3.7 KiB
| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| North American DC-3 | 2/5 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_DC-3 | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T13:21:41.394188+00:00 | kb-cron |
Faget felt that all of the proposed designs incorporated an unacceptable amount of development risk. Unlike a conventional aircraft, with separate fuselage and wings, the ILRV designs had blended wing-body layouts. This meant that changes in weight and balance, which are almost unavoidable during development, would require changes to the entire orbiter structure to compensate. He also felt that the poor low-speed handling of any of these layouts presented a real danger during landing. Upset by what he felt was a project that seemed to guarantee failure, he started work on his own design, and presented it as the DC-3. Unlike the other entries, DC-3 was much more conventional in layout, with an almost cylindrical fuselage and low-mounted slightly swept wings. The design looked more like a cargo aircraft than a spacecraft. Re-entry was accomplished in a 60 degree nose-high attitude that presented the lower surface of the spacecraft to the airflow, using a ballistic blunt-body approach that was similar to the one Faget had successfully pioneered on the Mercury capsule. During re-entry, the wings provided little or no aerodynamic lift. After re-entry, when the spacecraft entered the lower atmosphere, it would pitch over into a conventional flying attitude, ducts would open, and jet engines would start up for landing. The upside of this design approach was that changes in the weight and balance could be addressed simply by moving the wing or re-shaping it, a common solution that had been used for decades in aircraft design—including the original Douglas DC-3 whose wings were swept rearward for just this reason. The downside was that the spacecraft would have little hypersonic lift, so its ability to maneuver while re-entering would be limited and its cross-range would be about 300 miles. It could make up for some of this with its improved low-speed flying ability, but would still not be able to match the mandated 450 miles. The ballistic portion of its reentry profile also meant flying in a stall, which many NASA astronauts perceived as risky. Although the DC-3 had never been part of the original ILRV plans, Faget's name was so well respected that others at NASA MSC in Houston quickly rallied around him. Other NASA departments all selected their own favorite designs, including recoverable versions of Saturn boosters developed at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, lifting-bodies based on the HL-10 that were favored by the Langley Research Center and Dryden Flight Research Center (Edwards), and even a single-stage-to-orbit Aerospaceplane were also proposed. From then on, the entire program was beset with in-fighting between the various teams. On 1 June 1969, a report was published that attacked the DC-3 design, followed by several others over the remainder of the year. In spite of this, North American quickly took up the DC-3 design, having learned over the years that the best way to win a NASA contract was to make whatever design Faget favored. They won contract NAS9-9205 to develop the DC-3 in December 1969. In order to clear the logjam developing between the departments, on 23 January 1970 a meeting was held in Houston to study all of the in-house concepts. Over the next year a number of proposed designs would be dropped, including the entire series of lifting-body-derived vehicles as it proved too difficult to fit cylindrical tanks into the airframe. This left two basic approaches, delta wings and Faget's DC-3 series. Development of the DC-3 continued, with a drop test of a 1/10-scale model starting on 4 May.