LOST... Old concepts to project never going off paper

[kerbiloid]

A no-go.

The 32 km  length exceeds the KSP physical radius of 2 km.

Also, it will be colliding with Starlinkid meteoroids.

[SunlitZelkova]

10 hours ago, Beccab said:

Everybody talks about Solar Power Satellite microwave transmission, but what about Nuclear Power Satellites?


This is one of the configurations considered in the original 1977 SPS study - *much* smaller than your usual SPS, passing from 20-30 kilometers per 2-3 kilometers to "only" 2km x 3km for the same required energy

Nice. Thanks, I now have a “space power something” to fit into my “crazy space and crazy nuclear proliferation” world 

[Beccab]

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19710025903/downloads/19710025903.pdf

Evaluation of a ton of different near term concepts for artificial gravity in space, dated 1971. It's a report from the golden era of NASA concepts, being made right at the peak of the small window between the start of Space Shuttle studies and the end of Apollo derived concepts; as such, it considers both Skylab and S-II sized station and the fully reusable TSTO that is the  Phase B shuttle (whose cargo bay is exactly as large as the real STS). Lots of diagrams:

Edited October 22, 2022 by Beccab

[tater]

https://e05.code.blog/2021/01/26/b-70-recoverable-booster/

 

[tater]

 

 

 

[tater]

 

[tater]

 

 

[Blufor878]

18 minutes ago, tater said:

 

 

I see a fellow Hazegrayart fan! Also I love the idea of reused Saturn V first stages going up Falcon 9 style with scorch marks from previous missions.

[tater]

3 hours ago, Blufor878 said:

I see a fellow Hazegrayart fan!

Yeah, his stuff is awesome.

[Beccab]

Anyone knows of S-IVB sized telescope proposals? I've been looking for a while to no avail

[tater]

Cool Mars vehicle concept from Martin:

(OMG, it looks like a traveller scout ship with something stuck on front, virtually the same size)

[tater]

HL-20 (soon to be reborn as Dream Chaser)

 

 

[SunlitZelkova]

9 minutes ago, tater said:

HL-20 (soon to be reborn as Dream Chaser)

 

 

I wonder if we will see more past concepts/proposals revived in the future.

Anything y’all think is possible or would like to see revived and succeed?

[Beccab]

8 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I wonder if we will see more past concepts/proposals revived in the future.

Anything y’all think is possible or would like to see revived and succeed?

The Science and Applications Manned Space Platform (SAMSP)


From back when NASA was still hoping the orbiter would guarantee cheap access to space and space platforms were being proposed left and right, both in LEO and GEO

Imagine that, but docked with a Dragon that carries new payloads in the trunk like with the Bishop airlock and that Bigelow thing

Edited November 21, 2022 by Beccab

[tater]

6 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I wonder if we will see more past concepts/proposals revived in the future.

Anything y’all think is possible or would like to see revived and succeed?

Someone at all the different contractors needs to look through their archives and see what they have hiding there. There has been a lot of consolidation of those 1960s-1970s contractors, but they were not slouches. Combined with modern materials tech, and exponentially better compute you'd think some could be workable.

[Blufor878]

7 minutes ago, tater said:

Someone at all the different contractors needs to look through their archives and see what they have hiding there. There has been a lot of consolidation of those 1960s-1970s contractors, but they were not slouches. Combined with modern materials tech, and exponentially better compute you'd think some could be workable.

Space DARPA

[AckSed]

Sled-assisted launcher concepts. "So what," they ask, "if the first stage was not thrown away but stuck to the ground?"

It's fairly attractive: what's oft-quoted is that the Space Shuttle used a third to 40% of its fuel just to get up to 1000MPH. Cutting out that mass either leads to a lighter, cheaper vehicle that can lift the same payload or lift an increased payload. It makes a SSTO much less massy.

Rocket-sleds are a classic, proposed for Bono's Hyperion  among many, many others:

Maglifter (magnetic levitation) was seriously studied by NASA before the turn of the 21st century:

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/images/surfaceorbit/rocketSled11.jpg

They are usually struck down by the massive infrastructure costs and/or the challenges of finding a suitable slope.

But I think the study that was low-tech enough to actually work today was the Closed End Launch Tube. Spurred by the proposed development time of 25 years for the Maglifter, it was essentially a sled stuck to a pneumatic train. It wasn't as beefy, but it would have been much simpler, requiring little more than low-pressure steel vessels, concrete, valves and compressed air. The chamber wouldn't be evacuated much either.

Acceleration for a combined 700 metric ton sled and craft was calculated at a modest 20 m/s per second (or 2 G), release velocity around 260 m/s or 936 km/h and along a 6km track. It was meant to supplement a ramjet vehicle.

Edited December 17, 2022 by AckSed
Double-pasted typo... again

[DDE]

That's a lot of LM derivatives...

https://thespacereview.com/article/4503/1

[tater]

Aw yiss

 

[magnemoe]

On 11/21/2022 at 6:58 PM, tater said:

Someone at all the different contractors needs to look through their archives and see what they have hiding there. There has been a lot of consolidation of those 1960s-1970s contractors, but they were not slouches. Combined with modern materials tech, and exponentially better compute you'd think some could be workable.

One obvious one for me is the Starship in shuttle setup.Its nothing we need now, but would be very useful once we start building huge stuff in orbit and more so if orbit is not LEO. Larger but unpressurized cargo bay. smaller crew cabins as smaller crew on a shorter mission. Multiple arms, one heavy to connect, one medium to dock 2 lightweight to hold astronauts or robots. 

[tater]

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20030066932/downloads/20030066932.pdf

 

[tomf]

On 11/21/2022 at 5:58 PM, tater said:

Someone at all the different contractors needs to look through their archives and see what they have hiding there. There has been a lot of consolidation of those 1960s-1970s contractors, but they were not slouches. Combined with modern materials tech, and exponentially better compute you'd think some could be workable.

Bit late on this but I think that this thread proves that ideas are cheap and you might as well come up with some new ones based on the launchers you have or will soon have.

[Ryaja]

This thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_(rocket)

[steve9728]

In 1960s to 70s, the one of the craziest times, there had a manned spacecraft project in China called Shuguang-1 (The Chinese pronunciation of this word sounds very good to me).  

And I found interview transcripts with quite a lot of detail of the earliest Chinese astronauts but who never went into space. And yep, it's fully Chinese.

Now, 'Shuguang' become the dispatch code for the astronaut system on manned missions. In one way or another, it's a tribute to these pioneers.

Spoiler

I was just found and bought a book online about this. I'll see if there are any more interesting details worth sharing when the book arrives in a few days later.

An official documentary about Shuguang-1 project, and with English subtitles: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Ss411375n?p=6&vd_source=6fef304b8d0c4737896e6b702ddfbfb3

Edited December 28, 2022 by steve9728

[tater]

The pmview pages on these never built vehicles stops with an error at page 49...

https://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld001.htm

but if you change the URL to 50 it goes a little farther:

https://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld050.htm