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

ed kyle wrote:

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

One major factor in the loss of the British battlecruisers at Jutland was
cordite flash, a sort of chain reaction down the supply chain from the
turrets to the magazines. The Germans learnt about it the hard way at the
battle of Dogger Bank in 1915, when the battlecruiser Seydlitz lost both
its rear turrets and was lucky not to sink. After that they brought in
better safety procedures (notably ensuring that at no stage was there a
clear path from turret to magazine) which ensured that it wouldn't happen
again.

The first time it happened to the British was at Jutland; I think 2 of the 3
battlecruisers were lost to cordite flash, the last one from a direct hit
to the magazines. The British also learnt from it and made procedural
changes (and, I think, made changes to their cordite formulation and
standards). More generally, the lessons from Jutland were incorporated
into Repulse/Renown and the Hood, which were then under construction, with
extra armour. So they did learn from it and had the money to do something
about it.

As for the battlecruiser concept it depends how they were used. Fisher's
original idea was the "speed is armour" and, like the pocket battleships of
the 1930's, they could "outrun what they couldn't outgun". They were also
a Dreadnought-like development of the pre-Dreadnought armoured cruiser
concept. Note that British battlecruisers made mincemeat of German
armoured cruisers at the battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands. They
also defeated a German battlecruiser force at Dogger Bank. The problem
came when they were up against a big fleet of large ships, as at Jutland.

Now the loss of the Hood in WW2, that's another story... (if you believe one
theory, to do with anti-aircraft rocket storage)


--
Malcolm Street
Canberra, Australia
The nation's capital

Jim Oberg wrote:


SPACEPLANE SHELVED?

For 16 years, Aviation Week & Space Technology has
investigated
myriad sightings of a two-stage-to-orbit system that could place a small
military spaceplane in orbit. Considerable evidence supports the existence
of such a highly classified system, and top Pentagon officials have hinted
that it's "out there," but iron-clad confirmation that meets AW&ST
standards has remained elusive. Now facing the possibility that this
innovative "Blackstar" system may have been shelved, we elected to share
what we've learned about it with our readers, rather than let an
intriguing technological breakthrough vanish into "black world" history,
known to only a few insiders. U.S. intelligence agencies may have quietly
mothballed a highly classified two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane system
designed in the 1980s for reconnaissance, satellite-insertion and,
possibly, weapons delivery. It could be a victim of shrinking federal
budgets strained by war costs, or it may not have met performance or
operational goals.

This two-vehicle "Blackstar" carrier/orbiter system may have
been declared operational during the 1990s.

A few thoughts:

0. There's been rumours about something like this for years. Unless AWST
has been very well snowed, I'm now certain it exists. However it may be
only a prototype and it may not be able to do all that is claimed (ie
TSTO).

1. The upper stage isn't a pure rocket. The article mentions air intakes.
It also mentions a new material able to stand very high heat, and mentions
channels/vanes etc being used to dissipate heat. All this to me suggests
an air breather, probably a scramjet. Note that one major criticism of
scramjets as launchers has been higher heat build-up due to a shallower
climb through the atmosphere.

2. the channels/vanes etc go against every rule of hypersonic vehicle design
I know of. Qv John Anderson's "Hypersonic and High Temperature Gas
Dynamics; he points out that hypersonic shapes have to be relatively blunt
(qv Shuttle and DynaSoar) to radiate sufficient heat while retaining
structural strength. This suggests that whatever this new material is is a
quantum breakthrough in high-temperature strength and stiffness.

3. to my knowledge no-one has suggested an aerospike for a scramjet; all net
thrust-producing scramjet concepts I've seen have a half-nozzle built into
the rear of the aircraft. My guess is that it has a rocket engine which
fires twice; once to accelerate the machine from Mach 3.3 to Mach 6
(scramjet ignition speed) and then at the end of the scramjet phase for the
final boost to orbit. Hence the aerospike; these two conditions would
occur at very different altitudes.

4. I'd assume there's still some sort of active airframe cooling involved.
But with what? Oxidiser for the rocket engine, as someone has suggested?

5. Is the boron fuel used by both jet and rocket phases?

6. Yes boron fuels were tried decades ago and abandoned. Two differences in
this case: it doesn't have any turbine blades (erosion of which was a
major problem in running turbojets on boron compounds) and it is being
fired off at say 90,000 feet, which gets around the poisonous exhaust
problem.

7. In contrast the "mothership" is pretty simple. Four engines instead of
the six of the B-70; hmm, 4 x P&W J-58s a la Blackbird should be able to
push a plane of that size to Mach 3 plus without R&D on a new engine.

8. My guess about why it's coming out now is the people who built it don't
want to see it retired without letting the world know what they've
achieved, even if, like Concorde and the Shuttle, it's a technological
wonder but a financial disaster that's never lived up to its promise. Or
it could be spooks wanting to hang onto the capability, despite the cost.

Boy we're in for an interesting time as further info leaks out! :-)

--
Malcolm Street
Canberra, Australia
The nation's capital

Malcolm Street wrote:
achieved, even if, like Concorde and the Shuttle, it's a technological
wonder but a financial disaster that's never lived up to its promise. Or
it could be spooks wanting to hang onto the capability, despite the cost.

The shuttle *concept* is being retired , replaced by 1960s capsule
basically because technology hasn't advanced enough to make an
affordable and dependable heat shield. The actual STS system is old,
but if it were rebuilt with today's technology, a lot of its internal
systems would be made reliable and modern and much cheaper to operate.
But the heat shield still remains a barrier.

Now, if the military ressearchers had made significant advances in a
"shuttle" concept, perhaps this is why they are leaking the info so that
at least people know that they may in fact be technology out there to
make significant enough advances to reconsider the shuttle concept.


On the other hand, except for radar reflecting paint, has the military
really made any significant secret advances in technology in recent
times that were totally way ahead of what is public ?

They may have very interesting secret applications of existing
technology, they may have built stuff which is commercially not viable
due to cost or limited material availability, and they may have pushed
existing technology to new limits, but have they made truly radical
discoveries on how to make a totally new type of engine, a type that was
never imagined outside of the military before ?

Have they got matter/anti-matter cores running, and small fusion
reactors installed in aircraft ? Didn't think so.

If they have some sort of scramjet or air breathing engine, it is
probably roughtly at the same stage of development as civil ones, with
the difference that the military is probably more willing to risk lives
in testing it.


Also, don't forget that the military will also leak such stuff to make
people believe they are actually much more advanced than they really
are. It is to their advantage if there is a rumour that they can see
licence plate numbers on a car in traffic from a satellite. They
certaintly wouldn't want to admit that their real capabilities are
inferior to what Hollywood portrays them to be.


Have they tested a titanium skinned shuttle ? Maybe. NASA certaintly
doesn't have budgets for that, but the military has unlimited budgets.
But that is not a huge breakthrough in technology, it is just having the
budgets to test a known technology that is very expensive to test.

The shuttle *concept* is being retired , replaced by 1960s capsule
basically because technology hasn't advanced enough to make an
affordable and dependable heat shield.

I believe that is incorrect. Several years ago, the heat shield material
that was forseen for the X-33 was tested on figher jets flying through
rain, and it came through well.

On the other hand, except for radar reflecting paint, has the military
really made any significant secret advances in technology in recent
times that were totally way ahead of what is public ?

Surprisingly, it appears that GCHQ (the British analogon to the NSA, if
there is such a thing at all) seems to have invented asymmetric crypto-
graphy years before RSA - see Singh's book The Code Breakers on this.

Jan