From: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V3 #73 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Wednesday, 7 July 1993 Volume 03 : Number 073 In this issue: Re: SWERVE Interesting DC-X note Re: SWERVE Re: SWERVE Re: SWERVE Sea Shadow Sea Shadow er... See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: George Allegrezza 06-Jul-1993 0816 Date: Tue, 6 Jul 93 08:23:41 EDT Subject: Re: SWERVE Dean Adams writes: >Phil said: >> ...I think the SR separated at something like 180,000 feet, and it >> controlled itself all the way down. There are small, long panels near the >>base, which are hinged along the leading edge. These panels are almost >>rectangular, except they are narrower at the leading edge than the trailing >>edge. There are small hydraulic arms under the panels which lift them up. >>This changes the aerodynamics of the vehicle and provides for steering. >Interesting... >The DC-X has the very same sort of "petals" as control surfaces. >Sounds like it may owe a lot to past SWERVE research. Actually DC (and maybe SWERVE) owe a lot to the McDonnell Douglas AMARV reentry vehicle program, according to some recent reports. The Mark 21 RV (either MX or Trident D-5, I forget which) has a lot of AMARV technology in it, supposedly. There's a thread in one of the sci.space.kvetching groups on how McD-D used some of the AMARV database in designing the DC shape. Makes sense that a VTOL space vehicle that reenters nose first would look a lot like an RV. George George Allegrezza | Digital Equipment Corporation | "One hundred and four mph?" Littleton MA USA | -- my wife allegrezza@tnpubs.enet.dec.com | ------------------------------ From: Tom Ambrose Date: Tue, 06 Jul 1993 10:21:00 PDT Subject: Interesting DC-X note I was flying this weekend with a friend of mine that is friends with Charles "Pete" Conrad. Pete was part of the Mercury/Apollo program and is now an executive at MD Aerospace. He also happens to be in of the DC-X program. I guess Pete likes to name all of vehicles ______ Clipper. His plane was "Comet Clipper", his boat was "Yankee Clipper", etc. Now, his project is "Delta Clipper". I just thought that was kind of interesting. - -tom -------------------------------------------------------------- | Thomas P. Ambrose Gordian, Inc., Santa Ana Heights, CA | | tom@gordian.com phone: 714-850-0205 fax: 714-850-0533 | \____________________________________________________________/ | | | "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes | \ a bit longer." -- Henry Kissinger / \------------------------------------------------------------/ ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1993 11:46:06 -0700 Subject: Re: SWERVE From AIAA-93-0311; "A Comparison of Hypersonic Flight and Prediction Results" by Iliff and Shafer: >Sandia [Labs] designed, developed, and conducted three flight tests of a >slender hypersonic vehicle called SWERVE (Sandia Winged Energetic >Reentry Vehicle Experiment) ... >... All vehicles flown were spherically blunted conical vehicles. > ... >Small wings and elevons were used to increase lift and provide >control. To reiterate what Phil said on Fri, this does not sound like the vehicle he saw at the AF Museum, which employed the body side flaps for maneuvering, like DC-X. Larry ------------------------------ From: Mary Shafer Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1993 17:11:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: SWERVE Well, we took this directly from a Sandia document. Go figure. Which number vehicle did Phil see? It's pretty apparent that different vehicles were different--maybe wings and elevons were only on the third vehicle. Mary Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR shafer@ursa-major.spdcc.com On Tue, 6 Jul 1993 larry@ichips.intel.com wrote: > > > > >From AIAA-93-0311; "A Comparison of Hypersonic Flight and Prediction Results" > by Iliff and Shafer: > >Sandia [Labs] designed, developed, and conducted three flight tests of a > >slender hypersonic vehicle called SWERVE (Sandia Winged Energetic > >Reentry Vehicle Experiment) ... > >... All vehicles flown were spherically blunted conical vehicles. > > ... > >Small wings and elevons were used to increase lift and provide > >control. > > To reiterate what Phil said on Fri, this does not sound like the vehicle > he saw at the AF Museum, which employed the body side flaps for maneuvering, > like DC-X. > > Larry ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1993 14:37:55 -0700 Subject: Re: SWERVE Mary replies: >Well, we took this directly from a Sandia document. Go figure. > >Which number vehicle did Phil see? It's pretty apparent that different >vehicles were different--maybe wings and elevons were only on the third >vehicle. > Somebody made a proposal for a manned SWERVE for USAF. A vehicle that would contain one man with a special space suit, a number of which (8 if I recall) would be boosted into orbit in the payload bay of a USAF Space Shuttle, launched from SLC-6. The proposal for this vehicle mentioned the SWERVE tie-in and showed a drawing of the vehicle. Like your description in your AIAA paper, it was a conical shape, with small wings and elevons. I always wondered if that drawing accurately portrayed the Sandia RV. Larry ------------------------------ From: techie@w6yx.Stanford.EDU (Bob Vaughan) Date: Tue, 6 Jul 93 16:26:46 -0800 Subject: Sea Shadow Today's San Jose Mercury News has a 3/4 page article on the Sea Shadow, including front and top photos, as well as an photo of the Port of Redwood City (including the Hughes Marine Barge) It starts on page B-1, continued on B-4. Morning edition Tuesday July 6 Check it out.. -- Welcome My Son, Welcome To The Machine -- Bob Vaughan | techie@netcom.com | (packet radio) KC6SXC@N0ARY.#NOCAL.CA.USA.NA 415-856-8025 | techie@w6yx.stanford.edu | kc6sxc@w6yx.ampr.org [44.4.0.196] - -- I am Me, I am only Me, And no one else is Me, What could be simpler? -- ------------------------------ From: Rick Pavek Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1993 18:15:43 -0700 Subject: Sea Shadow The article I'd found turned out to be the July issue of Popular Science. Shows the inside of the Glomar and many different shots of the shadow. Also, has a cross section drawing... Rick ------------------------------ From: Rick Pavek Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1993 23:56:29 -0700 Subject: er... Once again, I mixed the two... That's the July '93 issue of Popular Mechanics. (Gee, they both _LOOK_ alike... ;-) that's for the nice article on the Sea Shadow. Rick Rick Pavek | Never ask a droid to outdo its program. kuryakin@halcyon.com | It wastes your time and annoys the droid. Lazar's Android Works | Summa Nulla | Anonymous ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V3 #73 ******************************** To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "listserv@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. Administrative requests, problems, and other non-list mail can be sent to either "skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu" or, if you don't like to type a lot, "prm@ecn.purdue.edu". A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to subscribe to that instead, replace all instances of "skunk-works-digest" in the commands above with "skunk-works". Back issues are available for anonymous FTP from harbor.ecn.purdue.edu, in /pub/skunk-works/digest/vNN.nMMM (where "NN" is the volume number, and "MMM" is the issue number).