(Henry Spencer) wrote in message ...
In article F2Oeb.659101$uu5.108436@sccrnsc04,
Jim McCauley wrote:
There was an Avro Arrow orbital-launch concept?
I've never seen this. Can anyone give me a reference?

I've never seen any actual documentation...

A large hot fighter with a *big* internal weapons bay -- the Arrow's was
huge -- is just what you want as a first stage for a small air-launch
system. An aircraft with that performance in a zoom climb will get you up
into a very low-dynamic-pressure environment, where you can pop out an
upper stage (which needn't be very aerodynamic) to go the rest of the way.

I've never seen any documentation on something like this either, but given
the mood of the times, it would be surprising if Avro Canada *hadn't*
thought a bit about it, at least informally. If you dug hard, you might
well find mention of it.

I seldom have any occassion for even a slight disagreement
with you, Henry, but I doubt that any internal capability
is likely to be of much use for space launch. I have looked
quite carefully in the past at the B-70, the B-1 and the RA-5
Vigilante. After some initial excitement, I have found all
coming up somewhat short after some detailed analysis.

External carriage is another matter. I find the B-1 and the
Tu-160 very promising in this respect. For small, RASCAL-
size payloads, the F-14 is quite promising; the F-14 was our
choice for our Phase I RASCAL contract. While the F-14 does
not fit DARPA's concept for MIPCC plus zoom climb to extremely
low dynamic pressure too well, it is nonetheless very promising,
if the extremely low-dynamic-pressure constaint is removed. We
are pursuing this post-RASCAL concept quite strenuously.

Best regards,
Len (Cormier)
PanAero, Inc. and Third Millennium Aerospace, Inc.
( http://www.tour2space.com )