I Finally Got Colliers Space Magazines!

Thomas Schoene wrote:


Isn't that a ghost-view of the von Braun space plane?


Yup, that's the third stage of this:
http://davidszondy.com/future/space/colliersshuttle.htm

If so, atmosphere was part of the craft's operating environment, so
wings weren't totally absurd.


I think that nose pitot tube is going to be toast on reentry though.

Pat

Joe Delphi wrote:

"Rusty" wrote in message
roups.com...


Here is a gallery of Colliers Magazines with space covers at
NASA JSC

http://www1.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/coltech.html




Interesting. Notice the March 1953 cover that shows a vehicle with wings on
it and some type of aerodynamic pointy thing on the nose.



That's the upper return stage of the passenger ferry rocket...it glide
lands like a Shuttle.

Pat

TVDad Jim wrote:

I own a copy of that Colliers - - there's a fascinating article about
abandoning ship at different points in orbital flight. The writer was
pretty prescient in saying the two most dangerous times in flight would
be during powered ascent/staging and re-entry.

Unfortunately the writer couldn't guess that budgetary restrictions
would make emergency egress a "nice-to-have" instead of a requirement.



While the cylindrical crew escape capsules were a neat idea, they also
sound heavy and would make the inside of the crew compartment a real
mess to move around in.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:


I think that nose pitot tube is going to be toast on reentry though.

That's true enough. And the wing design chosen is probably among the
worse possible for reentry, with nice sharp edges to concentrate the
heat buildup. But it's not like they had a lot of experimental data to
work with at the time.

--
Tom Schoene lid
To email me, replace "invalid" with "net"

"Joe Delphi" wrote:

"Rusty" wrote in message
roups.com...

Here is a gallery of Colliers Magazines with space covers at
NASA JSC
http://www1.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/coltech.html


Interesting. Notice the March 1953 cover that shows a vehicle with wings on
it and some type of aerodynamic pointy thing on the nose. I guess since we
hadn't actually been to space yet, the artists who drew these things still
assumed that spaceships would have a lot of aerodynamic surfaces - like
wings. The concept that wings would have no application outside of the
atmosphere apparently hadn't caught on yet.

Actually the engineer that designed that craft had the funny idea that
spacecraft would be reusable. He put wings on spacecraft because he
believed spacecraft should be extensions of aircraft rather than
extension of artillery shells. He had the idea that the pursuit of
space travel would be done incrementally and sustainably.

He had no idea that in a few years the politics of the Cold War would
pervert the development process and cause it to take a short cut that
lead directly to an evolutionary dead end.

You might have heard of this engineer with the funny ideas.

Werhner von Braun.

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

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

Pat Flannery wrote:
While the cylindrical crew escape capsules were a neat idea, they also
sound heavy and would make the inside of the crew compartment a real
mess to move around in.

Kind of irrelevant, because you weren't supposed to 'move around'
inside the crew compartment, other than to get out when you docked with
the space station. Unlike the shuttle, it was supposed to be a space
shuttle, not a space Winnebago.

Mark

Derek Lyons wrote:

Interesting. Notice the March 1953 cover that shows a vehicle with wings on
it and some type of aerodynamic pointy thing on the nose. I guess since we
hadn't actually been to space yet, the artists who drew these things still
assumed that spaceships would have a lot of aerodynamic surfaces - like
wings. The concept that wings would have no application outside of the
atmosphere apparently hadn't caught on yet.

Actually the engineer that designed that craft had the funny idea that
spacecraft would be reusable. He put wings on spacecraft because he
believed spacecraft should be extensions of aircraft rather than
extension of artillery shells. He had the idea that the pursuit of
space travel would be done incrementally and sustainably.

He had no idea that in a few years the politics of the Cold War would
pervert the development process and cause it to take a short cut that
lead directly to an evolutionary dead end.

You might have heard of this engineer with the funny ideas.

Werhner von Braun.

Or as Eugen Saenger said in a 1964 speech only weeks before his death,
"... fewer problems would need solving by using the ballistic method, and
that the transport of defined payloads would be more economical in the
ballistic mode... as long as the operating frequency remained low. The
high construction costs of such ballistic and non-reusable transporters
were overshadowed first by the still higher development costs of reusable
transporters."


Low flight rate favors the artillery extension (anybody here surprised?).

Bill Keel

(Derek Lyons) wrote:

He put wings on spacecraft because he
believed spacecraft should be extensions of aircraft rather than
extension of artillery shells. He had the idea that the pursuit of
space travel would be done incrementally and sustainably.

He had no idea that in a few years the politics of the Cold War would
pervert the development process and cause it to take a short cut that
lead directly to an evolutionary dead end.

That's one reading of his history. Another might be that he himself
devoted ~30 years to developing and extending the artillery-shell
model, because blowing things up fast from far away was what his two
employers would pay for... and that he convinced himself
(unrealistically, in the event) that a government would spend much
more, over a longer period, on space travel.

Here is an article I wrote about the Colliers series.

http://home.flash.net/~aajiv/bd/colliers.html

Thomas Schoene wrote:


That's true enough. And the wing design chosen is probably among the
worse possible for reentry, with nice sharp edges to concentrate the
heat buildup. But it's not like they had a lot of experimental data
to work with at the time.

The wing-canard/fuselage junctures are going to get very hot also due
to the lack of any blending for aerodynamic purposes.

Pat