For the record there's an useful article about the TAV program from the June 1984 Air Force Magazine available online https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/0684bold/. Shows some of the thinking behind this at the time.
Quote from: tuomasn81 on 04/05/2024 09:36 amFor the record there's an useful article about the TAV program from the June 1984 Air Force Magazine available online https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/0684bold/. Shows some of the thinking behind this at the time.I just read this article and it is... interesting. (Sidenote: "interesting" is such a useless word when you really think about it. Does it mean anything at all?)While reading it, it is worth keeping in mind that it was written 40 years ago. In that article, some people talk as if space warfare, including shooting down from space to destroy stuff on Earth, is imminent. It was going to happen really soon.
For example, Gen. Robert T. Marsh, Commander of AFSC, had long asserted that USAF “should move into warfighting capabilities in space — that is, ground-to-space, space-to-space, and space-to-ground capabilities.”Space Plan lays the doctrinal groundwork for all that. In its acknowledgment of USAF’s need to be able to fight not only in but from space, it goes well beyond the 1982 long-range planning document, “Air Force 2000.” The new Space Plan (in its unclassified version) has this to say:“To prevail in theater conflict, the Air Force must seize the initiative and quickly achieve both air and space superiority.“Air Superiority will require the capability to effectively attack and neutralize enemy airfields, destroy aircraft before they can employ their weapons, and destroy surface-to-air weapons.“Space superiority is required to ensure that our space-based assets are available to support theater forces. Superiority in space will require a robust force structure and the capability to destroy hostile space systems.”
Protecting such space assets and many others on benign but classified missions against the amply demonstrated Soviet antisatellite (ASAT) capability is the goal of USAF’s ASAT program. Arms-control developments or political pressures may slow or undo that program. From philosophical and national security standpoints, however, the safeguarding of US satellites seems to have widespread acceptance as a justifiable, solely defensive measure.There is a big difference, however, between using force only to protect space assets and applying force from space to shoot down bombers or ballistic missiles and even to shoot up runways and armor. This distinction is drawn — and thus inferentially underscored — in USAF’s Space Plan.It subdivides its candidly outlines “combat” category into tow parts: “space control” and “force application.” As defined by Maj. Gen. Neil Beer, Space Command’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans: “Space control is synonymous with space superiority.” Under this heading fall such strictly defensive weapons as USAF’s F-15-launched, rocket-boosted, heat-seeking Miniature Vehicle (MV) ASAT weapon, now in the very early testing phase, and whatever directed-energy or other ASAT devices may ensue from AFSC-Space Command technology programs.Force application is something else again, something far more portentous. Whereas space control means “counterspace operations” and “space interdiction,” as state in USAF’s Space Plan, force application means “ballistic missile defense” and — strikingly — “space-to-earth weapons.” And that, in turn, strongly implies future strategic and tactical missions from space.
And then there are descriptions of things that sound really cool, but which still have not happened four decades later. For instance, the description of taking out radars with high-velocity needles. Nope, not really. Even today we pretty much smack them with an explosive, although that explosive may be surrounded by tungsten balls. But the article also includes some notes of caution where people say that implementing stuff like the TAV will probably be really expensive, so it may not happen, and if it does, it won't happen until sometime in the 1990s. And the thought-provoking aspect of that is: we can ask ourselves, if the Cold War continued, would the TAV have happened? The answer is probably no.
“Let me add a word of caution.” Says Secretary Aldridge. “There are lots of implications here, in putting vehicles into space that can attack targets on the ground, that we haven’t thought through as part of national policy and national security objectives.”
Overall, I found that the article seemed to confirm my existing puzzlement and skepticism about the whole TAV idea. It seemed like a concept in search of a purpose. It was not going to be clearly superior to existing systems, or alternatives, nor would it necessarily be all that useful. After all, even a handful of TAVs would not carry enough weapons to be decisive, and they would be really expensive.One other thing that was in the back of my head while reading the article was stealth. When the article was written, the stealth program was top secret. I think this was even before the leaks about the F-117. If stealth had been public at that time, it would have made that conversation a lot different. One could ask "Why do we need the TAV when we have aircraft that are mostly invisible to radar?"
[Interviewer] Well, wasn’t the larger vehicle design closer to the goals of the National Aerospace Plane (NASP) project that you worked on later in the 1980’s, for hypersonic passenger & cargo transport?[Paul Czysz]Well, it’s hard to say what NASP was aimed at. Between about ’76 and ’83, I was involved with some special programs at McDonnell. On the last day in July in 1983, I was out there on Thursday and I was supposed to leave the next morning to be home for the weekend.Anyhow, I got a call from one of the Directors who said, “I happen to be out here for something — you’re not going home yet, you’re going to meet me at the Air Force station tomorrow for lunch over by the Aerospace Corporation on Sepulveda. Maybe you’ll make it home by Monday — we’ll see.”So I show up for lunch over at the Air Force station, and Harold Ostroff was sitting down at this table with a big group of military & civilian guys in business suits, and as I walked up to the table, he turns to the other guys sitting there and says, “I’d like to introduce you all to the new head of McDonnell’s Advanced Aerospace Program.” Anyhow, I didn’t know anything about this beforehand, and when he said it I looked around a bit for the person he was talking about — and after a second I guess that it finally sunk in that he was talking about me.So that was how I found out about it — I had a deputy program manager from Huntington Beach, and there was a group there from Aerojet — Don Kissinger, Mike Hamel, and Ron Samborski — that were there to talk about the air-turbo ramjet work that they’d patented back in 1946.I went out to Aerojet the next couple of days for briefings on their engine designs, and when I came back home, we did a proposal for the Air Force TAV program, but the main thrust was a proposal that we put together with the people from Huntington Beach on a 2-stage to orbit vehicle. The first stage would fly with air-turbo ramjets to about Mach 6 or 7, and then it would stage with a scramjet vehicle a rocket that would deploy up into orbit.We had several different concepts for this, depending on how soon we wanted we wanted the thing to fly. One of the people out at Huntington Beach named Joe Shergi had a concept for what he called a “toss-back booster”, that looked like an Apollo capsule with engines mounted in what looked like the heat-shield. After you separated the upper-stage, this thing would turn around and retrofire to toss back to the launch site, making everything recoverable.We had 2 or 3 concepts that we were briefing as 2-stage to orbit vehicles. The first one that we could build quickly, based on all the hardware that was available, was a hypersonic FDL-7C glider on top of a toss-back booster. Then we went to an air-turbo ramjet first stage which went to about Mach 7 to 8, and later we went to a scramjet first stage that went to about Mach 12.We hired a guy named Larry Fogel from the Titan Corporation, and he actually toured all of the SAC bases that had operational B-52 squadrons and asked them what they would do if they had one of these NASP vehicles — how they use it, maintain it, and stuff like that. We built an entire database on what the Strategic Air Command estimated these vehicles would cost to operate. We’d given them all the numbers that we had at the outset — how much thrust we had, how much propellant we needed, how many times the engines could be re-used, etc — and they gave us back operational cost estimates compared to a traditional B-52 squadron. It was quite interesting…We took this information and used it for briefings in Washington DC, which is where I met Scotty Crossfield, who was working with Dan Glickman — and what we ended up with was the first stage vehicle, which was a large, Mach-6 vehicle. This led to the development of a prototype that we created as a demonstrator to validate the technology.So the prototype was built to show how the NASP vehicle could fulfill 3 primary mission roles. The first was simply as a Mach-6 transport for passengers, the second was a Mach-8 strategic strike-aircraft for the Air Force, and the third involved combining the vehicle with an upper-stage rocket to go into Low-Earth Orbit.
The 2000's papers of Paul Czysz are many, and they often overlapped. I have a few of them on my HD. See attached.
Quote from: leovinus on 04/01/2024 08:45 pmQuote from: tuomasn81 on 04/01/2024 01:05 pmOne also needs to be careful since "TAV" is used both as a generic term and in reference to this specific 1982-1984 USAF ASD program. Attached is a graph showing what are the actual 14 concepts that companies submitted to this original USAF program in 1983. There is sometimes confusion created by labelling all kinds of 1980s projects as "TAV" when actually using the term in a generic meaning instead of referring to this particular program.[snip]What would be most interesting would be the final TAV reports of the other contractors.While we probably all agree that it would be great to read the other TAV contractor reports, some homework is required to find them first As least, to my knowledge, we do not even know the titles, report numbers, etc for the 14 or so studies [1], page 649. For the example Boeing report we have, it has some project number, AirForce project number and contract, etc. It seems to be public because of a FOIA mentioned on first two pages. Based on what we know, a FOIA to at least get a list of contractor reports, titles, report numbers, study numbers etc to AF Wright Patterson base should be possible because that is where the TAV office was based.[snip]Filed a new FOIA for the 14 Phase I plus any Phase II study titles and all relevant descriptions and contract numbers. Not for the document contents, just the descriptions. As deliverable, I would expect a spreadsheet with two dozen document descriptions. In case you wonder, why just for the titles et al, not the documents themselves? From my experience, full document reviews takes 10x longer, not to mention the budget. Nothing left but waiting a year till they get around to it.
Quote from: tuomasn81 on 04/01/2024 01:05 pmOne also needs to be careful since "TAV" is used both as a generic term and in reference to this specific 1982-1984 USAF ASD program. Attached is a graph showing what are the actual 14 concepts that companies submitted to this original USAF program in 1983. There is sometimes confusion created by labelling all kinds of 1980s projects as "TAV" when actually using the term in a generic meaning instead of referring to this particular program.[snip]What would be most interesting would be the final TAV reports of the other contractors.While we probably all agree that it would be great to read the other TAV contractor reports, some homework is required to find them first As least, to my knowledge, we do not even know the titles, report numbers, etc for the 14 or so studies [1], page 649. For the example Boeing report we have, it has some project number, AirForce project number and contract, etc. It seems to be public because of a FOIA mentioned on first two pages. Based on what we know, a FOIA to at least get a list of contractor reports, titles, report numbers, study numbers etc to AF Wright Patterson base should be possible because that is where the TAV office was based.[snip]
One also needs to be careful since "TAV" is used both as a generic term and in reference to this specific 1982-1984 USAF ASD program. Attached is a graph showing what are the actual 14 concepts that companies submitted to this original USAF program in 1983. There is sometimes confusion created by labelling all kinds of 1980s projects as "TAV" when actually using the term in a generic meaning instead of referring to this particular program.[snip]What would be most interesting would be the final TAV reports of the other contractors.
“Manned Hypersonic Test Vehicle Study” McDonnell Aircraft Company Report A9727 for United States Force, contract AF(33)600-2751, August 1964
Quote from: Spiceman on 06/26/2024 02:17 pmThe 2000's papers of Paul Czysz are many, and they often overlapped. I have a few of them on my HD. See attached.Did you notice that 6.2004-5888.pdf titled "An Essential Element in Affordable Space Access is the Return Vehicle. A Historical Perspective Based on Support Vehicles for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, circa 1964" has lots of interesting cross references? To MOL, to logistics. Need to read it again but there was a reference to Quote“Manned Hypersonic Test Vehicle Study” McDonnell Aircraft Company Report A9727 for United States Force, contract AF(33)600-2751, August 1964 The "AF" contract number looked familiar as "AF 33(600)" is the same for all MTSS contracts which start with that prefix in 1959. I was also reminded of the five SLOMAR SR-79814 contractors in roughly 1961. SLOMAR stands for Space Logistics, Maintenance and Rescue Systems and contemporary with the MTSS. SLOMAR studied gliding reentry vehicles as well. The exact SLOMAR contractors were:AF 33(600)-42014 Douglas Aircraft Co., Santa Monica, Calif.AF 33(600)-42015 Northrop Corp., Norair division, Hawthorne, Calif.AF 33(600)-42016 Martin Co., Denver Colo.AF 33(600)-42017 General Dynamics/Astronautics (GD/A), San Diego, Calif.AF 33(600)-42018 Lockheed Aircraft Corp, Burbank, Calif. Hence I wondered about the relation of the quoted MAC (McDonnell Aircraft Company) Report A9727 to SLOMAR et al where they also studied lifting body and DynaSoar as well. I guess Douglas was not starting from scratch with the 1964 report.
Quote from: leovinus on 09/27/2024 05:23 pmQuote from: Spiceman on 06/26/2024 02:17 pmThe 2000's papers of Paul Czysz are many, and they often overlapped. I have a few of them on my HD. See attached.Did you notice that 6.2004-5888.pdf titled "An Essential Element in Affordable Space Access is the Return Vehicle. A Historical Perspective Based on Support Vehicles for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, circa 1964" has lots of interesting cross references? To MOL, to logistics. Need to read it again but there was a reference to Quote“Manned Hypersonic Test Vehicle Study” McDonnell Aircraft Company Report A9727 for United States Force, contract AF(33)600-2751, August 1964 The "AF" contract number looked familiar as "AF 33(600)" is the same for all MTSS contracts which start with that prefix in 1959. I was also reminded of the five SLOMAR SR-79814 contractors in roughly 1961. SLOMAR stands for Space Logistics, Maintenance and Rescue Systems and contemporary with the MTSS. SLOMAR studied gliding reentry vehicles as well. The exact SLOMAR contractors were:AF 33(600)-42014 Douglas Aircraft Co., Santa Monica, Calif.AF 33(600)-42015 Northrop Corp., Norair division, Hawthorne, Calif.AF 33(600)-42016 Martin Co., Denver Colo.AF 33(600)-42017 General Dynamics/Astronautics (GD/A), San Diego, Calif.AF 33(600)-42018 Lockheed Aircraft Corp, Burbank, Calif. Hence I wondered about the relation of the quoted MAC (McDonnell Aircraft Company) Report A9727 to SLOMAR et al where they also studied lifting body and DynaSoar as well. I guess Douglas was not starting from scratch with the 1964 report.Note that the 2010 DIA report linked to here https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=60623.msg2603571#msg2603571 has a couple of pages summarising this era's reports-at least from Csysz's pov-see grabs below:
Robert R. Stephens; "Mission Requirements of Lifting Systems-Engineering Aspects"; Volume I Condensed Summary; McDonnell Aircraft Company Report B831 for NASAManned Spacecraft Center; contract NAS-9-3562; August 1965.
• Robert R. Stephens; "Mission Requirements of Lifting Systems-Engineering Aspects";Volume II Mission Analysis - Spacecraft Selection - Performance Analysis; McDonnell Aircraft Company Report B831 for NASA Manned Spacecraft Center; contract NAS-9-3562; August 1965.
* Robert R. Stephens; "Study of the Engineering Aspects, Mission Requirements of Lifting Systems"; Summary of Significant Results and Figures from Report MAC- B831; McDonnell Aircraft Company Report B947 for NASA Manned Spacecraft Center; contract NAS-9-3562; August 1965.