Faceted aerospace planes

I note that designers came up with faceted aerodynamics for aerospace
plane designs during the I950's-1960's- there are Kraft Ehricke's
Convair Shuttlecraft: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/concraft.htm
.... and the Soviet M-48/VKA-23 design:
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/vkasign1.htm for instance, then they
seem to fall out of favor, only to return during the 1980's in some of
the transatmospheric vehicle designs:
http://www.abo.fi/~mlindroo/SpaceLVs/Slides/sld057.htm What exactly was
the faceted approach about? Was it to simplify the computation of
shockwave interaction during hypersonic flight? Allow for controllable
expansion of the vehicle's outer skin without buckling from differential
heating during reentry? Or in the case of the 1980's designs; stealth-
such as was used in the F-117?

Pat

What exactly was
the faceted approach about? BRBR

I would guess it was at least partly about the limitations of contemporary
materials and design techniques. Today we can make almost any suitable
material into almost any complex shape, Some things, like titanium, were very
hard to work with in the past. Flat panels greatly simplified such problems.


Matt Bille
)
OPINIONS IN ALL POSTS ARE SOLELY THOSE OF THE AUTHOR

There was also a British design for launch atop a Blue Streak-derived
LV which I haven't added to my site yet. As I recall the justification
was given that it was strictly notional, to allow simplified
calculations (as was the case with the F-117 and radio waves). I had
some correspondence with Nonweiler waverider advocates to try to
discover if either this or the Russian VKS design of the same period
were in any way related to that concept (part of which involved sharp
actively-cooled leading edges) but could receive no final answer.

In relation to Von Braun's design for a long-glide RV with a
lower-temp thermal equilibrium, I couldn't tell if anyone had actually
done meaningful calculations on this approach since the 1950's. The
Dynasoar came closest. But my impression is that there has been little
investigation of alternative re-entry strategies for a long-time (e.g.
Avco's mesh-drag-brake scheme, sharp or pointed leading edge designs
(NASA did some work on this recently taking into account new
materials, skipping or long-glide re-entries). Hopefully (but not
likely) some of this would be investigated in relation to OSP in order
to define a more fault-tolerant, forgiving re-entry mode for future
manned spacecraft in the wake of STS-107...

Encyclopedia Astronautica wrote:

There was also a British design for launch atop a Blue Streak-derived
LV which I haven't added to my site yet. As I recall the justification
was given that it was strictly notional, to allow simplified
calculations (as was the case with the F-117 and radio waves).

I've seen that one- it's the one with the cylindrical crew compartment
(that rotates during flight to match the angle at which G forces are
being encountered?) that was designed by Armstrong-Whitworth in 1959
with Nonwieler's help; there are drawings of it on page 423 of Ron
Miller's "The Dream Machines".
It was too use a lightweight & jettisonable "Image Fairing" of
identical shape to the vehicle clamped to it's belly 180 degrees
reversed during ascent- to even out the aerodynamic forces and drag, and
so to cut down on the need for stabilization of the launch vehicle
during atmospheric flight.

Pat