A few days ago Blake Scholl the CEO of BOOM, put a picture out on X of something that looked vaguely like a Klingon ‘ Bird of Prey ‘ from Startrek. The most striking feature of the image were the highly sculpted wings.

A couple of seconds later I realized it was a 3D rendering of the BOOM Overture rearview. The image got me thinking about Supersonic wings, hence this piece.

The Klingon ‘Bird of Prey’ was inspired by the grand daddy of supersonic flight, the NAA ( North American Aviation) XB-70 Valkyrie and the manta ray, the largest of the ray fishes.

This piece attempts a walk through the evolution of wings, delta wings in particular.

Wings

Flight of birds and insects has always held mankind’s attention. Icarus the Greek mythological figure crashed back to Earth as he flew too close to the Sun as his wax wings melted. Indian mythology is full of Vimanas (aircraft).

Leonardo da Vinci sketched ornithopters and gliders. Issac Newton & Daniel Bernouli identified the concept of lift through air pressure differences.

Sir George Cayley is credited with creating the first fixed wing followed by Otto Lilienthal who experimented extensively with fixed wing gliders 

And then the Wright Brothers and powered flight in 1903.

Bernouli’s Principle 

Bernouli’s Principle states that ‘ as the speed of a fluid (air or water) increases their pressure decreases.

Simply put the total energy in a fluid system remains constant along a streamline (path of a fluid particle).

From the perspective of an airfoil (wing) the curved surface on the top forces air to flow faster over the top of the wing than the bottom.

Using the principle, air pressure on the top of the wing is less than the pressure below and the wing generates lift.

The Supersonic Wing Evolution 

Mention a delta wing and our mind’s eye thinks of wings that formed a triangle such as those on Mirage III fighters. 

The evolution of the Delta Wing began in Germany towards the end of WW2 first with swept wings and then complete deltas.

The Dassault Mirage  was the first delta winged fighter . It had a leading edge sweep of sixty degrees, no horizontal stabilizers . Elevons on the trailing edge provided both pitch and roll control.

The sharp leading edge and thin airfoil minimized drag and the Mirage III could sustain Mach 2 and over. The delta wing provided stable control at trans/supersonic speeds but directional control at low speeds was challenging, required high angles of attack and long runways to roll in and out.

The Mirage III was the first production aircraft to use Vortex Lift (by accident!).

Vortex Lift??

The Evolution of the Delta Wing

All wings produce vortices.

Subsonic wings use planar lift, vortices develop at the wingtips. The vortices induce drag and reduce lift efficiency of the wing. The solution was winglets to mitigate the vortices increasing efficiency. Today most subsonic airliners have them.

What if Vortices are an essential lifting tool of the wing?

Vortices by their very nature are unstable and need to be actively managed.  Many early slender deltas were tailless with sharp leading edges that resulted in airflow separation at low speeds and high angles of attack. (Angle of attack is the angle between the airfoil(wing) and relative wind experienced by the aircraft.) The separation created vortices which rolled off the leading edges of the wing and created lift especially at takeoff and landing. 

Low speed handling needed better control , i.e vortices needed to be controlled, enter the highly sculpted ogival delta on the Concorde.

But before that we need to speak about the legendary XB-70 Valkyrie, the first aircraft to use all three kinds of primary lift. The types of lift were:

• Planar lift : At sub & transonic speeds 
• Compression lift : High supersonic speeds
• Unoptimized vortex lift : Takeoff / landing / maneuvering 

We have already spoken about planar lift (Bernouli’s Principle), and Vortex lift (more on this later). But lets now speak about Compression Lift and the XB-70.

The XB-70 Valkyrie Wing

The XB-70 is an aircraft design like no other.

In the mid 1950s as the Cold War heating up the United States needed a bomber that could fly at Mach 3+ ( over three times the speed of sound) and fly at altitudes over 70,000 feet. 

Enter the XB-70 Valkyrie!

With a length of 185 feet, wingspan of 105 feet and MTOW (maximum takeoff weight) of 542,000 pounds this aircraft powered by 6 (six!!) General Electric YJ93 engines was massive. Each engine produced 28,000 pounds of thrust with afterburners and 19,000 pounds without. The range of this behemoth was 3,275 nm (nautical miles).

Managing the bulk of this aircraft across the speed range was a challenge that set the ground work for future SSTs (Supersonic Transport).Engineers came up with a triple whammy!

Planar Flow

The XB-70’s compound delta wing with it’s 58 degree sweep angle used planar flow to keep the air attached to the wing at subsonic speeds.

This was possible only at low AoA .As the the XB-70 had a large wing span and area, distribution of lift was even.

The wing had a subtle twist and a thin airfoil to delay early flow separation.

Vortex Lift

The swept back wings automatically generated vortices off their leading edges at high AoA. At low speeds and banking events vortices compensated for lack of high lift devices such as flaps.

The XB-70 was not optimized for vortices.

Compression Lift

During high Mach cruise the final 20 feet of each wing folded down 65 degrees from the horizontal ( a feature the Klingon Bird of Prey was inspired by ) and formed a compression chamber.

The sculpted nose and forebody trapped shockwaves along with the shaped engine intakes and directed the shockwaves between the Klingon wings.

Compression accounted for between 05-40% of total lift at high Mach numbers. The rest of the lift was generated by planar flows plus unoptimized vortex lift (at low subsonic numbers)

The canards on the XB-70 behaved as pitch control surfaces. As a tailess delta wing the XB-70 needed these surfaces to maintain balance at speeds in excess of Mach 2.5 as the nose of the aircraft had a tendency to pitch downwards.

The Valkyrie Learnings 

The two prototypes constructed flew a total of 160 hours and 16 minutes over 83 flights. Of this time AV-1 flew a total of 32 minutes over Mach 3 and reached a top speed of Mach 3.06. AV-2 which had several improvements over AV-1 flew a total of 20 minutes at Mach 3.08.

AV-2 was tragically lost on 08 Jun 1966 while flying in formation for a photo shoot. The vortices generated by the unfolded wingtips sucked the F-104 flown by NASA Chief Test Pilot Joe Walker, flipped it upside down over the starboard wing and across the twin vertical stabilizers killing Captain Walker instantly, and Major Carl Cross the copilot on the XB-70. Al White the pilot of AV-2 survived with serious injuries.The first ever warning on the dangers of wing vortices off large aircraft.

While the XB-70 flew for a very limited time between 1964-69 the lessons learned influenced future supersonic travel. A few listed below:

• The XB-70 influenced the selection of Titanium as the material for use on the legendary SR-71 Blackbird/Habu
• Aerodynamic data such as inlet design, shock wave interactions at high altitude & high Mach stability influenced the SR -71. Chines and inlet spike behavior were innovated as a result.
• Human fatigue at high Mach numbers were studied and solutions found
• Building on lessons learned by the XB -70 the Concorde (developed independently) focused on low speed behavior and wing sculpting to control stability at low speeds, take off & landing
• The material limitations of Mach 3 cruise on the XB-70 helped Concorde engineers arrive at a cruise speed of Mach 2
• The XB-70’s boom shaping and compression lift formed the early basis of NASAs QueSST program. The X-59 with its coke bottle shape and boom cheating design is a result of the early learnings from the XB-70

The XB-70 continues to be a supersonic reference point 61 years after its first flight.

The Concorde Wing

If the wing of the XB-70 Valkyrie was cutting edge technology & over the top engineering the Concorde wing comes across as a piece of supersonically sculpted art.

The Concorde’s secret was Vortex black magic.

The delta wing is naturally unstable at low speeds, while highly efficient at Mach 2. Extensive wind tunnel testing resulted in the ogival delta wing.

The slender Concorde ogival delta has a curved leading edge. If the plane is observed from the front, the S is clearly visible on the leading edge. Furthermore the wings droop down towards the wing tips. The droop or dihedral inversion contributed towards improved stability, and stable vortex structure.

This allowed the Concorde to smoothly transition from vortex lift during takeoff to planar lift as it got to transonic & Mach cruise speeds. The wing structure had minimal lifting surfaces and lift was managed by the sculpted wings.

The inboard section of the wings (swept back to 55 degrees) carried more lift at low AoA while the outboard sections improved stability and efficiency.

The Concorde used a state of the art fuel management system to shift its CG (centre of gravity) by pumping fuel between 13 different tanks.

At supersonic cruise the CG was shifted towards the tail (trim tank 11), the forward tanks were used during take off and low speeds,  and forward (trim tank 9) during descent.

The entire system was automatic and the CG could be shifted by two meters (6.5 feet). The MAC (mean aerodynamic chord) at 55-59%. To explain, 0% of MAC is the leading edge (the front edge of the wing) and 100% is the trailing edge (the rear edge of the wing). 55-59% means at cruise the Concorde’s CG was just aft of the mid chord of MAC.

This enabled Concorde to be extremely stable at Mach 2, minimize drag and maximize fuel efficiency.

The Concorde used all three types of lift as well. Controlled vortex lift at low speeds (the sculpted wings), planar lift at transonic and supersonic speeds along with compression lift as well. Concorde drew approx 30-40% of its lift at cruise from natural shockwave compression.

The XB-70 and the Concorde, two aircraft, two different deltas, so different yet so similar.

The Overture Wing 

The Overture will be operating in a very different speed regime from the Concorde. Where the Concorde operated at Mach 2+ for most it’s flights the overture will be operating at high transonic speeds (Mach 0.8 – 1.2). Aerodynamic needs at these speeds are a combination of subsonic & supersonic speeds.

The Boom website says the sweep of the Overture wings will be more than a 777 but less than Concorde.The 777 is at 31.6 degrees while the Concorde is at 55 degrees. The wing is of course thinner than a 777’s!

Where the Concorde relied on vortex lift at lower speeds the Overture will rely on planar lift(attached airflows).

The Overture will be a hybrid delta wing with horizontal stabilizers and will use a gull wing design. This means the wing arches upwards near the root and angles downwards towards the wingtips. The upwards attitude towards the root increases efficiency at Mach speeds. The outward droop towards the wingtips improves stability at subsonic speeds, takeoff, climb, descent and landing. The trailing edge has been shaped as well.

The podded engines slung below the wings on pylons offer net overall efficiencies, the embedded engines of the Concorde offered better aerodynamic efficiencies at Mach 2 (the max speed of the Overture is Mach 1.7)

Underwing podded engines offer advantages such as ease of maintenance, more space to add acoustic liners for sound damping, allows for modular engine design which in turn allows ease of maintenance. In case of uncontained engine failure engines on pylons under the wings are always safer.

Since the wings are a hybrid between the Concorde’s ogival delta and subsonic wings, the tail is more conventional with a horizontal stabilizer. The stabilizer offers finer pitch and directional control. The placement of the tail plane is outside the airflows over the wings and engines.

The wings of the Overture will provide higher lift than the Concorde at low speeds. The angle of attack at landing and take off will be similar to Concorde ( making the Overture a tall plane as well..the landing gear will be another story).

Since the Overture has a horizontal stabilizer, trim will be handled aerodynamically. There will be no need for a fuel transfer system to manage CG.

Lastly AI( Artificial Intelligence) renders the aircraft intelligent, translates to lighter crew workload.

Exciting times!

Summation

The delta wing has matured over the last 70 years. The Overture represents the next step in the evolution of the supersonic delta wing.

Disclaimer: This article has used images from multiple sources accessed through Google.

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Prologue 

At the end of my previous piece on the BOOM Symphony, more than a few questions were asked about the Sonic Boom, Sound Barrier, Boomless Cruise etc. This piece attempts to answer the questions. For that we need to go right to the very beginning.

History 

Prehistoric Man might have taken the concept of sound for granted and not given it much thought. The first inflection point was the realization there was a relation between lighting and thunder i.e how thunder always followed lightning. Some intuition later they realized that both travelled through the space around and above them.

The Norse God Thor was attributed by the the Vikings for Lightning as his hammer, Mjölnir travelled across the sky followed by Thunder as Mjölnir struck his enemies.

Similarly the Indian God Indra’s Vajra representing a diamond (indestructible) and thunderbolt (irresistible force)caused lightning as it travelled through the sky . Indra’s domain included Lightning and Thunder among many others.

History is replete with such allusions to Lightning and Thunder. From these allusions it is clear that lightning was faster than Thunder.

The concept of speed is arrived at.

Science Timeline

Scientific rigor made its entry. Below is a timeline some of the milestones in understanding sound.

• By 500 BC Pythagoras discovered that musical pitch depended on the percussion instruments string length
• Aristotle around 350 BC believed that an object striking air caused sound, he still thought sound was instantaneous
• Vitruvius in 50 BC Discovered the concept of the echo was in manmade architecture
• Between the 9-12th centuries several Islamic scholars studied vibration & resonance and the concept of sound moving through air as a medium

The Middle Ages & Renaissance periods made strides in understanding sound as a wave.

• In the early 1600s Galileo observed the concepts of vibration
• Marin Mersenne in 1636 measured the speed of sound for the first time at 1380 ft/s (the first measurement of the speed of sound)
• Issac Newton around 1687 applied his laws of motion to sound in air and calculated the speed of sound at 979 ft/s
• During the 1740s Euler and Bernouli created the wave equation for sound

There were several further increments to Man’s understanding of the phenomenon of Sound and then came Ernst Mach.

Ernst Mach

Mach was the first person to describe and photograph shockwaves.

By the 1800s when bullets or projectiles were fired at high speeds a loud cracking sound was observed. While piquing curiosity nobody understood what was taking place.

Mach who prided himself as a multi dimensional scientist merged physics , photography and optics in a fresh new manner.

Mach’s explorations into supersonic fluid dynamics led him to team up with physics photographer Peter Salcher.

Together in 1887 they presented a paper that correctly described  the sound effects of a supersonic bullet in motion. They determined the existence of a shockwave with the bullet as the apex of the shockwave.

The photography technique used was Schlieren Photography, a relatively new technique. The principle of this technique is light bends when it passes through air with a slightly different density.

Schlieren photos use mirrors, a lens, a bright light and a sharp edge to detect light refractions through the air. He then fired bullets through this set up and captured the shockwave! A first…

It was August Toepler who developed this technique in the 1860s to capture heat and density differences in air. This was developed specifically for thermodynamics and gas flow. Mach innovated on this technique to capture bullets in supersonic flight.

Man finally began to grasp what the sound barrier was about….pictorially!

The speed of sound or Mach is named after Ernst Mach.

Transonic Adventures

The term transonic was coined around 1945 by NACA director (the NASA precursor) Hugh Dryden while referring to speeds that were close to the speed of sound. The speed range is between Mach 0.8 – 1.2.

In dogfights during WW2 P-38 Lightnings, Spitfires & Thunderbolts accidentally approached Mach 0.8 – 1 in steep power dives. 

As these speeds were hit pilots experienced locked controls and violent shaking of the aircraft also known as compressibility buffeting. In some cases the aircraft broke apart or just stopped responding to control surface inputs.

The phenomenon was experienced for the first time and terrified pilots, who were the guys in the hot seat. They felt like they hit a wall and described it as a barrier. The term sound barrier originated here.

Experiential research later scientists replicated these effects and understood that as airflow over the wings and airframe approached the speed of sound, shock waves formed and disrupted known flight rules. This was the compressibility effect.

The fix was dive recovery flaps under the wings to be deployed early in the dive. The flaps helped bring the nose up and recover the aircraft. Engineers had managed to fix an issue they had scant understanding of.

The swept wings courtesy the Germans were coming.

Glamorous Glennis

Post WW2 a large number of documents and scientists  on aeronautical research were seized from the Germans and transported to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip.. The documents were on wing design, shockwave research from the Me-262 (the first Jet aircraft) and airframe design among many others.

Glamorous Glennis was piloted by Gen Chuck Yeager(had the privilege of interacting with him a couple of times on X)and named after his wife. The Bell X-1 was an all American aircraft purpose built aircraft designed to break the sound barrier. Among the many innovations it had was an airframe shaped like a .50 Calibre bullet (a shape known to handle supersonic speeds). 

The wings were unswept (straight) and extremely thin with a thickness to wing chord (distance between the leading and trailing edges of the wing) ratio of 8%. 

The tail plane was all moving to handle speeds in excess of Mach 1 and powered by a four chamber XLR-11 rocket engine that developed 6000lbs of thrust.

On 14 October 1947, Glamorous Glennis piloted by  Gen Chuck Yeager after dropping from a B-29 Superfortress at 25,000 feet, ignited its rocket and flew into history as the first aircraft to go through the sound barrier in level flight.

The Bell X-1 flew over eighty flights and contributed greatly to our understanding of Supersonic flight.

The Golden Decade

The  next decade and half would be the golden age of Supersonic flight.

Using the German WW2 research along with their own the US and Russia developed several firsts for aircraft.

Swept back wings (typically about 35 degrees) became the norm for the next generation of transonic/supersonic aircraft.

The US F-86 Sabre and Russian MIG-15 were the first aircraft to maintain high transonic level flight with stable handling.

The F-100 Supersabre and the MIG-19 Farmer the first aircraft to consistently maintain Mach 1+ speeds in level flight.

The F104 Starfighter the first fighter to hit Mach 2 and the big boy, the B-58 Hustler the first strategic bomber to hit Mach 2+.

The Human Facor

The decade of the 1960s ushered in a SST competition between the Concorde(UK & France), the TU-144(Soviet Union) and the Boeing 2707(USA). Supersonic transport stood for national superiority and attention turned to transporting people at Supersonic speeds across continents.

Supersonic speed always has the shadow of the sonic boom following it. The Boom itself is a sudden sharp booming sound or a double boom that follows the aircraft and the sound decibels range of 110 – 140 dB. The best analogy is the waves off the prow of a boat as ploughs through water.

The Oklahoma City Experiment 

Starting Feb’64 for eight months Oklahoma City was subjected to 1253 sonic booms @ eight booms a day. 

The FAA wanted to study the effects of sonic booms on the local population and chose Oklahoma City as the test subject.

Initially the population was enthusiastic about these tests, but soon realized the booms were everything and more than they were cut out to be.

The people of Oklahoma experienced the following:

• Disrupted sleep cycles that induced anxiety 
• Physical damage to property 
• Pets were frightened and stressed 
• Sensitive instruments being disrupted 

Oklahoma City felt like a guinea pig and a $25 compensation per household for damage caused, only added insult to injury. The experiments drew over 15000 complaints.

The Oklahoma experience snowballed into a national anti supersonic travel movement. Congress cut funding to the B-2707 program and by 1973 supersonic travel over land was banned in the United States, the rest of the World followed suit.

This was a body blow to the Concorde and TU-144 which were in advanced stages of development. They would fly Supersonic only over water (Concorde) and the TU-144 with its limited range only over the Soviet Union.

Supersonic Travel would be on the backburner for the next 25 years.

QueSST

Psychoacoustic , a word that pique’s interest 

By the 1990s NASA and the United States after exiting the Supersonic race had data across fluid dynamics, community response and shockwave shaping. Technological and material improvements improved aircraft airframe and engine efficiencies, the time had arrived to realign Supersonic research from creating new aircraft to better understanding the shockwave and creating designer shockwaves!

Psychoacoustic is how a sound comes across to people. The factors that contribute to it are things like startle factor (suddenness and loudness), frequency (low or muffled sounds are more accepted by the human ear) and timing of the day.

NASA already knew that repeated sound over 100 dB drew complaints, while a decibel level of 75dB was more acceptable to people.

The QueSST ( Quiet Supersonic Transport)program is about laying down the guidelines on the future of Supersonic transport across airframes, flight paths, speeds, altitudes and many more parameters, hopefully overcoming the 1973 ban.

During the 1990s NASA used a T-38 Talon to fly controlled supersonic passes over microphone arrays to understand boom propagation over different terrains and study boom carpet (the impacted ground area of a sonic boom)patterns.

In 2003 a F-5E Tiger with a reshaped nose was used to demonstrate that shockwaves can be manipulated. This test proved that boom intensity can be reduced by at a third.

Between 2011-2016 there were several acoustic simulation studies conducted which arrived at the 75 dB target.

Between 2016-2021 NASA used a F-15B in conjunction with  advanced ground sensor arrays to measure shockwave propagation and help tune future computational models. These tests were run over unpopulated desert.

There were several sonic boom carpet models used to test and control sonic boom impact area. Some of the tests included F/A-18 Hornets dive maneuvers to narrow the boom carpet. 

The X-59

The Lockheed Skunk Works is NASA’s low boom flight demonstrator aircraft, designed to fly at Mach 1.4 over land.

The X-59 is a specially designed airframe to control, break and reduce sonic booms. The aircraft will be used to confirm the sonic boom carpet, identify shockwave interaction with different parts of the aircraft and further fine tune computational models.

The design innovations include a long tapered nose that is over a third of the length of the aircraft at thirty feet. The nose stretches the shockwave formation at the very start. Due to the nose design, the aircraft uses 4K cameras for forward vision. The design of the wings in relation to the nose need the use of canards (small wing shaped appendages forward of the wings) for stable flight. The all moving tail plane is designed to handle supersonic speeds with minimum shockwave. Lastly the GE F414 engine is mounted on top of the fuselage to direct shockwaves away from the ground.

The aircraft uses area rule shaping to reduce drag (and mitigate shockwaves) at and around the speed of sound. Simply put, the rule states the shape of the aircraft should transition as smoothly as possible, also called the coke bottle shape.

The X-59 will be flown over multiple cities and communities across the United States and surveys will be taken of these communities to study their response to the shockwave characteristics of the X-59 in multiple flight profiles.

NASA’s goal is to prove to regulators that designed booms are acceptable to communities and pave the path to overturning the Supersonic ban over the Continental United States.

The Boom Connection

BOOM with the XB-1 did achieve Boomless cruise although they used a different approach.

BOOM used atmospheric refraction from a high altitude (over 35,000 feet) to use the atmosphere to bend the waves upward and keep away from the ground. They used area rule shaping to optimize shockwave generation. Furthermore BOOM limited the speed to Mach 1.1 to control shockwaves.

BOOM is part of the ecosystem NASA is looking to create. The X-59 tests are expected to initiate a Supersonic standards conversation and BOOMs Overture will benefit from these tests.

The Final Word

Finding innovative solutions to overcome physical limitations is the path forward. At the heart of the solution is managing human behavior and attitudes towards Supersonic Shockwaves.

Disclaimer: This article has used images from multiple sources accessed through Google.

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Elon Musk is the latest in a long line of visionary pioneers responsible for the evolution of the concept of reusability. SpaceX is the first private organisation to do this at scale. A Falcon 9 booster with the serial number 1058 has been reused seventeen times. To track the concept of reusability, considered the Holy Grail of long term rocket technology development, we need to go back 104 years to the year 1919.

A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes

Dr Robert Goddard considered the Father of modern rocketry in his pioneering paper of 1919 laid out the outlines which rocketry abides by to this day.

He was the first  to theorise that rockets could operate in a vacuum unlike conventional aircraft and to achieve that he highlighted Newton’s Third Law of Motion, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. He deacribed experiments with various types of propulsion both solid and liquid, and spoke of the need for further detailed experiments ( which he would carry on for the next twenty five years). Furthermore he was the first person to predict that rockets could get to space ( at that time the demarcation between the atmosphere and space, later known as the Karman Line was not yet clear). He was the first person to create the vision of space travel using rockets (non fiction).

For all his visionary brilliance Dr Robert Goddard never received any of the accolades showered on him posthumously. He was at various times called a madman, viewed with derision or just plain indifference. He rarely had access to funding (which if made available to him might have changed the face of the Space Race decades later). He had over two hundred patents covering rocket designs, propulsion systems and other related engineering concepts such as the stabilising Gyro patent no 1102653 from 1914.

Herman Oberth ( later considered one of the founding fathers of rocketry) published a book in 1927 called ‘ A Rocket into Planetary Space’, the timeline suggests he might have used ideas from Goddard’s 1919 paper. Oberth researched independently as well.

Charles Lindbergh, now a National Treasure after his Trans Atlantic exploit of 1927, visited Goddard’s laboratory in 1929 and expressed his support. This bought positive attention to an otherwise ignored Goddard.

The Rise of German Technology

Herman Oberth’s 1927 book created a lot of interest in Germany and whereas Goddard was viewed with derision, the Germans looked up to his ideas and formed rocket clubs. The VFRs ( translated to Society for Space Travel) were primarily based around Berlin and they experimented through the late 1920s and 30s with various aspects of rocketry such as propulsion and design. These societies were instrumental in not only contributing to rocket technology development, but nurtured several future rocket scientists, names such as Wernhard Von Braun.

From 1932 through the VFRs Wernhard Von Braun developed an all encompassing interest in rocketry. From then on he devoted the rest of his life to it. After coming to power in 1933 the Nazi party took more than a passing interest in the strides made at the VFRs. At around the same time the societies or the Nazi party using them as fronts (it’s not clear) asked for and received all of Dr Robert Goddard’s over two hundred rocketry patents, from the US Patents office for just 38 cents each!

Von Braun completed his PhD in Physics from the University of Berlin with a dissertation in rocketry in 1937, and began working on the A4/V2 program after first joining the SS as an officer at the Peenemunde rocket development facility on the German Baltic coast. His oratory skills along with his technical dedication to rocketry quickly brought him to the Nazi Party’s attention while still a hobbyist at the VFRs.

Unlike the VFRs which were impoverished and had out of work hobbyists playing around with rockets, the Nazis pretty much gave him a Carte Blanche which he used to construct the state of the art facility at Peenemunde. After almost six years of focused development an A4 demonstration to Hitler failed and the facility was almost closed down.

He had one staunch supporter, the SS General Hans Kammler, who urged him to continue his work. In August of 1943 Operation Hydra launched an air raid on Peenemunde. The damage caused to the facility took about six weeks to repair, however the Nazi high command knew the facility needed to be moved, and the decision to move to Mittelwerk Dora, into miles of underground tunnels was taken.

Here using over 60,000 concentration camp prisoners in appalling conditions research on the A4/V2 continued at pace and in June 1944 a V2 rocket became the first manmade object to get to space. (The Nazis did not normally use concentration camp labour for sensitive work, this points to the urgency of development needed.)

This achievement immediately led to an order of 12000 V2s from the Nazi Party to be used as the first missiles ever . Over 5700 were constructed and 3100 launched. The V2s themselves were responsible for only about 2500 casualties, but the Allies and Russia became very aware of a new weapon that radically changed the rules of engagement.

The tragic aspect of Mittelwerk Dora is that over 20,000 prisoners of the 60,000 allocated died at the camp. Over 200 of them hanged for sabotage (it is impossible to estimate how many lives these poor souls saved).

Once Mittelwerk fell to the Allies and Russia, they quickly divided the groups of scientists and the remaining 2600 V2 rockets (some complete, others in various stages of completion) among them to develop their own rocketry expertise.

Wernhard Von Braun a SS and Nazi Officer was brought to America as part of Operation Paperclip along with over 1000 scientists, fourteen tons of rocket research documents and approximately 100 finished V2 rockets.

Once in America Von Braun and his team were  initially with the US Army as they continued with their research on rockets. They were part of the research team that fired the V2 rockets as part of high altitude experiments as the US worked on understanding the characteristics of flight in the upper atmosphere.

In 1950 the entire team was transferred to the ABMA (Army Ballistic Missile Agency) which in turn was transferred to the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958.

A Nazi Officer would become an American Hero. This part of Von Braun’s life has been debated at length, the fact is He never expressed any remorse about Nazi actions during the war and He could not have not known about the appalling conditions of the workers.

He managed to use his expertise as a bargaining chip to avoid any persecution.

The X-15 Program

Until 1957 each of the arms of the armed services had their own rocket research program and they were in direct competition with each other. On that date in 1957 when Sputnik was launched and the launch a month later of Sputnik II with Laika the dog (went on a one way ticket) was just the kick the US needed. Their attempt to launch the Vanguard TV3 (Test Vehicle 3) ended in a launchpad disaster in December of 1957. The US would finally bring in Von Braun to be on the team that finally had the first successful American satellite launch in January 1958.

The X15 program had been on the drawing boards since 1955 but little progress was made.Once the unification body NASA was formed things began to move ahead albeit slowly at first. The first flight finally happened in June 1959.

The primary objective of the X-15 program was to gather data on high speed and high altitude heating and aircraft behaviour characteristics.

The rocket powered aircraft was shaped like a cross between a missile and plane. It had hydrogen peroxide thrusters in its nose and wings which gave the aircraft maneuverability at high altitudes and speeds and as speed and altitude decreased the control surfaces came into play. The aircraft had sleds for the main landing gear that gave it the ability to handle high speed and temperature landings on a variety of surfaces.

Over 199 flights the X-15 would bring back valuable data which would later be used on the Space Shuttle and other Low Earth Orbit vehicles.

The fleet of three aircraft had their share of mishaps, casualties and miraculous escapes. Along the way the X-15 set several records, highest altitude at 354,000 feet, highest speed at 4250 mph.

The X-15 finally retired in 1968 and was the first reusable spacecraft.

The Lifting Bodies

The lifting body program ran from 1963 to 1975. They were a series of experimental aerodynamic bodies that were meant to test the handling characteristics  of a small crewed reusable and cost effective spacecraft. They had no wings and the bodies looked like cones cut in half with vertical stabilisers only. The lift was generated by the body itself. They were also known as flying tubs.

The first non-powered body the M2-F1 was initially towed by a heavily modified Pontiac Catalina that got to 110 mph in 10.9 seconds. A true petrolhead car in the name of research. It was later towed by a C-47 to an altitude of approximately 12,000 feet and dropped. The craft descended at 3600 feet per minute.

Once the low speed flight characteristics were understood, the program progressed to heavier powered bodies such as the M2-F3 which was dropped from 45,000 feet by a the same B-52s that dropped the X-15 and descended at a rate of 10,000 feet a minute and topped Mach1. The other bodies were HL-10, X24, X24A & finally X24B. All of these bodies descended at 10,000 feet a minute and made precise landings on their designated runway at Edwards Air Force Base.

The data gathered from over two hundred of the lifting body flights went a great way in understanding the gliding behaviour of manned spacecraft and helped in designing the Space Shuttle.

The Moonrocket

Until the Starship Superheavy full stack of April 2023, the Saturn V rocket stack that launched the Apollo missions to the Moon and the Skylab between 1967 and 1973 was the biggest rocket by a long way. It held the record for over fifty years.

The height of 363 feet, thrust of over 7.5 million pounds and heavy lift capacity was staggering.

Wernhard Von Braun was at the heart of the design and deployment of this gigantic engineering wonder.

The cost of $185 million a launch in 1960s Dollars ($1.4 Billion in 2023) was staggering as well and Congress could not let this expenditure continue.

Future launches to the Moon could only happen when a more cost effective means of launch was made available.

The promise JFK made to the Nation back in 1962 was kept and Man did walk on the Moon before the 1960s was out, the project had played its part and run its course to a logical end.

The Space Shuttle

The hit single ‘ Space Truckin’ by Deep Purple from their album Machine Head of 1972 reflects the mood of the World and the decision made by the Space Task Group formulated in 1969 by Nixon and presented in 1972.

The group had to assess the future of Human spaceflight from America. The options were the Space Shuttle, the Space Station, Moon Missions, Mars Missions or the rest of the Solar System. 

The committee decided to go with the Space Truck and Low Earth Orbit Infrastructure. The Skylab was already in advanced stages of completion by 1972 (it would be launched in 1973).

The concept of the Space Shuttle was to be reusable, comparatively reasonable in cost ( remember each Saturn V launch), safe and be the enabler to furthering space exploration as Mankind headed into the modalities that went into truly interplanetary travel.

While designing the shuttle was a colossal nightmare it was a success on several fronts such as being the Space Truck that not only transported about 36% of the pressurised components of the ISS (International Space Station), it not only transported the Hubble Telescope to space but also transported personnel to space to fit Hubble’s glasses on. And several other significant missions.

However it was not completely reusable. The solid fuel tank was discarded after each launch, and the side boosters needed to be thoroughly refurbished before reuse.

The Shuttle itself had between 24000 and 31000 tiles as thermal protection on them and getting them to stick and stay in place was a nightmare (the Shuttle Columbia burned up on re-entry as a result of compromised thermal protection ).

The Boosters and tank made for a complicated set up and the Shuttle launches themselves were not exactly cheap at about $500 million a launch (2011 Dollars).

The Shuttle did have a total of 135 missions and is today considered a major step in the direction of utilitarian reusability, it however needed to be more reliable and cheaper.

The Ansari X Prize

Originally instituted as the X prize in May 1996 by the multifaceted Peter Diamandis. He was inspired by the Orteig Prize of 1919, a $25,000 prize instituted by New York Hotelier Raymond Orteig for the first solo aviator to fly non stop from New York to Paris or vice versa. The prize would eventually be won by Charles Lindbergh in 1927 and the rest is history.

Diamandis realised that  “such a prize updated and offered as a space prize might be just what was needed to bring space travel to the general public, to jump-start a commercial space industry”. The prize was further developed into a suborbital space barnstorming prize (a doff of the hat to the barnstormers of yore) and a prize money of $10 million was committed (backers were yet to be found). The target: The first crewed, non governmental and experimental spacecraft to launch into space twice in two weeks.

In May 2004, following a donation of $10 million by Anousheh and Amir Ansari, the X Prize became the Ansari X prize. Twenty Six Teams from around the World participated in this contest and much like the Orteig Prize that was won about eight years after it was instituted the Ansari X prize too was won by Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites eight years after it was instituted. The Scaled Composites team was backed by Microsoft founder Paul Allen with a backing of $25 million.

The Ansari X Prize did catalyse private commercial spaceflight and Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin stand today offering private space trips. Their rockets / planes / spacecraft are fully reusable.

The Ansari X Prize achieved its set goals much like the Orteig prize seventy five years before it.

SpaceX

The X in SpaceX and The Ansari X Prize stand for different reasons.The X in SpaceX stands for Xploration and the X prize would stand for the person’s name who put the prize money up (but that changed). Founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, the goals of SpaceX were Cheaper space exploration (reusability the holy grail of rocketry), commercial spaceflight,Colonizing Mars (that’s the big one), and contracting NASA.

After nearly bankrupting Musk today SpaceX stands as a giant among the next age breed of private space companies, they have achieved scale of launches with a significant reusability and 99.3% success rate (2023). Today watching the Falcon 9 rockets land back on Earth is nothing short of magical.

They launched their first private spaceflight with an all civilian crew in September 2021 led by Jared Issacman . The mission was billed as a fundraiser for St Jude’s hospital and raised over $243 million. Issacman is reputed to have paid $100 million and Musk topping up another $50 million and other public donations. This mission was a significant step as it proved all civilian crews could fly to space and back and highlighted equipment reliability and autonomy.

The Starship/Superheavy full stack is today the largest rocket fullstack ever set up. While costs are not available, estimates per stack vary between $60 million and $200 million. This puts the cost in a similar ballpark to what the Saturn V stack cost in 1969! Furthermore the full stack offers a significant percentage of reuseability.

SpaceX have truly proved reusability on an industrial scale and continue to break fresh ground with almost every launch. For 2023 SpaceX plans 100 launches and has already completed over 70 with a very high success rate as of October 05,2023.

The Reusability Component Summation

Reusability the Holy Grail of rocketry has paved the way for an entirely new generation of experimental and commercial space craft. The current crop of experimental and commercial spacecraft today are a linear build up of knowledge from Goddard to Oberth to Von Braun and the gutsy test pilots , innumerable engineers and support staff (starting with Esther Christine, Goddard’s wife of over 40 years) who made Spaceflight what it is today….Reusable!

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The 1965 movie Boeing Boeing has a much deeper aspect to it than what the premise suggests. Tony Curtis an American Journalist based in Paris has an elaborate timetable of Stewardess girlfriends who come in and out of Paris on their turboprop airliners and he is able to manage this beautifully, that is until the new fangled Jetliners begin to make their appearance. They cut travel time in half and the film is a satirical take on the turn of events as theses aircraft enter airline fleets. Jerry Lewis in the film is just being Jerry Lewis!

From the coming of age for aviation on that chilly December day in 1903 when the Flyer first took flight, three aspects of aircraft have been centre stage, Speed, Range & Altitude flown.

Airlines – Airplanes

The St Petersburg – Tampa Airboat Line was the very first scheduled airline ever created in 1914. It promised to connect the two cities of St Petersburg and Tampa in twenty three minutes. This was against a time of two hours by boat, twenty hours by car or four to twelve hours by train.

The revenue management was simple. Ticket prices were $5 dollars for a one way ticket and the aeroplane could carry one passenger.A round trip cost $10 and advance booking of seats was possible (although no information exists on advance purchase rules). The very first air passenger ever was Mr Abram C Pheil, a former mayor of St Petersburg and he won the seat in auction for a winning bid of $400. The airboat never flew higher than five feet in the air.

Commenting on the significance of the St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat line, Thomas Benoist, the builder of the Benoist airboats, said, “Some day people will be crossing oceans on airliners like they do on steamships today.” The airline served as a prototype for today’s global airline industry.

A sister aeroplane was ordered and this was to carry mail. The first air cargo bundle was a hundred pounds of the St Petersburg Times for $5. This is definitely the first freighter ever!

From the example above, it is clear that Airplane manufacturers and airlines have always gone hand in hand, and together created the global aviation industry what it is today, 110 years on.

The Incremental Years

The first airmail service was on February 11,1911 in India between Allahabad and Naini a distance of 13 kilometres (8.1 miles). Airmail networks quickly developed in the UK, USA,Europe and Australia.

Airmail took off first before passenger transport as the initial years were about trial and error and most people viewed the aircraft as a dangerous novelty . Airmail was directly responsible for creating the early route networks. Furthermore they were responsible for creating the infrastructure such as airports including layover facilities for crew, runways, route navigation updates and guides , engineering & refuelling services needed to keep the airmail pipeline moving. Of course Government interest and subsidies helped develop them in a big way.

The first major airlines appeared in the late teens and through the twenties, KLM, Qantas, Imperial Airways, United Airlines and Panam to name a few. American Airlines only made its appearance in 1934, Air India in 1932. As people realised there were options to long steamer and rail journeys, they began to look to air as an option. The early air routes were about connecting cities within Europe, UK, Australia & USA and India.

Charles Lindbergh changed all that on those famous days in 1927 when he flew from New York to Paris , solo and non stop. Trans Atlantic passenger services soon followed.

Air Travel was very elitist and most aircraft only had first class and passengers travelled in airborne opulence. As is the same today, first and business class travel is a very limited segment and for airlines to scale up and democratise air travel, aeroplanes needed to be faster, bigger and cheaper to fly on. The race was on.

Early metal airliners such as the Douglas DC-3 , Boeing 247, Lockheed Model 10 Electra ( Amelia Earheart’s plane) and Ford Trimotor competed for the crown of most passengers and speed. The DC-3 outstripped most of the competition with a maximum passenger capacity of 32 passengers and a range of 1500 miles (2400 kilometres). The others had passenger capacities of around 10-15.

Aircraft needed to fly higher to go faster more economically, and there came the human factor, our bodies react adversely to the cold and lack of oxygen at higher altitudes. The highest we can breathe normally is around 10,000 feet, and the current crop of aircraft were restricted to this height due to the human factor. The barf bags we barely glance at on most flights we take today, were a necessity in the 1930s due to altitude sickness suffered. Aircraft therefore had to fly through rough weather systems instead of over them.  The flights were unpleasant.

The airlines needed to scale up and a solution was needed to tackle the human factor altitude restriction.

The Pressurization & Early Jet Effect

In 1938 the Boeing Stratoliner became the first aircraft to offer a pressurised cabin. Pressurised to 9000 feet. Passengers flew in relative comfort for longer distances. With a cruising altitude of 20,000 feet and range of 2200 miles it was a big improvement over what was currently available. There was one catch, the price was much higher than aircraft such as the DC-3. Airlines could not see the value of such a visionary aircraft. The war soon came and changed everything.

The Heinkel 178 ( He178) first was the first jet plane to fly in 1939. Owing to the early days this jet was only marginally faster than the current crop of fighters and guzzled much more fuel, the Nazi management could not see the advantage of speed yet and continued with their Messerschmitt Me 109s and Focke-Wulf FW 190s.

The first pressurised aircraft to fly for extended periods successfully was the B-29 Superfortress. It first flew in 1942 and its specifications grabbed eyeballs immediately! In addition to a pressurised cabin, it flew at over 31,000 feet, at a cruising speed of 357 mph and a range of over 3000 miles.

The Me262 first flew in 1944 the same year as the Gloster Meteor. The pilots of these aircraft had to carry oxygen masks as the cabins were not pressurised, and the aircraft themselves entered too late in the war to make a difference to the eventual outcome, but their speed and advantage over conventional aircraft was obvious for all to see.

Both Boeing and the airlines knew there was synergy here and Boeing quickly converted the B29 into the B377 Stratocruiser that set fresh benchmarks in air passenger travel. Although only 46 were ever sold, it were known for their comfort of travel over long distances.

The age of the pressurised cabin had arrived.

The Transition

Howard Hughes ‘The Aviator’ had a controlling interest in TWA. He wanted to create an aircraft that was far superior to anything in the late 30s and early 40s. Enter the Lockheed Constellation! A cruising speed of over 350 mph(575 km/h), cruising altitude of over 24000 feet and a range of 3500 miles (5600 kilometres). The cabin was pressurised and could carry over 75 passengers.

Howard Hughes was fanatical about the secrecy of the project and the only reason the project saw light was because of the US war effort and the mandatory inspection of Lockheed’s facilities.

The US Army immediately gave the Connie a designation number of C69 and put 15 of them to work for the US Military. Once the war ended Lockheed bought the aircraft back and fitted them out to airline specs and sold them.

The Super Constellation with an increased range of over 5400 miles (8170 kilometres) came into service in 1951. By then the De Havilland Comet was just making its appearance.

The Constellation is the first example of how closely airlines and airframe manufacturers need to work to create a legend.

The Jet Age

The DeHavilland Comet 1 was an aircraft before its time. It was first introduced in 1952 and could fly at over 500 mph (800 km/h) and carry 36 passengers with a range of over 1500 miles (2400 kilometres). With a cruising altitude of over 25,000 feet, this jet was all airline dreams come true, after initial scepticism they lined up to buy the aircraft. Airlines could not afford not to have them. And then the crashes happened.

Aviation’s limited understanding of pressurisation and the resulting effects on the aircraft fuselage skin left the fleet grounded. Dehavilland a visionary company that even made its own engines, had lost the first movers advantage. By the time the Comet 4 was unveiled in 1958 with massive improvements over preceding models the momentum had been lost to another epic aircraft.  Proof the Comet’s ruggedness and endurance can be seen in the 46 RAF Nimrods ( derived from the Comet) that operated until 2011. A testament to engineering of the highest quality.

The Boeing 707-80 or demonstrator aircraft was a passenger jet disguised as military aircraft. The cost of development ( over $16 Million) was worth over 25% of Boeing’s total value. The disguise worked and the Military finally ordered the second iteration of the B707 ( KC135 and used over 800 of them) , and third with a completely redesigned fuselage and wing. The cost of the program development escalated exponentially with each iteration and Boeing needed to sell hundreds of 707s to break even.

The aircraft with a cruising speed of around 600 mph (960 km/h), cruising altitude of over 35,000 feet and range of around 4000 miles (6500 kilometres). Intercontinental models had higher ranges of over 5750 miles (9260 kilometres), changed aviation forever.

Summation

The B707 along with all that came before it shrank the world. The airlines who were looking to democratise air travel got to do exactly that.Fly more people further and cheaper than ever before.

The B707s biggest advertisement was President Eisenhower used the B707 to travel to 11 countries across the Globe in 19 days. A feat only made possible by the B707. And then there is Tex Johnston and his famous barrel roll.

Airline Commercial Infrastructure changed to keep pace. Route Network Planning became a critical department for every major airline. Revenue Management would find its true wings only in the twenty-first century.

Boeing Boeing the movie is a definitive marker of the turning to burning transition.

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Aerospace is a term that came into being in the mid 1950s and encompassed a wide array of topics from aeronautics, the study of planes and other flying machines and space flight. The term evolved over a period of almost four centuries.

Pre Flight

Leonardo Da Vinci the Italian painter / wizard / illuminati / visionary first sketched and conceptualised several different flying machines including gliders and ornithopters (a machine that achieves lift by flapping its wings) in the 1500s.

It fell upon Sir George Cayley in the early 1800s to get the concepts of aerodynamics organised into the fundamentals of flight. Sir George surmised that flight can be achieved by aerodynamic lift and this can be achieved by making a surface support weight by the application of power to the resistance of air, the surface being the airfoil in a wing of an aircraft and the power coming from an engine.  Cayley’s fundamentals of aeronautics hold true even today and he is considered the ‘Father of Aeronautics’.

While the basic theory of aeronautics held true through rigorous experimentation, constructing an airfoil with control surfaces and a light weight engine to drive propulsion would take another hundred years.

Otto Lilienthal of Germany is considered very influential in the development of airfoil design and conducted over two thousand glider experiments including working on control surfaces. He was killed in a glider crash in 1896 as his glider stalled at height and crashed to the ground (he was testing new control surfaces).

Samuel Langley and his Aerodrome 5 is generally considered to be the first powered flight achieved in 1896. However it was powered by a steam engine and had almost no directional stability or control. It did fly 3300 feet and showed that powered flight was possible.

Enter the Wright Brothers, bicycle mechanics Orville and Wilbur Wright.Over a four year period between 1899 – 1903 they perfected three concepts very important to flight. The first was power delivery, they custom built a lightweight gasoline powered twelve hp internal combustion motor that drove the propellers of the Flyer 1. The second they developed the concept of wing warping which gave the aircraft directional control as it banked. This is the basis of aircrfa design even today. Third : They developed pitch control that controlled the attitude of the aircraft. These three together gave the aircraft three dimensional control. Their first controlled flight was achieved on December 17, 1903 and flew a total of 120 feet. Along the way they did create what will become the first take off track (runway) and definitely was the first MRO facility at Kittyhawk and lounge!

By the time they got to the Flyer 3 in 1905 they had flown the longest distance of 24.2 miles, an increase of almost 2000% over their first flight in two short years. In the year 1908 the Wright Brothers were involved in the first fatality involving powered flight when Lt Thomas Selfridge died in a Military Flyer crash at Fort Myers, Virginia.

The Flyer 1 sparked a century of aeronautical evolution that continues to this day.

TransAtlantic Flight

On May 20-21,1927 as Charles Lindbergh flew his way into the history books, little did He know that he would spark a global revolution. He flew ‘The Spirit of St Louis ‘ a single engined monoplane manufactured by Ryan Airlines Corporation for 33.5 hours non stop and a distance of 3,600 miles (5,800 kilometres).

This not only set the benchmark for endurance but with the flight, but this feat created the TransAtlantic Airplane passenger market. Imperial Airways offered passenger flights in The Hannibal with approx 5-6 overnight layovers and Pan Am followed with their Clippers in 1931. This traffic created TransAtlantic infrastructure. Infrastructure creation is the fundamental basis of the Gemini & Apollo programs to the Moon and all other Earthbound and Space missions that followed.

On October 4th, 1957 the term aerospace was fulfilled when Sputnik became Earth’s first artificial satellite in space and Aeronautics was now Aerospace. In the year 1958 aerospace engineering came into being, the first institution to offer the course was MIT.

Space Flight

Sputnik realised a long cherished dream of Mankind when it was launched into space in an elliptical low Earth orbit that ranged between 134 – 583 miles. This first move by the USSR sparked off the space race and an era of enormous technological advances.

In 1961 Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space and the USA could not have another second spot to the USSR. It was in 1962 that President Kennedy announced that the USA would have a man on the Moon before the decade was out.

The Karman Line came into being in 1963 and was officially accepted as the edge of space (where the atmosphere ended) at a height of 62 miles (100 kilometres) above the surface of the Earth. This is the finish line for aeroplanes and the start line for spacecraft!

While there was plenty of data on aeronautical flight, very little was known about spaceflight. The X 15 program, a hypersonic rocket powered plane that flew at Mach 6.7 was launched from a B-52 Bomber at approx 50,000 feet. It would then ignite its rocket and get upto a height of 100 kilometres (62 miles). A total of 199 flights were conducted from the late 1950s through to the early 70s.

The data gathered by these flights was invaluable to the Gemini & Apollo programmers that eventually landed Man on the Moon and the Space Shuttle program as well.

Post the Moon Flights which created the vision of Mankind as an interplanetary species, a series of missions were undertaken for us to understand the effects of zero gravity on the Human body , these Space Laboratories have contributed immensely to our understanding of space. The ISS has been the longest in space for over twenty three years.

The X-15 is the first example of, is it a rocket, is it a plane? The second was the Space Shuttle and the third will be the SpaceX Starship. The concept of Aerospace just got stronger.

Supersonic Flight

Legendary Gen Chuck Yeager (who once liked my tweet!!) was the first human being to fly supersonic on October 14,1947 in the Bell X-1 named ‘ Glamorous Glennis ‘ after his wife.

From that moment in December 1903 when the Flyer 1 first flew, there have been three objectives to all air travel: speed, height and endurance. If Lindbergh was the epitome of endurance then Yeager came to stand for speed. Height ( endurance and speed!) would go to the SR-71.

However for speed to be achieved in multiples of Mach (the speed of sound), propellers would not do it, the aircraft needed turbofans (read jets). While the Bell X-1 was powered by a rocket engine, the ubiquitous jet engine of today was invented by Sir Frank Whittle and would be the mainstay of all supersonic aircraft.

Supersonic flight has continued to be the mainstay of air forces across the world, however supersonic speeds are not about endurance, which is what makes the Concorde and the Tu-144 so special. Both aircraft could fly supersonic for hours (the Concorde had far superior endurance) .

Our understanding of Supersonic flight characteristics have gone a long way to bridge our understanding of high speed flight characteristics of reusable spacecraft such as the Space Shuttle and of the future of Space flight the Starship.

Aerospace is a crossover.

Future Flight

The Saturn V rocket that carried the Apollo missions to the Moon and the Skylab to space remains the only rocket to have carried humans beyond the LEO (Low Earth Orbit). At over 363 feet tall and 33 feet in diameter it was huge. Over three stages it generated 7.5 million / 1 million / 200,000 pounds force (lbf), the decreasing order of force over the three stages is the decreasing atmospheric force as the rocket rose and gathered momentum. It remained the largest rocket ever created for over fifty years.

On April 20,2023 Saturn V lost its long held crown of the biggest rocket ever made and flown to the SpaceX SuperHeavy. The SuperHeavy has 33 raptor engines generating over 16 million pounds of thrust and at over 230 feet high and 29.5 feet diameter is only the first stage of the full stack. Sitting on top of SuperHeavy is the Starship with height of 164 feet with the same diameter , which generates an additional 3.3 million lbf. The full stack comes in 394 feet making this biggest ever constructed.

Much like the evolution of flight when Lindbergh created the vision of the TransAtlantic aerial route , airlines and countries followed suit by creating an infrastructure chain to ensure the TransAtlantic Clippers and Hannibals stayed on time , we observe the same happening with SpaceFlight.

The NASA Artemis Base on the Moon surface and gateway are steps in the same direction of creating infrastructure in space as we evolve into an interplanetary species.

SpaceX is sending tanker ships (Starships without windows) in LEO  for their planned Mars missions.

The term Aerospace was born of necessity (even NASA stands forNational Aeronautics & Space Administration) in the considerable overlap between Flight & SpaceFlight.

An important term was born…

Credits:

NASA

SpaceX

YouTube

Google

Plenty of missed credits…sorry

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