Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
*Although it might have occurred to them that if they did give it the
ability to fly unmanned missions, its time on-orbit could be greatly
extended, and you would end up with something along the lines of the X-37B
decades sooner.


For what purpose though?

Way back when the program got started, Dyna-Soar was to carry a atomic
weapon around in it to bomb Russia after flying a skip-glide trajectory
over the north pole; that concept got dropped with the successful
arrival of the ICBM, but that was the origin of the program.
An unmanned version could have been launched into orbit in times of
crisis and commanded to descend from orbit to attack the USSR while
maneuvering to evade ABMs. If unneeded, it could reenter and land for
future reuse. One other thing you could envision it doing unmanned is
flying a automated reconnaissance mission over a period of a month or so
and then bringing all the film back, as it would have been in the time
frame where physical film return was still done.
What really worked against Dyna-Soar was the need to use a Titan III or
Saturn I booster to get it into orbit; that is getting awfully expensive
to do on any sort of regular basis.

Pat