Giuseppe de Chiara

[ronatu]

Рисунки того же автора...

http://up-ship.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Boeing-Model-832-879.jpg

http://www.thespacereview.com/archive/1774b1.jpg

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2466973/posts

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/winemini.htm

Giuseppe De Chiara points out:

...recently I was involved in a cycle of lectures, concerning manned spacecraft configuration, at the Aerospace Engineering Dept. of the University of Naples..analyzing Gemini family.I found that the drawing of the Winged Gemini in your page (credited Glen Swanson) is completely wrong. This drawing is clearly taken by the Flight Manual of the Gemini .and modified with the addition of a mid-line sleek triangular wing and "subsystem interconnection" (??!!) on the bottom.
As you said Winged Gemini was derived from the experience gained by the ASSET programme. If you analyze the ASSET drawings you will find a bi-conic re-entry spacecraft with a low cranked arrow wing. Interestingly if scale-up the ASSET layout drawings you will match exactly Winged Gemini configuration (as portrayed in the other drawings).

These considerations put a new light on the ASSET (AEV and ASV) programme - it seems clear that ASSET was never a subscale model of the X 20. In fact, there are a lot of configurational differences between the two vehicles, the former being a bi-conic shape with a very reduced wing without a vertical stabilizer, the latter was a "classic" hypersonic >75° degree delta wing with . two huge vertical stabilizers. It's also clear that the performances of the two vehicles (especially re-entry footprint crossrange) were completely different.

This leads (me) to think that ASSET could be a completely different spacecraft configuration later adopted by the hybrid Gemini capsule to increase its re-entry performance. The whole project was managed by Mc Donnell, which built both vehicles, under the cover of USAF funds (I always wondered why, if ASSET was a subscale model of X-20, why was it built by Mc Donnell, and not by Boeing, as prime contractor of the Dyna Soar project......?).

Following this train of thought it seems that the USAF (after cancellation of the X 20), continued to seek to have a small, and even cheaper, spaceplane obtained by the merging of the ASSET configuration and a Gemini spaceframe. Such a vehicle could be launched by a Titan II directly from a ICBM silo at Vandenberg AFB, in space interception mission with a highly secret profile.