would become testbeds for the incoming Big Gemini. It had been a very strange day spent in the desert, far away from the outside world, at the mercy of nervous soldiers and men dressed in black. At some point Gordon even figured himself running across the desert, chased by a black helicopter with snipers firing at him... just because he had discovered the truth was out there... he laughed uncomfortably at the vision.
Owen Gordon had been tasked to take a pair of Gemini B out of mothball and prepare it for a suborbital flight. In 1973 a Titan II had lofted the capsule into a ballistic hope to test the hatch through the heatshield.
What Gordon had discovered was rather amazing. The MOL had started as early as 1963 but the real start had been 1965. Six missions were planned, so six more Gemini capsules would be build in the shape of the somewhat upgraded Gemini-B. NASA for its part had flown its last Gemini in November 1966. The military wanted a smooth transition from Gemini to Gemini B; McDonnell Douglas production line wouldn't be interrupted. That meant that production of the six Gemini B had started as early as 1966 while the MOL program had been canned only in June 1969, three years later.
Within the span of three years McDonnell Douglas had had well enough time to build all six capsules; but the rest of the MOL being delayed, the six Gemini B had been stored. The storage that should have been temporary had become permanent post June 1969 after the MOL was canned. Gordon had seen all six capsules carefully stored at a secret military facility in the desert. Only two of them had been taken out of storage for the Big Gemini flight test program. Four more flight-ready capsules stood in the hangar, unused.
Perhaps someday they will be some space cadet crazy enough to fly those capsules for space tourism. Gemini only weights 3.5 metric ton yet it can remain in orbit for 14 days. One day, perhaps... time will tell.
So he loved his job, but the nightmares remained; he was still haunted by his WWII fighting experiences.
March 21, 1945.
Music: Twisted sisters, Like a knife in the back
Seen from 20 000ft, the plant was a blurry square, with little details visible in his gunsight. Details didn't mattered, however; he just had to plant his pair of 1000 pound bombs right in the middle of that square. He first throttled the big Sabre engine back, and the Typhoon was shaken by vibrations. Then he lowered his flaps, turning them into dive brakes. He armed the massive bombs strapped under his wings, pushed his stick forward, and entered a 80 degree dive. Noise and speed reached alarming levels, with the altimeter veering crazily. "If the altimeter is right, we are aboard a fucking submarine" he reminded that joke about a bomber crew lost in the fog. The acceleration just boggled his mind - 300, 400, 500, 600 miles per hour, on the way to supersonic speeds his machine couldn't endure. For a fraction of second the blurred square become a plant, complete with rows of Junker bombers, hangars, smoking chemneys, and fuel tanks. A neat little German plant, only seconds away from hell. He dropped his bombs and pulled the stick like hell - the effort was horrible, as if the damn column was solidly planted in concrete. G-forces literally crushed him, he weighed tons, but he never stopped pulling his column with all the strength he was left. The Typhoon was now in a ten degree dive, a gentle dive. He throttled his engine back to full power, and with the dive, he was still flying at a good 450 miles per hour. He pressed on to its next target, the air base. He briefly glanced over his shoulder and saw an huge cloud of smoke, with orange flames at the base. Gotcha. He pushed his column, and the Typhoon accelerated again, diving at tree tops level - no less, the pine trees clearly visible. Sweat cascaded in his back. He eyed a small tower over the top of a hill; the air base was behind the hill, he would have to literally jump above that bump that, he hoped, would mask him to the flak until it was too late for them. And so he did, and he took the Krauts per suprise. There was row of tent or hangars or whatever that was, and he took the thing into his gunsight, and pressed the trigger. Four Hispano guns and four small machine guns exploded in a hail of deadly bullets. Hell spread below his wings as he pressed over the airfield at an alarming low level. Now the Krauts were jumping to their guns, trying to blast him from the sky. Good luck to them. The last thing he saw of the damn base was a huge hangar, huge like a cathedral, and he had to pull his stick not to smash into the big thing. He pressed the trigger again, and bullets cascaded out of the Hispanos, crippling the huge structure, with secondary explosions everywhere. Not time to admire what he had done; he was already out of the perimeter, cutting the top of pine trees with its thick wings, with the flak exploding above his cockpit. He did not dared to climb until a complete minute had passed, and he returned to his base in France.
After losing so much friends along the years, Gordon had conceived a maddening hate for the flak. Against 109s or 190s you could defend yourself; but the anti-aircraft weapons were for cowards, he had decided. He had so much hate tucked inside him he had asked to be detached to a ground attack unit. For some weeks now he had flown a Typhoon, a massively ugly, brute-looking fighter, with a huge air intake gapping like the mouth of a dinosaur. It was the exact opposite of the sleek Spitfires he had flown for years; and a perfect match to Gordon enraged, hateful mind. With his Typhoon he had blasted dozens of ground targets, notably steam locomotives vital to whacko Adolf war effort. Only a couple of hispano bullets into the boiler would blast not only the locomotive, but also much of the wagons and part of the rail track. Most of the time the trains were crammed with ammunitions and gazoline, with obvious results. He took some ignominous pleasure aiming, pulling the trigger, and making his target explode. Kabooom: he was just insane. The war had turned him into an enraged beast; he was living only to the day, never hoping to return alive from a mission. Typhoons piloted by his squadron mates felt like flies, and died pilots were replaced by young recruits lacking experience that suffered horrible losses.Still, somewhere the fucking fate had decided he would not die, and he did not died, and from May 1945, like millions of survivors across the planet he had to find a new sense to his shattered life.
March 21, 1976 - McDonnell Douglas plant - Long Beach, California
There was the public and press and NASA officials and lot of people, all gathered at the McDonnell plant for the presentation of a Big Gemini full size mockup. NASA was taking no risk with the hatch through the heatshield, another controversial aspect of the new manned ship.
Design of Big Gemini had long been frozen, since 1973. There has been some interesting debates about how would Helios appproach and dock from the space station.
The Agena was to use a LIDAR, an automated docking system, and initially Helios was to use it, too. But the astronaut corps had protested, and they had obtained manual docking. An astronaut would stand up, strapped to a work station similar to a phone booth and located at the rear of Helios cargo module. The astronaut would take manual control of Helios reaction and control system and ram the spaceship backward, into the space station docking assembly. The docking rings by themselves had been the subject of heated debates. Should NASA use the plain old Apollo probe and drogue system, or the brand new APAS-75 androgynous system invented for Apollo-Soyuz ? In theend the APAS-75 was chosen. Not only the Agena and Helios would use it. All the space station modules would feature strengthened APAS-75 docking rings.
The Big Geminis neighbored with Skylab B, and Owen Gordon felt the move had been delibarate. It was a demonstration of force, a message send to both NASA and Rockwell.
We are the winner of the shuttle debacle.
Legendary designer Raymond Loewy was also there - many years before NASA had hired him for a major redesign of Skylab interior. Loewy and a promising, 30-years old recruit named John Frassanito had done a fantastic job, so good that NASA asked Loewy to renew his work for the next space station. Loewy agreed, but warned that Frassanito was no longer with the company, and that himself was on the brink of retirement. Still he would work on the space station with great pleasure.
When in 1972 NASA emphasis switched from shuttle to station, McDonnell Douglas felt their experience with Skylab promised more modules of that kind, notably the core of the space station.
Instead, the space agency decided MDD had enough work on his plate with Big Gemini, and turned the core contract to Rockwell and their S-II stage. In the process they also contracted with Loewy for the design interior.
The reasonning was the McDonnell Douglas didn't needed Loewy again, since their own modules would be close derivatives of Skylab he had already worked on. Gordon company completely disagree, and wanted his own talented designer for the Skylab design modules and even Big Gemini.
That's how Gordon was tasked to track back that Frassanito and hire him at any cost.
He ultimately found him working in Houston but not on the space program. Frassanito had been hired by Datapoint, a growing computing company. To Gordon surprise, he learned that the co-founders Austin Roche and Phil Ray were former NASA employees from the Apollo days. The company itself was exploiting a spinoff from the Apollo program, some revolutionnary technology invented for the Lunar Module landing computer.
It was called the microchip.
Gordon had no idea what a microchip was, thus Frassanito asked Roche to show him one. It was rather unempressive, an aparently unsignificant little bit of metal that looked like a centipede. Yet watching Ray and Roche and Frassanito excitation, for unknown reasons Gordon felt that microchip thing alone might be worth the $20 billion the space agency had spent on Apollo. The very irony was that NASA had so far completely missed one of the potentially best space program spinoff that ever existed. Or did it ?
Frassanito sketch of the Datapoint 2200 computer, the great grandfather of today's PC.
Gordon did not managed to hire Frassanito, which instead went on to fund his own design company. Still, Gordon could see that work done by Frassanito on Skylab had sparked some deep-rooted interest for the space program.
Back at McDonnell Douglas, Gordon remained in touch with Frassanito and the guys at Datapoint. He felt something huge was coming from there, which may be useful for the space program.
The shuttle controls may need some hefty computing power someday.
The shuttle, by the way, was far from dead. It was more like in life support or coma, with the hope of a resurrection, perhaps after 1980. Low-level contract studies had in fact never stopped, refining the future shuttle again and again. With Marshall on the brink of closure and Houston busy with Big Gemini and the space station, Langley had taken a lead role in shuttle studies.
Gordon had made a brief stint at Langley before - like so many Canadian engineers orphans from the Arrow, he had been send there in 1959, together with Chamberlin, Lindley, Hodge and others.
A decade later a small group under the direction of Gene Love fought for the shuttle against all odds. They had obtained funds not only to refine the shuttle, but also for industry study of more advanced concepts such as single-stage-to-orbit. Martin Marietta and Boeing had received contracts but Martin was busy with the Titan, so they withdrawn, and Gordon's company replaced them.
His leader counterpart for Boeing was Andrew Hepler, and because there would be nothing to build at the end of the contracts, they were not true rivals. Hepler had impressive credentials in both aircraft and missile worlds. He had worked on Boeing famous B-29 and B-52 bombers, the tankers to refuel them, the BOMARC huge anti-aircraft missile (a program where he had worked along future writter Thomas Pynchon !), Dynasoar, the MOL, and the 2707 supersonic airliner.
After the latter cancellation in April 1971 he had briefly worked on Boeing bid for the aborted shuttle, and on Langley post-shuttle studies. He had recruited from Rockwell a very talented engineer with a promising concept - Len Cormier and his Windjammer.
Gordon and Hepler went along quite well.
Because of his Boeing background, Hepler strongly embraced George Mueller original vision of the space shuttle, exposed at that JBIS meeting in London, August 10, 1968. He was obsessed with giving the future shuttle aircraft-like operations.
All this, however, was very preliminary work, and the lost shuttle remained in everyone mind.
The year 1973 had brought two massive changes.
On one hand, NASA had secured a space station; on the other hand, the Air Force had affirmed the Titan III would handle the heaviest satellites for the predictable future. Accordingly, the space shuttle had been reduced in size and weight and crew. Now four astronauts would ferry 20 000 pounds of payload to Liberty, or perhaps to its twin and eventual successor everybody already called Destiny. The reduced crew would sat on ejector seats similar to those of the SR-71, assuring survival up to Mach 3.
With a decade to spent, NASA had plenty of time to refine the shuttle, giving contractors lots of contracts to study some aspects more pointedly. For example Owen team at Douglas had recently been tasked with assessing the issue of ferrying orbiters from their landing fields back to their home base of Cape Canaveral. The lighter shuttle could have easily been hauled on the back of an airliner. But that solution was anything but practical: not all airports featured giant cranes strong enough to loft an orbiter.
No, the best scenario would have the shuttle flying alone; a couple of F-101 turbofans, together with a kerosene tank in the payload bay, would do the trick. The orbiter blunt ass would be covered with an aerodynamic fairing. Gordon five-volumes report to NASA featured a picture of the whole thing on the cover, a superb artwork done by legendary Robert McCall.
The orbiter had the turbofans hanging from a couple of underwing pylons very reminiscent of the Boeing 707 or Convair Hustler from the 50's. Together with the rear aerodynamic fairing, it made for an awesome-looking flying machine - if not very efficient. The low atmosphere being evidently not the orbiter home place, it would stuck to subsonic speeds and short hops, a mere 500 miles at best. Ferry flights across the United States promised to be a shore, although they might be familiarize astronauts with the beast cockpit.
If I were to sat at the controls, I would go full throttle and try a barrel roll. Open day at Edwards AFB, in the 80's: god, the look in the eyes of childs watching an acrobatic shuttle orbiter barreling over Roger Dry Lake !
As for the lower half of the shuttle, the flyback S-IC booster, the latest news were pretty encouraging. NASA was throwing a lot of contract money at Boeing so that they refined the concept.
Owen Gordon aerospace career was progressing nicely, still he was plagued with contradiction and misunderstandings. There was some entrenched hate directed against the Big Gemini program he was managing, if only because of the lost space shuttle it replaced. He somewhat felt that resent, and suffered from it. He masked that working as hard as he could; next month would mark a milestone, the rollout of the first manned Big Gemini. He actually enjoyed his work; he had learned a lot of things, and there had even been some big surprises on the way.
For example, that day at a remote military area in the desert.
There, the Air Force had a vault were they stored a variety of things they didn’t wanted leaking to the outside world.
To Gordon frustration there had been no alien bodies nor Ark of he Covenant nor fake Apollo film stage; and, unfortunately, no Arrow that got away. Instead were three little spaceships the shape he immediately recognized. Three Geminis ! The ships had been build for the military, for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory that had been canned in ’69. For Douglas they were precious assets; launched by Titan II the refurbished capsules would become testbeds for the incoming Big Gemini. It had been a very strange day spent in the desert, far away from the outside world, at the mercy of nervous soldiers and men dressed in black. At some point Gordon even figured himself running across the desert, chased by a black helicopter with snipers firing at him... just because he had discovered the truth was out there... he laughed uncomfortably at the vision.
Owen Gordon had been tasked to take a pair of Gemini B out of mothball and prepare it for a suborbital flight. In 1973 a Titan II had lofted the capsule into a ballistic hope to test the hatch through the heatshield.
What Gordon had discovered was rather amazing. The MOL had started as early as 1963 but the real start had been 1965. Six missions were planned, so six more Gemini capsules would be build in the shape of the somewhat upgraded Gemini-B. NASA for its part had flown its last Gemini in November 1966. The military wanted a smooth transition from Gemini to Gemini B; McDonnell Douglas production line wouldn't be interrupted. That meant that production of the six Gemini B had started as early as 1966 while the MOL program had been canned only in June 1969, three years later.
Within the span of three years McDonnell Douglas had had well enough time to build all six capsules; but the rest of the MOL being delayed, the six Gemini B had been stored. The storage that should have been temporary had become permanent post June 1969 after the MOL was canned. Gordon had seen all six capsules carefully stored at a secret military facility in the desert. Only two of them had been taken out of storage for the Big Gemini flight test program. Four more flight-ready capsules stood in the hangar, unused.
Perhaps someday they will be some space cadet crazy enough to fly those capsules for space tourism. Gemini only weights 3.5 metric ton yet it can remain in orbit for 14 days. One day, perhaps... time will tell.
So he loved his job, but the nightmares remained; he was still haunted by his WWII fighting experiences.
March 21, 1945.
Music: Twisted sisters, Like a knife in the back
Seen from 20 000ft, the plant was a blurry square, with little details visible in his gunsight. Details didn't mattered, however; he just had to plant his pair of 1000 pound bombs right in the middle of that square. He first throttled the big Sabre engine back, and the Typhoon was shaken by vibrations. Then he lowered his flaps, turning them into dive brakes. He armed the massive bombs strapped under his wings, pushed his stick forward, and entered a 80 degree dive. Noise and speed reached alarming levels, with the altimeter veering crazily. "If the altimeter is right, we are aboard a fucking submarine" he reminded that joke about a bomber crew lost in the fog. The acceleration just boggled his mind - 300, 400, 500, 600 miles per hour, on the way to supersonic speeds his machine couldn't endure. For a fraction of second the blurred square become a plant, complete with rows of Junker bombers, hangars, smoking chemneys, and fuel tanks. A neat little German plant, only seconds away from hell. He dropped his bombs and pulled the stick like hell - the effort was horrible, as if the damn column was solidly planted in concrete. G-forces literally crushed him, he weighed tons, but he never stopped pulling his column with all the strength he was left. The Typhoon was now in a ten degree dive, a gentle dive. He throttled his engine back to full power, and with the dive, he was still flying at a good 450 miles per hour. He pressed on to its next target, the air base. He briefly glanced over his shoulder and saw an huge cloud of smoke, with orange flames at the base. Gotcha. He pushed his column, and the Typhoon accelerated again, diving at tree tops level - no less, the pine trees clearly visible. Sweat cascaded in his back. He eyed a small tower over the top of a hill; the air base was behind the hill, he would have to literally jump above that bump that, he hoped, would mask him to the flak until it was too late for them. And so he did, and he took the Krauts per suprise. There was row of tent or hangars or whatever that was, and he took the thing into his gunsight, and pressed the trigger. Four Hispano guns and four small machine guns exploded in a hail of deadly bullets. Hell spread below his wings as he pressed over the airfield at an alarming low level. Now the Krauts were jumping to their guns, trying to blast him from the sky. Good luck to them. The last thing he saw of the damn base was a huge hangar, huge like a cathedral, and he had to pull his stick not to smash into the big thing. He pressed the trigger again, and bullets cascaded out of the Hispanos, crippling the huge structure, with secondary explosions everywhere. Not time to admire what he had done; he was already out of the perimeter, cutting the top of pine trees with its thick wings, with the flak exploding above his cockpit. He did not dared to climb until a complete minute had passed, and he returned to his base in France.
After losing so much friends along the years, Gordon had conceived a maddening hate for the flak. Against 109s or 190s you could defend yourself; but the anti-aircraft weapons were for cowards, he had decided. He had so much hate tucked inside him he had asked to be detached to a ground attack unit. For some weeks now he had flown a Typhoon, a massively ugly, brute-looking fighter, with a huge air intake gapping like the mouth of a dinosaur. It was the exact opposite of the sleek Spitfires he had flown for years; and a perfect match to Gordon enraged, hateful mind. With his Typhoon he had blasted dozens of ground targets, notably steam locomotives vital to whacko Adolf war effort. Only a couple of hispano bullets into the boiler would blast not only the locomotive, but also much of the wagons and part of the rail track. Most of the time the trains were crammed with ammunitions and gazoline, with obvious results. He took some ignominous pleasure aiming, pulling the trigger, and making his target explode. Kabooom: he was just insane. The war had turned him into an enraged beast; he was living only to the day, never hoping to return alive from a mission. Typhoons piloted by his squadron mates felt like flies, and died pilots were replaced by young recruits lacking experience that suffered horrible losses.Still, somewhere the fucking fate had decided he would not die, and he did not died, and from May 1945, like millions of survivors across the planet he had to find a new sense to his shattered life.
March 21, 1976 - McDonnell Douglas plant - Long Beach, California
There was the public and press and NASA officials and lot of people, all gathered at the McDonnell plant for the presentation of a Big Gemini full size mockup. NASA was taking no risk with the hatch through the heatshield, another controversial aspect of the new manned ship.
Design of Big Gemini had long been frozen, since 1973. There has been some interesting debates about how would Helios appproach and dock from the space station.
The Agena was to use a LIDAR, an automated docking system, and initially Helios was to use it, too. But the astronaut corps had protested, and they had obtained manual docking. An astronaut would stand up, strapped to a work station similar to a phone booth and located at the rear of Helios cargo module. The astronaut would take manual control of Helios reaction and control system and ram the spaceship backward, into the space station docking assembly. The docking rings by themselves had been the subject of heated debates. Should NASA use the plain old Apollo probe and drogue system, or the brand new APAS-75 androgynous system invented for Apollo-Soyuz ? In theend the APAS-75 was chosen. Not only the Agena and Helios would use it. All the space station modules would feature strengthened APAS-75 docking rings.
The Big Geminis neighbored with Skylab B, and Owen Gordon felt the move had been delibarate. It was a demonstration of force, a message send to both NASA and Rockwell.
We are the winner of the shuttle debacle.
Legendary designer Raymond Loewy was also there - many years before NASA had hired him for a major redesign of Skylab interior. Loewy and a promising, 30-years old recruit named John Frassanito had done a fantastic job, so good that NASA asked Loewy to renew his work for the next space station. Loewy agreed, but warned that Frassanito was no longer with the company, and that himself was on the brink of retirement. Still he would work on the space station with great pleasure.
When in 1972 NASA emphasis switched from shuttle to station, McDonnell Douglas felt their experience with Skylab promised more modules of that kind, notably the core of the space station.
Instead, the space agency decided MDD had enough work on his plate with Big Gemini, and turned the core contract to Rockwell and their S-II stage. In the process they also contracted with Loewy for the design interior.
The reasonning was the McDonnell Douglas didn't needed Loewy again, since their own modules would be close derivatives of Skylab he had already worked on. Gordon company completely disagree, and wanted his own talented designer for the Skylab design modules and even Big Gemini.
That's how Gordon was tasked to track back that Frassanito and hire him at any cost.
He ultimately found him working in Houston but not on the space program. Frassanito had been hired by Datapoint, a growing computing company. To Gordon surprise, he learned that the co-founders Austin Roche and Phil Ray were former NASA employees from the Apollo days. The company itself was exploiting a spinoff from the Apollo program, some revolutionnary technology invented for the Lunar Module landing computer.
It was called the microchip.
Gordon had no idea what a microchip was, thus Frassanito asked Roche to show him one. It was rather unempressive, an aparently unsignificant little bit of metal that looked like a centipede. Yet watching Ray and Roche and Frassanito excitation, for unknown reasons Gordon felt that microchip thing alone might be worth the $20 billion the space agency had spent on Apollo. The very irony was that NASA had so far completely missed one of the potentially best space program spinoff that ever existed. Or did it ?
Frassanito sketch of the Datapoint 2200 computer, the great grandfather of today's PC. Gordon did not managed to hire Frassanito, which instead went on to fund his own design company. Still, Gordon could see that work done by Frassanito on Skylab had sparked some deep-rooted interest for the space program.
Back at McDonnell Douglas, Gordon remained in touch with Frassanito and the guys at Datapoint. He felt something huge was coming from there, which may be useful for the space program.
The shuttle controls may need some hefty computing power someday.
The shuttle, by the way, was far from dead. It was more like in life support or coma, with the hope of a resurrection, perhaps after 1980. Low-level contract studies had in fact never stopped, refining the future shuttle again and again. With Marshall on the brink of closure and Houston busy with Big Gemini and the space station, Langley had taken a lead role in shuttle studies.
Gordon had made a brief stint at Langley before - like so many Canadian engineers orphans from the Arrow, he had been send there in 1959, together with Chamberlin, Lindley, Hodge and others.
A decade later a small group under the direction of Gene Love fought for the shuttle against all odds. They had obtained funds not only to refine the shuttle, but also for industry study of more advanced concepts such as single-stage-to-orbit. Martin Marietta and Boeing had received contracts but Martin was busy with the Titan, so they withdrawn, and Gordon's company replaced them.
His leader counterpart for Boeing was Andrew Hepler, and because there would be nothing to build at the end of the contracts, they were not true rivals. Hepler had impressive credentials in both aircraft and missile worlds. He had worked on Boeing famous B-29 and B-52 bombers, the tankers to refuel them, the BOMARC huge anti-aircraft missile (a program where he had worked along future writter Thomas Pynchon !), Dynasoar, the MOL, and the 2707 supersonic airliner.
After the latter cancellation in April 1971 he had briefly worked on Boeing bid for the aborted shuttle, and on Langley post-shuttle studies. He had recruited from Rockwell a very talented engineer with a promising concept - Len Cormier and his Windjammer.
Gordon and Hepler went along quite well.
Because of his Boeing background, Hepler strongly embraced George Mueller original vision of the space shuttle, exposed at that JBIS meeting in London, August 10, 1968. He was obsessed with giving the future shuttle aircraft-like operations.
All this, however, was very preliminary work, and the lost shuttle remained in everyone mind.
The year 1973 had brought two massive changes.
On one hand, NASA had secured a space station; on the other hand, the Air Force had affirmed the Titan III would handle the heaviest satellites for the predictable future. Accordingly, the space shuttle had been reduced in size and weight and crew. Now four astronauts would ferry 20 000 pounds of payload to Liberty, or perhaps to its twin and eventual successor everybody already called Destiny. The reduced crew would sat on ejector seats similar to those of the SR-71, assuring survival up to Mach 3.
With a decade to spent, NASA had plenty of time to refine the shuttle, giving contractors lots of contracts to study some aspects more pointedly. For example Owen team at Douglas had recently been tasked with assessing the issue of ferrying orbiters from their landing fields back to their home base of Cape Canaveral. The lighter shuttle could have easily been hauled on the back of an airliner. But that solution was anything but practical: not all airports featured giant cranes strong enough to loft an orbiter.
No, the best scenario would have the shuttle flying alone; a couple of F-101 turbofans, together with a kerosene tank in the payload bay, would do the trick. The orbiter blunt ass would be covered with an aerodynamic fairing. Gordon five-volumes report to NASA featured a picture of the whole thing on the cover, a superb artwork done by legendary Robert McCall.
The orbiter had the turbofans hanging from a couple of underwing pylons very reminiscent of the Boeing 707 or Convair Hustler from the 50's. Together with the rear aerodynamic fairing, it made for an awesome-looking flying machine - if not very efficient. The low atmosphere being evidently not the orbiter home place, it would stuck to subsonic speeds and short hops, a mere 500 miles at best. Ferry flights across the United States promised to be a shore, although they might be familiarize astronauts with the beast cockpit.
If I were to sat at the controls, I would go full throttle and try a barrel roll. Open day at Edwards AFB, in the 80's: god, the look in the eyes of childs watching an acrobatic shuttle orbiter barreling over Roger Dry Lake !
As for the lower half of the shuttle, the flyback S-IC booster, the latest news were pretty encouraging. NASA was throwing a lot of contract money at Boeing so that they refined the concept.
- Archibald
- Word Count: 2.9k