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  #1  
Old September 25th 03, 03:44 AM
Richard Stewart
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Default Rascal?

Daarpa's new toy?

http://aviationnow.com/avnow/news/ch...s/09223top.xml

Cheers,
Richard

  #2  
Old September 26th 03, 07:16 PM
Anvil
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Default Rascal?

Richard Stewart:
Daarpa's new toy?

http://aviationnow.com/avnow/news/ch...s/09223top.xml

-----
I feel it follows a trend.
* The X-15/air-launch concept works.
* The planned returned to manned capsules on rockets.
* Now what sounds like a scaled-up version of the Avro Arrow orbital-launch
concept, perhaps with a good dose of XB-70 Valkyre.

If the trend continues, I also expect to see a small lifting-body reentry
craft on top of a conventional rocket (since an empty cargo-bay can be
expendable). The shuttle never was the best way into space but remains the
best way to bring something large down intact (The remaining service-life
of the shuttles should be conserved specifically for that purpose - IMHO).
--
Anvil*
(even wing warping is back as a concept)
  #3  
Old September 26th 03, 08:55 PM
Damon Hill
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Default Rascal?

Richard Stewart wrote in
:

Daarpa's new toy?

http://aviationnow.com/avnow/news/ch...id=news/09223t
op.xml

Cheers,
Richard



Serious hotrod, eh? Wonder if it'll have any extra seats
for paying passengers?

--Damon
  #4  
Old October 2nd 03, 05:44 AM
Jim McCauley
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"Erik Anderson" wrote in message
...

* Now what sounds like a scaled-up version of the Avro Arrow

orbital-launch
concept, perhaps with a good dose of XB-70 Valkyre.



There was an Avro Arrow orbital-launch concept?

I've never seen this. Can anyone give me a reference?


I've never seen any actual documentation.

There is a motion picture (_The Arrow_, starring Dan Ackroyd as a
hard-drinking and wholly impolitic industrialist) that features a
sad-but-droll scene. After the plane has been cancelled and the Canadian
aircraft industry is destroyed, ostensibly by evil America (in the person of
Dwight Eisenhower threatening John Deifenbaker (sp?) during a fishing trip),
Ackroyd's potted industrialist blearily observes a grief-stricken engineer
demonstrating how Canada could have launched a satellite from a souped-up
Arrow. It a bizarre moment of pathos and irony, the engineer flips the
little Arrow model over and pops a little rocket launcher out of its belly.
This looks for all the world like a penis, of course -- the symbolism is the
emasculation of Canadian technological independence by Yanks acting in the
future tradition of Lorena Bobbitt.

So I guess America was the Evil Empire, even back in the 1950s. Dubya is
just putting the icing on the cake.

Jim McCauley


  #5  
Old October 2nd 03, 07:56 PM
Anvil
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Default Rascal?

Erik Anderson:
There was an Avro Arrow orbital-launch concept?

I've never seen this. Can anyone give me a reference?

-----
That can be taken with a grain of salt. The concept was
alluded to in the movie about the Arrow program and may be
no more than that. Though Jim Chamberlin's later work with
NASA does show at least a passing interested in spacecraft.
The weapons bay on the arrow was 16ft long The Mk2 was
fitted with the the newly designed Iroquois engine but never
flew(program cancelled). It was expected to take the speed
record from the US (then held by the F-104 Starfighter).
A Mk 3 version was planned using a stainless steel in high
heat areas and take full advantage of the new engine.

As the US has launched a missile from a F-15 fighter to shoot
destroy a satellite, it appears a workable concept. High-speed
craft with provision for aerodynamic heating work with the
concept of porposing in the upper atmosphere to lob an upper
stage and payload at both high-speed and high-altitude.
  #6  
Old October 2nd 03, 08:32 PM
Henry Spencer
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Default Rascal?

In article F2Oeb.659101$uu5.108436@sccrnsc04,
Jim McCauley wrote:
There was an Avro Arrow orbital-launch concept?
I've never seen this. Can anyone give me a reference?


I've never seen any actual documentation...


A large hot fighter with a *big* internal weapons bay -- the Arrow's was
huge -- is just what you want as a first stage for a small air-launch
system. An aircraft with that performance in a zoom climb will get you up
into a very low-dynamic-pressure environment, where you can pop out an
upper stage (which needn't be very aerodynamic) to go the rest of the way.

I've never seen any documentation on something like this either, but given
the mood of the times, it would be surprising if Avro Canada *hadn't*
thought a bit about it, at least informally. If you dug hard, you might
well find mention of it.
--
MOST launched 1015 EDT 30 June, separated 1046, | Henry Spencer
first ground-station pass 1651, all nominal! |
  #7  
Old October 3rd 03, 06:00 PM
Len
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Default Rascal?

(Henry Spencer) wrote in message ...
In article F2Oeb.659101$uu5.108436@sccrnsc04,
Jim McCauley wrote:
There was an Avro Arrow orbital-launch concept?
I've never seen this. Can anyone give me a reference?


I've never seen any actual documentation...


A large hot fighter with a *big* internal weapons bay -- the Arrow's was
huge -- is just what you want as a first stage for a small air-launch
system. An aircraft with that performance in a zoom climb will get you up
into a very low-dynamic-pressure environment, where you can pop out an
upper stage (which needn't be very aerodynamic) to go the rest of the way.

I've never seen any documentation on something like this either, but given
the mood of the times, it would be surprising if Avro Canada *hadn't*
thought a bit about it, at least informally. If you dug hard, you might
well find mention of it.


I seldom have any occassion for even a slight disagreement
with you, Henry, but I doubt that any internal capability
is likely to be of much use for space launch. I have looked
quite carefully in the past at the B-70, the B-1 and the RA-5
Vigilante. After some initial excitement, I have found all
coming up somewhat short after some detailed analysis.

External carriage is another matter. I find the B-1 and the
Tu-160 very promising in this respect. For small, RASCAL-
size payloads, the F-14 is quite promising; the F-14 was our
choice for our Phase I RASCAL contract. While the F-14 does
not fit DARPA's concept for MIPCC plus zoom climb to extremely
low dynamic pressure too well, it is nonetheless very promising,
if the extremely low-dynamic-pressure constaint is removed. We
are pursuing this post-RASCAL concept quite strenuously.

Best regards,
Len (Cormier)
PanAero, Inc. and Third Millennium Aerospace, Inc.
( http://www.tour2space.com )
  #9  
Old October 5th 03, 10:38 PM
Henry Spencer
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Default Rascal?

In article ,
Derek Lyons wrote:
(Henry Spencer) wrote:
A large hot fighter with a *big* internal weapons bay -- the Arrow's was
huge...


The weapon pack *looks* huge because of the amount of square footage
it takes up. But what is has in length, it lacks in depth.


It *was* huge -- circa 400 cubic feet, which is very large indeed for a
fighter internal weapons bay. (Carrying Sparrows internally just plain
takes a lot of room.)

The flat shape (roughly 16x10x2.5ft) would be a little awkward, but not
disastrously so, especially for a high-altitude release where aerodynamics
would be less important. It's inefficient for a rocket that's a single
cylinder, but it's a fairly good fit for three cylinders side by side.
One can imagine non-cylindrical shapes that would fill even more of the
internal volume, but with any reasonably dense rocket, the triple cylinder
is probably already hitting limits on mass.
--
MOST launched 1015 EDT 30 June, separated 1046, | Henry Spencer
first ground-station pass 1651, all nominal! |
 




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