Spaceplanes Part 1: Early Spaceplane Concepts - Space Pod 04/23/15

Hey, what's up everybody? So in the last SpacePod that I did, which was about India's human spaceflight program, Jason Warren asked me to talk about spaceplanes. So I've decided to talk about the early projects on rocket-powered spaceplanes and lifting body studies. This is your SpacePod for April 23, 2015. So I guess the best place to start would be in the late 1930s and early 1940s in Nazi Germany. A man named Eugene Sanger and a woman named Irene Bredet, I think that's how you say their names, they designed a suborbital rocket-propelled bomber named the Silbervogel, which means silver bird. The Silbervogel design was significant in that it incorporated rocket technology and lifting body principles. It actually was a two-stage rocket as well. The first stage would have been a rocket-propelled sled that would have accelerated the aircraft to around 500 miles per hour, or 800 kilometers per hour, before it would detach from the sled, go airborne, and ascend to about 145 kilometers. After gradually descending into the stratosphere, theoretically the increasing air density would generate lift against the underside of the aircraft and it would bounce off the atmosphere. This would be repeated several times until the bomber could reach targets in the United States. Post-World War II analysis of the design of the Silbervogel revealed that the actual heat upon re-entry would have destroyed the aircraft had it actually been built and flown. It never actually got past the mock-up and wind tunnel testing phase. After the war, when German rocket technology and scientists were being collected by the Americans and Soviets, the Silbervogel, and more notably the V-1, inspired lots of cruise missile and ramjet technology projects. Notably, the Soviets designed a ramjet-propelled version of the Silbervogel called the Keldysh bomber. The Keldysh bomber, too, was never actually built, but it did inspire lots of future Soviet projects. The legacy of the Silbervogel was actually its engine, or rather, its regeneratively cooled engine. Regeneratively cooled engines are where you run the fuel or oxidizer through tubes around the bell or nozzle of a rocket engine to both cool down the nozzle and pressurize the fluid. Almost all liquid-fueled rocket engines today use this design. Sanger and Bredet, who actually married in 1954, would later work for the West German aircraft company Junkers in the 1960s, and they designed a similar but more advanced version of the Silbervogel, simply called the RT-8. And this version also would start on a rocket-propelled sled, but also consisted of a rocket-powered carrier plane and a smaller manned orbital space plane called HORUS, which is an acronym for the Hypersonic Orbital Upper Stage. This space plane would have been able to have two astronauts on board, and it also featured a cargo bay for deploying satellites. When Sangers died in 1964, the project was re-evaluated, and they failed to get the economic support that they needed to make the project a reality. And it's doubtful that West Germany was serious about investing money into a massive space project at the time, anyway. I find it really interesting, and maybe not a coincidence, that shortly thereafter, some of the early concept studies for NASA's space shuttle had the shuttle flying on top of some sort of carrier airplane. In the 1980s, the Mashersmith Aircraft Company, who had previously absorbed Junkers, decided to make a new concept idea of the RT-8 space plane. This version was called the Sanger 2. This version did not start off on a rocket-powered sled, and instead, the carrier aircraft used a ramjet engine. It also could launch an unmanned upper stage called Cargus to deliver a larger payload than the HORUS space plane. This project was eventually cancelled, since the huge cost of development would have produced a vehicle that was only slightly cheaper than the Ariane 5 once it was operational. Germany hasn't given up on the idea, however, and the German Aerospace Center is currently investigating ideas for having a suborbital passenger transport that's rocket-powered. They're calling this the Space Liner. Many other nations and private companies have looked at developing a similar design as well. Someone who may have worked on Sanger's original Silbervogel, or at least was aware of it, was Walter Dornberger. He was one of the leaders in charge of the original V-2 and V-1 rocket programs in Germany, and was brought to America under Operation Paperclip. Later on, he was very influential in bringing about the X-15 and X-20 dinosaur programs. And for now, I would like to leave it at that, but I want to talk about those space planes in the next space pod that I do. Thank you for watching this video. I hope you enjoyed talking about some of these early space planes, even though none of them actually flew into space. Let me know what you think about these particular programs, and especially the follow-on space planes after this, especially some of the lesser-known ones. Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already, and if you're interested in finding out more information about how you can help us to make these space pods, since this is a crowd-funded show, please visit patreon.com slash spacepod to find out more information about how you can become a citizen of tomorrow. Thank you again for watching this video. My name is Michael Clark, and I will see you guys next time.