{"id":3693,"date":"2025-11-19T00:56:29","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T00:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3693"},"modified":"2025-11-19T00:58:57","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T00:58:57","slug":"ftv-dyna-soar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3693","title":{"rendered":"FTV: Dyna-Soar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When I taught my students about the evolution of NASA\u2019s Manned Flight Program, I would mention a project called Dyna-Soar.\u00a0 I had read snippets about it but never knew many of the details until I read General Chuck Yeager\u2019s biography (Yeager – 1985 – C.Yeager & L.Janos – Bantam Books).\u00a0 Yeager\u2019s life and career as an Army Air Corp pilot during World War II have been topics in this space before (FTV:\u00a0 <\/span>Yeager<\/span><\/i> 4-23-25 and FTV: <\/span>\u00a0Air Combat <\/span><\/i>6-18-25).\u00a0 After he became what is commonly referred to as a \u2018Bird-Colonel\u2019 in 1967 (a name derived from the silver wings insignia worn by a full Colonel), his flying time became secondary to his new administrative position at Edwards Air Force Base in California.\u00a0 Yeager still managed to fly a lot (nothing would keep him from that) but what I found interesting about this phase of his career was an Air Force program that very few people have even heard of.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In order to put this all into perspective, we need to go back twenty years before Chuck became Col. Yeager.\u00a0 The term \u2018Space Age\u2019 was officially coined after the first artificial satellite (USSR\u2019s Sputnik) was orbited on October 4, 1957.\u00a0 Yeager notes that plans for an Air Force presence in space were being drawn up as early as 1947, shortly after he made his historic Mach 1 flight on the Bell X-1.\u00a0 The armed forces were making plans to conquer space well before humans put anything in orbit around the Earth and the \u2018Space Age\u2019 title was born.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In 1947, there wasn\u2019t an entity called NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration).\u00a0 The organization that President Eisenhower would rebrand NASA was the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA – founded in 1915).\u00a0 NACA was a federal agency whose mission was to \u2018undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research\u2019 according to our friends at WIKI.\u00a0 The Bell civilian pilots designated to try and break the sound barrier were nearing what some experts warned it might be an impenetrable \u2018wall\u2019.\u00a0 When one of the Bell pilots demanded a $100,000 stipend to undertake the dangerous task of flying the X-1 past MACH 1, finishing the job was handed off to the U.S. Air Force.\u00a0 The Air Force\u2019s choice to make the historic flight was Chuck Yeager.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Air Force think tank began pondering what the next advancement in aviation would be in light of the successful breaching of the sound barrier.\u00a0 Like many of his accomplishments, Yeager\u2019s entry into the Space Race was through the back door.\u00a0 It all started when his good friend (and pioneering woman aviator) Jackie Cochran approached the Air Force Chief of Staff and requested Chuck\u2019s presence at an aviation conference in Spain.\u00a0 The purpose of the meeting was to finalize the criteria used to determine aviation records.\u00a0 Cochran told General Tommy White, \u201cYeager is the only one who the Russians respect for his experience in high-speed airplanes.\u00a0 He can explain the problems and get them to agree.\u201d\u00a0 Gen. White said, \u201cI don\u2019t see why Chuck can\u2019t go,\u201d and he wired the War College test pilot school (where Yeager was taking advanced courses relating to the newer high-speed jets).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the War College commandant refused the request, White pulled rank:\u00a0 \u201cPublish orders on Yeager in my name and send him.\u201d\u00a0 Yeager spent his test pilot school time well flying every plane he could\u00a0 (\u201cNot playing golf like the younger guys,\u201d he said) so even with his trip to Spain, he passed with the highest marks.\u00a0 \u201cThe school never forgave me,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I went with Jackie to Madrid and we got everything jelled on the FAI records, including a Russian agreement to recognize fifty-miles high as \u2018space\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 Yeager looks back at this time period and says whether he knew it then or not, these were his first steps toward his later role training Air Force pilots to fly in space.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After WWII, Yeager had been assigned as a test-pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in California where they were testing the first research rocket aircraft, the Bell X-1.\u00a0 After breaking the MACH 1 barrier, he went on to be the first to fly at MACH 2 in the next generation Bell X-1A on December 12, 1953.\u00a0 He was later deployed in Germany at Hahn Air Base, then to George AFB in California, and later to Moron AFB in Spain.\u00a0 In spite of \u2018skipping school\u2019 to go to Spain with Jackie Cochran, he graduated from the Air War College at Maxwell AFB, Alabama in June of 1961.\u00a0 He was named commandant of the Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards AFB in July of 1962.\u00a0 At ARPS, he was put in charge of training all military astronauts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Air Force wasn\u2019t interested in going to the Moon.\u00a0 They viewed space as an opportunity to train pilots to be pioneers on the next frontier.\u00a0 They wanted to put the first men in space, and according to Yeager, \u201cWe had plans on the board since 1947 for orbiting military space stations manned with our own (Air Force) astronauts.\u00a0 We knew the Russians had similar plans and we aimed to beat them to it.\u00a0 All we needed was a green light from Congress and the White House.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The only thing stopping them was the curveball President Eisenhower pitched them – he put the United States Space Program in civilian hands when he converted NACA into NASA in 1958.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Air Force plans were ambitious.\u00a0 Yeager described the ARP school:\u00a0 \u201cIt was a historic first step for putting the Air Force in space.\u00a0 At that point, little was known about the rigors of space travel and the ability of astronauts to sustain long periods of weightlessness.\u00a0 These unknowns awaited future testing and evaluation, but in the meantime, we decided to train a first generation of military aerospace pilots in the highly precise and disciplined flying demanded by orbiting space labs and transportable shuttles.\u00a0 The course work was high-powered engineering\u00a0 and flight mechanics, and the training would preview the new techniques needed to fly in space.\u201d\u00a0 Yeager left the heavy lifting (the academic part of the curriculum) to his instructors while he managed the program and made sure he flew with every pilot to assess their skills.\u00a0 He had flown to the edge of space in the Bell X-1A and his high profile name gave him the leverage he needed to equip ARP school with the best equipment.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Air Force brass were not keen on giving up their shot at space to a bunch of civilians so they were receptive to what Yeager said they needed.\u00a0 He requested a computerized space mission simulator to expose the students to a space environment.\u00a0 \u201cWe received four million dollars to convert three Lockheed Starfighters, the F 104,\u201d Yeager recounted.\u00a0 \u201cWe equipped them with six-thousand-pound thrust rocket engines and hydrogen peroxide reaction controls on the nose and wings – the cheapest way we knew to give a student a minute and a half of zero-Gs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The airplane would get him up to 100,000 feet in an inflated pressure suit, and he could practice maneuvering with his reaction controls just as if he were in a space capsule.\u201d\u00a0 His staff of thirty included instructors Frank Borman, Tom Stafford, and Jim McDivitt who would all go on to join NASA\u2019s astronaut corps.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The program was swamped with applicants and the enrollees were pretty much cream of the crop Air Force pilots.\u00a0 Make no mistake – the training was also dangerous:\u00a0 \u201cAfter graduating, Major Mike Adams had the chance to fly the new X-15 or become an astronaut.\u00a0 He chose the X-15 but was killed in it a few years later.\u00a0 Another notable graduate turned astronaut was Col. Dave Scott. It was Scott who took over the controls on Gemini VIII when he and Neil Armstrong went into an uncontrollable tumble due to a stuck thruster.\u00a0 David took over and righted that thing and got them back safely.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Yeager remembered an incident at the flight school when Scott and Adams were flying a two seater together:\u00a0 \u201cThey were running low-lift drag ratio landings where they came in at a very steep angle and needed to flare the airplane, give it power, and go around and shoot another steep landing.\u00a0 On one of these runs, they lost their engine.\u00a0 The airplane hit the ground with a bash,\u00a0 Mike Adams in the back seat ejected just before that thing hit, but David Scott didn\u2019t.\u00a0 It was amazing to me:\u00a0 both guys made a split second decision that was absolutely correct.\u00a0 And both were opposite courses of action. The rear cockpit crunched and if Mike had stayed he would have been killed.\u00a0 If David had punched out, he would have been killed because when he hit, his seat was cocked sideways.\u00a0 To me, that incident indicated their capability and future.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The program hoped to produce the pilots who, within seven or eight years, would be manning labs in orbit, experimenting with lasers and particle beam weapons, and be ready to fly the X-20 Dyna-Soar (short for Dynamic Soarer).\u00a0 This rocket plane was designed to be a lifting body.\u00a0 A\u00a0 precursor of the Space Shuttle, it would be rocketed into orbit and then return to Earth not by parachuting into the ocean, but flying back to a runway landing.\u00a0 The development program for the X-20 ran from October 1957 to December 1963.\u00a0 It was slated to be a multi-mission spacecraft capable of aerial reconnaissance, bombing, space rescue, satellite maintenance, and act as a space interceptor that could sabotage enemy satellites.\u00a0 The Air Force spent $660 million on its development (equivalent to $6.78 billion in today\u2019s dollars).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The concept for this craft was actually conceived in WWII Germany by Eugen Sanger and Irene Bredt for a program they called <\/span>Silbervogel<\/span><\/i> (\u2018Silver Bird\u2019).\u00a0 It was designed to be a rocket powered bomber that would cross the Atlantic at high altitude and bomb New York City.\u00a0 It would continue on and land in Japanese held territory in the western Pacific.\u00a0 It would then be refueled, re-armed, and sent back over the United States for another bombing run before returning to Germany.\u00a0 The German High Command never warmed up to the project, preferring V-1 and V-2 rockets instead.\u00a0 After the war, analysis of the design plans found a computational error that underestimated the heat load the <\/span>Silbervogel<\/span><\/i> would have generated re-entering the upper atmosphere.\u00a0 The heat load generated would have destroyed it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Seven astronauts were secretly picked to train for the Dyna-Soar program, one of whom was future Moon walker Neil Armstrong.\u00a0 Dyna-Soar was hampered by three problems – funding issues, uncertainty over which booster would be used to put the craft in orbit, and the lack of a clear goal or mission for the craft.\u00a0 Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara eventually pulled the plug.\u00a0 The day the Dyna-Soar went the way of the dinosaurs, the Manned Orbiting Laboratory was announced.\u00a0 This was advertised as a \u2018science platform\u2019 but the Air Force really wanted a manned spy satellite.\u00a0 When the technology was developed to build better cameras that could do the same job from orbit without a human presence, the MOL was also scrapped.\u00a0 Even with these cuts, the Air Force still wasn\u2019t out of the space game so the Edward\u2019s AFB training program continued.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The X-15 program kept gathering data about high-speed flight until 1968.\u00a0 The last X-15 flights ended about the time Apollo 8 made their historic circum-Lunar flight in December of that year.\u00a0 The Apollo program succeeded in putting twelve sets of human footprints as well as\u00a0 Lunar Rover tire tracks on the Moon.\u00a0 With congress getting jumpy about the cost of the program, the last three Apollo flights were canceled.\u00a0 With the program being wound down, Eugene Cernan ended up being the last human to stand on the Moon\u2019s surface on the Apollo 17 mission.\u00a0 After the Apollo 11 flight, public apathy about space flight was becoming apparent.\u00a0 There was a resurgence of interest when NASA fought successfully to return the crew of Apollo 13 to Earth after an oxygen tank exploded in the Service Module section.\u00a0 They were already \u00a0 halfway to the Moon and returning the crew safely branded the flight \u2018a successful failure\u2019.\u00a0 Even though the science being done during the next flights was impressive, Congress got cold feet about the cost.\u00a0 As soon as the last Apollo mission was launched, pink slips began appearing for people whose labors had made the Moon landing program a success.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0NASA administrator James Webb had seen to it that President Kennedy\u2019s pledge to reach the Moon was met.\u00a0 When Webb retired, Thomas Paine, his deputy, took the reins.\u00a0 He was not about to let the end of Apollo define the future of NASA.\u00a0 He laid out an agenda that called for new directions in the space program.\u00a0 Paine\u2019s plan included an orbiting space station, a Moon base, and a three part \u2018Space Transportation System\u2019 that would include a \u2018space tug\u2019 to ferry astronauts to the Lunar surface.\u00a0 There was even talk of manned missions to Mars.\u00a0 Noting the expense of the \u2018one and done\u2019 vehicles used up to then, Paine envisioned a reusable vehicle that would have a fast turn around and be cheaper to operate.\u00a0 The only thing Paine didn\u2019t plan for was the political climate.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t a space fan like Kennedy cheerleading and pushing the program any more.\u00a0 Richard Nixon, a president with little interest in the space program and a bent toward penny-pinching, was now the anchor holding NASA back.\u00a0 Getting to the Moon was fine, but the American public showed little interest in sending men to Mars.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Paine had to abandon Moon bases, nuclear powered rockets, and the space tug.\u00a0 The future of NASA was condensed to the \u2018next\u2019 vehicle on the drawing board.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t even on the drawing board yet, but Paine turned to one of NASA\u2019s best designers to develop what would eventually be called the Space Shuttle.\u00a0 The first thing Max Faget did was craft a model using the \u2018lifting body\u2019 design first envisioned for the<\/span> German<\/span> Silbervogel <\/span><\/i>bomber.\u00a0 Max built the model and showed it to his design team in a window-less hanger named Building 36.\u00a0 He held it aloft and flew it across the room in an arrow straight path.\u00a0 To the astonishment of all present, he then tipped it sixty degrees toward the ceiling and repeated the flight.\u00a0 Everyone understood what they saw – this craft would be able to push through the upper atmosphere with a profile that would not generate as much heat as the capsules he had previously designed or the flawed <\/span>Silbervogel <\/span><\/i>craft that was never built.\u00a0 Now the NASA design team just needed to draw up plans for a full size orbiter using the concept of a lifting body.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The first plan was grandiose.\u00a0 A Boeing 747 size piloted craft would boost a smaller lifting body to an altitude where it could climb to orbit.\u00a0 Both the booster and orbiter would return to a runway landing and be totally reusable.\u00a0 It was ingenious and Paine wanted it flying by 1975,\u00a0 but the $14 billion price tag wasn\u2019t going to fly.\u00a0 Many versions of the concept were prepared, and ironically, the Air Force managed to be the deciding voice in shaping the new Space Shuttle.\u00a0 They insisted the bus-sized surveillance satellites they wanted to orbit (big enough to carry 27 miles of film) needed to fit in the cargo bay.\u00a0 The ultimate size and weight of the orbiter was the determining factor in the use of two solid fuel boosters to get it off the pad.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Solid fuel rockets had never been used for manned flights, but they were cheaper than liquid fuel boosters.\u00a0 They could not be shut down once fired but, unlike the external fuel tank, they were reusable.\u00a0 Examination of the O-ring seals between the booster segments showed evidence that they did not seal completely in the first seconds after they were ignited.\u00a0 Cold weather compounded this problem and the blow through created when the cold O-rings did not seal right away led to the the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger and crew on January 28, 1986.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The final design of the Space Shuttle was inspired by the <\/span>Silbervogel, <\/span><\/i>but the end product was driven by budget cuts and compromises.\u00a0 It was the most complex flying machine ever created.\u00a0 If\u00a0 NASA had not opted to use the simpler space capsule design in the early 1960s (to get astronauts into space sooner than later), America might have had an operational space plane much earlier.\u00a0 The routine space truck missions never materialized and when the Space Shuttle was retired, conventional booster rocket \/ space capsule technology again became the path to space.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the Shuttle was decommissioned before NASA had a suitable replacement meaning the USA had to purchase rides to the International Space Station from the Russian space program.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It is hard to say if the Dyna-Soar would have been a better \u2018space truck\u2019 than the Space Shuttle.\u00a0 When Dyna-Soar was scrapped and the Shuttle fleet was decommissioned, the question became moot.\u00a0 The lack of governmental support opened the door for companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin to fill the role previously pioneered by the U.S. Air Force and NASA.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Okay, the Dyna-Soar would have gone higher than 8 miles, but we will settle for The Byrds last appearance on American Band Stand before David Crosby got himself fired!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When I taught my students about the evolution of NASA\u2019s Manned Flight Program, I would mention a project called Dyna-Soar.\u00a0 I had read snippets about it but never knew many of the details until I read General Chuck Yeager\u2019s biography (Yeager – 1985 – C.Yeager & L.Janos – Bantam Books).\u00a0 Yeager\u2019s life and career […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3693"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3696,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3693\/revisions\/3696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}