Across the high frontier: a Big Gemini space TL

[Archibald]

TWO COMPANIES TAKE RADICALLY DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO LAUNCHER REUSABILITY

Two companies actively working on reusable launch vehicles recently described their strategies, with one starting in small increments of reusability and the other beginning with a fully formed - if untested - spaceplane. Both companies - Boeing and Martin Marietta - said the goal is to reduce launch costs by developing reusable hardware. U.S. and European government officials said they remain believers, if not currently big investors, in the two systems but stressed that the past 20 years of rocket history is littered with designs and flight vehicles — including the U.S. space shuttle — that never met the economic promise of reusable systems. George Mueller the former NASA deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, whose background includes work on both shuttles, said reusability presents more engineering and physics challenges than anyone expects. Mueller also stressed the importance of economic considerations. He said the Space Shuttle program likely would not have survived the changed expectations in the commercial launch market in any event. The vehicle was developed, then scrapped, in the early 1970s at a time of what proved to be wildly optimistic projections of commercial launch demand.

Martin Marietta strategy with Gaia is a rather simple, low risk approach. Starts from plain old expendable (ELV) Titan tooling; use proven XLR-105 (the Atlas sustainer) H-1 and later F-1 engines, always on the same growth pattern – one, then five, then nine. If reusability is needed down the line, then go for the brute force approach: stretch the core by the amount of fuel it takes to hover and land vertically likes a helicopter. And yes, superboosters are planned over the long term, perhaps with a methane variant of the F-1A to support Mars missions. What matters as of today is to takeover the ELV market from Ariane, Delta, Atlas, eventually with reusability to lower cost further.

Mueller recalled an earlier joint effort to reuse large rocket boosters - namely, for the long forgotten space shuttle.

“The reusable first stages at the start of our studies were just cylinders with engines and little wings,” Mueller said. “Three years later, they had become complete 747s in terms of size, with four engines on each of them. Our main problem was the impact reusability has on the design of the launcher. Safety factors have to be higher, and you need around 30 percent more propellant in the first stage to fly the stage back to the launch site.”

Mueller said NASA concluded that a reusable first stage could save about 10 percent in costs for a fully expendable rocket if the reusable vehicle flew 50 times per year and the engines could be used nine times on the rocket’s boosters before being used a 10th time as an expendable engine on the rocket’s second stage.

“Then we would save 10 percent — plus or minus 15 percent,” Mueller said. “We have more to learn.”

Robert Zubrin, Martin Marietta vice president for commercial sales and business development, said Martin is proceeding in small steps by adding legs to the first stage of the company’s currently expendable Titan II to test maneuvering, while continuing parallel testing through the company’s Grasshopper program. Grasshopper will be evolving into the Gaia program, aimed at developing a partially reusable Titan boosters. Martin Marietta told its customers that the company’s commercial Titan launch prices, already considered low when compared with other launch service providers, should drop further once the first stage is made reusable. Zubrin said it is too soon to estimate how many flights per year would be required of the Titan II with a reusable first stage to generate the savings Martin Marietta hopes to realize.

Zubrin is rapidly climbing echelons of Martin Marietta hierarchy, although he handwave away any ambitions.

"I'm anything but a good manager or leader. I have the wrong character for that, plus my heart is on Mars, not on Earth. I'd rather have my hand on Viking or Titan engineering rather than making a large amount of money as CEO."

Yet there is no doubt that Zubrin ebullient character is shaking out Martin Marietta creativity. The company is no longer one of those "lumbering aerospace giants" space cadets loath so much. Zubrin discussed some rough numbers.

"In order to get the price per pound low enough to start seeing serious demand elasticity and profitability, most analyses say you need ~50flts/yr/airframe. But in order to have a robust system, you need at least 3 airframes so that if one has a failure or needs to be taken down for an overhaul or serious repair, you can keep flying with the other two. Now you're up to needing 100-150 flights/yr3- But in order to have a robust industry, you really need 2-3 serious players, so that if any one of them has to ground their fleet for a while due to a serious problem, the industry goes on. Basically to get a robust RLV industry, you need demand in the ~300-500 flights per year range. Even just to get to a single-company with a semi-robust fleet, you need 100-150flts/yr. That's a lot. Existing markets won't do that and new markets take time to come online. And there are the technical questions of not just can you recover the vehicle and refly it at great expense, but can you a) do it with a short enough turnaround time to get to the 50flts/yr rate you need to make the economics work, b) can you reach that turn rate without sacrificing safety, and c) can you do that without requiring such a big standing army that the economics never close. I personally think all three of those are likely feasible, but can understand why reasonable people might disagree. I'm very confident that Martin Marietta will very well have the financial capacity to do a "build it and see if they come" with Gaia. In order to get to a high enough flight rate to enable a good industry with at least 2-3 good players, each with multiple vehicles, you're talking about needing several hundred flights per year. I don't think you're going to get there with F9R. At least we seems to have found a great approach to get into basic reusability starting from an expendable vehicle.

Boeing Orion, meanwhile, is a single-stage-to-orbit rocket designed to take payloads into low Earth orbit before returning to the same aircraft-type landing strip from where it took off. Orion project manager Andy Hepler said focusing on flight rate is only one way of solving the economics problems around reusable rockets. Boeing, he said, is coming at the market from another angle.

“People ask us: ‘With only 60-70 total launches per year, how can you justify spending admittedly much more than what is needed for a rocket like ELVIS — two or three times as much?’” Hepler said, referring to NASA-military’s proposed $5 billion future launcher now in design.

Hepler said Boeing proposes to adapt commercial airline industry practices, where Boeing obviously sell plans to multiple airlines that use the same airports. Under this model, he said, even nations whose governments would launch only once or twice a year might find it valuable to purchase an Orion and then share spaceport costs.

“It is much easier to buy a spaceplane for somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion than to develop your own system,” Hepler said. “If you can get sales of around 30 planes, then the business model closes and this can be developed using private funding. If there are fewer, then you are looking at some form of public-private partnership, and this is what we are going to talk to NASA about.”

 

[CrazyGeorge]

This is always good.

 

[Archibald]

Thank you ! And thank you alls for those 80 000 views.

 

[Archibald]

September 13, 1985

...Owen Gordon voice was shaking slightly as he spoke. In accordance with the Orion team he was to disclose a major, groundbreaking departure into their space plane design - to DARPA, the lean-and-mean military agency tasked with high-risk technlogical ventures.

The small group gathered around the table included Robert Cooper, once the director of DARPA ; Anthony Tether and Robert Williams, aeronautical engineers and project managers at DARPA; and Lawrence Skantze, a four-star Air Force general. All were strong believers in the feasibility of the TAV, the fabled Trans Atmospheric Vehicle that could fly out of an ordinary airport or air base and go into orbit. All had supported early iterations of Orion, but that one was a major departure from the original plans.

Gordon knew the Boeing RASV team he now belonged to (he had left McDonnell Douglas and the Big Gemini program) had serious competitors.

General Dynamics was pitching its Air Launch Sortie Vehicle (ALSV) an external tank small shuttle launched from the bak of a modified 747.

Rockwell, for their part, had a lifting body mated to an expendable booster, the two parachuted out of a C-5 Galaxy transport !

There had also been an unsollicited proposal by maverick engineer Tony Dupont for a scramjet vehicle which supposed performance was very dubious. Further tests of scramjets on the subscale shuttle models had been hardly encouraging, plus Dupont had stuck with podded (and not integrated) scramjets, a pretty bad idea by itself. So he last a lot of credibility, although this did not deterred him from lobbying the military.

The use of scramjets or modified airliners resulted from the TAV most difficult requirement: of a space plane that could fly out of an ordinary airport or air base and go into orbit, if possible on a short notice.

As far as Gordon was concerned in flight refueling was another possibility.

“In 1967 Richard Nau had a seminal, landmark study with the title A Comparison of Fixed Wing Reusable Booster Concepts

The study conclusion has this to say

It is recommended that concepts such as in-flight refueling, scramjet, and oxidizer collection be evaluated quite carefully so that lengthy and costly technology programs peculiar only to a single concept are not indulged in to the exclusion of other more general technologies applicable to several of the other concepts.

This sentence remain very pertinent today. DARPA is tudying Tony Dupont scramjet; the British are developing HOTOL oxidizer collection system.

"It is my opinion that the case of exoatmospheric suborbital refueling is one of those crazy things that we wonder how we ever lived without. It can reasonably be asked why no-one ever thought about it before Robert [Salkeld] and Richard [Nau] ?

Well, there was a close call some years before.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Air Force investigated a single-stage-to-orbit concept called Aerospaceplane. The vehicles explored during this program included some very exotic propulsion concepts, such as LACES and ACES, that extracted oxygen from the atmosphere during ascent and used it once the vehicle left the sensible atmosphere.

Most of the contractors involved in the program performed parametric evaluations of conventional concepts that carried all of the propellants from the ground–termed "propellants onboard at takeoff" (POBATO, was a bizarre acronym, sounds like potato) – in addition to the air-collection schemes. However, an even more bizarre concept was called the "hypersonic in-flight refueling system" (HIRES). Designers at Convair, Douglas (model 2335), and North American each considered - you guess ! - trying to refuel the Aerospaceplane in flight... at Mach 6.

This concept actually advanced far enough that the Air Force and NASA had preliminary discussions about using two X-15s flying in formation to validate the idea. The logistics of getting two X-15s in formation would have been formidable, and the piloting task daunting. On two separate occasions the X-15 program attempted to fly two flights in a single day (but not at the same time, since the High Range could not support the concept), and each time one of the X-15s had a system problem that led to the flight being scrubbed. Fortunately for the X-15 program, the refueling demonstration was never attempted.

There is no question that refueling at mach 6 would have been a suicide because of the hypersonic shock wave, a rather horrific flight environment made of severe heat, turbulence and sonic booms. Yet it should be remembered that the X-15 not only broke speed records. It also flew suborbital parabolas at 350 000 feet, way above the atmosphere. It happens that in contrast with the hypersonic regime, suborbital flight is somewhat smooth and quiet.

The reason is that the atmosphere is mostly gone.

In turn this begs an interesting question, that is, how about refueling in suborbital rather than hypersonic ? How about trading speed for height ? Whatif one of the Aerospaceplane contractors did the tradeoffs, and the X-15 formation flight was ultimately attempted at 350 000 feet rather than Mach 6 ?

One has to figure a pair of X-15s rocketing past 250 000 feet, their engines shut down, closing the formation. Once close enough, they would have three minutes of suborbital parabola to try and hook together for the propellant transfer before falling back to Earth for the glided landing at Edwards.

The X-15 carried ammonia fuel and liquid oxygen oxidizer, but also hydrogen peroxide for its reaction control system. All three propellants would have been worth a transfer. Ammonia is a non cryogenic fuel very similar to kerosene while hydrogen peroxide is generally considered the second best oxidizer beside liquid oxygen. The non-cryogenic propellants could be transfered via a simple hose. Due to its very low temperature liquid oxygen would be somewhat harder to transfer; it would need a boom akin to the KC-135 system. Perhaps X-15A-2 drop tanks could have been modified for the tests. It wouldn't be too hard to stretch or cut such a drop tank to make room for a refueling drogue or probe.

Flight testing on the X-15 didn't cost a lot, and the program managed to ran along Apollo that sucked so much of NASA budget. This mean that suborbital liquid oxygen transfer could have been proven by 1968, in time for the space shuttle program.

That year, when George Mueller disclosed the space shuttle he did it via Lockheed's Starclipper project. Mueller and Starclipper designer Maxwell Hunter heavily insisted on airliner-like operations, although the Starclipper vertical liftoff and large drop tanks would have prevented that. NASA also wanted a 20 000 pound payload for space station resupply. It happens that both objectives were well within reach of a suborbital refueling machine. How history could have been different had Orion been invented twenty years in advance !

"In 1906 naval warfare undergone a major breakthrough, the kind that happen once in decades but change things forever. That breakthrough was called HMS Dreadnought. To make a long story short, once uppon a time battleships were build with two guns calibers - big and medium, 305 mm (12 inch) and 270 mm (10.5 inch) respectively. The balance was usually four big and twelve or sixteen medium guns. It was believed this combination ensured maxium firepower and broadside, but in fact, unnoticed by most naval architects a rift was slowly growing.

It happened that battleships fired at each others farther and farther, making the smaller guns less and less useful despite their superior numbers. Thus in 1905, taking the bull by the horns, the British admirals decided to try a big-gun-only battleship - in fact they asked themselves how many big guns could be packed into a standard battleship hull. They discovered the number of guns remained pretty high- ten of them. In the end what mattered was the big guns; and there, the Dreadnought had ten of them, while every other battleships only had four since their medium guns just didn't mattered anymore.

The result was a major breakthrough, and within a decade every naval power that counted started building Dreadnought-like big-guns battleships - to the point the British ship become a household name! Older battleships were known as pre-dreadnoughts, followed by dreadnoughts and later superdreadnoughts.

Three decades later, in 1936, a similar conceptual revolution happened in commercial aviation with the Boeing 247 and later, the Douglas DC-3. Before them, the standard airliner was the Ju-52; fixed undercarriage, three engines. The Boeing and Douglas were the first true modern airliners; the first that allowed airlines to earn money and raise benefits.

Three decades later the burgeonning space program sought his Dreadnought or DC-3 - a conceptual breakthrough, a revolutionnary machine that would make transportation to orbit more affordable than the classic throwaway boosters.

"We can achieve that through a thorough re-examination of the rocket equation.

Let's take an example – Mars trips. We’ve been studying Mars mission options for thirty years. Right back to von Braun. And the basic problems — the energy needed to get out of Earth’s gravity well, to cross interplanetary space — none of that has changed. And we haven’t come up with any fundamentally smarter solutions than von Braun’s, either. We’re still firing off big hydrogen-oxygen rockets, because we don’t see what else we can do.

What we need is to put down the tyrannny of the rocket equation. We need to turn that equation upside down. We need a force multiplier to overcome that obstacle.

"On the surface the rocket equation (as forged by Tsiolkovski a century ago) is straightforward. In fact it is redoutable.

The equation reads as follow.

v = g *Isp *ln(minitial/mfinal)

v is the delta-v, the amount of energy to reach Earth orbit expressed in meter per seconds.

g is Earth acceleration of gravity, 9.81 sometimes rounded to 10.

Isp is the specific impulse, the energy contained in the chemical propellants - fuel to burn with an oxidizer.

The last part of the equation deals with the rocket mass before and after the propellant combustion. One has to realize that when building Reusable Launch Vehicles rocket scientists simply try to find and exploit a breach in the equation, somewhat a very uneasy task.

"So one could ask, what elements in the equation can be tweaked, what can't be, and how to cheat.

"99% of RLV concepts try to tweak either specific impulse or mass, that for a very simple reason - Earth acceleration of gravity can't be fooled, since it is related to the planetary body own mass. Unless we cut Earth mass to Mars or Moon size, we can't go around that part of the equation. It also means that by a strange, wicked irony building a reusable rocket would be easier on Moon and Mars, not only because those bodies are smaller but also because their atmosphere is thinner or even non-existent !

So what matters is mass or specific impulse, or both. So let's try and tweak them.

"Tweaking mass ? "

"Like it or not, but, for all the exotic propulsion systems proposed along the years (from nuclear thermal propulsion to antimatter, including space elevators) today the best option on hand is chemical propulsion. By burning liquid oxygen with liquid hydrogen the specific impulse maxes at 460 seconds. This is negated by hydrogen inherent storage weaknesses - low density, low temperature. Which mean that lower-energy fuels such as methane, kerosene, hydrazine or ammonia eventually match hydrogen performance through density and smaller tanks resulting in better aerodynamics.

In the end however, whether to use hydrogen or not doesn't really matter because chemical propulsion performance level is just no match to Earth gravity pull. Hydrogen or not, the unconvenient truth is that no less than 90% of the vehicle mass has to be pure propellants. The end result is a vehicle made of tanks wrapped around that big mass of propellants, and everything else (the vehicle, crew, and payload !) stacked around the big tanks.

"Tweaking specific impulse ?"

Fortunately it was rapidly understood that the above iron-fisted rule only applied to all-rocket powered Reusable Launch Vehicles. The only way to get away from that tyranny is to try and cut into the huge mass of propellants. Propellants that includes fuel and the oxidizer to burn it, most of the time liquid oxygen.

"The proportion between the two can be as high as 80/20 - so the obvious conclusion is, get ride of some of the liquid oxygen and things will be better.

"Which bring us back to aircrafts. Jet engines burns "free" atmospheric air and not liquid oxygen, but of course they never leave Earth atmosphere. It also happens that specific impulse of the jets made rockets look pathetic - 2000 seconds against 400 or so. But jets don't go very fast nor very high; worse, aircrafts fly horizontally while rockets shot vertically, meaning their respective trajectories doesn't match very well.

"Still, before going into space rocket have first to cross the atmosphere, so the challenge is to have them suck some free air in order to trim some weight out of the heavy oxidizer tanks. Forcing a rocket to burn the atmosphere, however, is an arduous challenge. There are exactly two ways of achieving that. Or burn the atmosphere as if, like an airplane - using much improved jet engines called ramjets and scramjets."

Gordon saw that his mention of scramjets hit some nerves. Dubious glances were exchanged across the room. He felt Dupont scramjet was in troubled waters, and that was as well like that. The man was a fraud.

"Or try and turn air atmosphere into rockets precious oxidizer - liquid oxygen !" he continued unabatted. "Which mean getting ride of all that unuseful nitrogen (80 percent of air) and liquefy what's left - the oxygen and rare gases. Needless to say instantly turning hot, gaseous air into dozens of tons of liquid oxygen is no easy feat, although that technology has perhaps better chance that scramjet.

"Now back to the equation.

v = g *Isp *ln(minitial/mfinal)

We saw g can't be fooled, neither can Isp nor mass, at least not without great difficulty. But how about v ?

"As se saw earlier, v is in proportion to g. Earth mass and density result in a strong gravity pull, which in turn determines a big delta-v to orbit. It amounts to 7700 m/s... without gravity and drag losses. Whatever the losses we can't cut Earth mass to diminish the gravity pull, so we are stuck with 7700 m/s; there is no workaround that huge number.

Face it, or burst.

"So how does Ariane or Saturn or Proton manage to reach orbit ? they stage. They cut the delta-v into two or three chunks; three rockets are literally stacked on top of each other. Once a rocket has exhausted its propellant supply it detach and fells back into Earth atmosphere where it gets destroyed. It is that weight loss that make orbital flight a possibility."

"The stages could theorically be recovered, but their cylindrical shape has all ill-placed center of gravity, and this leds to tumbling and destruction. Mass of the recovery gear would also eat into the payload. Still Martin Marietta is seriously considering a recoverable Titan.

"For all its flaws staging nonetheless remains the most clever trick ever used against the rocket equation tyranny. But is also works counter to complete reusability, hence the desesperate atempts at building non-staging vehicles that in turn run into the oxidizer huge mass.

In the light of the above difficulty, it could reasonably be argued that perhaps we should better trying to improve staging instead of getting ride of it.

So how could staging be improved ?

Catapults, aircrafts motherships, or even towing (!) all represents different way of staging. Unfortunately they only reasonably work at very low mach numbers. Past Mach One they amount to suicide, but the aforementioned 9000 m/s equals to mach 25 !

Staging, by contrast, works at any speed if only because it is a very straightforward manoeuver. As the rocket ascent, the now unpowered stages are separated by explosive bolts, then fall away courtesy of Earth gravity pulling them toward the planet surface (ever see that iconic Apollo video ?)

So is there an alternate staging process working past mach 1 ?

Yes, and it is called in-flight refueling. Much like towing, catapulting, or air-launching if done below mach 1 in flight refueling stands no chance against the usual staging business. So it would have to be done at higher speeds."

Now the moment had come.

"One has to figure a pair of twin space planes flying out of a very ordinary airport on jet power, then firing rockets and accelerating to 5500 m/s. Although far from Earth orbit 9000m/s, this allows for a suborbital parabola, a parabolic arc long enough that one aircraft extends a refueling boom and replenish its twin."

He heard muffled expectatives in the room. Surely, this guy can't be serious !

Of course I'm serious, and don't call me Shirley. I've prepared for that reaction.

"The knee-jerk reaction is to declare supersonic or hypersonic refueling suicide, and surely it is. But let's think again about the X-15. That amazing machine busted speed records up to mach 6.7. But it also broke altitude records, up to 354 000 feet or 107 km - to the edge of space, and out of Earth atmosphere."

Gordon took a sip of fresh water.

"And that's the reason that make suborbital refueling so intriguing. If done at the top of a suborbital parabola (read, during a free fall and out of the atmosphere) then everything changes. Out of the atmosphere say goodbye to the hypersonic shockwave and all the heating and buffeting. There the refueled machine can quietly recover enough propellants - energy - to fly into orbit.

"A key aspect of that technique is that an "orbital" machine can be build around 6000 m/s of delta-v and not 9000 m/s. This is a huge advantage that not only makes structure design vastly easier, it also boost the payload to orbit enormously. There's no need either to burn the atmosphere to improve the specific impulse and cut into the oxidizer mass. The engines are well-known turbofans and chemical rockets.

It could be a conceptual revolution." Gordon emptied his glass of fresh water before continuing. Ready to hammer the last blow.


"the empty shells they had discarded twitched for a while in a mindless dance of death, then crumbled into rust"



"Those words have been written by Arthur Clarke in the iconic novel 2001, a space odyssey. It illustrates how suborbital refueling could make obsolete all the throw-away boosters, past reusable launch vehicle concepts and manned capsules. Well, today I feel that suborbital refueling could be that major breakthrough.."

"In conclusion I'd like to quote a book called Konstantin Tsiolkovski, his life and works. Hail the glory of a socialist hero."

Owen started reading.

"The second type of step-rocket Tsiolkovsky called a rocket squadron. This is several, for instance eigh, rockets, moving parallel to one another and fastened together lrke logs in a raft. All the rocket motors work simultaneously at the start. When each of the eight rockets has spent half its fuel, four rockets (for instance, two on the right and two on the left) fill the half-empty tanks of the other four rockets with their remaining fuel and detach themselves from the squadron. The remaining four rockets, their tanks full, continue their flight. When these have spent half of their fuel, two of them (one on the right and one on the left) fill the tanks of their neighbours with the remaining fuel and also detach themselves from the two that proceed on their way. Finally, one of the two remaining rockets pours its remaining fuel into the half- empty tank of the one which is to reach the goal and leaves it. The advantage of the squadron type is that here all the rockets are of equal build and weight."

"It is Tsiolkovski that forged the cold, harsh equation of rockets that currently strand us on Earth. Yet is could be very well that same Tsiolkovski found an elegant solution to that thorning issue."

The next day Owen Gordon summarized suborbital refueling main issues.

"Gentlemen, the naysayers are on our back. They say it can't be done or brings no advantage wahtsoever. Here are some various "back of the enveloppe" assumptions:

1) Rendezvous speed is around Mach-10 on a high but suborbital trajectory to give as much time as possible. Note: "Relative" speed for the vehicles is close to zero at the beginning of the maneuver or as close as possible - that means the same launch site is used.

2) We assumed that total time along the trajectory from atmosphere exit to interface to be around 30 minutes with the "optimum" rendezvous window of around 10 to 15 minutes with no power applied to either vehicle prior to hook-up. Note: We actually have less than this because the vehicle is steadily loosing "speed" as it goes; and the more speed it lose the more it has to make up boosting with the propellant it is now taking on-board.

“As a matter of comparison, ICBM flight times are 15 - 20 minutes. So this means that the trajectory has to be higher to get more "flight time", almost sounding rocket like.

So we need to answer the following questions.

First, with such a lofted trajectory, what is the final destination orbit?

Secondly, where is the burn for the receiver vehicle to continue into orbit? At apogee? That maybe hundreds of miles high. Lower? Does that really make the concept even viable?

I think we will have to finely tune a very peculiar trajectory. ICBM and sounding rockets fly pointed trajectories which aim isn't orbit, peaking as high as a thousand miles before falling back in minutes. The usual rocket fly a much flatter, curving trajectory which height never exceds two hundred miles. As for airbreathers they fly like aircrafts, that is, horizontally. None of these three cases really applies here; we have to imagine a hybrid trajectory, half ballistic missile and half classic rocketry. Since most orbital launches flight time is around 10 minutes the trajectory will have to be highly lofted with the receiver vehicle boosting as soon as possible after transfer is completed. In the end rendezvous and transfer operations might very well take place in under 5 minutes at most, together with a a much more "depressed" trajectory but with thrust augmented "out-of-atmosphere" time during transfer.

3) Assuming a realistic propellant transfer rate - one can't really dump the whole load from one vehicle to the other in less than 30 seconds - its likely that both vehicles will need to put on some thrust to extend the trajectory time once the rendezvous is made. Depending on the method of hook-up there is going to be a variable amount of tension on the transfer and docking system and thrust from each vehicle is going to have to be very tightly controlled, perhaps more so than human would be capable of.

I feel that, whatever the trajectory we might end up needing a pretty beefy set of docking and transfer clamps that also have a serious cushioning and damping system attached. If you only had a couple of minutes you end up having to pretty much slam the vehicles together with all the robust structure that entails for both vehicles. In the above scenario the docking-and-transfer structure can be a lot lighter but still has to have some basic characteristics such as load bearing capability and fast transfer. Early studies gave some of the basics such as drogue-and-probe versus refueling boom with the boom having the fastest transfer rate but even that might not be enough in the time window.

• A hard-dock tubular or boom set would seem the best but you have positional problems to think about.
  
  
• Over/Under" where the booms are between the vehicles (above/below or side-by-side) makes any thrust issues into unwanted movement or rotations that would have to be damned out and constantly controlled.
  
  
• Fore/Aft where the vehicles are more or less aligned along a horizontal axis (above or below but aft for the following vehicle) introduces exhaust impingement issues and again stressors on the transfer booms as one vehicle gets lighter and the other heavier during transfer.
  

And there is the question of the basic assumption of commonality between the vehicles as, even assuming that there is a tanker pallet in the cargo bay of the transfer vehicle the receiving vehicle has to have almost the same set up to be able to receive the propellant and where does that leave room for the original cargo payload?

In the end I don't doubt that it can be done but the most basic question is would it be worth the effort due to the various constraints and how do we go about quantifying and outlining those constraints and issues?”

Owen was taking a risk there, introducing doubt. But he could see the DARPA and SDIO officials were hooked.

 

[Archibald]

http://raritania.blogspot.fr/2011/10/review-russian-spring-by-norman-spinrad.html
https://books.google.fr/books?id=RK...AA#v=onepage&q=russian spring spinrad&f=false

I stumbled across that novel a while back and loved it even if it somewhat flawed and dated. It now reads like an alternate history. I intend to tweak it to fit my TL (because it mentions the space shuttle, which doesn't exists ITTL)

 

[Michel Van]

The Classical Saturn V staging in real speed (from Apollo 4 and Apollo 6 Saturn V test flights.)

Here Modern Suborbital flight
note that New Shepard vertical speed drop to zero as it reach highes point of trajectory (at 5:00 in Video)

so with proper trajectory they got 4 minutes time to fuel up fast by turbo pumps.

by the way
I love Norman Spinrad novel "Russian Spring"

 

[Archibald]

***



"In the decades that followed Reykjavik historic breakthrough, plutonium and uranium from the dismantled nuclear bombs were poured into Molten Salt Reactors (MSR). The meltdown-proof, proliferation-resistant, no-waste MSR helped some ecologists change their mind over nuclear energy.

Molten salt reactors dissociated hydrogen from water via complex thermochemical processes. That hydrogen was then recombined with air nitrogen into ammonia - a fuel that substitued to oil in piston engine and gas turbines. Nuclear meltdowns, global warning, the oil crunch all belonged to the past. Mankind had won the energy battle and ensured its future."



***

Robert Zubrin (April 9, 1952 - )

Born in the Bronx, Robert Zubrin first hold a B.A in mathematics at the University of Rochester in 1974.
In 1972 while at Rochester the young Zubrin randomly learned about his university connection to the Viking program. Indeed Rochester biology department (which was only some doors away from Zubrin math department) had a researcher and scientist called Wolf Vishniac.
Vishniac was an extraordinary man. First, he was a good friend of Carl Sagan. Secondly, he was a pioneer in the quest for extremophiles life forms – first on Earth Antarctica, and later on Mars trough the Viking life-seeking package.

Vishniac was one out of five scientists with an experiment to be flown to Mars aboard the Viking landers. Late 1971 however due to cost and technical delays with the biological package Vishniac “Wolf Trap” experiment was very nearly deleted. Only an unexpected cash infusion into Viking – related to the space shuttle cancellation – saved Vishniac experiment.

For years Carl Sagan friend had actively tested his device in Antarctica, the most similar environment from Mars surface on Earth. In the process Vishniac used to enlist Rochester students for trips to Antarctica. The young Zubrin was so impressed with Vishniac that he resolved to bang at the scientist door, and together they went to Antarctica, a place that made a lasting impression on Zubrin. “It was as if we had landed on another planet.” After they returned Vishniac was gentle enough to encourage Zubrin, actually changing the student life.

Vishniac went as far as aranging a meeting between Zubrin and Carl Sagan. The young Zubrin saw a career opportunity and, thanks to Vishniac and Sagan backing in 1975 he landed a job at Martin Marietta, builder of the Viking spacecraft. He worked on the Viking lander, notably the Viking 3 tracked rover launched in 1979 and a possible follow-on Viking Sample Return (VSR). Because Viking was too small for sample return, Zubrin sought a way to cut weight, and in the process ran into early work on ISRU by Ash in 1978 and brought it to people like Al Schalenmuller and Benton Clark. Together they integrated ISRU into Viking Sample Return, albeith the mission was never flown. ISRU needed nuclear power and Zubrin got interested in RTGs, SP-100 and Molten Salt Reactors. In the process he met David Buden. Buden was a nuclear scientist having worked on the US - USSR Molten Salt Reactor research program spearheaded by Senator Howard Baker between 1973 and 1977. Only much later did the West learned that after 1978 MSR technology had found its way into the MKBS giant space station.

Zubrin
"Enter David Buden, another extraordinary engineer. I met David at Los Alamos. He had credentials that made him unique - he was a true veteran of nuclear propulsion. In 1958 his first job had been at General Electric in the vaning days of the aircraft nuclear propulsion program (ANP)
The nuclear aircraft promised unlimited range because it no longer burned air with a limited supply of kerosene. Instead a nuclear reactor would heat air; it was pretty much a hot-air aircraft ! Buden and I spent a lot of time discussing "atompunk" concepts of the 50's, the golden age of nuclear power. We pieced together a bold nuclear future: a world with molten salt reactors that couldn't meltdown, nuclear aircrafts with unlimited range and endurance, and the Army Nuclear Energy Depot. Back then the military had a grand vision: they wanted to get ride of gasoline and run their tanks, trucks, helicopters and aircrafts on liquid hydrogen, ammonia and methanol. To achieve that, air's nitrogen and water's hydrogen would be split using nuclear power from compact, mobile reactors.
"ANP was an enormous project at the time, spending the equivalent of about $20 billion in today's money over ten years. Not quite as big as Rickover submarine project, but still big. And it produced working hardware, including three nuclear turbojets that were static-tested in Idaho."
Buden had worked on the direct-cycle option by GE.

"In its final incarnation, this consisted of an air-cooled, beryllium oxide-moderated reactor with uranium oxide fuel elements. Air would enter the turbojet, be ducted to the reactor, be heated by direct contact with the fuel elements, and then be ducted back to the turbojet. Now this has some serious problems, even leaving aside the whole "crashing" thing. First, it's not going to be fast. It's just not. What it can do is stay aloft for a couple of weeks - its endurance is limited by maintenance and the crew's sanity, not by fuel." Buden joked. "That could still be really useful, for things like missile carriers and command planes."

A massive aerial platform staying airborne for weeks, now that was a grand vision. In fact it was something Tony Stark would have loved; the infamous Marvel helicarriers.

"Unfortunately, that's not what the Pentagon wanted - they wanted a fast, high-altitude bomber, basically the XB-70 Valkyrie. This led to regular oscillations in the program's support, as it was alternately scaled up and cut back, which wasted a huge amount of money and time. Despite that, they still managed to produce a few turbojets, and by the time the program was cancelled in 1961, they basically knew how to build a nuclear airplane. It would be big, expensive, and slow, but it would fly, and it would not be completely useless."

Buden's General Electric studied the direct cycle, where the air passed through the nuke core. Pratt & Whitney was tasked with the indirect cycle, where a heat exchanger stood between the reactor and the flowing air. The two cycles mandated different nuclear reactors with better performance than the usual water-cooled power plants found on Rickover's submarines or civilian facilities. The advanced reactors designs (liquid metal, molten salt, gas-cooled) later found their way into the civilian world. Pratt & Whitney indirect cycle was the first to go, in 1957; General Electric limped on until 1961, when JFK definitively buried nuclear aircrafts. Everything was not lost, however; as nuclear rockets soon replaced nuclear aircrafts.

So Buden moved to the Rover / NERVA space program, working on the so-called NRX - the closest thing from a working nuclear thermal rocket NASA ever saw.

When the space nuclear program collapsed in 1972 Buden moved to Los Alamos advanced designs division, and there he was when the SP-100 program got started. I saw Buden career as a bridge spanning over the successive eras of aerospace nuclear propulsion. Although NRX prototypes were only tested at Jackass Flats, Nevada, non-nuclear tests were also done at Plum Brooks - NASA Lewis test facility once build for the nuclear aircraft, then recycled for the NERVA. At General electric Buden had worked on both programs, so he knew Lewis pretty well. He had heard the lab had been moved out of NASA and to the ERDA; it had specialized into energy programs - although in fact the relation with NASA had not been totally severed.

From Lewis come an intriguing concept - of the molten salt reactor. Which reminded Buden of his early days at General Electric, working on the nuclear aircraft program. The molten salt reactor made sense, and not only for the multimegawatt future lunar base - it also made sense at the SP-100 scale.
In 1982 through Zubrin and Vishniac Carl Sagan learned about Buden's Molten Salt Reactor; and the more he dug, the more he liked it. A reactor that was so hard to melt was pretty welcome in the aftermath of Three Mile Island, and Tchernobyl just cubed that feeling. The best of fission working hand by hand with tritium fusion powerplant was an exciting prospect. That, and the MSR was proliferation-proof since one couldn't build nuclear bombs from uranium 233. And then he learned about Weinberg and Baker decade-old cooperation with the Soviet Union, including application of the reactor to the space program.

For good or worse, thanks to Buden the MSR found itself high on Carl Sagan political agenda...

 

[Archibald]

October 1985

On 27 August 1984 Minister of General Machine Building Oleg Dmitriyevich Baklanov had signed order no. 343/0180 on the creation of the Skif-D laser battlestation. There would be two D1 and D2 prototypes, but the whole thing was bogged down in a myriad of technical issues. D1 has no laser onboard, but D2 would have, the two being launched in 1987 and 1988 respectively.

Baklanov (the Big Oleg) had replaced Serguey Afanasyev (the Big Hammer) in 1983, after a personal vendetta of Ustinov against his former ennemy. The accronym General Machine Building was an euphemism that masked the true nature of a state organization which mission was building ballistic missiles by the dozens.

Big Oleg was angry. He was angry at the new leader, that weak Gorbachev. He was worried by the American stance over the SDI, all that sabre rattling by Reagan. Years before Andropov and Chernenko had given no ground to the cowboy, with all disarmement discussions first tied to the abandonment of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Gorbachev, however, was decidedly different. He was going to Geneva to meet their ennemy; he was determined to cut the military funds, and markedly unenthusiast about a Soviet answer to the SDI. Baklanov had understood how his leader thinking had been influenced by those pacifist scientists Velikhov and Sagdeev, which had no desire either for a Soviet Star Wars. With Ustinov death and Ogarkov cast aside, the military had been out of Chernenko succession process; and the final result had been that Gorbachev, not that puppet Romanov, had won.

Baklanov was ready to act.

The Beriev A-60 had just landed. A modified Il-76 transport, that aircraft housed a powerful 1 MW laser, somewhat the beginning of a Soviet answer to the Strategic Defense initiative.

Baklanov had a group of military officials under his control. Together they would act.

The instrument of Baklanov project was N1-13L. In 1972 the huge lunar booster had been one out of six to be repurposed for the MKBS-1 space station and, most importantly, to confuse the Americans over whether the Soviet Union had a superbooster in production or not.

As far as Baklanov was concerned the MKBS-1 space station and its backup were certainly huge things, but not the point of taking six N-1 to launch them. As such, there was a trio of surplus boosters that would never be launched - either used as decoy to foil American spy satellites, or test fired to support the N-1F.

Boris Gubanov, however, rightly feared that ground testing a N-1 may led to a huge explosion akin to the memorable 1969 disaster that had properly wiped the launch pad out of the surface of Earth. And Gubanov had complained to MOM and Baklanov, and the latter started developping an outrageous concept.

Gubanov plan was to flight test more N-1s, notably since one of them would someday carry a Topaz small nuclear reactor for the MKBS-1; reliability in that case was imperative, and it would only come with more flight testing. Gubanov, however, had no 80 ton payload to be placed on his test N-1. It felt to Baklanov to find him that payload, and there the reasonning was simple. The Beriev A-60 was in fact a modified Illyushin Il-76 military transport with a maximum payload of 40 tons - half of what the N-1F could carry into Earth orbit.

The plan was to launch a Skif DM mockup carrying the prototype laser to scare the American and trigger a reaction from Gorbachev. Of course the project would be hidden from his knowledge, buried within the sprawling MKBS-1 system. That was only the tip of the iceberg, however. The space laser program reached as far back as 1976, long before either Reagan and Gorbachev stepped in. It had been developed on secret military funds, and Big Oleg was not in a hurry to reveal it to Gorbachev.

This day Baklanov was briefing the Soviet military about latest development of the Skif space-based laser system. Amazingly, development of the Soviet own "Star wars" had began some years before Reagan "evil empire" speech of 1983.

"In 1968, the Air Force Weapons Laboratory (AFWL) was authorized to begin a new program on building and testing a CO2 gas dynamic laser. Between October and December, 1972 when technicians fired a ground-based 100 kilowatt CO2 laser that propagated at 10.6 microns against a variety of stationary targets. The tests went so well the project elevated to firing the laser at a moving airborne target.

On November 13, 1973, the laser was used against a 12 foot long Northrop MQM-33B radio controlled aerial target, a drone, in an attempt to knock it out of the air. Indeed, the drone did drop, but not precisely as planned. The laser beam burned through the drone's aluminum skin, frying the control system. The Air Force had hoped the beam would ignite the drone's fuel tank. The next day, the laser performed according to expectations. The beam found and locked onto the area of the drone where the fuel tank was located for 1.2 seconds, long enough to raise the temperature on the exterior of the fuel tank to ignite the interior vapors. The two tests marked the first time that aerial targets had ever been destroyed by a high-energy laser. Flushed with success, the Air Force decided that the next step would be to mount the laser on an aircraft, then shoot down targets while circling above the clouds.

On February 3, 1971, Air Force Headquarters issued a directive calling for an accelerated demonstration program to create an airborne laser laboratory. This directive, together with the positive recommendation of the Board, provided the push necessary to get started. The proposal that eventually emerged was to modify a Boeing KC–135 tanker aircraft to accept a large carbon dioxide laser that would produce a beam with a continuous wave energy of about 500 kilowatts. The airplane would also be equipped with a fire-control system that would be sufficiently accurate to perform the proof-of-concept experiments.

The laser tests were conducted in a series of cycles beginning in May 1973 with a low-power carbon dioxide laser installed in the ALL aircraft. The first fire-control tests were completed in November 1973, yet it took the best of a decade for the ALL to achieve significant results. On May 26, 1983, the ALL shot down an AIM-9B Sidewinder air-to-air missile over California's China Lake, a feat it quickly repeated. On May 31, it destroyed another Sidewinder, then, on June 1, two more. The final test for the ALL took place on 26 September 1983. In a joint experiment with the Navy, the ALL shot down and destroyed three 23-foot-long, ground-launched, BMQ-34A Navy drones, representing a Russian cruise missile, a weapon of deep concern to the Navy. The interception and destruction of the three drones signaled that the ALL program was a resounding success, proving that the goal of airborne anti-missile defense was indeed realistic.

Although it had shown that a laser mounted on an aircraft could be a formidable defensive weapon, it was generally viewed as impractical. Its carbon dioxide laser was too bulky and it did not generate enough power to be effective at extended ranges. Its long, 10.6-micron-wavelength gas dynamic laser, combined with limited optical component dimensions, led to poor laser beam propagation over distances greater than 10 km. Just as importantly, the system was not designed to be operated or maintained by a war fighter. However, it did give us a glimpse of the kind of devastating damage HELs could produce when operated from an airplane and coupled with the inherent flexibility and mobility of air power. We have developed a similar aircraft from an Il-76 transport. The Beriev A-60 carries a 1 megawatt laser.

Next step would be a complete defense shield based in space, with kinetic interceptors and improved lasers.

In 1976 the Soviet government issued a decree that placed OKB-1 in charge of a space weapons programme. It envisaged the use of space-based weapons not only to destroy incoming US missiles, but also to destroy enemy satellites as well as targets on the ground, in the air and on the sea. Space weapons were to be supported by MKBS-1.

The ASAT tier of the NPO Energiya programme consisted of two types of “battle stations” based on Glushko civilian Salyut space stations and the mostly similar Chelomei Almaz (the two programs were later consolidated by Glushko). One was called Kaskad and would be equipped with a large amount of self-guided missiles developed by the KB Tochmash design bureau of Aleksandr Nudelman to nullify targets in medium and high Earth orbits. The other was called Skif (“Scythian”) and would use laser systems to destroy targets in low Earth orbits. The stations would be periodically visited for maintenance and refuelling. Experimental versions would be launched by the Proton rocket and eventually the N-11.

In 1981 both Skif and Kaskad underwent significant changes. Because the gas dynamic laser system needed for Skif turned out to be much heavier than projected, the spacecraft was transformed into a 100-tonne class vehicle to be launched by the N-1 heavy lift launch vehicle.

Kaskad remained within the 20-tonne launch capacity of the Proton rocket, but instead of being built on the basis of the DOS space stations would now use a strippeddown version of the FGB cargo sections of the TKS transport vehicles designed by KB Salyut in the 1970s. Attached to the bus would be three small space tugs each carrying one or more missiles of the Tochmash design bureau. After separating from Kaskad in low Earth orbit, the space tugs would use their own propulsion and guidance and control systems to get as close as possible to their targets in higher orbits and then launch the missiles at them. That work on space tugs closely mirror Lockheed's Agena, officially NASA but with clear dual-military purpose.

In addition to Skif and Kaskad, KB Salyut began work on three new ASAT systems that were also part of SK-1000:

• Naryad-V: a ground-based kinetic kill vehicle using a silo-based ICBM (the UR-100N UTTKh) and a new upper stage to reach targets from low Earth orbits (LEO) to geostationary orbits (GEO). That upper stage become the Briz, our answer to the Agena. Briz is a modular rocket booster with two tanks of hypergolic propellants, big and small. The big tank can be removed resulting in an Agena -size tug. Also, small and big Briz can be stacked, providing very large delta-V for in-space manoeuvering. Briz would act both as a third stage and a space tug. It would first be ignited to place itself into a parking orbit and then be re-ignited one or several times to approach the target and then deploy its missile(s).

• Kamin (literally “Fireplace”, but in fact a compound of the words kosmicheskaya mina or “space mine”): a constellation of small ASAT weapons deployed in orbits close to potential target satellites for very quick intercepts. Using a new lightweight bus, several of them could have been launched in one go by launch vehicles such as N-11 or N-111.

• Lider (“Leader”): an ASAT vehicle using particle beam weapons to disable electronic systems of enemy satellites.

Like Kaskad, Naryad-V and Kamin were to be outfitted with space-to-space missiles of the KB Tochmash design bureau for a hit-to-kill intercept of target satellites. In order to save costs, the initial hope was that the three systems could employ a common space tug that would be loaded with different amounts of propellant depending on the mission. That what the American plan to do: Lockheed proposed to use their Agena as a "space garage", a platform housing a load of kinetic interceptors.

Lider, the space-based particle-beam weapon, is also a huge vehicle requiring the N-1 rocket. The development of a space-based particle-beam weapon is in an even more immature stage than that of a laser system.

The laser-equipped Skif is also targeting at objects in LEO. Whereas the American space-based laser systems proposed under SDI have to be accurately aimed at ballistic missiles or warheads flying at large distances and high speeds, Skif needs less power-hungry lasers to hit orbiting satellites at much closer range and lower relative speeds. Advantages over the kinetic systems are the shorter intercept times and the ability to destroy multiple targets with a single vehicle.

However, Skif is a cumbersome vehicle that is dependent on the expensive N-1 moon rocket and, like the carrier vehicles of the US Space Based Interceptors, would be an easy target for enemy ASATs. Moreover, even the development of a short-range space-based laser is a challenging task that is continuously running far behind schedule.

"Skif currently came into five steps into two broad phases – Skif "D", varied demonstrators, and the definite, operational Skif-U.

Let's first definite what Skif-D is. Our early objective had been to use a powerful laser built by the Astrofizika design bureau. But that program has fallen behind; in 1983 we realized that the Astrofizika laser and its power systems are too big and heavy for existing rockets to launch. So we came up with an interim plan. We decided to adapt the small, one-megawatt carbon dioxide laser that is flying on the Beriev A-60 since August 1981. For the record, the laser aircraft targeted, and shot down, various high-altitude balloons and a La-17 drone."

What Baklanov didn't said was that a rising star among the Astrofizika laser design bureau was Nikolai Ustinov, the son of defunct Dmitriy Ustinov, once the Soviet minister of defence. It was no surprise Skif got priority over kinetic system Kaskad.

"Launching the Beriev A-60 laser into space has been approved in August 1984 hence the Skif-D family. Flying even the small laser in space is already a daunting challenge, that's why there will be three Skif-D – the DM, D-1 and D-2.

First is Skif DM. This vehicle will test the functional block's control system and additional components, like the gas ejection vents and a targeting system, consisting of a radar and a low-power fine pointing laser that would be used in conjunction with the big chemical laser. There will be no large laser on board, nor even the two AI-24VT turbogenerators.

Second step is Skif D1. This is a complete vehicle minus the laser itself; still it carries the turbogenerators. Last step is Skif D-2, that will carry the Beriev A-60 laser. The final, operationnal vehicle will be Skif-U, with the Astrofizika laser.

We also have another space laser project that uses the Skif platform. This is the Skif-Stilet system, a station equipped with an infrared laser (1.06 nm)based on surface used for tracking satellites developed. The laser would be within the 1K11 BSK module, built by Astrofizika that includes a telescope. Unlike Skif or Skif-D the aim of Skif-Stilet is not to destroy satellites, but blind their sensors and render them unserviceable. Specifically, Skif-Stilet will be able to attack Americans geostationary early warning.

We reviewed a host of possible platforms: Soyuz, TKS-FGB, Almaz or Salyut, or even scores of Soyuz LOK manned lunar orbiters that have been stored into the MIK-112 for the last decade. The LK lunar lander was considered attractive due to his capability of making large orbital manoeuvers.

This topic remain undecided.

The last subject I want to review is how the MKBS-1 will support the Skif and Kaskad systems. We don't want the Skif platforms to be stuck to the space station, since it would make for an enormous, static target. Still the MKBS-1 300 kW molten salt reactor could provide electrical power to the platforms. Kaskad by contrast doesn't really need a lot of electrical power. But we could use the MKBS-1 to store large amounts of kinetic killer warheads; then we would reload Kaskad platforms just like a gunman reload his gun with ammunition." Baklanov concluded.

"So the enormous Skif DM / D1 / D2 laser battlestations would have to be mated to the old N-1 lunar rocket." Glushko thought. They had grown into Frankenstein's monsters: at 131 feet long and more than 13 feet in diameter they weighed 210,000 pounds, more massive than NASA's Skylab space station – or the MKBS-1 building blocks, for that matter.

The solution found was to literally decapitate the N-1, cutting everything above the Block V third stage – the Block G translunar stage and the whole LOK-LK lunar landing complex. By a curious coincidence the length of the whole lunar stack matched Skif 131 ft length. Hence and against all odds the mating would be pretty straightforward. The N-1 three stages – Block A, Block B and Block V with a total of 45 engines, would accelerate Polyus to Earth orbit.

Skif and Kaskad however were only two elements into a much more massive package.

On 15 July 1985 the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers passed a decree that approved two major “umbrella” programmes that together comprised nearly 300 projects ranging from fundamental research to development of specific systems. The first, called D-20, concentrated on ground-based missile defences. The second, dubbed SK-1000, focused on space-based elements and was entrusted to the Ministry of General Machine Building, which oversaw most of the design bureaus involved in space and missile programmes.

More specifically, SK-1000 encompassed space-based missile defence, anti-satellite systems (both ground-based and spacebased) and systems designed to strike targets on the ground from space. However, it also included almost all launch vehicle and satellite programmes already underway at the time (including manned programmes such as the MKBS-1 space station).

In fact, many of the projects under D-20 and SK-1000 had already been under development prior to the July 1985 decree and were now brought together under a common denominator, probably in an attempt to obtain stable funding. D-20 and SK-1000 were expected to cost tens of billions of rubles, keeping the design bureaus and production facilities occupied into the late 1980s.

However, at the same time no commitment was made to actually deploy most of these systems. Rather the goal was “to create by 1995 a technical and technological base in case the deployment of a multi-layered missile defence system would be necessary”.

The July 1985 decision came despite the rise to power of Gorbachev, who, having been in office for only several months, had little to do at this point to keep the influential Soviet defence industry from imposing its wishes. Baklanov was typical of that trend.

 

[Archibald]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_H._Flax

Alexander Henry Flax (January 18, 1921 – June 30, 2014) was the third Director of the National Reconnaissance Office. Flax was Director NRO as the second generation of imaging systems became operational and began to play a major role in United States intelligence during the Cold War. He advocated major growth in NRO funding and personnel and oversaw the production of signals intelligence collectors from space and promoted the development of an electro-optical imaging system for U.S. reconnaissance satellites

Flax however is best-known to the public as the man who, eight years apart, failed to save both DynaSoar and Space Shuttle space planes.

In June 1963 the Air Force systems divisions requested studies showing DynaSoar capability to fulfill satellite expension missions. As a result in November 1963 the DynaSoar office offered a satellite inspection vehicle, the X-20X. It could have provision for one or two man crew, an endurance of 14 days and climbing as high as 1000 nautical miles. The DynaSoar office estimated a first flight date in September 1967.

From July 1963 the future of the DynaSoar become tied to a projected space station that later become the KH-10A Manned Orbiting Laboratory. On July 22, 1963 Vice President Johnson raised the question of the importance of space stations to national security and requested the Secretary of Defense to prepare a statement on the subject. In his reponse, McNamara stressed something DynaSoar couldn't do : multi-manned orbital flights of long duration.

In August Brown approved an Air Force request to conduct a study of an orbital space station, with focus on reconnaissance and assessing the utility of man in space.

Then on October 24, 1963 Harold Brown (the Pentagon director of defense research and engineering ) offered a manned, orbiting, laboratory program o the Air Force in exchange for an agreement to terminate the X-20 program.

On November 14 Brown recommended such program, backed by his own analyzis. Varied space stations were drawn, using Titan II, Titan III or Saturn IB for launch ; and Gemini or Apollo crew ferries. Brown showed McNamara two options

• A lunar module adapter space station launched by a Saturn IB, with Apollo on Titan III as crew ferry;
  
  
• A Gemini crew ferry vehicle launched by a Titan II to a Titan IIIC space station (this was Brown prefered option).

In discussion with NASA, the civilian space agency suggested a simpler approach: that is, launch Gemini on a Titan III with a 1500 cubic foot module. There would be no need for ferrying, docking and resupplying since the entire thing would be launched in one piece. In NASA view Gemini and DynaSoar were not competitor; DynaSoar landing on airstrips would make it far more flexible than Gemini. While deeply involved in Apollo, NASA still had an eye on winged vehicles resupplying space stations, even if it was to the military to achieve these goals.

Brown however was concerned because both Apollo and Gemini employed primitive landing systems. The solution found was a scaled-up variant of the ASSET lifting bodies. A striking aspect of Harold Brown space station proposals was that DynaSoar was nowhere to be found !

This did not escape another men. Indeed on December 4, 1963, Dr. Alexander H. Flax, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Research and Development, wrote a strong memo rebuking Harold Brown. Flax first emphasized that both Gemini and DynaSoar needed major modification for a space station program. Flax then underlined DynaSoar landings at airstrips against Gemini ocean landings and their expensive recovery forces. DynaSoar reentry was also smoother, due to wings lift. Flax concluded with a critic of Brown alternate ferry vehicle: 400 million $ had been spent on Dynasoar since 1958, so why replace it with an ASSET – derived lifting body? Flax nonetheless recognized the value of a military space station and endorsed it.

Secretary of the Air Force Zuckert forwarded Flax memo to McNamara the same day, saying it was the best technical advice available in the entire Air Force. Zuckert supported Flax arguments. It happened that the under-Secretary of the Air Force, Brockway McMillan, backed Zuckert.

What is amazing (with perfect hindsight) is that both McMillan and Flax were later directors of the National Reconnaissance Office, the highly classified military agency managing spy satellites. Together they hold the job between March 1963 and October 1965 for McMillan, followed by Flax between October 1965 and March 1969, a total of six years, the beginning of which overlaps with DynaSoar final chapters.

This begs the question of NRO involvment in DynaSoar. For the record, the NRO was created on September 6, 1961 while DynaSoar was cancelled on December 10, 1963. NRO involvment in DynaSoar during those 26 months is anybody guess; what is sure is that at some point, the NRO, CIA and Air Force struggled to control the aircrafts and satellites spying on the Soviet Union. This resulted in the A-12 and SR-71 variants of the same Lockheed aircraft. The same thing could very well have happened to DynaSoar had the program lived.

Meanwhile another man responded to Harold Brown 14 November memo. Major J. K. Chester memo suggested several alternatives for varying sizes of space stations. Significantly, all used DynaSoar.

First option had DynaSoar rear, cone-shaped transition section turned into a 700 cubic feet module, the entire thing launched by a Titan IIIC with a two men crew.

Option 2 had a separate, 1000 cubic feet space station launched by a Titan II, with the classic DynaSoar Titan III as ferry vehicle.

Option 3 had another, far bigger space station, launched by a Titan IIIC. Chester considered the first space station could be launched in 1967.

Chester added that, if Gemini and DynaSoar « competition » was too expensive, then Gemini should be cancelled.

Once again, Zuckert send Chester memo to McNamara. He underlined a crucial fact : the Air Staff clearly indicated that there was no definite reason for omitting DynaSoar from consideration as a re-entry vehicle for a military space station.

This was not avail, and DynaSoar was canned on December 10, 1963 after McNamara discussed it with President Johnson.

Some days later Harold Brown replied to both Chester and Flax. He had found three objections :

a) DynaSoar would have to grow bigger to resupply a space station, eating funding for the space station itself

b) Gemini couldn't be cancelled because it was a NASA program

c) Gemini was already flying and the Air force space station ferry variant would only have minimal modifications, so it would actually fly before, and cheaper, than a DynaSoar crew ferry vehicle.

Two years after his desperate charge to save DynaSoar, Al Flax become Director of NRO, a post he hold between October 1965 and March 1969. Flax then got involved in many aerospace boards, publics and privates, before landing a prominent job as President Richard Nixon PSAC – President Science Advisory Committee.

In that function, late 1971 Flax was requested to study a more affordable space shuttle. Perhaps learning from his DynaSoar past experience, or in an atempt to bring the lost space plane back after eight years, Flax prefered option become a 100 000 pounds, DynaSoar-like space plane launched by a much enlarged Titan III, the III-L.

The former director of NRO, Flax was one of the very few who knew about the new generation of enormous spy satellites, the KH-9 and KH-11. Flax was faced with two options: either the space shuttle was to grow big enough to swallow a spy satellite that was 15 ft in diameter and 60 ft long, resulting in an enormous, expensive «shuttle orbiter»; or the Titan III would be handled the job, since it already launched KH-9s. Flax prefered option was flexible enough to handle both options; since it preserved the Titan III, the shuttle being only a payload among others.

In an interesting twist of fate, Flax wasn't heard, and Big Gemini prevailed. Flax keep these failures for himself until public existence of the NRO was revealed in September 1992. It is interesting to speculate about Flax influence on the return of the MOL through Big Gemini, the KH-10B «Gray» approved in 1972 after the military lost the space shuttle (and once again, the possibility of proving the usefulness of space soldiers. KH-10B finally achieved that goal by the late 70's, although it was even more controversial than in the 60's. What made space soldiers acceptable was the fact that NASA essentially paid Big Gemini development costs, with the Air Force buying those vehicles «off the shelves» at far lower cost than MOL or DynaSoar.)

-----------------

«X-27F space plane ? Agena for satellite inspection ? Manned reconnaissance from space ? The Reagan administration gloats about it as if they had invented the wheel. Meh. This is hardly new but threeb decades old.»

Owen Gordon dug out an old paper.

«This is a briefing we Canadians was given in 1959 when we landed in the United States after the Arrow fiasco. It really shows were aerospace stood at this point in history.

Look at this, Story (England). Figure 5 is a plot of altitude in thousands of feet versus years, which shows the altitude trends of U.S operational aircraft from about 1925 through the present (that is, 1958). The trend in every case is a gradual decrease in slope, indicating a levelling off capability for air breathing engine aircraft. Of course this trend is to be expected since it is obvious that air breathing engine vehicles cannot have an infinite altitude. It is interesting to note however that flying at 60 000 ft indicates that the last drop of altitude capability is being wrung out of contemporary air breathing engines. It is aparent that some breakthrough is required in order to fly at altitudes of 100 000 ft.

Before WWII bombers were not optimized, but tremendous emphasis was placed on range, with an according sharp increase; the B-29 was an enormous leap forward. Soon an improved B-29, followed by a jet powered B-52, circled the Earth with aerial refueling.

Yet in recent years the problem of range has returned, because we are now flying supersonic aircraft. It happens that range is directly proportional to lift to drag ratio; and it drop from a B-52 22, to a miserable 5 for a supersonic aircraft. Hence a supersonic bomber with the range of a B-52 (such as the WS-110A) must have an enormous size, and a length exceeding that of a football field.

«WS-110A?» Story England asked.

«Better known as the North American XB-70 Walkyrie» «Let us consider the future with respect to propulsionsystems. The air breathing engine has a capability of speed up to Mach 2.75 and altitudes to about 70 000 ft. Improvements like pre-cooled turbojet or vapor cycle engines utilizing hydrogen fuel should have a capability of Mach 3 to 4 at 100 000 ft. It should be noted that hydrogen fuel is not an Air Force inventory item at the moment. One contractor in the air breathing field, Marquardt has proposed an hypersonic ramjet for a speed of Mach 8 at 140 000 ft, a 100% improvement but not before 1970 or even beyond.

By contrast a boost glide vehicle could fly at Mach 18 and 160 000 ft, right from 1964, with an operational system before 1970 – an hypersonic boost-glide manned bombarment reconnaissance system.

Another factor concerned with our question «why boost glide» is mission capability. Since the development of the B-17, two primary reasons for replacing weapon systems have been to increase range and to decrease vulnerability. As the time of operational missiles approaches two other factors become worthly of consideration – the yield accuracy combination and the total system cost.

It appears that

• the B-52 will remain in the inventory until at least 1970
  
  
• the B-58 will be in the inventory by 1962
  
  
• the SNARK subsonic cruise missile should phase-in in 1959
  
  
• ICBMs will be operational by 1962
  
  
• WS-110A (mach 3 long range bomber) could phase-in by 1965
  
  
• WS-125A will not be operational until 1970 or beyond.
  

«What's WS-125A?»

«The supersonic nuclear bomber that would replace the B-70 in the 70's.»

«They did not wasted time by then» Story England poked.

«Remember, that was before Gary Powers got blown out of the sky by a SAM-2.»

The first question which must be answered is, Can the entire strategic mission in the post-1970 period be enthrusted to ICBMs ?

Story smiled «I think the answer is positive»

«Remember, that was 1958, an ICBM was an Atlas, not a Minuteman yet. The Minuteman crash program was mind boggling, perhaps a trio of years from the drawing board to the silo. And by the way, McNamara at some point wanted 10 000 of them.»

Owen Gordon continued reading the document.

It is all a matter of what scientists call CEP, Circular Error Probable. Bluntly, if ICBM CEP can be brought to as little as 500 ft, there may be no requirement for a boost glide bomber, but it is not sure such precision can happen before 1970, or even beyond. And there will still be requirement for a high performance reconnaissance system. Much time can be argued about bringing CEP to 500 ft through advanced guidance systems; but the problems of unlocated targets, hardened targets, reliability and combinations of these things seems to indicate that a 100% missile air Force cannot perform the required mission between 1970 and 1975.

Then if ICBMs can't do the job, why current bombers (B-52, B-58, and the future WS-110A and WS-125A) can't assume it?

A recent SAC-RAND study investigated the capabilities of the B-52 to cope with the Russain air defence system circa 1960. The result was that the B-52 could do it if provided with electronic counter-measures, decoys, anti-radiation missiles and stand-off cruise missiles.

But the Russians will soon deploy SAMs, mach 2+ fighters, new radars with IR detectors, threats the B-52 could no longer face. That's the reason why the bomber fleet will be reinforced with supersonic bombers, first the B-58 and then the far more capable WS-110A. Yet another study bluntly stated that even a mach 9 bomber would be vulnerable by 1965 !

A boost-glide bomber had no such limits. It doesn't need aerial refueling; its warning time is only three minutes versus 15 mn for an ICBM; it has global range and multiple attack trajectories, and most importantly, it can be recalled in a fast changing sistuation.

Beside the bombing mission, reconnaissance is also paramount; to the Strategic Air command such capability is vital. In general what is required is a reconnaissance capability of high order photo, ferret, radar and infrared, with a capability of of detection and indentification of hard targets. It is also desirable that such a system have an immediate action capability – that is,providing the required reconnaissance data almost imediately after the initation of hostilities. Some of these requirement may be met by the WS-117L ARS, however its objectives and those of a boost-glide vehicle are quite different. The Advanced Reconnaissance System is intended to collect intelligence through routine surveillance, accepting whatever level of information detail it is possible to obtain. A boost-glide vehicle would bring information faster thanks to its short flight time and low altitude (50 miles vs 300 miles). The ARS satellite is not recoverable, while a boost-glide vehicle is.

«Geez, you said that was 1958 ? they surely couldn't see spy satellites coming. It is amazing to see how Dynasoar missions vanished one after another. The Minuteman ICBM and the spy satellites just swept it away. Yet it seems that briefing you get was prescient: we are back to SAINT, DynaSoar, only orbital bombing is missing.

«Indeed. And somewhat Orion picks up where aeronautics stopped and give place to space, bridging the gap between air breathing aircrafts and satellites in orbit.»

«You know, WSL-117 become Corona and a host of other spy satellites like SAMOS. The E-1 and E-2 both used a technique called film-readout. The film would be exposed and then as it moved through the system it would be pressed up against another film called a “web” and coated with developer and a fixing agent. After the film had dried out, it would then be scanned with a light beam and the light and dark spots on the film converted to electrical impulses that would be transmitted to the ground over a 6 megahertz transmitter.

The benefit of this approach was that imagery could be sent to the ground within hours, and the satellite could stay in orbit for weeks. But this came at a price: the total number of images that could be transmitted was small, only a few dozen per satellite per day. In fact, several photographs during each pass over the Soviet Union would have to be discarded because there was insufficient time to transmit them to the ground when they were in sight of a ground station in the United States. In order to compensate for this low number of images, the Air Force would have to orbit several satellites simultaneously, dramatically increasing the number of ground stations to control them as well as the overall cost of the project.

The E-3 was still only a paper concept in 1958, although it would have had a more powerful camera than the E-2. But the major difference between the E-3 and the other cameras was that the E-3 used an exotic electrostatic tape system to store its images in order to improve transmission time. E-3 was more popular with ARPA’s leadership than it was with the Air Force officers at Ballistic Missile Division responsible for managing the satellite effort. The ARPA officials had less faith in the proven, but limited, film readout approach than the satellite managers at Ballistic Missile Division, and felt that the E-3’s untested electrostatic tape offered a better solution, promising to return more images per satellite than the E-2.»

«And in the end they went for CORONA approach of dropping film buckets through the atmosphere.»

«And recently the NRO declassified a X-27F mission in which the space plane picked up a film bucket from a KH-9 and brought it to a safe landing at Andrews air base near Washington.»

«So you think DynaSoar could have made a similar mission?»

«Who knows. There were certainly people at the NRO that thought about it, between 1961 and 1963... people like Alexander Flax. With perfect hindsight, 1961 had strategic reconnaissance at crossroads. Just think about it.

Lockheed U-2 was a subsonic machine, essentially a glider with a jet engine, its only defence being it flew very high where interceptors couldn't shoot it down. Unfortunately, Soviet Surface-to-Air -Missiles (SAMs) changed this. Lockheed fabled A-12 was being build and flew in 1962, that was the CIA variant, but the Air force also wanted it, and that become the SR-71. Yet neither aircrafts could safely enter the soviet air space like the U-2 before them, not after the Gary Power fiasco. Meanwhile North American was trying to save its B-70 Walkyrie bomber that was also doomed by the advent of SAMs. They were backed by the Air Force famous Gen. Curtiss Le May, who invented a new rôle for the giant Mach 3 plane. The Walkyrie would fly after ICBMs rained on the soviet Union (vaporizing those pesky SAMs) and destroy whatever stood after the carnage. As such, it was a reconnaissance aircraft hence it was rebranded RS-70. Hence Lockheed SR-71 was somewhat a competitor to it. All these aircrafts however were made obsolete, not only because of Soviet missiles, but also because of the ICBM and space race. After the U-2 fiasco the military lost no time transfering strategic reconnaissance to satellites. Unlike airspace, space was free. The spooks however couldn't decide how to recover satellite pictures of the Soviet Union. Corona had its film loaded into capsules that reentered Earth atmosphere to be retrieved, but that was a long and cumbersome process, and they wanted near real time imaging. So they tried film readout (SAMOS) and failed. Meanwhile DynaSoar provided an alternative. It could boost glide at suborbital or even orbital speed, snapping pictures of the Soviet Union, and then land back at any military base between Point Barrow, Alaska, to California. And then there was another alternative : a military space station staffed with military soldiers snapping pictures of targets of opportunities. That become the KH-10 MOL.

So when you realize it within the span of a decade you had the U-2 and RB-57F, the SR-71, A-12 and RS-70, Dyna Soar, Samos, Corona, and MOL, all of them spying USSR one way or another. By 1970 however strategic reconnaissance had shifted to the NRO satellites.

 

[Archibald]

“Too gassy.” he whispered back. “Coke paid a million bucks to get these cans on the Mission Module, but they just can’t get the damn mix right.” Natalie just agree with Ralph. Even worse however were the zero-gravity burps from drinking carbonated drinks in space. “On Earth, that’s not such a big deal, but in microgravity it’s just gross. Because there is no gravity, the contents of your stomach float and tend to stay at the top of your stomach, under the rib cage and close to the valve at the top of your stomach. Because this valve isn’t a complete closure (just a muscle that works with gravity), if you burp, it becomes a wet burp from the contents in your stomach.”

“Not that Pepsi cares”. Ralph poked.

(Stephen Baxter, Voyage)

It was January 1984, the height of the Cola War. Pepsi was riding high on the back of the Pepsi Challenge and an endorsement from Michael Jackson, the world’s biggest star. After more than 60 years of trying to beat Coca-Cola, victory was in sight. But the Atlanta soda giant still had a trick up its sleeve to use against its fast-growing Yankee rival.

On January 25, 1984 Coca-Cola engineer Ashis Gupta leaked that his company would ask NASA to take soda into outer space. The company was to spent about $250,000 on research and testing to come up with a can that would work in zero gravity and pass the space agency's stringent safety standards.

At the offices of Pepsi in Purchase, New York, the news that its archrival was to be first into space came as a shock.

Bob McGarrah “What! Coke’s going to space and we’re not?” There might not have been moon bases or Martians out there to buy their fizzy drinks but this was the Cola War and the contest to be crowned soda king was on a knife edge. Pepsi couldn’t let Coca-Cola be the first into space. No way. If Coke was going where no soda had gone before, Pepsi was coming too.

The cola wars were a series of mutually-targeted television advertisements and marketing campaigns since the 1980s between two long-time rival soft drink producers, The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo. The battle between the two dominant brands in the United States intensified to such an extent that the term “Cola wars” was used to describe the feud. Each employed numerous advertising and marketing campaigns to outdo the other.

Jay Coleman, the marketing mogul founded his company Entertainment Marketing and Communications International in 1976, twigged that Jackson would be a savvy investment for a major brand - especially if he brokered a multi-million dollar deal in the process.

Soon Coleman cooked up a marketing plan with Jackson at the helm and took it to Coca-Cola. But the fizzy drink giant were ambivalent - if anything, they feared that attaching Jackson to their brand would only lure in one audience. “They gave it serious consideration yet couldn’t make that leap of faith, they saw anything they would do with Michael as a more targeted, ethnic campaign”. Coke offered a $1 million to Jackson, and it was turned down.

The next target? Coca-Cola’s nearest rival: PepsiCo.

In the early Eighties, Roger Enrico was the CEO of Pepsi, and he was constantly on the front line of the fizz wars. The average American was drinking three times as much soda in 1980 as they were in 1950, and a rush of new flavours and varieties had created a fevered market: drinkers were divided into Pepsi people and Coke people.

Enrico came up with a “New Generation” campaign for Pepsi, a youth-targeted approach that would reband Pepsi as the cool, young alternative to Coke - which had recently used Bill Cosby in adverts to have a pop at its competitor. Jackson, Coleman argued, could be the perfect poster-boy for Pepsi’s new image, but he would come at a price.

In November 1983 Jackson and his brothers partnered with PepsiCo in a $5 million promotional deal that broke records for a celebrity endorsement. The first Pepsi Cola campaign, which ran in the United States from 1983 to 1984 and launched its iconic "New Generation" theme, included tour sponsorship, public relations events, and in-store displays. Michael Jackson, who was involved in creating the advertisement, suggested using his song "Billie Jean" as its jingle with revised lyrics. It instantly became the most expensive marketing campaign ever. Enrico, he writes, “initially balked at the price tag but relented because, as Jackson’s promoter Don King told him, “This is Michael Jackson. He is bigger than God”.

And the Coca cola pulled their NASA trick. Pepsi took it very badly. From late 1983 open warfare reached new heights.

“Back then we reasonned that providing astronauts with soft drinks was a two- or three- case business each year — and in an industry that produces retail sales of $39 billion annually, it's hard to get worked up about anything less than 30 million or 40 million cases. So, in 1983, when engineers at a Pennsylvania company called Enviro-Spray Systems, Inc., suggested that Pepsi commission them to develop a technologically advanced can that could be used in a zero- gravity environment, our people really weren't all that interested. And then in the cola wars open warfare business, Coke proposed Michael Jackson $1 million, we got him instead for $ 5 million. Coke revenge was “Well, you may have Michael Jackson with his moonwalk, but we have NASA to send coke into space.” When we learned about the deal we were furious. Our initial reaction was to get to NASA, too, and launch Pepsi into orbit. But Coke had a serious advance.

Then somebody half-jokingly suggested to send not only a Pepsi can, but Michael Jackson himself, into orbit. We knew, however, that was impossible. Then somebody else noted we didn't needed to get into orbit: NASA had a modified Boeing airliner flying parabolas for 30 seconds, enough to film an advert. And that what we did: we got NASA authorization to fly Michael Jackson aboard their Vomit Comet. We drew inspiration from 2001 a space odyssey zero gravity scenes, notably the flying pen caught by the flight atendant. The ad become an instant classic.

Meanwhile it seems that Coca Cola flight into orbit was for naught. The astronauts were very pissed off, and back on Earth they told the press that space station liberty refrigerator was packed with far more important experiments, hence warm soda just doesn't cut it. In fact there was no food refrigerator aboard Liberty, simply because space food got away from it. With perfect hindsight, a case could be make we Pepsi were right not sending our soft drink into space.

A very unexpected development of the whole affair was the MichaelJackson got to love microgravity flights and more generally, microgravity. At the time however a potentially serious accident happened.

During one parabola, as we were filming Jackson with a huge and unwieldy camera, a shank of his frizzed-out hair was snatched into the machine by the belt drive of the film magazine. It was as if his hair had been caught up in the fan belt of an automobile. He screamed and we grabbed at his tresses to prevent them from being ripped out of her scalp, but, with nothing to hold us in place, we tumbled out of control; MichaelJackson did the same. Through his increasingly urgent screams, we heard the camera labor to a grinding stop. The hair had clogged the motor, finally stalling it and popping a cockpit circuit breaker. All this happened in less than 30 seconds and everybody had to get ready for the return of gravity. We feared that the weight of the camera could snap the hair out of MichaelJackson head, but we managed to get around that disaster and everything went smoothly. Once the aircraft in level flight and gravity returned to 1-G we cut King of Pop free with scissors. The hair was so thoroughly jammed into the motor gears we doubted the machine would ever pull another frame of film. Eventually the camera was repaired and we got our ad in time, albeit near the end we (mostly, our stomaches) were very sick of those parabolas, particularly with Jackson strands of loose hair that floated everywhere. They were in our eyes and mouths, but we did away with them.

 

[Archibald]

The hair accident is adapted from an OTL event, not with Michael Jackson but with the unfortunate Judith Resnik that later died on the Challenger accident. As you can guess, there is no Pepsi accident that got Jackson hooked to painkillers until they killed him. Which doesn't mean Jackson late life is bed of roses, by a long shot.

 

[Michel Van]

Michael Jackson not on painkillers and he love Zero G environment ?
1990s Jackson in Space !!!

Spoiler: Jackson in NASA flight suit

 

[Archibald]

LOL michel, please can you remove that picture ? it is a little scary...

 

[Michel Van]

LOL michel, please can you remove that picture ? it is a little scary...

i put him in Spoiler folder so viewers are save...

 

[Archibald]

Mike Mullane

"Our one-month Blue Helios missions into varied orbits (including the first polar orbit flight in 1985) excited the military appetite. We had already flown a boatload of advanced sensors, but the show was only beginning. The apotheose of this was to be Teal Ruby.

In 1985 the Air Force required from NASA the Liberty docking ball. The military wanted to create an Orbital Command Outpost (OCO) to be assembled into a polar orbit. Two or four Blue Helios cargo modules would be symetrically attached to the docking ball and the whole thing would rotate to create artificial gravity. From polar orbit the spacecraft would overfly the whole Earth.

OCO payload has been developped under the Teal Ruby classified program that has run for a decade now. Teal Ruby was once to be launched aboard a single Blue Helios polar mission, packed into the cargo module. But the military added more and more overambitious experiments to the point that three separate missions would have been needed. The military decided instead to create a small, man-tended space station that could support Teal Ruby massive requirements, including years long measurements. Technology from Helios and Liberty would help cutting down costs.

There was a half-baked proposal to use Liberty to support Teal Ruby, but NASA flatly refused, and so did the Air Force.

Teal Ruby began as a collaborative effort between the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the US Air Force. The Air Force managed the Space Technology Program, which included substantial participation by the Navy and Army and involved launching small experimental payloads and small satellites into orbit, testing everything from solar panels to electronics to lightweight materials. The Space Test Program had an annual budget of around $15–20 million in the mid 1970s. But the office was about to take on several bigger and much more expensive projects. There really was a zoo of different projects, most of them straight out of a sci-fi movie or a Jame Bond flick, all of them with bizarre, exotic names. There were HALO and LaserCom, Teal Ruby and Teal Jade and Teal Amber (I often wonder what was with that military obession with gems) Blue spike and Red spike, Clipper Bow and Slow Walker.

For example, beginning around 1976, DARPA undertook a new project called HALO, which stood for High Altitude Large Optics. HALO initially involved competitive 19-month studies conducted by Grumman Aerospace and Hughes Aircraft. The two companies were evaluating the feasibility of a high-resolution optical and infrared warning and surveillance satellite system. HALO was a very ambitious program with the ultimate goal of developing truly massive diameter optics in geosynchronous orbit.

But HALO also involved evaluating the new technology of charge-coupled devices, or CCDs. CCDs are now common for a host of commercial products, from digital cameras to cellphone cameras to videorecorders. But in the 1970s they were still an immature technology that offered great promise for military use.

One of the military benefits of CCD sensors is that they can be used to “stare” at a large area. Other sensors in use at the time, such as the linear detection arrays on the Defense Support Program missile warning satellites, had to sweep over an area of interest like a rotating radar beam. This resulted in a delay between each sweep over a target. For instance, the DSP satellite rotated six times per minute, meaning a delay of ten seconds between each detection of a single infrared source, such as a hot ICBM rising out of its silo at high speed. In addition, only a limited amount of energy reached the detector, reducing its sensitivity and accuracy. A staring sensor could return target data continuously, enabling more accurate detection and tracking. The sensor could operate in staring mode or follow a repeating ground track to cover more area.

Hence DARPA had a number of projects underway to develop CCD technology for detecting infrared sources, including Teal Jade, which was to investigate the detection from space of small missile launches; and Teal Amber, to evaluate CCDs for tracking space objects and missiles from ground based sensors.

The sensitive infrared telescope was not the only payload scheduled for Teal Ruby. Three secondary payloads were also planned to be carried on the spacecraft bus. The biggest and most important of these was an experimental communications package that offered the possibility of revolutionizing space-ground communications – the futuristic Laser Communication system. This technology, known as Lasercom, offered the potential to transmit huge amounts of data over a communications link that could not be intercepted or jammed by an enemy.

The Air Force had conducted tests with a C-135 aircraft flying a racetrack pattern at 9,100 meters (30,000 feet) and receiving data at 100 bits per second from a ground-based laser. In addition to pointing a laser at the Teal Ruby spacecraft and demonstrating the ability to transmit data to it at 100 bits per second, the Air Force wanted to put a small laser on the spacecraft and try to communicate with the plane and the ground from orbit. An off-the-shelf gallium arsenide laser would be installed on the spacecraft to transmit data back to earth at 800 bits per second, but would only be in view of the ground station for about ten minutes. Hence the need for a second Orbital Command Outpost located in geosynchronous orbit.

The Lasercom package promised some great advantages over traditional radio communications. In transmitting from the ground to the spacecraft, the ground footprint visible by the spacecraft would be no more than two miles wide, providing great privacy and jam resistance because an adversary would have to be that close to the ground station to jam the signal. But weather was a problem for the laser system. High data rates had not been achieved through clouds. And the experimental system that the Air Force planned to test had a low data rate.

Starting in the mid-1970s, the Air Force’s Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites had detected unusual heat targets. The DSP had been designed to look for the heat generated by relatively hot ballistic missiles. But soon after DSP entered service, Aerospace Corporation scientists began detecting other heat targets, including surface-to-air missiles and ground explosions. The company’s scientists and engineers also began noticing unusual infrared events. These infrared returns occurred over Soviet territory at regular intervals and traveled in relatively straight lines. They were clearly not ballistic missiles. They soon determined that they were originating at Soviet bomber bases, notably those that fielded Backfire bombers. For the next several years, Aerospace Corporation scientists tried to interest the Air Force in studying this data more closely and possibly using it as a source of intelligence. Ultimately, the US Navy fielded the SLOW WALKER Reporting System, or SLWRS, which used DSP data to track the movements of Soviet bombers.

At first glance they believed the DSP saw Tu-22M afterburners, but it was in fact the hot skin of the supersonic bomber.

So that was Teal Ruby OCO payload. Our small space station would be the nexus of a system called Space Based Wide Area Surveillance, kind of “air traffic control system in sky” that could detect all kinds of aircraft. We would follow Backfire bombers glowing red, making sure Tom Clancy Dance of Vampires never happened.

As mentionned earlier, there was also High Altitude Large Optics – HALO. It was a very ambitious program with the ultimate goal of developing truly massive diameter optics in geosynchronous orbit - an optical structure some 100 ft. across and consisting of approximately 10 million detectors, including mosaics of different frequencies and probably low-light-level TV, phased array radar and laser radar, advanced cryogenic coolers and adaptative mirrors. Hence Blue Helios missions to happen in the 90's were to hitch a ride on a Centaur up to the high ground of GEO. Astronauts would help deploying HALO optics high there, albeit we were affraid that radiation levels might fry our testicles and brains (in that order).

DARPA HALO was connected to the JPL Large Deployable Reflector studies of a giganormous infrared space telescope to be assembled at Liberty or Destiny.

First step in the direction of the OCO was to outfit a ground-based Blue Helios module for 1-G operations instead of microgravity. A pair of modules were being build, to be launched with the massive Teal Ruby payload in polar orbit by 1992, before the end of Cold War killed the program. The OCO concept was transfered to NASA and later become the EML-2 lunar gateway.

 

[Michel Van]

I have only one issue with that Post

Why rotating this USAF outpost ?
the rotation would aggravate the Earth survey or are rotation stoped for high res picture over USSR ?

 

[Archibald]

It is a bit like the MOL, it is more man-tended than permanently crewed as the ISS.

 

[Michel Van]

It is a bit like the MOL, it is more man-tended than permanently crewed as the ISS.

That make now more sense
most of time the station is unmanned and not rotate
only after Docking with Blue Helios the Station spin up and de spin if crew leave the station.

 

[Archibald]

SAGAN SAYS US-SOVIET MISSION TO MARS COULD BE 'TOKEN' FOR PEACE

HARRY F. ROSENTHAL , Associated Press

Oct. 8, 1985 - 8:06 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Astronomer Carl Sagan told Congress Tuesday that a U.S.-Soviet joint manned mission to Mars ''would be a powerful token ... to turn around the present quarrel which has threatened everyone on the planet.''

Such a mission, to be conducted in the next century, appears the most promising for scientific return, Sagan told the House space science subcommittee.

''This is by no means the only such possible major long-term goal for the United States,'' the Cornell University scientist said. ''For capturing the world's imagination and doing something sufficiently challenging, a joint mission to Mars seems hard to beat.''

Rep. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who leads a delegation of 36 to the Soviet Union on Saturday, had asked witnesses at a hearing on the future of space science to disucss ways of promoting cooperation with the Soviets.

''The mission I'm describing could certainly not be mustered until the turn of the century,'' Sagan said. He suggested ''precursors'' to the Mars mission that would involve both nations, with each sharing costs.

He said Soviet scientists had informally talked to him about a mission where ''Country A'' would fly a roving robot vehicle to Mars and have it collect soil samples for as much as a year, depositing them in a single place.

''Country B'', he said, then would send a spacecraft with limited mobility to Mars to pick up the samples and return them to Earth.

Sagan said the Reagan administration has been reluctant about joint ventures with the Soviets in the past because the United States would be in danger of revealing some advanced technology.

But, he said, ''the Soviets are so able along these lines of technology transfer, it's at least a dead heat, and some competent testimony before Congress is that the U.S. gains more than it loses in that respect.''

Physicist James Van Allen, who shares the view of many scientists that development of the space shuttle deprived space science of funds, was critical of the space station - a major goal of the United States in the 1990s.

A space station would circle the Earth about 200 miles high, becoming home for a dozen men and women for long periods of time. They would do scientific experiments as well as commercial manufucturing.

Recalling President Reagan's ''ringing endorsement'' of space activities and his approval of the space station, the University of Iowa scientist said:

''It was pleasant to hear of his interest in space but I found his rationale for this $20 billion undertaking so speculative and so poorly founded that no one of lesser stature would have dared mention it to an informed audience.''

He continued, ''I assure you that if NASA were to receive a research proposal of this quality from a university scientist, it would be rejected promptly - even if it were for only $20,000.''




US DELEGATION TO DISCUSS JOINT SPACE VENTURES WITH SOVIETS

HARRY F. ROSENTHAL , Associated Press

Oct. 9, 1985 3:00 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AP) _ A congressional delegation leaves for the Soviet Union on Thursday to talk about joint space ventures, including a space-rescue demonstration long sought by the United States.

Included are two of the astronauts who took part in the Apollo-Soyuz flight of 1975 when an American spacecraft with three men aboard linked up with a Soviet ship carrying two.

''This is a reciprocal thing,'' said Rep. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., chairman of the House space science subcommittee who is leading the group of 36. ''We hosted two cosmonauts on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Apollo- Soyuz flight and had a reception for them. I requested the Soviets extend an invitation for our committee and they did.''

En route, the delegation will stop in Stockholm to attend the afternoon session Friday of the International Astronautical Federation, which is holding its 36th Congress. The group will arrive in Moscow on Saturday for five days of talks.

Nelson said the delegation will meet with the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Council on International Cooperation in the Exploration and Uses of Outer Space. The Americans also will tour Star City, the cosmonaut training center, and the flight control center in Kaliningrad.

Congressmen on the trip, all members of the Science and Technology Committee, include Manual Lujan Jr., R-N.M.; George E. Brown Jr., D-Calif.; Robert A. Young, D-Mo.; Robert G. Torricelli, D-N.J.; Robert S. Walker, R-Pa.; and Donald L. Ritter, R-Pa.

Astronauts Donald K. Slayton and Gen. Thomas Stafford will meet in Moscow with their Soviet counterparts Alexei Leonov and Valery Kubasov.

Also along will be Thomas O. Paine, National Aeronautics and Space Administration administrator in the Apollo days and now chairman of the president's National Commission on Space. Apollo-Soyuz astronaut Vance D. Brand is not making the trip.

President Reagan is on record favoring cooperative space ventures with the Soviets and has several times proposed a joint, simulated rescue mission. In such an exercise, an astronaut, using a maneuverable jet backpack, would fly to a ''stranded'' Soviet ship and bring a cosmonaut.

The Soviets have not agreed to such a venture.

Another subject of the talks, Nelson said, is a proposed joint mission to Mars.

Such a mission was praised Tuesday by Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan as ''a powerful token ... to turn around the present quarrel which has threatened everyone on the planet.''

In response to a question from Nelson at a hearing on the future of space science, Sagan said other joint projects are possible, but ''for capturing the world's imagination and doing something sufficiently challenging, a joint mission to Mars seems hard to beat.''

Sagan said the Reagan administration has been reluctant about joint ventures with the Soviets in the past because the United States would be in danger of revealing some advanced technology.

But, he said, ''the Soviets are so able along these lines of technology transfer, it's at least a dead heat, and some competent testimony before Congress is that the U.S. gains more than it loses in that respect.''

 

[Archibald]

So where does the space program stands as of 1986 ?

1 - Space stations

Skylab A was as per OTL, with a twist - it was properly desorbited by an Agena in 1978.

Skylab B lost its ATM and was turned into a ground based mockup of Liberty modules (informally known as Endeavour)

Enterprise was the first Liberty module, flown solo from 1978 and later docked to Liberty. With Skylab B ATM.

Liberty is a modified S-II stage with five modules docked - Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis.

Destiny is Liberty twin, a massive 33 ft S-II derived space station core module. To be launched by 1995 and completed with inflatables or Big Gemini modules.

Salyut - DOS 1, 2, 3, 4 mostly as per OTL, that is, only Salyut 4 really worked in 1974.

Salyut DOS-5 and DOS-6: docked together in 1978, as an interim space station called Mir

Salyut DOS-7 and DOS-8: in storage in Baikonur (a Glushko initiative)

Almaz OPS: -1 , -2, as per OTL. OPS-3 was grounded, wjust like OPS-4.

MKBS-1: launched 1983 by a N-1F.

MKBS-2: in storage at Baikonur, to be launched in the 90's.

OCO: Orbital Command Outpost. An Air Force small space station made of Blue Helios cargo modules.

2 - Manned ships

Soyuz is mostly OTL albeit it's career will be curtailed. Progress never exists.

TKS will fly manned in the 80's

Apollo went to Europe as Liberty lifeboat and was renamed Solaris.

Big Gemini (rebranded Helios) is flown by both NASA and Air Force

3 - Rockets

Titan III - rules both NASA and the military

Saturn IB: the last five were expanded to launch Liberty modules

Saturn V: the last three: Skylab A, Liberty, eventually Destiny.

Delta: Thorad (Thor + Agena D) went to both NASA and Japan

Ariane 1 - 4 : mostly OTL, with a twist: the Agena is used as stage 3

Ariane 5: no shuttle, no Hermes: closer from OTL Ariane 6.

Blue Streak : went to Canada through the General Dynamics connection and was given an Agena second stage

Diamant: was given Agena as stage 2, become Lockheed DIAGONAL small partially reusable launcher

Future launchers
- Ares 1B, AR-5, Gaia, ELVIS, Orion space plane, An-248 giant carrier aircraft, Berkut TAN SSTO.

4 - The U.S military in space

- X-27F space plane
- Blue Agena military space tug
- KH-10B "GRAY" manned orbiting laboratories
- Orion space plane to replace all three above

More to come.