05-03-2020, 08:19 AM
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Master Modeler
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by ghrocketman
The Centuri Space Shuttle was close to Chrysler's concept.
I found the Space Shuttle to be fairly lousy but a Flying DODGE (or DeSoto) would have been much WORSE.
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Which one--their SST Shuttle (sort of like Estes' Orbital Transport), or their Phase B two-stage, winged reusable one (with the rear-ejecting motor mount inside the straight & stubby-winged orbiter, acting as a front-motor boost-glider)? Chrysler's SERV was a wingless, SSTO vehicle, and:
For carrying its optional MURP spaceplane on its nose (for crew transport to and from a space station, along with small amounts of up/down cargo), SERV would fly a suborbital ascent trajectory and make a jet engines-braked vertical landing. (It also would have made such a vertical landing when flying to/from orbit in its payload-only configuration.) With the MURP spaceplane serving as a second stage, it would inject itself into orbit while the SERV vehicle--after acting as the first stage of the SERV/MURP combination--would re-enter and make a vertical touchdown, either downrange of the launch site or, like some Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy first stages (and outer boosters)--*at* the launch site, after making a boost-back maneuver. |