260 Inch Space Booster

[BigRIJoe]

Anyone got any info on a proposed 260 inch solid booster with a 156 inch solid upper stage? I believe AWST ran an article about them in their 1964,1965 or 1966 Forecast and Inventory issue

 

[sferrin]

I'd have sworn there was a ton of stuff here on both the 260 and 156 dia. motors here but search returns nothing on the 260. Did it get lost? :-\

 

[Johnbr]

I so a photo of the 260" that was about to be tested a long time a go.I Read a report on aerojet's one piece booster for the shuttle.It got to the prof of concept test.

 

[Michel Van]

Anyone got any info on a proposed 260 inch solid booster with a 156 inch solid upper stage? I believe AWST ran an article about them in their 1964,1965 or 1966 Forecast and Inventory issue

The Document you looking for is
"Solid Propellant Motor Applications for Future launch Vehicles"
that space document n°56 at Scott Lowther homepage
http://www.up-ship.com/drawndoc/drawndoc.htm

Boeing look into the use of the two solid booster with 120 inch third stage

 

[RyanC]

Since this is the 260" SRM thread... B)

From the Bellcomm library at NASM Udvar Hazy...

 

[circle-5]

19,800 tons of thrust. That's good for about 275 Tesla roadsters in LEO ...

 

[GeorgeA]

Thanks for posting, Ryan. The Bellcomm stuff is not very accessible online.

I have an SAE paper that shows an MLV with the auxiliary fuel tanks extended to the entire length of the MS-II. The third stage and/or payload shroud diameter was about 76 feet, the combination of the core and the boosters. It looked cool but the staging would undoubtedly have been pretty sporty.

Edit: SAE 66-0453, "Selected Methods for Uprating Saturn Vehicles".

 

[Michel Van]

Thanks for posting, Ryan

That so far i know are those Boeing studies
The one with extra fuel tanks on top of solid were proposed als Heavy lifter for there Mars mission proposal in 1968
The Integrated Manned Interplanetary Spacecraft

 

[Archibald]

Never heard about this one. Knew about the 156-inch boosted Saturn, knew about single stick 260-in with S-IVB on top, but that one is new to me. Yowza, 900 000 pounds to orbit, and 4X 260-in boosters ! Talk about a monster rocket. Still it makes some sense: it is the logical step beyond the 4X 156-in saturn, the one from Stephen Baxter Voyage.

As noted above, thrust is just... gargantuan. Accoustic energy at launch, and the risk of a huge, freakkin' explosion would be interesting, to say the least. If it exploded, bits of solid fuel might land as far as Orlando...

 

[GeorgeA]

There were liquid booster options too, most involving two to four boosters with two to four F-1s. These were resurrected for FLO and, in somewhat smaller form, SLS.

They had the advantage of eliminating the need for a new engine development and production program, and much easier ground handling. The AJ-260s were monolithic and would have required transportation and erection equipment suitable for several millions of pounds at once.

 

[bobbymike]

Here's the ICBM version h/t Scott L. or Scott F.

 

[Archibald]

An ICBM ? really ?

 

[Michel Van]

An ICBM ? really ?

yes Archibald
The USAF wanted to build the Mother of all ICBM
But on the cost to build this ICBM and its Silo complex, say US Congress: NO WAY !

 

[Archibald]

What kind of H-bomb would such monster carry ? Edward Teller 1000 megaton warhead ? I often thought that Proton and Tsar bomba would make one hell of ICBM, but this is even nuttier...

 

[Michel Van]

What kind of H-bomb would such monster carry ? Edward Teller 1000 megaton warhead ? I often thought that Proton and Tsar bomba would make one hell of ICBM, but this is even nuttier...

i only guess: multiple 20 megaton warheads in own reentry vehicle, plus decoy and ECM pods.

 

[merriman]

What kind of H-bomb would such monster carry ? Edward Teller 1000 megaton warhead ? I often thought that Proton and Tsar bomba would make one hell of ICBM, but this is even nuttier...

Maybe they were thinking of chemical explosive(s)? As MIRV was not a viable way to close the CEP at the time. Such lofting ability could shot-gun the target with conventional bombs.

David

 

[sferrin]

Here's the ICBM version h/t Scott L. or Scott F.

Note that says Thiokol is working on it not Aerojet (who actually built a 260" booster).

 

[Michel Van]

Aerojet, Thiokol and Douglas were working on 260'' solids in 1960s

 

[Brickmuppet]

What kind of H-bomb would such monster carry ? Edward Teller 1000 megaton warhead ? I often thought that Proton and Tsar bomba would make one hell of ICBM, but this is even nuttier...

Maybe they were thinking of chemical explosive(s)? As MIRV was not a viable way to close the CEP at the time. Such lofting ability could shot-gun the target with conventional bombs.

David

That's an interesting idea.
I wonder when project THOR was being pondered. This would give a launch on warning capability for a few hundred 'ortillery' pieces in a crisis (like F.O.B.S. but without the worry about re-entering nukes if the crisis subsides).

On the nuke front...
The U.S. had 2 notational designs for 100 megaton bombs; one "advanced" and one other one, the non-advanced design was 30-40000 pounds depending on configuration, the advanced version has no data available.

(Image attached below. I've lost the source on the image. I had initially thought it was from the Wellerstien link below. It's file name indicates it was to McNamerra from Glen Seaborg.)

So this could conceivably have carried 2-3 100MT MIRVs. Dividing 110,000 by the weight of the w-56 minuteman warhead gives 161...so subtracting all the kit needed for MIRV dispensers for that many items gives an admittedly uneducated guess at the number of 1MT warheads approaching 100.

There is one source I've seen...
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/12/23/kilotons-per-kilogram/
...that suggests the US was looking at very high yield advanced weapons (advanced as in 11kt/kg!) around this time. Given that such efficiencies likely require very large physics packages such weapons would need a heavy lift booster of large diameter. One notational weapon was a 10,000 pound 50MT weapon which was described as having an impractical girth.This missile would seem ideal.



OBB covered this weapon about as extensively as possible in U.S. Bomber Projects#17.
http://www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/blog/?p=2460

 

[marauder2048]

Given that this was in the same era where there was concern about Soviet "southern launches" (ballistic and FOBS)
was this conceivably an attempt to exploit the same weaknesses in Soviet BMEWS?