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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency and dated 8 March 2010, was produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program. It gives a historical and technical review of how to reach space and return. It covers hypersonic gliders, air-breathing and rocket propulsion, thermodynamics and materials, and launch options. It argues that reliable, schedulable access to low Earth orbit is mainly a hardware and propulsion problem rather than a technology one.
“The Advance”12 pages
UNCLASSIFIED//F8A 8FFI~II k YE'lii 811k>C The AFFDL's approach was to design a hypersonic performance configuration that would minimize the waiting time in orbit to return to the continental United States (CONUS). This resulted in configurations with sharper leading edges and smaller nose radii than found in NASA and Russian configurations. All of the material, structural, and thermodynamic details related to the sharper configurations were tested and verified in ground test facilities and flight tests (BGRV and ASSET). Characteristics of selected AFFDL hypersonic glider configurations are identified in Table 1. Table 1. Characteristics of Selected Flight Dynamics Laboratory Hypersonic Glider Configurations During the 1958-68 Timeframe # Model ()hservation I FDL-248 Flat bollom, sharp leading edges, com·entional tails. a~ desi"ned 2 All Body Glider, similar to Ru~~ian BOR vehicle~ Upturned ~patular nose, conventional tails Te~t vehicle to evaluate aerodynamic~. 3 ASSET thermodynamic~ and materials. based 00 no~e of DvnaSoar 4 FDL-7MC Flat bottom, ~harp leading edges, variable geometry wing, experimentally developed tail X configuration 5 Blunt nose, wing-hody DynaSoar type configuration Spaturlar Nose Version Fir~t integration of 2-dimensional no~e (le~~ drag) on a 6 of DynaSoar type hyper~onic glider (R.D. Newmann) 7 FDL-8 Flat bottom, ~harp leading edges, outboard taih 8 HL-10 NASA Ame~ flat up-swept with bottum, round upper budy, high dihedral angle taib 9 X-24A NASA Langley round body, high dihedral angle tails t () Star Budy based on Russian Star Budy type configuratiun Configuration 2 was a higher wing-loading, relatively blunt all-body with an upswept spatular nose that is not unlike Russia's Bar series of Lozino-Lozinski hypersonic gliders. When the author was at Wright-Patterson, interest in this waned quickly because of the limited cross range available. Because of the longitudinal extent of the former Soviet Union compared with the United States, the minimum L/D ratio to ensure a landing on the continental land mass was less for the former Soviet Union than it was for the United States-1.7 for the Soviet Union versus 2.7 for the United States. Configuration 3 was a subscale research vehicle to evaluate the thermodynamic and materials for hypersonic gliders. The nose and leading edge radii were full-scale size. ASSET was successfully flown on a Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) booster. One that was recovered after an ocean landing is on display in the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. Configuration 6 was the first two-dimensional nose applied to a conventional winged-body (configuration 5) in the United States. Configuration 4 was a product of cooperation between the AFFDL (Alfred Draper) and McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Company (Robert Masek) to develop a vehicle to support the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL). This concept was briefed to the U.S. 6 UNCLASSIFIED/ /F81it 8FFI&I.«1k W&lii Ollk¥
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Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 56 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.