Original North American Rockwell Shuttle

Scott Lowther has a cutaway drawing up on his blog from 1971 of what the
original NAR Shuttle was going to look like when first designed:
http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=4901
Interesting features include propulsion by four J-2 engines rather than
three SSME's*, an airlock mounted ahead of the crew cabin rather than in
the rear lower deck, wing and tail-tip RCS pods, and a retro motor on
the top of the ET to help bring it back down where intended after
separation.

* I got jumped on a couple of years back for suggesting that the
original engines for the Shuttle when it was first pitched were J-2's to
cut development costs, but knew I remembered that correctly.

Pat

On Dec 20, 8:24*pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
Scott Lowther has a cutaway drawing up on his blog from 1971 of what the
original NAR Shuttle was going to look like when first designed:http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=4901
Interesting features include propulsion by four J-2 engines rather than
three SSME's*, an airlock mounted ahead of the crew cabin rather than in
the rear lower deck, wing and tail-tip RCS pods, and a retro motor on
the top of the ET to help bring it back down where intended after
separation.

* I got jumped on a couple of years back for suggesting that the
original engines for the Shuttle when it was first pitched were J-2's to
cut development costs, but knew I remembered that correctly.

Pat

Thanks for the .jpg - Notice its 1971. There was a fully reusable fly-
back booster proposed, built around the F1 with the second stage built
around the J2 in 1969.

http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/b/bsts70b.jpg

I feel this is a better design.

Better yet are Bono's designs for VTOVL reusable rockets.

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/rombus.htm

Which were built around pumpsets for the J2 to drive an aerospike
engine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Annular-Aerospike.jpg

This in 1964.

Which basically would have cost what it cost to develop the External
Tank, and about 1/3 of what it would cost to develop the SSME - would
have given a work-horse for space.

Combined with improved logistics and support and automation of the
launch and refurb operations with higher launch rates would have
radically reduced costs to orbit.

Finally, take the money saved on the shuttle program doing this and
invest it in a nuclear deep space stage, and a nuclear electric
interplanetary stage.

http://www.astronautix.com/project/nerva.htm

Which would have gotten us to Mars by 1975 and a moon base the same
year.

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/vonn1969.htm

Or earlier...

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/stus1962.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yph4lkYOEeY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILjXGfTkKvk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBi69V8oNuw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRCQ2Cu3bSE