The Need for Speed: Technology Thread

[Shevek23]

This is why it is jetpunk; steampunk, to achieve the Coolness factor, simultaneously exaggerates the potentials of Victorian tech and unrealistically ignores the alternative techs that did evolve OTL to supplement and succeed them.

It is one thing to temporarily delay the development of rocketry compared to a OTL, a little bit, to give projected developments looked to in the 1950s in airbreathing jets a little bit more time to evolve. But sooner or later someone will get back to the rockets, if only for ballistic missile purposes, and a missile that can achieve intercontinental ranges is just a step away from a rocket that can put something into orbit. To delay that for decades, in favor of dubious approaches to airbreathing all the way, or even air-launch of rockets, involves handing both the US and Soviet military-industrial complexes the Idiot Ball. Even this timeline, IIRC, has the Chinese picking up the rocketry slack; once that happens the Pentagon and Kremlin have no more excuses left; too bad it makes supersonic bombers obsolete and totally changes the game for aircraft in general.

Even going supersonic for air-launch, an idea I muster more enthusiasm for than the better-educated in these matters e of pi, never seems to work out no matter how much I want it to. I don't think the whole business of merely counting on getting into thinner stratospheric air for marginally better rocket engine performance is worth it at all; adding speed to reduce the delta-V the rocket stage(s) need to reach is more helpful.

But unfortunately not so helpful that, if you look at with hardnosed economy rather than romantic eyes, it makes much sense to make say a Mach 3 launcher plane compared to the alternative of simply achieving the necessary speed and altitude for the upper stage or stages by stacking them on top of a suitably large and powerful booster stage launched from the ground. Sure, the air at the ground level is thick and not only creates significant drag but worse, impedes the exhaust of the rocket, thus robbing it of both thrust and specific impulse just when one wants both the most. Too bad; it costs 20, maybe 25 percent more than if the rocket were operating in hard vacuum--so you up the thrust of the engines and mass of the fuel, and punch on through anyway. It only takes a minute or two to match and exceed what the best high-supersonic launch plane we could possibly build could accomplish.

The chief difference is, the launcher plane--if we could build it--would be reusable. It had better be! If it is going to launch anything big though the all-up takeoff weight is going to be huge, in the range of a thousand tonnes or more, or three times bigger than anything that has gotten airborne to date, so it will not be able to operate from just any old runway.

Nowadays there is a lot of talk about making booster stages of rockets reusable too. Even if not--it is a question of volume, whether building a throwaway booster, most of whose mass is propellant, works out to be more or less expensive than the development cost and infrastructure of a suitable launch aircraft. And most booster first stages will shove the upper stack to both altitudes and speeds that exceed even the most ambitious airbreathers that can realistically be anticipated---with 21st century tech!

BTW if e of pi is right that the top speed of a realistic scramjet is just Mach 4 I don't see the point in developing them at all; by the early 1960s the USAF had two aircraft that could come near to matching that speed using engines much more conventional than scramjets! And the Soviets soon came near to matching these speeds themselves.

 

[forget]

Jets punks main advantage over rockets in space is not there speed but the affordability of the tec to the private sector who cannot develop crazy expensive rockets.
Develop a jet early enough in history able to drop private satellites into orbit jet punks won and there is nothing you can do about.
In OLT 1960s-70s government funding for space jets were dropped in favour of big expensive rockets.
Not gonna happen so much in a jet age TL, sorry.

 

[Just Leo]

I actually have an artist's depiction of a CF-105 with ramjets underneath each wing launching a center mounted rocket/missile.

That artist's depiction is firing an anti-satellite missile which has to reach orbital height but not orbital speed. An F-15 was assigned such a task without ramjets. The state of the art in ramjets at the time, primarily of Marquardt design and manufacture, would not inspire great confidence in their operation, powering the D-21 drone and the Bomarc missile. The attachment point to the aircraft in its original design was that to be used for extra fuel tanks, one on each wing, outboard of the landing gear, by the leading edge notch. The use of two engines would be problematic without major structural redesign, but moreover, the problem of asymetrical thrust in the event of engine failure would be catastrophic, and engine failure was not unknown. Having 4 engines increases the likelihood of such failure. Using the engine in an unmanned vehicle is one thing. There was one fatality to a D-21 launch vehicle. I was going to do my own depiction, but have decided to give it a pass.

 

[katchen]

This is the competition for jet aviation. And these folks are hoping to use this as a 4000 mph catapult to lreduce rocket mass needed to launch payloads into orbit as well.This is another one of those things that we could have ATL if we had devoted resources to much earlier. Heinlein saw it cming in the 1950s.
Why ET3?

Transportation should be clean, green, fast, comfortable and affordable for all; It must also be financially sustainable on a global level. THE TIME FOR A NEW MODE OF TRANSPORTATION IS NOW!
WHAT IS ET3 and HOW DOES IT WORK?

ET3 is literally "Space Travel on Earth". ET3 is silent, low cost, safe, faster than jets, and is electric.
Car sized passenger capsules travel in 1.5m (5') diameter tubes on frictionless maglev. Air is permanently removed from the two-way tubes that are built along a travel route. Airlocks at stations allow transfer of capsules without admitting air. Linear electric motors accelerate the capsules, which then coast through the vacuum for the remainder of the trip using no additional power. Most of the energy is regenerated as the capsules slow down. ET3 can provide 50 times more transportation per kWh than electric cars or trains.
Speed in initial ET3 systems is 600km/h (370 mph) for in state trips, and will be developed to 6,500 km/h (4,000 mph) for international travel that will allow passenger or cargo travel from New York to Beijing in 2 hours. ET3 is networked like freeways, except the capsules are automatically routed from origin to destination.
ET3 capsules weigh only 183 kg (400 lbs), yet like an automobile, can carry up to six people or 367 kg (800 lbs) of cargo. Compared to high speed rail, ET3 needs only 1/20th the material to build because the vehicles are so light. With automated passive switching, a pair of ET3 tubes can exceed the capacity of a 32 lane freeway. ET3 can be built for 1/10th the cost of High Speed Rail, or 1/4th the cost of a freeway.
ET3 stands for Evacuated Tube Transport Technologies. The company et3.com Inc. is an open consortium of licensees dedicated to global implementation of Evacuated Tube Transport (ETT).
Watch YouTube videos of ET3 HERE

• 
• Printer-friendly version
• Send by email

 

[Shevek23]

Jets punks main advantage over rockets in space is not there speed but the affordability of the tec to the private sector who cannot develop crazy expensive rockets.
Develop a jet early enough in history able to drop private satellites into orbit jet punks won and there is nothing you can do about.
In OLT 1960s-70s government funding for space jets were dropped in favour of big expensive rockets.
Not gonna happen so much in a jet age TL, sorry.

So it is your considered opinion that such orbit-capable "jets" are possible, and indeed cheaper to make and operate than our existing space-launch options. And yet, no one has gone ahead and developed them to steal a march on the dinosaur-minded powers that be in the leading space launch nations and consortiums that currently do exist. That in the OTL 60's and 70's for some reason or other the government, out of idiocy or some kind of perversity, chose to fund a more expensive option.

If such jet-based spaceships are in fact possible, and withal cheaper than "crazy-expensive" rockets (which ain't cheap, I'm not arguing that they are)--what exactly has stood in the way of the merely rich from losing patience with this waste of taxpayer dollars and snubbing of the designated mission of NASA to advance the aerospace state of the art generally, and just gone ahead and built themselves their own privately owned affordable spacejets? And offering, out of patriotism if not greed, to sell them, or their services, to the government they hate least? Or just bypass the governments if they dislike all of them and set up operations in space free of all supervision? There are quite a few individuals in the world who own more wealth than the worth of entire nations, and quite a few medium-sized nations that perhaps can't afford a Cape Canaveral of their own but might well afford to back some project to reach space on the cheap, and without answering to Washington DC.

You need not be sorry for me if someone can show by example that these possibilities have been in our reach all along, and it is just that it is our own timeline that has been handed the Idiot Ball. I'd be embarrassed, and sad that we'd blown off so much opportunity for so long, but basically thrilled that at long last human beings and their enterprises can reach orbital space at a sensible price--once we are in orbit around Earth we are halfway to anywhere, and recent news has given me some hope that pretty soon now we'll have a fine sort of advanced rocket drive that can take people anywhere in the inner Solar System, from low Earth orbit.

It would be great news. Unfortunately I see no easy way to make it so, and just saying that a lot of people thought it would be easy in the 1950s doesn't mean they were right.

Nor do I think that all the nations that have current space capabilities would all have overlooked real opportunities to do it cheaper and better. Even if for some weird or twisted reason most would, it only takes one to upstage all the others, who would perforce have followed suit just to keep up.

So--why don't they?

 

[katchen]

Technology, like anything else is a matter of choices taken, and there are plenty of alternate universes possible if someone at some time decides to make a different technological or investment choice.

And one of our biggest problems is that once we have an investment in an existing technology, unless there is either serious competition or serious public demand, there is generally more of an investment in maintaining that existing technology and mummifying that technology than in scrapping that technology for something new and innovative. That's why it took India until the 1990s to scrap it's last steam locomotives and why we in the US never electrified our rail lines or invested in straightening out right of ways for higher speed. Our industry got used to a standard 60-90 mph on land and 400-550 mph in the air and built itself around it. Only the military had any incentive to go any faster for any reason. Why innovate if you can create a legal standard and ban competition and innovation that exceeds that standard? Would we have ever abolished the 55 mph speed limit if all trucks were from big companies and all truckers were Teamsters instead of independent operators who could lose their rigs if they didn't get their load somewhere fast? I doubt it.
In most of the world, raiilroads, which would be investing in high speed rail, were either built by governments or bought by governments when they went bankrupt. In the United States, railroads developed a cozy and corrupt relationship with governments during the Gilded Age. So cozy and corrupt that the American public developed a backlashsh againstt railroads in the early 20th Century and while keeping them in private hands, had the government regulate every aspect of them from rates to union contracts, which became featherbedded with unnecessary employees. As a result, investment and innovation suffered and freight as well as passengers departed the railroads for cars , trucks and the airlines,, not to return until the 2000s.
Wheras aiviation, after an initial burst of innovation in the early 20th century, bifurcated during WWII into civil and military aviation in the three nations that built most planes, the US, the UK,-Europe and the USSR. Both plateaued in terms of performance. Civil aviation plateaued at 500 miles per hour and began to concentrate on a) larger and larger planes and b) fuel economy after the cost of jet fuel became a serious factor after 1973. Military aviation plateaued at about 2000 mph because a) heat from friction was a limiting factor and b) advances in missile guidance made most manned military bombing more and more obselete anyway, culminating in pilotless drones, but not until it put a premium on stealth rather than speed.
And space?
Space exploration has suffered from the limitations of a) initial military dominance of rocketry b() government funding of the Space Program of the 1960s turned it into a one task based project--ie. a race to the Moon c) creating an extremely wasteful way to get to the Moon, yet one which pushed the technical envelope yielding a great deal of technological spin off and d) a budget crunch of the Vietnam War and anti-poverty programs which were increasingly resisted by Southern and Republican business conservatives who we now know see something wrong with a nation in which there are NOT extremes of wealth and poverty.

At the same time, there was a backlash by the Baby Boomer Generation against science of all sorts from conservatives against the teaching of science and evolution to environmentalists who consider scientific advances evil until proven good and associate all science with militarism and corporatism. The one exception to this turned out to be personal computing, which ultimately absorbed most of the investment in science and innovation of the latter half of the 20th Century--and which arguably may have laid the groundwork for a more sustained attack on space. And from microtechnoogy, nanotechnology. And nanobiotechnology. Which may turn out to be the most important technology for conquering space beyond near earth orbit of all, now that I think of it.

Because the gravity well isn't the only barrier to deep space. Beyond the Earth's Van Allen Belts, the solar wind propels high energy particles and cosmic rays right through the human body, causing long term damage to the bodfy's cells. Shielding from those cosmic rays requires a) lead, brought up from Earth at great cost, b) using the spacecraft's water supply as a shield with unknown effects on the water supply--maybe more "heavy water" or c) an ion propulsion system that we're just now perfecting that can get us to the Moon or Mars quickly as in maybe 2 weeks to Mars --still enough for damage where whe have to have had robots busy digging a habitat for us underground to shield ourselves from the surface environment unless we are near a Mascon on the Moon (which dosen't help us on Marsk,, let alone on an asteroid or Jovian moon.

Or we can have nanobots inside our body repairing the damage these particles do to our cells, as the damage happens. Nanobots we are just starting to develop the technology to develop.
Maybe we could have had an earlier space program. But what kind of space program would it have been? Would it have gone from accepting a certain number of casualties to treating people as expendable? And if so, which countries would be in the forefront of such a space program? And if some of them were on the Moon now, would they be in a position to launch ten ton asteroids at locations on Earth using the same magnetic induction technology we've just seen above, Cheylabinsk style?
Asteroids are the only bombs which can be bigger and more efficient at bunker busting than nuclear weapons. And once they get into the gravity well, they are just a ten ton piece of rock--almost impossible to deflect. Within the next 20-30 years, I could easily see India, China, Iran and Israel going to the Moon for this kind of deterrence once space really opens up.
So there are many different ATLs that an accelerated space presence with accelerated technology can open up Some of them may not be pleasant. . Alternate universes teaches us how to think of them. At least if we wait until we have nanobots, living in space may be somewhat humane and not a death sentence for the expendable.

 

[Delta Force]

Flight of the Arrow

Avro Canada employees celebrate Janusz Żurakowski's record breaking March 20,
1959 flight, which gave Canada it's first international aviation record. The Arrow
established several aviation records, amazingly using unmodified aircraft.

Avro Canada test pilot Janusz Żurakowski smashed the world speed record on March 20, 1959, easily exceeding the record established by a heavily modified USAF F-104 the year before. This feat was accomplished with an Arrow Mark I prototype, attracting significant international attention for the previously obscure Canadian aviation company and even an order from the Shah of Iran. Between 1959 and 1961 the Arrow went on to establish several aviation records, easily fending off competition from American and Soviet aircraft and helping to secure further export orders. Unlike competing record attempts, the Canadian ones were accomplished with stock aircraft, showcasing the amazing capabilities of the design.

The Arrow Mark III was Canada's unconventional choice for a tactical nuclear attack
aircraft. Despite reduced performance and operating outside of its designed flight
envelope, the Arrow proved superior to the NATO standard F-104G in the role.

Several Arrow variants were proposed and produced throughout the early 1960s. The Arrow Mark II was the first variant to enter service with the RCAF and foreign air forces, featuring domestically developed Canadian engines and avionics and increasing aircraft speed to Mach 2.5. The Mark III multirole variant entered service in 1962 to equip Canada's tactical nuclear attack aircraft in Europe. Although its external weapons pylons and fuel pods reduced aircraft performance, the Arrow's Blue Owl avionics proved superior at low altitude, helping the RCAF to achieve a lower accident rate than air forces using the F-104G.

The Arrow Mark IV was the premier Anglo-Canadian interceptor of the early 1960s.
It's twin 40,000 lbf Orenda III engines and the Skystreak missile offered a powerful
combination of speed and power matched by few other aircraft.

The Arrow Mark IV was the final military variant introduced in the early 1960s and improved speed and altitude performance to Mach 3 and 70,000 feet, respectively. Early design concepts planned to use ramjets to increase vehicle performance, but the successful test firing of a 40,000 lbf Orenda Mark III engine allowed the desired performance figures to be achieved with conventional engine technologies. This significant performance increase required modifications to the design of the aircraft. The wings and air intakes were modified, and the Arrow Mark III fuel pods were modified to reduce drag during the supersonic dash to the target. Titanium was utilized on leading edges and other surfaces exposed to high heat levels, in addition to the pioneering use of ablative carbon fiber later used for spacecraft. Ramjets were utilized on the Skystreak missile, developed by the Canadian Armament Research and Development Establishment (CARDE) as an Anglo-Canadian alternative to the AIM-47 Falcon. The Mark IV was designed to carry a single Skystreak missile in fuselage recesses, allowing this powerful long range armament to be equipped without compromising aircraft performance.

-----

I will do one more update for Avro to explore some of their other projects, perhaps mixing it with some work from CARDE and Gerald Bull.

 

[Bahamut-255]

I think Canada's importance in the Global Stage in the 1960's just went up a lotta notches.

 

[Delta Force]

I think Canada's importance in the Global Stage in the 1960's just went up a lotta notches.

Canada played (and continues to play) a huge role in the turboprop market niche they acquired in the 1960s. Avro Canada is going to establish itself as one of the big companies of the postwar world, at least on par with OTL McDonnell Douglas or the British Aircraft Corporation. The Canadians may have lost out on acquiring a share of the commercial market early on, but they can go many different directions. STOL or even VTOL aircraft for the RCN, massive cargo planes, ground effect vehicles, SSTs, even spacecraft.

 

[LostCosmonaut]

Since the Arrow Mk-IV is only carrying one Skystreak, would it be fair to assume that it is nuclear tipped (as was the AIM-47).

Also, how capable is the Arrow of sustaining Mach 3? I suspect it's somewhere closer to the performance of the MiG-25 than the SR-71.

 

[Delta Force]

Since the Arrow Mk-IV is only carrying one Skystreak, would it be fair to assume that it is nuclear tipped (as was the AIM-47).

Also, how capable is the Arrow of sustaining Mach 3? I suspect it's somewhere closer to the performance of the MiG-25 than the SR-71.

The Skystreak comes in both nuclear and conventional variants. In RCAF and RAF service the Arrow Mark IV typically carries nuclear Skystreaks, the conventional variant is for the export market.

As for range, the Arrow is closer to the MiG-25 than the SR-71. The Mark I variant had a combat radius of only 380 miles, and that's with 23,500 lbf thrust J75s. The fuel tanks help, but the Orenda III is still putting out up to 40,000 lbf of thrust.

 

[Nicola]

Thanks for answering my question.

Yeah seeing them on the last 707s would be unlikely, unless they do some sort of super 707 instead of a 757, although the economics of twins vs quad-jets makes that unlikely I guess. Really I'm hoping for earlier super twins, because I love me some big twins.

despite the fact that low bypass Turbofans were fitted to many civvie 707s and the 707 / dash 80 derived military aircraft were fitted with a variety of high bypass Turbofans ...

butterfly ETOPS and suddenly the super twins look a lot less appealing compared to a trijet or quad ...

 

[Just Leo]

Impressive! A response to a 2011 post proves that everything comes to those who wait, unless they die first.


Just thought I'd add that the weapons fit to the Avro Arrow was somewhat limited to the weapons bay between the front undercarriage and the speed brakes. I did measure it once for 3 semi-conformal AIM-47s, the limit of length and width. In the drawing, the Skystreak looks a little nosy, and the central fuel tank behind it doesn't go there.

 

[Vonar Roberts]

Since the Arrow Mk-IV is only carrying one Skystreak, would it be fair to assume that it is nuclear tipped (as was the AIM-47).

Also, how capable is the Arrow of sustaining Mach 3? I suspect it's somewhere closer to the performance of the MiG-25 than the SR-71.

I believe the basic Arrow was tested at Mach 1.98, and still had plenty of room on the throttle. When the project was canceled in our time line there were designs on the drawing board that were supposedly capable of even higher-Mach speeds. Avro Mach 3 design studies for the CF-105 also mentioned Titanium as a construction material in order to withstand airframe heating.

 

[Usili]

Have you thought about including the F-107 Rapier and B-70 Valkyrie in usage for the USAF?

 

[Delta Force]

Have you thought about including the F-107 Rapier and B-70 Valkyrie in usage for the USAF?

The F-108 Rapier has entered service as an Aerospace Defense Command interceptor and as the R-108 reconnaissance aircraft in the timeline. You can read about it here. The B-70 will also be entering service in the timeline, which will be explored later.

 

[Archibald]

It is possible to jump directly from jet planes to space planes without going through throwaway rockets.
What you need is suborbital refueling, and the X-15 shows the way.

Figures an aircraft with a pair of turbojets and a rocket engine.
No surprise, such machine is way to heavy too put itself into orbit.
Top speed: mach 15. Ceiling: 350 000 feet or 100 km. That's the best that can be done, unfortunately orbit is mach 25 and 300 km.

So how do we fill that gap ?

Have a pair of such space planes flying separately to the maximum speed and height. There, they go into a suborbital parabola; a parabola that last 10 to 20 minutes. Out of the atmosphere, the sonic and hypersonic booms, shock waves and turbulence no longer exist; it is a quiet, silent flight in space.
So quiet that it is possible to refuel in flight, much like fighters or bombers refuel from a tanker at subsonic speed.
So one space plane sprout a refueling boom and refuel its twin. The job done, the tanker glide back to Earth, while the twin goes into orbit.

No need for advanced, complicated engines like ramjets and scramjets, or air liquefaction like Skylon. Just turbofans and rockets - that's enough.
The drawback: liquid oxygen is too cold for refueling, so alternate oxidizers are needed. Like H2O2 or N2O. Even at lower performance, suborbital refueling still works pretty well.
I've done a lot of research, and run the maths, and I can say two things a) no one thought about it before 1993
b) the maths work pretty well !

 

[Vonar Roberts]

It is possible to jump directly from jet planes to space planes without going through throwaway rockets.
What you need is suborbital refueling, and the X-15 shows the way.

Figures an aircraft with a pair of turbojets and a rocket engine.
No surprise, such machine is way to heavy too put itself into orbit.
Top speed: mach 15. Ceiling: 350 000 feet or 100 km. That's the best that can be done, unfortunately orbit is mach 25 and 300 km.

So how do we fill that gap ?

Have a pair of such space planes flying separately to the maximum speed and height. There, they go into a suborbital parabola; a parabola that last 10 to 20 minutes. Out of the atmosphere, the sonic and hypersonic booms, shock waves and turbulence no longer exist; it is a quiet, silent flight in space.
So quiet that it is possible to refuel in flight, much like fighters or bombers refuel from a tanker at subsonic speed.
So one space plane sprout a refueling boom and refuel its twin. The job done, the tanker glide back to Earth, while the twin goes into orbit.

No need for advanced, complicated engines like ramjets and scramjets, or air liquefaction like Skylon. Just turbofans and rockets - that's enough.
The drawback: liquid oxygen is too cold for refueling, so alternate oxidizers are needed. Like H2O2 or N2O. Even at lower performance, suborbital refueling still works pretty well.
I've done a lot of research, and run the maths, and I can say two things a) no one thought about it before 1993
b) the maths work pretty well !

I could be wrong, but I don't think it is possible to make the jump directly from jet planes to space-planes without going through throwaway rockets. Throwaway rockets are a good area to test key technologies that will eventually form the core of the space plane, and somehow I doubt the space program would be very popular for a 1940's or early 1950's nation to be loosing lives in a space-plane because of a rocket failure triggering a catastrophic explosion or during re-entry because heat shield technology does not exist yet. Of course I admire your Kerbalness though.

Also there comes the question of Orbital decay, how long will a orbital fuel depot be able to stay in a 100 by 100 km orbit without being pulled back to Earth and burning up in the atmosphere as a result of Atmospheric drag? A better bet would be to have your orbital fuel depot at a higher altitude, say a 300 by 300 km orbit and have a orbital tug come down to meet the space-plane after it has achieved a low orbit then bring it up to the fuel depot.

It should be interesting to see the alternate space race in this timeline though, because if memory serves a lot of Avro Canada engineers went south to work with NASA and the Apollo Program after the RL closure of Avro.

 

[Delta Force]

I just wanted to post here to let people know that there is another thread that explores some of the world events that are helping to shape the developments seen in this thread. Here is the link to my most recently update, dealing with the Suez War.

 

[Alternate History Geek]

I am SUBSCRIBED!!!!!!!!!!