What Became of Black Horse?

The Black Horse mid-air refueled SSTO concept was widely discussed
in the early to mid-1990s, but has been little mentioned since.
Anyone know what became of it?

- Ed Kyle

The Black Horse mid-air refueled SSTO concept was widely discussed
in the early to mid-1990s, but has been little mentioned since.
Anyone know what became of i

The usual. No one put any money into it. I beleive Clapp's originaldesign,
when reviewed by other engineers, turned out to need significat scaling up -
the F-16-sized spaceplane simply lacked the propellant, even after th midair
tankup, to get to orbit. A larger version has some intriguing features, but no
one has ever doen LOX transfer from a tanker, and few pilots would be
interested in being the first to try it. Still, the bottom line is just the
usual - interesting idea, no funding.




Matt Bille
)
OPINIONS IN ALL POSTS ARE SOLELY THOSE OF THE AUTHOR

In article ,
ed kyle wrote:
The Black Horse mid-air refueled SSTO concept was widely discussed
in the early to mid-1990s, but has been little mentioned since.
Anyone know what became of it?

Basically, Mitch Burnside Clapp -- its father -- failed to sell the USAF
on funding major development work. So he left the USAF and tried the
private route, in the form of Pioneer Rocketplane; Pioneer's concept is
somewhat less ambitious than Black Horse for various pragmatic reasons
(e.g., "so we don't have to try to convince people we're a lot smarter
than Boeing, LockMart, etc. -- that's a hard sell"). Unfortunately, it
too has failed to attract major development funding, so far.

(Caveat: I wasn't close enough to the details to be sure of exactly which
events were cause and which were effect, so take the above as possibly
only an approximation of the truth.)
--
MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |

Basically, Mitch Burnside Clapp -- its father -- failed to sell the USAF
on funding major development work.

Whatever comes of this, I will always have the greatest respect for Clapp's
initiative. As a lowly Air Force Captain, he got four-star generals excited
about his idea, and it went into numerous Air Force "vision" documents and
studies. That it was not followed up is sad, but it was still one heck of an
achievement.

(former USAF Captain myself)
Matt Bille
)
OPINIONS IN ALL POSTS ARE SOLELY THOSE OF THE AUTHOR

(MattWriter) wrote in message ...

Basically, Mitch Burnside Clapp -- its father -- failed to sell the USAF
on funding major development work.

Whatever comes of this, I will always have the greatest respect for Clapp's
initiative. As a lowly Air Force Captain, he got four-star generals excited
about his idea, and it went into numerous Air Force "vision" documents and
studies. That it was not followed up is sad, but it was still one heck of an
achievement.


One wonders if some form of this thing might not have been
developed anyway in the "black" world. There were those
AW&ST-purchased space-imaged photos that showed new facilities
and signs of an active super-long runway at Nellis, for example.

- Ed Kyle

ed kyle wrote:

One wonders if some form of this thing might not have been
developed anyway in the "black" world. There were those
AW&ST-purchased space-imaged photos that showed new facilities
and signs of an active super-long runway at Nellis, for example.

- Ed Kyle



But Black Horse wouldn't need such a runway; something gliding back from
orbit would need that big of runway for safety; and something godawful
big and heavy would need that sort of runway to get airborne and carry
the thing that glides back from orbit up to launch altitude and speed.
One of the SALT negotiators from the Soviet Union was supposed to have
shown one of our negotiators photos of three aircraft that looked like
B-70's parked at Area 51.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote in message ...
ed kyle wrote:

One wonders if some form of this thing might not have been
developed anyway in the "black" world. There were those
AW&ST-purchased space-imaged photos that showed new facilities
and signs of an active super-long runway at Nellis, for example.

- Ed Kyle


But Black Horse wouldn't need such a runway; something gliding back from
orbit would need that big of runway for safety; and something godawful
big and heavy would need that sort of runway to get airborne and carry
the thing that glides back from orbit up to launch altitude and speed.
One of the SALT negotiators from the Soviet Union was supposed to have
shown one of our negotiators photos of three aircraft that looked like
B-70's parked at Area 51.


The new Nellis runway was reportedly constructed in 1996 or
thereabouts. It replaced (and perfectly paralleled) the
now-abandoned original runway. Why wouldn't they just
refurbish the original runway? The only reasons I can think
of are 1) weight restrictions (something really heavy started
flying that exceeded the specs of the original runway or 2)
runway width (something big or with really high landing or
takeoff speed or something that HAD to land even if crosswinds
were high, etc.) How big/fast? The original runway handled
B-52s, C-130s, C-5s, A-12s, SR-71s, etc..

One would think that the residents of Las Vegas would have
taken note (boom-BOOM) of supersonic glider approaches, though.

- Ed Kyle

(ed kyle) writes:

Pat Flannery wrote in message ...
ed kyle wrote:

[...] There were those
AW&ST-purchased space-imaged photos that showed new facilities
and signs of an active super-long runway at Nellis, for example.

But Black Horse wouldn't need such a runway [...]

The new Nellis runway was reportedly constructed in 1996 or
thereabouts. It replaced (and perfectly paralleled) the
now-abandoned original runway. Why wouldn't they just
refurbish the original runway? The only reasons I can think
of are 1) weight restrictions [...] or 2) runway width [...]
How big/fast? The original runway handled
B-52s, C-130s, C-5s, A-12s, SR-71s, etc..

How about the much less sinister (3) They could not afford to close
the existing runway for refurbishment, so they had to build a new
one in parallel? Refurbishing a runway is a major operation that closes
it for long periods of time. At the San Jose Airport here, the main
runway (the only one big enough for commercial planes) needed replacement.
To avoid interrupting service, they took a small parallel runway out of
service and build it up to commercial standards (this took about a year).
Then that became the main runway and the original was taken out of
service.

If they stopped there this would be exactly what happened at Nellis. At
San Jose they actually wanted two runways capable of commercial ops,
so then the rebuilt the (now closed) original. But this took another
year an some 10s of millions of dollars, even though they were starting
from an existing, pretty big, runway.

Lou Scheffer

(ed kyle) wrote


The new Nellis runway was reportedly constructed in 1996 or
thereabouts. It replaced (and perfectly paralleled) the
now-abandoned original runway. Why wouldn't they just
refurbish the original runway? The only reasons I can think
of are 1) weight restrictions (something really heavy started
flying that exceeded the specs of the original runway or 2)
runway width (something big or with really high landing or
takeoff speed or something that HAD to land even if crosswinds
were high, etc.) How big/fast? The original runway handled
B-52s, C-130s, C-5s, A-12s, SR-71s, etc..


Perhaps I've missed Nellis developments, but I suspect you're talking
about Groom Lake/Area 51:

http://www.serve.com/mahood/nellis/groom/groomtl.htm

January, 1996: The Bechtel Corporation is reported to have begun
work lengthening the secondary runway (14L-32R) by 5,000'.

http://www.fas.org/irp/overhead/groom.htm

(See 1998 pix.)

Clearly they're still doing stuff there, though my guess would be that
it mostly has to do with various sorts of subsonic UAVs.

But you never know....

(ed kyle) wrote:

The new Nellis runway was reportedly constructed in 1996 or
thereabouts. It replaced (and perfectly paralleled) the
now-abandoned original runway. Why wouldn't they just
refurbish the original runway? The only reasons I can think
of are 1) weight restrictions (something really heavy started
flying that exceeded the specs of the original runway or 2)
runway width (something big or with really high landing or
takeoff speed or something that HAD to land even if crosswinds
were high, etc.)

Or it was cheaper/easier to build a new runway rather than partially
shut down the facility while refurbishing the old.

D.
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