Unguided orbital insertion (cheap upper stages)

(MattWriter) wrote in message ...
Vincent Cate wrote:
One trick (from Henry Cate) is that you could have your apogee
kick motor in front of the payload aimed the opposite way so
that when your spin stabilized vehicle got to the other side of
the Earth it would be aimed the right way.

This is exactly what the Navy guys from China Lake tried in the NOTSNIK
launches of 1958.

This is very interesting. A good URL (search for NOTSNIK) is:

http://ftp.seds.org/pub/info/newslet...views.9807.txt

It seems they had 4 months and $300,000 to get something to orbit.
This has got to be one of the shortest times and the lowest budget
for any orbital launch vehicle development.

It was also the first air launch to orbit (or at least attempted).

From URL:
This rocket had a total length of 4.38 meters (14.4 feet), a
fin span of 1.65 meters (5.42 feet) and weighed only 950 kilograms
(2,100 pounds). Even with the mass of the Skyray included,
NOTSNIK is the smallest known system ever built to launch satellites.

Some more info and pictures at:
http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/models/vault/NOTSNik/

This seems like a general method that a few guys with an X-prize vehicle
would want to think about trying. :-)

-- Vince