6 replies to this topic

[Mr King]

North American DC-3 concept. 

 

 

 

 

Delta wing glider design path

 

 

 

Mission profile defined 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source 

[Christian Lupine]

A great series of video lectures from a fewt of the engineers on the STS program.
http://ocw.mit.edu/c...video-lectures/

Edited by Christian Lupine, 03 November 2015 - 2115 PM.

[TOW-2]

When I was a kid we used to have this great set of .. well, I guess you'd call them "factbooks" since they weren't extensive enough to be actual encyclopedias, and in the very back of volume 2 there was a section on "future space travel" (this being in '78 or '79) and there were some drawings of the Shuttle, as it'd started to come together.

 

I'll have to see if they're still at the parent's house and if so I'll scan the images and share in this thread.

[Mr King]

That would be awesome

[zaarin7]

Here is a fantastic blog by someone in the space industry on what was and what could have been. Some of the images above have been in the blog:

 

http://spaceflighthi...y.blogspot.com/

[johnr]

Was there/Is there any plans for a shuttle replacement with a craft of the same type?

[Halidon]

Was there/Is there any plans for a shuttle replacement with a craft of the same type?

Same type? You mean a huge, somewhat refurbish-able spaceplane launched via a partially somewhat refurbish-able stack? No. There were proposals while STS was still operational to update various components to improve cost, performance, reuse metrics, and before its cancellation the Venture Star program aimed to produce a genuinely reusable SSTO with broadly similar LEO performance. While we don't yet know for sure SpaceX is intending for their Mars Colonial Transporter, some sort of large reusable crew vehicle seems likely to be part of it. But that wouldn't bear much resemblance to a Shuttle stack, I should think.