AWST: Two-Stage-to-Orbit Manned 'Blackstar' System

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oups.com...
Joe D. wrote:

(6) Amateur observation from the ground means it's unlikely
an orbital military spaceplane would long remains secret. As you
can see from this image, a large group of amateur satellite
observers are constantly scouring the sky for anything new

You are overly optimistic about hobbyist capabilities. A very small
number of us have the required skills, and we do not constantly scour
the sky for anything new...
...
I suspect that the orbital mission of a spaceplane would be fairly
brief, so unless they were launched very frequently, and were very
bright, we would have been very lucky to spot and identify it as
something new...

Ted, thanks for the insight. I guess there's a chance
Blackstar could have orbited unseen after all.

-- Joe D.

You are overly optimistic about hobbyist capabilities. A very small
number of us have the required skills, and we do not constantly scour
the sky for anything new...


The way I read the poster's point was that spotters would see the object
being launched and/or land, as opposed the assumption that it would be
spotted in orbit.

"John Doe" wrote in message ...
You are overly optimistic about hobbyist capabilities. A very small
number of us have the required skills, and we do not constantly scour
the sky for anything new...


The way I read the poster's point was that spotters would see the object
being launched and/or land, as opposed the assumption that it would be
spotted in orbit.

I was actually referring to spotting the object in orbit, so Ted's
statement would apply.

-- Joe D.

Thanks Ted, well said.

Al


wrote in message
oups.com...
Joe D. wrote:

(6) Amateur observation from the ground means it's unlikely
an orbital military spaceplane would long remains secret. As you
can see from this image, a large group of amateur satellite
observers are constantly scouring the sky for anything new

You are overly optimistic about hobbyist capabilities. A very small
number of us have the required skills, and we do not constantly scour
the sky for anything new.

To identify a new secret orbiting object we must: spot it, make
positional observations sufficient to compute a preliminary orbit, make
additional positional observations over several days, refine the
orbital elements, and compare them against those of known objects.

Worldwide, there are about 20 hobbyist observers who make the precise
positional observations required to determine an object's orbital
elements. Only about half a dozen are very active, most of whom are
located within a small geographical area, so our coverage is poor.

Instead of scanning for new objects, virtually all of our effort goes
into tracking about 150 objects that we have previously discovered over
many years, for which official orbital elements are not published. If
we do not track them regularly and update their orbital elements, we
will lose them.

Of course, we see many other objects at random, but we seldom have the
time or interest to make the measurements required to identify them.

Despite these limitations, experience has shown that we are reasonably
likely to randomly detect and determine the orbit of a bright new
object, say, magnitude 2 or brighter, within about 3 to 12 months of
launch.

I suspect that the orbital mission of a spaceplane would be fairly
brief, so unless they were launched very frequently, and were very
bright, we would have been very lucky to spot and identify it as
something new.

We might expect better luck with a spaceplane's payload, if
sufficiently bright and long-lived in orbit.

Ted Molczan

Joe D. wrote:

(2) The AW&ST article said using warehoused XB-70 structural
elements expedited completing the mothership. The actual B-70 would
have had a 20,000 payload. That's not nearly enough
for a man-carrying orbiter. The X-15A2 weighed 56,000 lbs and couldn't
remotely achieve orbit.

It seems more likey to me that an unmanned suborbital
sortie vehicle or a boost-glide vehicle would have been
carried. For example, an upgraded XB-70 might have been
able to carry one of these things (Lockheed's Hypersonic
Glide Vehicle)
"http://www.astronautix.com/craft/hgv.htm"
which it says might have weighed in at 11.3 tonnes
(24,916 pounds) loaded and 2 tonnes empty and
had a range of 8,000 km.

(4) The article is right about needing a superfuel. To achieve
orbit from a Mach 3 air-dropped X-15A2-size/weight vehicle with a
an approx. 0.9 mass fraction and a 5,000 lb payload, you'd
need about 500 seconds specific impulse. IOW you'd need
to burn liquid fluorine and liquid lithium, or something similar.
Delta-V calculator:
http://www.strout.net/info/science/delta-v/intro.html

With 465 seconds specfic impulse (achievable with liquid
hydrogen), and a drop mass of 10 tonnes, it would be
possible to add 7,700 meters/sec delta-v to a 1.86 tonne payload,
possibly enough for a minimal orbit, but that would include every
ounce of a the small unmanned "spaceplane"! By comparison,
X-15 weighed 5.16 tonnes empty. A small deployed boost stage
would be needed to put anything useful into orbit, turning the
spaceplane into a suborbital second stage.

It would be much easier, and probably less expensive, to
just use a Pegasus or similar subsonic air-launched
rocket to perform a "pop-up" mission. An XB-70 might cost
$3 billion or more today. Such a craft would have to perform
a lot of orbital missions to amortize just its development and
operating cost against Pegasus, which goes for probably
$30 million per mission. If the spaceplane cost another
$3 billion or more, than the system would have to perform
way more than 200 missions before cost savings could begin
to be realized. I suppose, however, that you could do some
things with the "mother ship" that Orbital Sciences could not
do with its L-1011!

Pegasus has been off the radar screen during recent years,
not flying at all (as far as we know) in 2001 and 2004 and only
once in 2002 and 2005.

- Ed Kyle

Joe D. wrote:

(2) The AW&ST article said using warehoused XB-70 structural
elements expedited completing the mothership. The actual B-70 would
have had a 20,000 payload. That's not nearly enough
for a man-carrying orbiter.

It appears that the 20,000 pound payload was a maximum
range specification. Range could be traded for payload with
the XB-70, which could be loaded with up to 136 tonnes
(300,000 lbs) of JP6 fuel. Some writings suggest that a
50,000 payload was possible.

I think it might be possible to get 4 tonnes to orbit (including
the orbited "spaceplane" mass) with a 22.68 tonne (50,000 lb)
drop mass (see my other post in this thread). I still think the
orbited "payload" would more likely be unmanned.

- Ed Kyle

MILITARY ALWAYS ADVANCES TO SOMETHING BETTER!

So if this program was retired wonder what replaced it???????

On Wed, 8 Mar 2006 10:37:27 -0600, ed kyle wrote
(in article .com):

At some point, as the empire starts to decline, the hardware gets shoddy or
simply becomes obsolete faster than it can be replaced. Consider the British

Emprire's exploding cruisers at Jutland, for example.

Bad, nay, TERRIBLE example. The British Empire was still at it's
height and had no real trouble affording the naval arms race that led
up to WWI.

Losses at Jutland were a procedures/training issue much more so than a
technical failure of British design or construction methods. Pre-War
years had been spent training for speed, speed and more speed in
gunnery drills, resultiing in flash doors being left open and stacks of
powder charges shoved wherever they would fit in order to speed gun
loading. Read Massie's "Castles of Steel" for more background.

--
Herb

"Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which,
unfortunately, no one we know belongs."
~Anonymous

Herb Schaltegger wrote:
On Wed, 8 Mar 2006 10:37:27 -0600, ed kyle wrote
(in article .com):

At some point, as the empire starts to decline, the hardware gets shoddy or
simply becomes obsolete faster than it can be replaced. Consider the British

Emprire's exploding cruisers at Jutland, for example.

Bad, nay, TERRIBLE example. The British Empire was still at it's
height and had no real trouble affording the naval arms race that led
up to WWI.

The U.S. and Germany surpassed British industrial power by
1900, by which time Britain was running a huge trade deficit.
So the "decline" had already begun by the time of the Great
War.

But I could have selected a better example. The British
battlecruiser problem at Jutland is most often reported to
have been the result of a flawed design concept - the
decision not to armor the battlecruisers against the
shells of enemy ships in the same class. The flawed
idea was that speed would win over firepower. Three
sunk battlecruisers and more than 3,000 lost lives
proved otherwise.

Would a more economically powerful Britain have been able
to test the fast battlecruiser idea more thoroughly before
commiting it to battle?

- Ed Kyle

We have ballistic missle launch detection systems that watch over parts
of the world to observe and report missle launches. Doesn't Russia have
something similar to watch North America? If so, wouldn't an air launch
like this trigger a detection/warning system like that?

Regardless of that technology, any sort of air launch *should* have a
visible trail with either a smoke trail or a visible exhaust plume,
right? (I'm no expert, so don't treat this post as one either). Given
that, both a daytime and nighttime launch would have an observational
probablity - though you could minimize that with a launch over the
ocean or head north to Canada, etc.