A-9 landing procedure

Derek Lyons wrote:.
But creating a fear of an ICBM crossing an ocean is a good thing if
one is trying to urge one's citizens to support building ICBMs.


Which nobody was doing in 1947.


Actually, the Soviets were looking at both the A9/A10 and Antipodal
Bomber projects at that time as a means of attacking America, but went
up the wrong path at first by starting to do work on a modified version
of the Antipodal Bomber:
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/kelomber.htm

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:


Derek Lyons wrote:.

But creating a fear of an ICBM crossing an ocean is a good thing if
one is trying to urge one's citizens to support building ICBMs.

Which nobody was doing in 1947.


Actually, the Soviets were looking at both the A9/A10 and Antipodal
Bomber projects at that time as a means of attacking America, but went
up the wrong path at first by starting to do work on a modified version
of the Antipodal Bomber:
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/kelomber.htm

The Soviets didn't exactly have to drum up public support did they?

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

wrote:

Not really. Once it was exoatmospheric, it didn;t matter where it was
pointed. it would, if properly designed, orient itself properly once
it hit atmosphere, just as the V-2's did.


V-2 was basically a dart coming down, as long as it ended up coming in
pointy-end first, everything was fine.
A9 was a lot more like a X-15 reentering (in fact, the manned A9 concept
was one of the things that led to the creation of the X-15). When Maj.
Adams came back into the atmosphere at the wrong attitude the aircraft
broke up after going into a multi-Mach flat spin.
Because of its wings, the A9 doesn't have arrow stability - it well
self-align well in the yaw axis, but not in the pitch axis.
I assume the dihedral on the wings is supposed to get it at least
aligned belly side down on the way in, but you don't want it to come in
pointy end first, as as soon as you try to pull out of a rapidly
accelerating nose dive, the wings are going to stall in the thin air,
and it's going to end up going straight down all the way to impact.
Even that scenario means the CG is pretty far forward, probably too far
forward for gliding flight unless you set the horizontal control
surfaces at a up angle to compensate for the CG position.
Nowadays you could do that automatically via some sort of fly-by-wire
system that would input the data on speed and air density. Back then, it
would be up to the pilot to do it by the seat of his pants, or the gyros
to try to keep the angle right; and the amount of control surface
movement needed to accomplish the appropriate change in attitude as the
rocket descends and speed and air density change is going to be mighty
hard to build into a automated system. A large control surface movement
will be needed at high altitude to have much effect at all... the same
movement of the control surfaces at lower altitude could cause the
vehicle to violently pitch-up and break apart. Imagine making a
Dyna-Soar pilot fly the glider back into the atmosphere minus a RCS
system to align it for reentry, and with only 1940's era
instrumentation and control systems... he may hit the atmosphere upside
down and rear end first without a RCS system to get things lined up
right as he coasts above the atmosphere.
At the time the Germans were designing the A9 and Antipodal Bomber, any
detailed information on what the atmosphere was like above the height
that balloons could reach was missing. It took rockets like the V-2 and
Aerobee to get that data, and the Germans didn't do instrumented V-2
flights above the atmosphere during the war.
So you'd be launching a pilot into a region you didn't really know much
about, and have him do a controlled reentry at Reynolds numbers and
temperatures you didn't have data on.
The second A4b flight was supposed to have failed when a wing broke off
during descent; I think that's a major understatement of what really
happened... if the wooden wings weren't on fire during the reentry
itself, then the whole rocket probably disintegrated around the time it
tried to pull out of its dive.


The pilot sits in the area that's normally taken up by the guidance
system and it's a pretty tight fit even back there...


The guidance system would need to be retained, so it would have to be
moved forward.

On the A9 they moved it back between the propellant tanks, as the
cutaway shows: http://www.pp.htv.fi/jwestman/images/a9-skiss.jpg
The production A9 was intended to be longer than the A4b in the
cylindrical body section; A4b kept its guidance system forward:
http://www.pp.htv.fi/jwestman/images/A-4bskiss.jpg
The actual physical size of the V-2's warhead wasn't that great; 37.6
inches in diameter at its base, by 79.1 inches long.
Overall weight of the warhead was around 2,150 pounds, so if you save
just the warhead shell, you probably have around 1,900 pounds to work
with for a crew compartment, which should easily be sufficient (for
comparison, a complete Mercury capsule minus retropack and escape tower
weighed 2,635 pounds).
But that's predicated on having the rocket lift off at the same weight
as a stock V-2; now the rocket is longer and has wings as well as a
pilot's cabin, so overall weight is going to be higher.
At liftoff, a stock V-2 weighed 28,413 pounds, and the engine generated
52,000 pounds thrust, so thrust-to-weight ratio was 1.83/1 so you can
add considerably more weight to it and still have it get off the pad.
Cut-off velocity and altitude will be considerably lower, but you are
trading velocity and altitude for longer range via gliding, and coming
up on the target at subsonic speeds.
That's also assuming a stock V-2 engine; the A9 was intended to use
hypergolic propellants in a new engine, so it may have had a superior
isp to the standard V-2 engine.
There was of course a advanced V-2 engine in development during the war
using only a single injector head, although AFAIK, none of the
operational V-2s used it.


Even so there would be little enough room. And the
weight of a pressurized cockpit would be about that of the now-deleted
warhead.


You can shoehorn the pilot into the guidance compartment as my model
showed; it's a mighty tight fit, akin to a Spitfire or X-1 cockpit, and
of course some of the space needs to be taken up by insulation to keep
the cockpit cool during reentry.
(I've got the pilot wearing a white heat-resistant suit flight suit in
a glass fiber insulated cockpit. Another approach would be to achieve
insulation and save weight via giving the pilot a full pressure suit and
letting the cockpit go into vacuum as it exited the atmosphere. Then
heating of the pilot could be prevented via something like a thermos
bottle effect.)


Warhead size may need to be reduced, but there still should be room for
one ahead of the pilot.


A few sticks of dynamite, perhaps.



Note also the little thing way up at the end of the nose, which almost
looks like a small enclosed radar dish.


It's part of the fuse assembly for the warhead.
http://www.up-ship.com/drawndoc/v2ad1.jpg


Base booster charge for the Amatol?

Pat

On Mar 28, 6:16 pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
(in fact, the manned A9 concept
was one of the things that led to the creation of the X-15).

According to whom?



The guidance system would need to be retained, so it would have to be
moved forward.

On the A9 they moved it back between the propellant tanks, as the
cutaway shows:http://www.pp.htv.fi/jwestman/images/a9-skiss.jpg

How certain are you of that, based as it seems to be one one small
onlinecutaway drawing?

The production A9 was intended to be longer than the A4b in the
cylindrical body section

According to whom?

That's also assuming a stock V-2 engine; the A9 was intended to use
hypergolic propellants in a new engine

Wrong.


You're starting to read like Arndt. Easy acceptance of things found
online.

wrote:
On Mar 28, 6:16 pm, Pat Flannery wrote:

(in fact, the manned A9 concept
was one of the things that led to the creation of the X-15).


According to whom?


According to what I read, the basic idea of the X-15 came up during a
road trip, when two engineers heard about a successful Viking launch
over the radio in the car, and started shooting the breeze about what a
manned Viking could do with someone riding in the front end and wings on
the side.
Once you'd read the articles (like the one cited from 1947) about a
manned, winged, V-2...it doesn't take much imagination about where that
idea came from...it was running around in a back of a lot of people's
heads from the first moment they had heard about it. It sure shows up in
a lot of space books from the late 1940's to the mid 1950's, like
Chesley Bonestell's famous painting of a scaled-up A9 on the moon:
http://www.astro.virginia.edu/class/...stell-moon.gif



The guidance system would need to be retained, so it would have to be
moved forward.

On the A9 they moved it back between the propellant tanks, as the
cutaway shows:http://www.pp.htv.fi/jwestman/images/a9-skiss.jpg


How certain are you of that, based as it seems to be one one small
onlinecutaway drawing?


We've run into this situation before; that cutaway comes from the
historical archives of the Smithsonian Institution:
http://www.pp.htv.fi/jwestman/space/nazispace.html
You, on the other hand seem to re-write the history of the past into a
world where the Antipodal Bomber can be ready to go in 1945, the
Dyna-Soar makes more sense than a ICBM, and most intriguing of all, how
pagan Vikings were a lot more tolerant and better people than the
Christians who supplanted their religion over time; because it made for
a lot more stable society than they had early on in their aggressive
days sacrificing people to Odin or Wotan.
You are one very odd, and very singular person in you're interpretation
of past history.
This is downright weird, and knowing the history of your life and the
evolution of your philosophical outlook that got you where you are today
would be fascinating.



The production A9 was intended to be longer than the A4b in the
cylindrical body section


According to whom?


Well, take a look at the two wartime images of its innards; the A9 is
longer than the A4b.
It really surprises me that someone who has all the drawings of such
exotic designs as the X-15 Ejector Ramjet Engine or the flying-wing
nuclear-powered bomber doesn't have a better background regarding th A4
and its history, despite it having been written about in detail for over
half a century.

That's also assuming a stock V-2 engine; the A9 was intended to use
hypergolic propellants in a new engine


Wrong.


You can argue about propellant mixtures as much as you want, but they
did come up with a single injector V-2 engine during the war; I'm trying
to track down a photo of this on the web (I've got around ten photos of
the actual engine in my V-2 related missile books) but here's at least a
cutaway drawing showing it:
http://www.zamandayolculuk.com/cetinbal/VZ/V2.png

You're starting to read like Arndt. Easy acceptance of things found
online.


I must apologize to Thor during the first thunderstorm of this spring.
Hopefully, he won't blow his red beard out against me too severely, so
that the daughters of Hel don't raise too dangerous of waves against me
in my toilet bowl.
I've already run into the Midgard Serpent lying there in wait more than
once, raising the lower seas as it stoppered them with its girth, and it
took the work of Baldur's magic plunger to send it on its way back to
Utgard.

Pat

On Mar 29, 2:19 am, Pat Flannery wrote:


You've gone round the bend again into idiocy. Done with you.

On Sat, 29 Mar 2008 02:19:14 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

I must apologize to Thor during the first thunderstorm of this spring.
Hopefully, he won't blow his red beard out against me too severely,

....Pat, you've been out of the loop. First off, Thor is now blonde and
clean-shaven. Secondly, the only one of the Aesir who's accepting
prayer and ritual sacrifice is Volstagg. And that usually consists of
hitting the local buffet twice.

OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[

wrote:
On Mar 29, 2:19 am, Pat Flannery wrote:


You've gone round the bend again into idiocy. Done with you.


Oh yeah? Well, when the Fenris Wolf shows up and starts baying at your
door, don't think I'm going to be giving you the magic thread you can
tie it up with. :-)

Loki

OM wrote:
On Sat, 29 Mar 2008 02:19:14 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:


I must apologize to Thor during the first thunderstorm of this spring.
Hopefully, he won't blow his red beard out against me too severely,


...Pat, you've been out of the loop. First off, Thor is now blonde and
clean-shaven.


They're fairly sure the "blowing out his red beard" is related to storm
clouds at sunrise or sunset.
Who knows? Maybe this is related to the "red sky at morning, sailor's
warning; red sky at night, sailor's delight." adage.
I still remember one morning that had a very bright red sunrise, and I
thought of that saying. Around eight hours later a tornado struck.

Pat

On Mar 29, 5:57 pm, OM wrote:
On Sat, 29 Mar 2008 09:21:18 -0700 (PDT), "

wrote:
On Mar 29, 2:19 am, Pat Flannery wrote:

You've gone round the bend again into idiocy. Done with you.

...Jeez, I fight off death *twice*, just to see you two get into
another squabble over nits and pickings?

No. As I said, I'm done with Pat. He's become too much like Arndt...
willing to accept *anything* so long as it's fantastical (such as his
rubbish about the A-9 being powered by hypergolics... all referecnes
show it witha conventional A-4 LOX/ethanol engine). Applies to his
technical blather as well as his political nonsense, it seems.

Lowther, you go find me some
ASTP documents.

Sure. I charge $300 per day plus expenses to travel to visit aerospace
archives and do specific research. I accept checks, money orders and
Paypal. An ATP-specific trip (likely to NASA HQ in DC or NASA-MSFC in
AL) would be the third archival digging trip I've been contracted to
do (second one coming up in a few weeks). So if you're serious, email
me.