Rockwell International Star-Raker

From Shape of Wars to Come

Two different designs. First one is clearly labelled Star Raker.

last one looks as TSTO...

more on StarRaker...

source
STAR-RAKER: AN AIRBREATHERIROCKET-POWERED, HORIZONTAL TAKEOFF TRIDELTA FLYING WING, SINGLE-STAGE-TO-ORBIT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM
David A. Reed, Jr., Hideo Ikawa, Jonas A. Sadunas
Rockwell International, Satellite Systems Division
Seal Beach. California

immense size of StarRaker is seen being compared to Jumbo and Boeing's RASV SSTO...well, last one wasn't little bird, too

I am very interested in finding more pictures and info on the Star-Raker. The best information and few pics I have previously found was on Marcus' website http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld047.htm







However I recently found 2 posts by a person by the name of Kevin L. Reed (Who posts by username "klreed") on the forum Space Talk. According to his profile http://space-talk.com/ForumE/member.php3?action=getinfo&userid=3558 his father worked on the Star-Raker project. He also posted an 18MB PDF file with info on the project http://space-talk.com/ForumE/showthread.php3?threadid=4240 (http://rapidshare.com/files/63474155/StarRaker1.pdf) as well as had a website at one point with info and pictures http://space-talk.com/ForumE/showthread.php3?threadid=2218&pagenumber=3 (http://home.earthlink.net/~klreed/starrakerssto/)yet both the PDF file and the earthlink site are down. I was able to get his E-mail address (klreed@earthlink.net) yet I got back a 505 error. Does anyone here know either how I can contact him or maybe someone here had downloaded that star-raker PDF in the past? Any visual material regarding this Star-Raker concept I would very much appreciate.

P.S. I would like to attach images in the thread like most the posts on this forum have but so far I only see the option to link to images as I have just done, how do I do the attachment option?

Attachments require you to make a couple of posts first, this is a security measure after hackers hacked the site by uploading a malicious file pretending to be an image.

I...LOVE...YOU...GUYS...SO...MUCH! Seriously, can any other forum on the web give me this kind of quick responses and such awesome rare artwork?

Hmmm? Did I miss something? ???

This is/was an alternative email address: Reedsescrc@yahoo.com

Martin

Orionblamblam said:

Hmmm? Did I miss something? ???

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Overscan and Flateric were responding to my post, I am not quite sure how their replies now show up before mine

Flateric, I see you have numbered those pages 1 through 8, but page 7 is missing. Was there a page 7?

flateric said:

last one looks as TSTO...

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That one *is* a TSTO. Somewhat later than Star Raker, and unrelated. Star Raker was meant to haul vast amounts of payload into orbit to support megaprojects like SPS; the TSTO was one of the far smaller military TAV studies.

Hey Scott, nice to make your acquaintance. I have had Up Ship bookmarked for some time now and I love many of the designs you have been posting in the Unwanted blog. I was quite pleased when I found out you were posting on this board.

The posts above yours already were in the forum - flateric simply added your posts to an existing topic. Its what we do here, often the answer was already in here before you asked the question

overscan said:

The posts above yours already were in the forum - flateric simply added your posts to an existing topic. Its what we do here, often the answer was already in here before you asked the question

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Which thread were they in originally? I used the search feature and found no other threads on the Star-Raker

this was plain magic

now, for the God's sake, who have this 18 Mb Star-Raker pdf?

flateric said:

now, for the God's sake, who have this 18 Mb Star-Raker pdf?

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Hmm, I wonder if it's just a scan of the 1979 AIAA paper you've already posted figures from ... how many pages does the paper have? (trying to work out if 18 MB is a credible file size!)

Looking at these paintings at the top of the thread again makes me realize how much cooler aerospace designs were decades ago. Part of it might also be the fact that today's designs are always shown by using cheap CGI renders that were obviously thrown together in a day than actual good talented traditional artists. If you are gonna use 3d to make art, at least make it realistic and good (I'm looking at you, Popular Mechanics & Popular Science!)

I suspect a lot of it is due to "ease." Back then, to make a decent painting of a concept, you had to make a decent model of it, then select the angle, lighting, etc. and then paint it. Today, to make a decent CG rendering, you still need to make a model of the concept (albeit in the computer, rather than carving it out of wood), then select angle, lighting, etc.... then hit the "rendwer" button. Render from a hundred different angles/lighting conditions by lunchtime. But with the painting, each painting was a definite effort over several man days. That which you have to work harder at, you tend to take greater care about.

Orionblamblam said:

I suspect a lot of it is due to "ease." Back then, to make a decent painting of a concept, you had to make a decent model of it, then select the angle, lighting, etc. and then paint it. Today, to make a decent CG rendering, you still need to make a model of the concept (albeit in the computer, rather than carving it out of wood), then select angle, lighting, etc.... then hit the "rendwer" button. Render from a hundred different angles/lighting conditions by lunchtime. But with the painting, each painting was a definite effort over several man days. That which you have to work harder at, you tend to take greater care about.

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I had thought about replying (to ozmosis) simply 'Good takes time while good enough is quicker.'

I'm in agreement with you Scott, but I'd like to add that there was the good versus good enough option back in the good old days. A 'finished' painting by R. G. Smith, Keith Ferris, Nixon Galloway or Robert McCall would be a work of fine art. Then you'd have works done in a more illustrative style. I'm not sure about R. G. Smith, but I know that Ferris, Galloway and McCall did work in the quicker (and cheaper) illustrative styles at various points in their careers. (Keith is still with us but as far as I know he does 'finished' work now.) In the hospitality suite at one of the Artist's Forums Keith and Nixon talked about the 'Two-Color' - Black/White/Red or Black/White/Blue - work they did in their younger days. They commented that they both had worked on the Sperry account. I asked them which one had done the Dyna Soar art and Nixon said he had.

Another difference between good and good enough could be the medium used, though I think the artist's style or ability played a bigger part. It is easy to consider oil paintings 'good' and gouache paintings 'good enough' but in the hands of the right artist, a gouache painting could look just as 'finished' as an oil painting. And, in my opinion, even oil paintings can be made to look 'good enough.' The Greater St. Louis Air & Space Museum holds a number of paintings done for McDonnell and McDonnell Douglas and the R. G. Smith paintings stand out as more finished when compared to the other works.

Where the work was to be used also played a part in the good versus good enough decision. For example, High profile advertising use versus illustrations for a report. With an experienced artist, gouache paintings can be knocked out very quickly and those illustrations would look fine in the update report.

The comment about using models is dead on. I've had many "Oh yes!" moments while looking through the threads here and seeing model shots which match up with illustrations I've seen of those projects. Keith Ferris, on the other hand, works with a descriptive geometry process which allows him to develop the viewing angle from a three-view drawing. Still, as it is a time consuming process, he does many drawings and studies to be sure of his choice of viewing angle before plotting it.

To bring this back to the question of CGI Renders versus 'Art,' I'd like to point out that CGI is still a relatively young medium. Go into your local bookstore and just browse the covers - especially the science fiction covers - then try to imagine those artists working for the aerospace industry. The day will come when they or their followers will be.

Does anyone know who's signature is on the bottom right of the very first image in this thread? I would like to know who that artist is. The painting itself is VERY similar to something Syd Mead would do, although I know this is not a Syd Mead work.

I agree with Scott and theartist,

More time means better endresult. I am a professional 3d artist working for a lot of different clients, but sometimes I make stuff that is not as good as I would like it to be, but time has run out to work on it any longer, so they get what they ask for, a piece made in a very short time.
I do my very best to get things better, but you can do only so much in a period of time.

ozmosis said:

Does anyone know who's signature is on the bottom right of the very first image in this thread? I would like to know who that artist is. The painting itself is VERY similar to something Syd Mead would do, although I know this is not a Syd Mead work.

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The best I can make out is M. Alvares. I've attached an enhanced blow-up of the signature for others to give it a try. Doing a quick search of that name brought no aerospace leads - at least in doing an image search.

My guess is that the second image (on orbit) and the 747 comparison image were done by the same artist. He, or she, may have been an in-house artist at North American Rockwell.

Syd Mead's style has influenced many illustrators over the years.

I completely forgot until recently I had this image of the Star-Raker. I wish I could remember where I found it, anyone have any idea who did this and where it is from?

FutureSpaceTourist said:

flateric said:

now, for the God's sake, who have this 18 Mb Star-Raker pdf?

Click to expand...

Hmm, I wonder if it's just a scan of the 1979 AIAA paper you've already posted figures from ... how many pages does the paper have? (trying to work out if 18 MB is a credible file size!)

Click to expand...

If the document has a lot of illustrations it can push the file size up to 1mb per page, especially if care has been taken to scan the pictures. I tried to retrieve the K L Reed website through the Internet Archive, but it looks like it was taken over by site squatters before it was scanned.

I found Reed's 18 MB file that I retrieved from one of his links a few years back. It does contain the aforementioned 1979 AIAA paper that was prepared for a Conference on Advanced Technology for Future Space Systems, as well as a number of additional black/white and color illustrations/slides, related excerpts from a Rockwell International IR&D technical plan for a project titled "Earth-to-LEO Transportation Systems for SPS", and a page with Reed's contact information for a total of 56 pages. I'd gladly upload it, but the maximum allowed attachment size here is 1.5 MB, so no dice - perhaps the admin/moderator can help? In the mean time, enclosed is a smaller related file with some background info and example pages that also came from Reed.

Martin

martinbayer said:

I found Reed's 18 MB file that I retrieved from one of his links a few years back. It does contain the aforementioned 1979 AIAA paper that was prepared for a Conference on Advanced Technology for Future Space Systems, as well as a number of additional black/white and color illustrations/slides, related excerpts from a Rockwell International IR&D technical plan for a project titled "Earth-to-LEO Transportation Systems for SPS", and a page with Reed's contact information for a total of 56 pages. I'd gladly upload it, but the maximum allowed attachment size here is 1.5 MB, so no dice - perhaps the admin/moderator can help? In the mean time, enclosed is a smaller related file with some background info and example pages that also came from Reed.

Martin

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For the time being, upload it to rapidshare and put the link here. I have been desperate to see it

That'll take a little. I've never put anything on Rapidshare (or similar sites) before, and I'll have to transfer the file to another computer early next week before I can even access any file sharing sites. Any alternative ideas/suggestions?

Martin

martinbayer said:

That'll take a little. I've never put anything on Rapidshare (or similar sites) before, and I'll have to transfer the file to another computer early next week before I can even access any file sharing sites. Any alternative ideas/suggestions?

Martin

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I just sent you a private message with my email address, send it there and I'll upload it to a file hosting site

martinbayer was kind enough to get me the PDF, so I will be converting it and posting it here for all to view

ozmosis said:

martinbayer was kind enough to get me the PDF, so I will be converting it and posting it here for all to view

Click to expand...

...Looking forwards to it, sir!

Here are pages from the full PDF. The last page was not able to be converted, however it was just the same contact info as the first page in the sample PDF posted previously

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Good find.

Thanks for sharing martinbayer and ozmosis!

Much thanks to ozmosis for eventually getting me the 18 MB PDF.

You can grab it HERE.

I also found mention of the STAR-RAKER in two other NASA documents after googling SWAT 201 turbofan ramjet:

NASA CR 3321: Satellite Power Systems (SPS) Concept Definition Study – Volume IV: Transportation Analysis

NASA TM 58238: Satellite Power System: Concept Development and Evaluation Program – Volume VII: Space Transportation

I used Acrobat to cut out only the parts of those documents concerning STAR-RAKER.

You can find them HERE and HERE

RyanCrierie said:

Much thanks to ozmosis for eventually getting me the 18 MB PDF.

You can grab it HERE.

Click to expand...

FYI, for those with access aka AIAA-1979-895. While the dark graphics are hard to view, text is at least preserved and can be selected. Whole doc is 1.4MB.