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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/ ,<F9A. 9FFlil.t.k WfilE 8Hk'/ One of the difficulties with silicon carbide (SiC) is that it is ridged fibers, like very-small- diameter rods. When the NASP team visited Japan in 1988, one of the very interesting products of the UBE Corporation was Tyranno® cloth (see Figure 23). Composed of strong, flexible fibers from natural Feldspar, Tyranno cloth handled and felt like tweed cloth. The cloth could be wetted by liquid aluminum or titanium, and the NASP team saw examples of both aluminum and titanium metal matrix composite (MMC) products. For example, an aluminum MMC piston and connecting rod was being used in Kawasaki racing engines. And a powder form of aluminum MMC was being used as a dry pigment that was fused onto the surface of Kawasaki motorcycle mufflers. The MDC NASP team foresaw many applications for Tyranno cloth for its NASP aircraft. Figure 22. This 1988 SEP Bordeaux SiC/SiC Panel Could Sustain Temperatures of up to 3,000 °F. With SEP having subsequently closed, little of this capability remains. The FDL-7 and Model 176 configurations always elicit comments that their sharpness and the associated high heating rates make them nonviable concepts. However, that is not the case. Figure 24 shows a 1-inch- diameter, sintered-nickel nose tip attached to a 1,000-psi water tank that sweats water. The result is a functional sharp, low-drag nose with a minimum-thickness entropy boundary layer.12 This tip was flight-tested on a hypersonic glider (BGRV flight in 1966) beginning at about 22,000 feet/second. Today, Aerojet Sacramento's platelet diffusion-bonding technique would make this a much easier task. Some experimental evidence from the BGRV flight indicates the water vapor film in the -·~ .~ ·~ • ·-:~,;_.,;;.;,;~ Figure 23. UBE Corporation's Tyranno Cloth. The cloth was used industrially in Japan. Figure 24. A Porous Nickel Tip Oozing Water. This test lasted 4,300 seconds before the arc heater cathode-not the nose tip-failed. boundary did act to reduce the heat transfer to the body aft of the nose. 21 UNCLASSIFIED/ ;«F81it 8FFIIIAk 1!1815 &••kY
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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.