It's like they were trying to build the most impressive firework in space-travel history, and then put people on it. Very toxic, such explosions, wow.
Possibilities with the Space Shuttle?
- Thread starter Emperor Norton I
- Start date
It's like they were trying to build the most impressive firework in space-travel history, and then put people on it. Very toxic, such explosions, wow.
Archibald
Banned
Couldn't say it better ! Except that it had SIX boosters, not four, thus even more O-rings, a good thirty-six of them ! (my bad: there was no SSME nor external tank. It was in fact NASA own Buran with Titan III-L in the role of Energiya. Still, that big orbiter ontop of a narrow Titan III-L would have had serious control issues)
Incidentally, here's the result of a single, five-segment Titan SRM failure. Yikes !
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Engineers semi-regularly come up with insane designs that technically meet requirements in order to get the customer to think about what they actually want, and to write requirements that make sense. This is probably an occasion where one of those insane designs leaked out into the real world.
Arichbald
here the insane idea to put Titan L4 on Orbiter
do you know this insane proposal FIVE UA1207 on ET?
here the insane idea to put Titan L4 on Orbiter
do you know this insane proposal FIVE UA1207 on ET?
It wasn't really crazy, though; they were looking at what existing boosters like the UA1207 would have to do to meet the mission requirements. These sort of studies were part of what drove them to using the bigger custom boosters they actually did instead of using Titan boosters, even though they would lose commonality and the cost savings that could come from tapping into the Titan production line.
Replace "likely" with "absolutely certain" - even if they started out with a straight-winged design, sooner or later someone would have realised that putting straight wings on a HYPERSONIC vehicle is an utterly insane idea. Delta wings exist for a reason, people!
If you don't have the USAF involved, wouldn't NASA have the flexibility to just eliminate wings all together and do a lifting body?
It was Max Faget who came up with the DC-3, not the USAF. Lifting bodies have the problem that they fly badly at subsonic speeds and have strange, inefficient shapes for holding things like fuel and payload, which is why they didn't choose to build one of those (an X-24B-like lifting body would have had a pretty good cross-range, for example)
Well, it wasn't as crazy as all that. The reason it was a "low-cross-range" vehicle was that it was supposed to reenter ballistically, in a very nose-high attitude (or in some versions with folded wings), without trying to maneuver or fly at hypersonic or supersonic speeds at all. Once they got down to subsonic speeds they would lower the nose and try to start flying properly, and at that point straight wings are just fine.
There were still a lot of aerothermal questions about that wing joint, though...not to mention that the pilots really didn't like the idea of flying down in a stall from the entry interface almost to the ground. Stalling tends to mean crashing, after all.
There has to be some good advantages, the X-33/34 lifting body, Dream Chaser lifting body and HL-20 lifting body. Was it just a matter of the material science catching up?
Well, for the Dream Chaser and HL-20, one of the things was that they were really small and didn't really try to have onboard propulsion to any significant extent. The problems with lifting bodies are less significant at those scales, especially if you're not trying to stuff propellant tanks in. Plus, they were supposed to be launched on existing rockets, for which the low L/D ratio of a lifting body is actually an advantage--lifting vehicles cause difficult bending moments during launch.
For X-33 specifically, the fact that it was a lifting body was actually a major factor in its failure--the whole debacle with the composite fuel tank was driven in no small part because it needed a very complex multi-lobed structure to fit in the X-33's lifting body shape. The design itself was basically Lockheed bringing the Starclipper concept they invented in the 1960s back up for another go, though with a few tweaks, which explains why it was a lifting body. Its competitors for the X-33 program were a conventional winged design, from Rockwell, and essentially DC-Y, from McDonnell Douglas, so it wasn't like it being a lifting body was pre-ordained.
In any case, you shouldn't take away from that statement that lifting bodies are bad. They have certain disadvantages--another one I didn't mention is that their aerodynamics are very strongly coupled to their design, so that changes like those common in aerospace projects can require major, expensive redesigns--but they have advantages of their own, like not having wings (and thus saving some weight and complexity). It's just that, at least in the 1970s, these disadvantages seemed to outweigh the advantages, which is why they didn't go with a lifting-body orbiter.
The entire weight saving part makes me wonder that for a SSTO you have to be really weight conscious (if you even think it is possible) and doing a lifting body was the only way that NASA and Lockheed thought a SSTO was even remotely possible.
your right
for another TL "On the shoulders of Apollo" i look in failure rate of UA1205
looking for 4 US1207 on ET, theoretical it would goes good until launch 26 one of UA1207 burn true.
the STS-51-L Challenger disaster happened on flight 25
here is interesting proposal for Solid booster for Space shuttle
like cluster of 6 UA1207 booster with ET and shuttle on top.