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SpaceWars - Ep.XIII A New Challenge

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by GrandFalconRailroad (U14802912) on Wednesday, 20th July 2011

  
  
  and
  
  
  
  Notice that Shuttle replacement that looks rather like the X-20 Space Fighter (although a bit larger) - if that gets the go-ahead as a replacement then can we expect smaller 1-2 man crewed versions as "Space Interceptors" to combat Chinese/Russian satelites etc. See the illustration in bttm right of Wiki-page - call me suspicious.......

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Wednesday, 20th July 2011

  This HL-20 strongly resembles the HL-10. A statement that may not sound very surprising, but the HL-10 was the product of a 1960s program, and made its first flight in 1966. NASA at this time explored the possibilities of "lifting bodies" for high-speed flight, i.e. vehicles that gained lift from the shape of their fuselage instead of from wings. The HL-10 was one of the most successful vehicles in a series that included the M2F3 and X-24. It made its first flight in 1966, and its last flights in 1970 --- the last missions were flown to explore the behavior that could be expected from the Space Shuttle during landing.
  
  The X-20 or "Dyna-Soar" (the joke was no doubt intentional) was one of a series of earlier projects that never left the drawing board. One of the significant evolutions in later designs was the trends towards blunter, fatter body shapes: Not what you would expect for a vehicle that enters the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds, but actually a much better compromise between aerodynamics and the dangers of kinetic heating.
  

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