Major Spiral "50/50" find

Finally some good data on the Soviet Spiral Spaceplane and it's "50/50"
hypersonic carrier aircraft, complete with cutaways of the pilot's
escape capsule and a reconnaissance camera system (the green tubular
thing behind the cockpit) and the fighter version with six
space-to-space homing missiles (yes, they have drawings of these also):
http://www.buran.ru/htm/str126.htm
The manned booster flies at Mach six under the power of four liquid
hydrogen jets that use some sort of odd power cycle I've never heard of:
"Liquid hydrogen was used as propellant for the launch aircraft. The
power plant included a set of four AL-51 turbojet engines boasting 17.5
tonnes of thrust each designed by Arkhip Lyulka's OKB-165. They had a
single air intake and a single supersonic divergent nozzle.
With the empty weight of 36,000 kg, the launch aircraft could carry
up to 16,000 kg of liquid hydrogen in tanks of 260 m3 each.
The engines' peculiarity consisted in the use of hydrogen vapours
to gear the turbine that rotated the turbojet compressor. Hydrogen
evaporator was placed at the compressor inlet. This is the way the
powerplant for the aircraft was elaborated without combining turbofan,
hypersonic and turbojet engines.
The adjustable hypersonic air intake was yet another advanced
feature of the launch aircraft. It used almost entirely the forward
bottom surface of the wing and the specially designed fuselage nose to
compress the air."

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:
Here's the homepage for the english version of the site: they've got
lots of good stuff here, although I wish the whole site was in english:
http://www.buran.ru/htm/molniya.htm anyway it's fun to look at all the
detailed pictures of various things- how would you like to land a space
shuttle like this on a windy day?: http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/afa-0.jpg
Lookie! Close-up photos of "Polyus" Battle Station:
http://www.buran.ru/htm/cargo.htm

Pat

Cool site. Looking at the schematic (as is) of their Asat I can't help
but think those canisters resemble the terminal stage guidance rockets
set up we had on ours (single use rockets in a "can"). As for the
truckload of watermelons dumped on the runway during a 105 test all I
can say is..... oh those Russkies!...........................
Pat Flannery wrote:
Pat Flannery wrote:
Here's the homepage for the english version of the site: they've got
lots of good stuff here, although I wish the whole site was in
english:
http://www.buran.ru/htm/molniya.htm anyway it's fun to look at all
the
detailed pictures of various things- how would you like to land a
space
shuttle like this on a windy day?:
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/afa-0.jpg
Lookie! Close-up photos of "Polyus" Battle Station:
http://www.buran.ru/htm/cargo.htm

Pat

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...
how would you like to land a space shuttle like this on a windy day?:
http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/afa-0.jpg

Sort of the parachute version of clustering. Perhaps a single chute failure
could induce neighboring ones to fail, so it would need to be jettisoned. I
wonder if they were planning some automatic system to balance drag, so if
one chute failed, the one on the opposite side would also be jettisoned?
Maybe they wouldn't actually test all the chutes in advance, but just one
from each production run, and assume they all functioned identically.

Ami Silberman wrote:

I
wonder if they were planning some automatic system to balance drag, so if
one chute failed, the one on the opposite side would also be jettisoned?
Maybe they wouldn't actually test all the chutes in advance, but just one
from each production run, and assume they all functioned identically.


Good one, centurian! :-D

Pat

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
The manned booster flies at Mach six under the power of four liquid
hydrogen jets that use some sort of odd power cycle I've never heard of:
"... The engines' peculiarity consisted in the use of hydrogen vapours
to gear the turbine that rotated the turbojet compressor. Hydrogen
evaporator was placed at the compressor inlet..."

Not very different from what was done for Suntan -- the long-classified
abortive LH2 spyplane that came between the U-2 and the Blackbird at
the Skunk Works. It wasn't flying at such high speed, so it put the
heat exchanger in the exhaust rather than the intake, but otherwise it
was the same idea -- essentially an expander-cycle jet engine.

Various bits and pieces of technology from the canceled jet engine for
Suntan showed up a bit later in the RL10 rocket engine.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

In article , gcash wrote:
(Henry Spencer) writes:
Various bits and pieces of technology from the canceled jet engine for
Suntan showed up a bit later in the RL10 rocket engine.

Really?? Do you have a cite? Not that I don't believe you, it's just that this
has been a personal fascination for me, so I like to read up on it.

If memory serves, there's a reasonable discussion of the history in John
Sloop's "Liquid Hydrogen as a Propulsion Fuel, 1945-1959", NASA SP-4404.
It may be online at the NASA History web site by now. Mind you, it's from
1978 and more may be known about the spyplane side of things by now.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

Henry Spencer wrote:

If memory serves, there's a reasonable discussion of the history in John
Sloop's "Liquid Hydrogen as a Propulsion Fuel, 1945-1959", NASA SP-4404.
It may be online at the NASA History web site by now. Mind you, it's from
1978 and more may be known about the spyplane side of things by now.



Looky what I found:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Hi...4404/cover.htm
I think this is the section of interest:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Hi...404/ch10-1.htm

I'd still like to learn more about the Soviet "50/50" hydrogen motor design.

Pat

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:



Henry Spencer wrote:

If memory serves, there's a reasonable discussion of the history in John
Sloop's "Liquid Hydrogen as a Propulsion Fuel, 1945-1959", NASA SP-4404.
It may be online at the NASA History web site by now. Mind you, it's from
1978 and more may be known about the spyplane side of things by now.



Looky what I found:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Hi...4404/cover.htm
I think this is the section of interest:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Hi...404/ch10-1.htm

Nope. Visit the table of contents
(http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Hi...4/contents.htm) and
scroll down to Chapter 8 - Suntan.

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

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

Derek Lyons wrote:

Nope. Visit the table of contents
(http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Hi...4/contents.htm) and
scroll down to Chapter 8 - Suntan.



gcash's interest was in Suntan project fallout leading to the RL10 for
Centaur; that's described in the chapter I cited.
The big problem with LH2 powered jet aircraft is lack of range due to
the size of the LH2 storage tanks and their insulation; but if you were
going to use one as the first stage of a reusable launch system, that
problem disappears due to the short duration of the flight.

Pat