Yesterday we talked about the USAF's abandoned space plane, the X-20 DynaSoar. Not to be outdone, the USSR wanted a one-man fightery space plane thingie, too. Here's their entry, with more info below the jump:
The CGI footage at the beginning comes from the old Dan Roam website, "Deep Cold." the rest is mostly archival Soviet footage of Spiral drop testing.
The Spiral - also known as the Mig 105 - got further in testing than the X-20 did, but never actually made it in to service as a spacecraft. In typical Soviet fashion, it lasted longer, too, with the project finally being disolved in 1975, a victim of it's own hyper-expensive development, and the changing political nature of the times. It was the age of detent, after all, and a space-fighter would probably have sent the wrong message. Lots and lots of technical info here http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/spil5050.htm
It's worth noting that the 50/50 aircraft could have launched large payloads in to orbit rather than the Spiral/Mig 105 itself, and in that regard is somewhat similar to some Canadian (!) studies in the 60s that I hope to cover in the future.
Politics aside, these mini-shuttles - the X-20, the Spiral, the Hermes - all seem to have razor thin windows of weight and fuel in which they can work, which might have affected their ultimate abandonment. For instance, the French, Germans, and ESA were very gung-ho about the Hermes project, which seemed like it was going to work fine, but when they realized they had to put some kind of safety-eject mechanism on it, it put them over their weight limits, and the thing could no longer fly, thus resulting in the end of the project.
Some more info here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-105
and of course Dan Roam's old website here http://www.deepcold.com/
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Comments
27 December 2008
6 min 45 sec
The Shuttle was actually designed with stubby little traditional plane wings, and if you find early pictures and artists concepts you'll see 'em. This would have worked fine, and in fact for what the shuttle actually does, that design would be vastly more sensible than the delta wings, and probably it would add about 10 tons to their cargo capacity.
The USAF insisted on the Shuttle having a 1500 mile cross-range. Why? The plan was to launch the shuttle from Vandenberg AFB due north "Over the pole" and land it again one orbit later. The earth would have rotated aout 1500 miles in that time, so they needed it to be able to glide 1500 miles to the east or west of the angle it came in on.
Of course the USAF was out of the probram entirely by 1975 over concerns about the Shuttle's risks to life and limb (Since verified in actual practice), so the crossrange thing was never used, but NASA didn't change the design back. Thus we've spent 30 years hauling 30 tons of wing in to space when we could have been hauling 15 tons. Grr!
27 June 2009
54 sec
I remember when I was a kid reading about lifting bodies and how they would be ideal for return from orbit. The concept did not work out and the Shuttle became a delta wing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting_body
It is telling that the Russians built their own Shuttle that flew once and was mothballed because of cost.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_%28spacecraft%29
The DC-X would probably be a better reusable launcher than the shuttle if it ever could get developed, it has a Buck Rogers sort of cool to it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X
Now if you want something freaky here is the Nazi orbital bomber it never got beyond the wind tunnel stage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N38oSFwlYhE