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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 |
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Original North American Rockwell Shuttle
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 |
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