If Dyno-soar had been built.

Hi everyone,

If the Dyno-soar had been built would this have had an effect on the
shuttle?

Would the shuttle program have gone ahead?

Take care

Paul

"paul mannion" wrote in message
news
Sorry mate i suppose i must of had to many sherberts.

I miss those...not on my diet anymore

"paul mannion" wrote in message
news
Yeah, Yeah, i got the spelling wrong .

Well, it gave me such an opening, "dino-soar", and all, it was hard to
resist

Henry Spencer wrote:

Any attempt to use a Dyna-Soar as an operational
vehicle would have run into the same problem CEV faces: it has to go up
on a large expendable booster, which is inherently a bit pricey.

Which is why it would have rapidly become at least partially reusable.
Reusable SRM's were studied to some depth; had they proven as basically
useless from a cost viewpoint as the Shuttle SRBs turned out to be, then
that would have had an obvious impact.

In any event, reusbale launch vehicles such as Phoenix (no, not the
SSTO) would have been funded to completion, most likely, if Dyna Soar
had become operational.

--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam
gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address

On Mon, 3 May 2004 20:10:16 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:



Is "Dyna-Soar" the one-man X-20, an experimental vehicle going up on a
Titan IIIC -- the only Dyna-Soar that was actually funded -- or one of the
legions of hypothetical derivatives which were going to be the greatest
thing since sliced bread (maybe)?

Even setting that question aside, note that these were all spacecraft, not
launch vehicles. The shuttle was primarily a launch vehicle, a way of
getting things into orbit (by intent, cheaply and easily), so it's not
directly comparable. Any attempt to use a Dyna-Soar as an operational
vehicle would have run into the same problem CEV faces: it has to go up
on a large expendable booster, which is inherently a bit pricey.

Having more data on winged reentry and radiative thermal protection would
have helped shuttle development, likewise being able to test-fly things
like tile specimens under realistic conditions.


The Shuttle is flown through reentry and guided to the runway by
computers.

Could a winged vehicle have flown a manual reentry from orbit and made
it to the runway in 1966 without onboard computers?

- Rusty Barton

Scott Lowther writes:
Which is why it would have rapidly become at least partially reusable.
Reusable SRM's were studied to some depth; had they proven as basically
useless from a cost viewpoint as the Shuttle SRBs turned out to be, then
that would have had an obvious impact.

I doubt this would have had an impact on the shuttle. The shuttle's
design was compromised in many ways in order to cap development costs.
The choice of SRB's over liquid fueled boosters is just one example of
this trade-off.

Jeff
--
Remove "no" and "spam" from email address to reply.
If it says "This is not spam!", it's surely a lie.

In article ,
Rusty Barton wrote:
The Shuttle is flown through reentry and guided to the runway by
computers.
Could a winged vehicle have flown a manual reentry from orbit and made
it to the runway in 1966 without onboard computers?

On the navigation and guidance side, certainly -- the shuttle can be
hand-flown reentry-to-runway if necessary, and it *was* hand-flown on one
or two of the early flights, until some of the bugs were sorted out.

On the control side, there is more room for doubt, since it's hard to make
a winged reentry vehicle that's aerodynamically stable, and most such
designs do end up resorting to fly-by-wire systems for artificial
stability. (I don't remember whether Dyna-Soar did; certainly the shuttle
does.) However, fly-by-wire was certainly available in 1966, because you
don't *have* to do it with digital computers -- that's just the preferred
implementation technique nowadays. The first non-research fly-by-wire
aircraft flew in 1958, and fly-by-wire was already universal in large
rockets, which are almost always aerodynamically unstable.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
The first non-research fly-by-wire
aircraft flew in 1958

It wasn't the Fairey Delta Two, was it?

In article , says...
In article ,
Rusty Barton wrote:
The Shuttle is flown through reentry and guided to the runway by
computers.
Could a winged vehicle have flown a manual reentry from orbit and made
it to the runway in 1966 without onboard computers?

On the navigation and guidance side, certainly -- the shuttle can be
hand-flown reentry-to-runway if necessary, and it *was* hand-flown on one
or two of the early flights, until some of the bugs were sorted out.

On the control side, there is more room for doubt, since it's hard to make
a winged reentry vehicle that's aerodynamically stable, and most such
designs do end up resorting to fly-by-wire systems for artificial
stability. (I don't remember whether Dyna-Soar did; certainly the shuttle
does.) However, fly-by-wire was certainly available in 1966, because you
don't *have* to do it with digital computers -- that's just the preferred
implementation technique nowadays. The first non-research fly-by-wire
aircraft flew in 1958, and fly-by-wire was already universal in large
rockets, which are almost always aerodynamically unstable.

Hell, the Mercury spacecraft had three control systems -- manual
porportional, auto, and fly-by-wire. The manual and auto systems had
separate fuel tanks, and the fly-by-wire mode let the pilot use the auto
system "manually." So fly-by-wire is a grand old tradition in American
spaceflight.

Doug

In article ,
Neil Gerace wrote:
The first non-research fly-by-wire aircraft flew in 1958

It wasn't the Fairey Delta Two, was it?

I don't *think* the FD.2 was fly-by-wire, and if memory serves, it was a
bit earlier anyway. Also, it was pretty definitely a research aircraft;
it was a little too small to carry a useful payload, and even with no
payload was awfully light on fuel.

As far as I know -- I haven't done a systematic search to confirm this --
the Avro Arrow (first flight March 1958) was the first aircraft meant as a
production design which had full (analog) fly-by-wire. It wasn't actually
aerodynamically unstable, but its stability, especially in yaw, was rather
marginal in some conditions.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |