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Category: Media

Pegasus Cutaway & Plan

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Pegasus Intercontinental Passenger Rocket

  1. Forward pressure dome;
  2. Two-man crew compartment;
  3. Re-entry stabilization fines (2);
  4. Cargo compartment;
  5. Aft pressure dome;
  6. Pressurized cabin for passengers (170);
  7. Deck structure (4) with passenger couches (43 each).
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Pegasus during atmospheric re-entry uses the LH2-cooled plug nozzle as a heat shield. The ballistic transport would convey 172 passengers and freight 7,456 miles (12,000 km.) in 39 min. without exceeding an acceleration of 3g during ascent or re-entry. At the arrival spaceport it would hover on rocket thrust during a soft landing in the vertical attitude.

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Pegasus Passenger Compartment

  1. Four-level passenger access doors (3);
  2. Stairways (2) connecting four passenger decks;
  3. Double-wall acoustic damping structure;
  4. Luggage racks (9);
  5. Re-entry stabilization fins (2).

Frontiers of Space
Philip Bono & Kenneth Gatland
Macmillan, 1969

Pegasus at Astronautix

Image credit: Douglas / Blandford Press

Image source(s):

Numbers Station

SDASM Archives

Selena Storyboard

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How re-usable ROMBUS-type launch vehicles can be applied to construction of a temporary lunar base (Project Selena).

  1. Vehicle en route for the Moon is refuelled in Earth Orbit;
  2. Soft-lands on the Moon with lunar base components;
  3. Pressurized moon-tractor hauls hydrogen tanks adapted for human habitation to assembly site;
  4. The lunar base is ready for occupation.

Frontiers of Space is peppered with artwork from Douglas, including paintings by Don Charles and James Finnell. In the book, this section was illustrated with (pretty poor) knock-offs. Why? Who knows? These were the masters.

Project Selena at Astronautix

Image credit: Douglas

Image source: SDASM Archives

Deimos Storyboard

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Mission to Mars (Project Deimos)

  1. Hydrogen tanks jettison as ROMBUS spaceship accelerates from Earth-orbit;
  2. Two hydrogen tanks jettison after retro-thrust into Mars orbit. Mars Landing Module separates from ROMBUS parent above the cratered deserts;
  3. After soft-landing, astronauts begin exploration setting out research equipment and taking meteorological soundings;
  4. Ascent stage of Mars Landing Module returns astronauts to ROMBUS parent in Martian orbit for return to Earth.

Frontiers of Space
Philip Bono & Kenneth Gatland
Macmillan, 1969

Project Deimos at Astronautix

Image credit: Douglas

Image source: SDASM Archives

X-20 Three-View

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Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar abandoned by the US Air Force in 1963 before flight trials could begin. Although ultimately intended for launching by Titan 3C, this one-man vehicle followed principles established by the Austrian engineer Dr Eugen Stänger a quarter of a century before. The project played an important part in developing aerodynamic and structural techniques for new-generation space-craft capable of maneuvering after re-entry from orbit. Length 35 ft (10.7m.) wingspan 20 ft (6.09m.); height (with wire-brush landing skis retracted) 8 ft (2.4m.).

Frontiers of Space
Philip Bono & Kenneth Gatland
Macmillan, 1969

X-20 Dyno-Soar at Astronautix

Image credit: Macmillan

Image source: Numbers Station

Four Space-Shuttle Concepts

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Here are examples of tentative designs for a space shuttle, made public by members of the four industrial teams competing in the project:

  1. McDonnell Douglas/Marietta
  2. Boeing/Lockheed
  3. North American/General Dynamics
  4. Grumman Aerospace

Each of pictured space-shuttle versions is a composite craft consisting of two stages, a booster and an orbiter, and is launched vertically like a space rocket, as shown. It’s two stages separate in space, and both return to earth for re-use.

Image credit: Robert McCall

Text and Images: Popular Science

For spacemen. And earth families.

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This silent morning, on Space Shuttle #28, breakfast will probably begin with Tang.

Imagine a spaceship that carries 12 passengers and lands as easily as an airplane. It will be ferrying back and forth to space by the late 1970’s.
And if the future is like the present, Tang will be there in its galley. Just as it’s on your kitchen table.
Nutritious, orange-flavored Tang. The instant breakfast drink with more Vitamin C than orange juice.
No matter where you are.

Tang. For spacemen. And earth families.

Shuttle Program at Astronautix

Image credit: Convair

Image source: Numbers Station

The Next Steps

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Inside the cockpit of a shuttlecraft, with the pilot and co-pilot preparing for docking with a space station.

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The shuttlecraft docked with the station -in this case a top docking, but a nose docking is also possible. Two other shuttlecraft are seen, each of a slightly different configuration, since this scene looks forward to a time when shuttles, like aircraft today, will be specially designed according to their functions.

Our World in Space
Robert McCall & Isaac Asimov
New York Graphic Society, 1974

Image source: Numbers Station