Martin Antares, Arcturus and Aldebaran Rockets

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This concept is so outrageous that I can only think to post it here.

This is from the book America's Mightiest Missile by Lloyd Mallan. Does that craft have enough volume to hold the fuel needed to keep that big engine firing? And, what would the sound be like?

Edit - I was too quick to hit 'Send' - with the image this time.
 

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"Fuel" for the concept was nuclear bombs ;D
Similar in concept to the "Orion" (blam-blam) but exploding the bombs INSIDE the "combustion-chamber" with a layer of water circulated around the inside for added 'reaction' mass. Part of the whole line of the "Helios" propulsion concept ships.

Randy
 
Thanks. I had not made a connection to the Orion concept.
 
Aldebaran was work of Dandridge Cole
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandridge_MacFarlan_Cole

With 50000 tons, so big it has to launch like seaplane
Air breathing Rocket engine its take off
fly 40 km high and switch to Nuclear plus engine
payload 10000 tons
is described in some space literature as bringing a "small village" to Mars

source
Das 1x1 Weltraumfahrt
by Josef Pointner 1966
 
Aldebaran drawings and comments in this book (Beyond Tomorrow: The Next 50 Years in Space - page 24) as well.

Link: http://www.allentium.com/playground/royscarfo_site/index.cfm?section=visions&fuse=books

I purchased the book from the Scarfo website a couple years ago.
 

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Nice as always Scott

Now, on Page 571 of THE DREAM MACHINES is what might be a more modest take on the Aldebaran concept--from 1980 by Gary Hudson. This is also a winged nuclear pulse design of more modest size using lift fans in atmosphere. This is the closest thing I have seen to the old science fiction idea of a single spaceship that can fly about all in one piece. Some drawings were made of the concept but I wonder if anyone here might have anything else on it.

it was called the ADVANCED HYPERSONIC BOOST ADVANCED SPACESHIP

Propellant would be water with fission pellets.
 
Thank you for doing that. If you could modify this concept for something like AVATAR…what changes would you make?
 
Thank you for doing that. If you could modify this concept for something like AVATAR…what changes would you make?

Pulsed NTR - Pr. Arias hybrid of TRIGA and NERVA. 6000 to 13000 seconds ISP HIGH THRUST.
I echanged some E-mails with Pr. Arias, a true gentleman. He has invented an awesome propulsion system.
 
I was hoping something might come of Rubbia’s Americium…instead of Aldebaran’s blunderbuss approach…different atomics for different purposes. Avatar’s Valkyrie had nice big intakes and looked large enough to be SSTO with additional tech implied in the film…but the drawings Scott has unearthed do have a ring of truth to them. NSWR might help if the heat can be licked. High thrust and specific impulse both.

The shuttlecraft from Star Trek even if it was sublight still bothers me more than, say—Jeffries’ ringship. MAYBE that can be a real FTL…but small craft that can just idle into orbit?

Never
 
IIRC, like the problem with mag-lev: The bigger, the better, such that 'standard' 4' 8½" gauge is too small by a factor of about two. A 3-metre gauge would be good, 5-metre ideal...

'Rolling Stock' ? Think A380 meets mining haul-truck. Would suit a mostly-land 'Big Earth', or giants...
 
I have been trying for a few days to find information on a rocket concept from 1960 named "Antares", But i haven't had much luck yet. I was hoping that y'all on this forum could help!
I know it was designed before 1961, As i first found it on a blueprint for Cole's Aldebaran rocket, i know it has a mass of roughly 10,000,000lbs, and was speculatively designed for the early 1970s. I also have come to believe that it had a Nuclear second stage, most likely powered by NERVA engines, as in a separate paper on Aldebaran, there is a sentence saying "A Rover (Project Rover?) Type nuclear upper stage, similar to the second stage of Antares but larger". I've searched as hard as i can and can't seem to find anything. Does anyone here know any information about it? Also, if this is the wrong forum area for this, let me know! i decided to post it here because i saw a few Aldebaran threads here, but im not too sure if this is the right spot.
 
Apologies. It looks as if the Antares was one of the concepts Cole was involved in...
 

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From

Exploring the Secrets of Space: Astronautics for the Layman by I. M. Levitt and Dandridge F. Cole (1963, Prentice-Hall, Inc)

Antares is powered by air-breathing engines in its first flight phase, and a Rover or Ncrva nuclear engine in its second propulsion phase.
The Queen Mary-sized Aldebaran is powered by an advanced nuclear propulsion system. The growth in vehicle mass indicated here may take place, first of all, to provide practical-sized space payloads. The second reason for growth is to improve the payload fraction and the vehicle efficiency. Still a third reason for size increase is to reduce costs. While payload mass increases even faster than gross mass as the vehicle is enlarged, the over-all cost per pound of the vehicle decreases. Thus the vehicle cost per pound of payload is reduced drastically.

Other contenders for the role of the economical space ship are the nuclear space ship Rita, proposed by Douglas, the chemical space plane under study by the USAF, Orion, CONEX and many others. The Antares conceptual vehicle is a nuclear space plane proposed by one ol the authors in 1959 as a high-performance vehicle of the 1970-1975 period (see Fig. 19-7).

The Antares was considered to have a gross mass between ten and 20 million pounds. Since it would land and take off horizontally and was a winged aerodynamic vehicle, its propellant fraction was assumed to be only 0.75 as compared to 0.90 or higher for a rocket. The average specific impulse was estimated to be 1000 stapps and the gross weight to-payload ratio lor orbital flight was calculated as four. This calculation assumed a boost to 2000 feet per second by a carrier vehicle on an inclined track. At 2000 feet per second, ramjet engines would be started and would accelerate the vehicle to 8000 to 10,000 feet per second after which the nu clear engine would propel the space plane into orbit. From orbit to the moon a vehicle like Antares could carry pay loads equal to more than 40% of its gross mass.

This could be an Antares refueled in orbit or a special ferry vehicle designed for operation from orbit to the moon. In the latter case payload could be an even larger percentage of the gross mass—perhaps as much as 50% (G /L = 2). Thus the over-all payload ratio lor the earth- moon trip would be eight or ten as compared to 100 lor the all chemical rocket.

For a ten-million-pound Antares (two stages) better than one million pounds ol payload could be carried to the moon. Of the nine million pounds of vehicle and propellant, 6.75 million would be liquid hydrogen. At 23 cents per pound, the total propellant cost would be $1,550,000.00 or $1.55 per pound of payload. If Antares were designed for 100 flights (compared to 10,000 for commercial airliners), the vehicle could cost one billion dollars and still have only $1.00 per payload pound of vehicle depreciation cost. With about $1.50 for propellants and $4.00 for indirect costs, the total cost per pound would be $6.50.

The Aldebaran, proposed by one of the authors in 1959, is a 100-million-pound space plane designed for horizontal take-off and landing from the ocean. Its propulsion was considered to be an advanced nuclear system such as the gaseous core reactor, a fusion reactor, Orion or CONEX. Its specific impulse was estimated at 1500 to 3000 stapps and its propellant fraction at 0.5 to 0.7. At 1500 stapps and 0.5 propellant fraction, Aldebaran would be competitive with Antares. At 3000 stapps and 0.7, its payload fraction for orbital flights would be about 1.6 and for moon flights about five. Total costs per pound of payload would be equal to or less than the costs for Antares (see Fig. 19-8).

Although costs of $10.00 or less per pound delivered to the moon may seem fantastically low to many people who are aware of current, high, space payload costs, it is none the less reasonable to expect such cost reductions in the next 20 years. With cost of perhaps $5000.00 per pound expected for 1965, it appears prob able that a drop of an order of magnitude will occur every five years. At this rate moon travel will cost only $50.00 per pound in 1975 and $5.00 in 1980 (see Fig. 19-9). Some people estimate a slightly less precipitous drop with an order of magnitude change every seven years. 1 his would mean $50.00 per pound in 1979 and $5.00 in 1986.
 

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