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Defense Intelligence Reference Document Space Access Where We ve Been And Where We Could Go

Defense Intelligence Agency · 56 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 5 …much the issue, as exemplified by the Lockheed A-12/SR-71. When asked about space…
  • p. 12 …the AFFDL at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the McDonnell Douglas Corporation (MDC), and the Lockheed…
  • p. 20 …This was similar to the Lockheed Star Clipper (see Figure 38). liE!l B:!lll IElill…
  • p. 42 …So both Lockheed Aircraft and McDonnell Douglas proposed a self-sustained operational system using recoverable lateral…
  • p. 51 …and logistics requirements, Lockheed, NAS-9-1422. • Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), Lockheed, NAS-9-1688. • Manned…
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was contained within CONUS, demonstrating a significant maneuver capability. If a
glider carries a fuel reserve, it can be reaccelerated to a recoverable-range glide speed.
A typical circuit pauern for inirial tesrint of a hypersonic Nasp-type vehicle
Flight-test ground track for hypersonic cruise vehicle
Figure 42. Hypersonic Decelerating Descending Turns are Wide But Within a Reasonable CDNUS Area if
Mach 12 or Less
But where is our space infrastructure? Forty years after Apollo, why have we advanced
so little (as illustrated in Figure 43)? Like the pioneers' Conestoga wagons, most of our
trips to LEO are one way, and when we do return, we do so with little more than the
people we took to space. There is no evidence that any Conestoga wagons ever
returned to St. Louis or St. Joseph, Missouri, from which most departed; rather, most
were used as building materials on the West coast.
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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.