General Dynamics Winged Atlas

[hesham]

From Aviation magazine 1967,

here is a winged Atlas from GD,what was it,and was this a shuttle or not ?,sorry I am not
expert in aerospace.

 

[TomS]

From Aviation magazine 1967,

here is a winged Atlas from GD,what was it,and was this a shuttle or not ?,sorry I am not
expert in aerospace.

I believe it's an early look at a recoverable first stage, in this case an Atlas rocket with wings and jet engines added for fly-back.

 

[The Artist]

From Aviation magazine 1967,

here is a winged Atlas from GD,what was it,and was this a shuttle or not ?,sorry I am not
expert in aerospace.

I believe it's an early look at a recoverable first stage, in this case an Atlas rocket with wings and jet engines added for fly-back.

Scott will likely be posting a link to his article and drawings, but a quick search led me to these thumbnail images of a model. The Atlas first stage was to be manned and flown back.



Edit: It turns out that Michel Van posted these images with others in a discussion at https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...he-space-transportation-system.405832/page-11

 

[Archibald]

Awesome. Simply awesome. But I wonder, how could the Atlas ultra-thin balloon tanks support all this heavy aircraft stuff ?

Interestingly enough Martin proposed a winged Titan more or less at the time.

 

[RanulfC]

From Aviation magazine 1967,

here is a winged Atlas from GD,what was it,and was this a shuttle or not ?,sorry I am not
expert in aerospace.

going to point out that this looks less like a winged Atlas than a version of the winged S1 Saturn recoverable stage.

A link to one of Scott's blog entries on the concept with offers of higher rez pics and a link to the downloable paper itself.

Reusable Atlas model photos – Aerospace Projects Review Blog

Awesome. Simply awesome. But I wonder, how could the Atlas ultra-thin balloon tanks support all this heavy aircraft stuff ?

Interestingly enough Martin proposed a winged Titan more or less at the time.

The proposed Atlas had a more robust internal strucure to allow the addition of the wings cockpit and other systems needed for recovery:



Randy