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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.
UNCLASSIFIED/ /PS"-. 9PPl!ltllt t!l91!! 9HLY Al Draper assembled the ASSET (Aerothermodynamic Structural and System Environmental Test) experimental flight-test program to evaluate current U.S. Air Force and NASA materials for hypersonic entry vehicles. The intent was to launch a test vehicle from an Air Force Thor IRBM in the 18,000 to 20,000 feet/second range and recover the vehicle. The ASSET glider was approximately the forward portion of the X- 20 Dynasoar vehicle and is shown in Figure 25 after recovery. Except for the carbon leading edges, the materials generally performed as required. As a result, a small team of McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Company engineers and model builders began working on an alternative approach for the leading edges. This team's efforts resulted in the heat pipe leading edge shown in Figure 26, a series of formed stainless steel tubes brazed together to form a leading edge based on NASA space shuttle requirements. The tubes contained a stainless steel mesh wick and were filled with metallic sodium. Figure 25. FOL ASSET Flight-Tested From Orbital Speeds To Evaluate 1g60s' Materials. Carbon leading edges proved the least durable. Figure 26. Heat Pipe Shuttle Leading Edge Designed and Built by McDonnell Douglas Astronautics. Tested extens,vely at McDonnell Douglas Corporation, St. Louis, and NASA Langley, it never failed. The leading edge was tested in NASA Langley's 8-foot High-Temperature Structures Tunnel, the NASA Langley Radiation Thermal Test Facility and the McDonnell Douglas Graphite Thermal-Altitude Test Facility (graphite radiation heaters within a vacuum altitude chamber). All of these tests showed the installed leading edge to be durable, robust, and lightweight (equaled the installed NASA carbon-carbon leading edges). Starts from cold tubes showed the sodium melts and began the heat pump process without any difficulties. Because this leading edge was made by the engineers and mechanics as a one of a kind, the tubes developed thermal shorts and other problems over the span of the testing, all of which were rectified before the test continued. Although brittle and difficult to manufacture, this leading edge met the thermodynamacists' solution of a simple radiation structure, not a heat pump. 13 22 UNCLASSIFIED/ ,u;oAt OFFIGIPk IP&'i 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.