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2005-07-12 Home Front: Tech

Interview: "Two Guys At The Vanguard:" TGV Rockets' Earl Renaud on Suborbital Spysat Replacement

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Posted by Phil Fraering 2005-07-12 12:51|| || Front Page|| [6 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Shhssssssssss
"plastics"

Posted by Shamu 2005-07-12 14:24|| 2005-07-12 14:24|| Front Page Top

#2 Not plastics.

Tinkertoys.

Posted by Phil Fraering 2005-07-12 15:08|| http://newsfromthefridge.typepad.com]">[http://newsfromthefridge.typepad.com] 2005-07-12 15:08|| Front Page Top

#3 I wonder if we're related? I (Gary Renaud) work for Raytheon. My brother (Alan Renaud) works for Lock-Mart. Maybe rocketeering runs in the family.

Posted by Jackal">Jackal 2005-07-12 19:25|| home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]">[home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html] 2005-07-12 19:25|| Front Page Top

#4 As worthwhile as Renaud's proposal is, he is being less than honest in this passage:

TSR: What youâre saying is that the guys who did these orbital satellites had this low tech low cost option that they just could have taken their X-15 or their sounding rockets, and made something reusable out of it and done this instead of the national fleet of satellites? Wouldnât that be cheaper for all the theater support?

Renaud: Not really. Thereâs a problem with glass. To get decent sub-meter resolution imagery from 80 kilometers up you are not talking about something the size of a coffee can. A Black Brant can launch a coffee can. Youâre talking about something the size of your desk or two desks. Youâre talking about a meter aperture piece of glassâhigh gain optics. A large sized CCD, solid-state storage, powerâ

TSR: You are basically lofting an observatory.

Renaud: You are lofting a ton of stuff, literally a ton of material.

As part of the background for one of my alternate history projects, I researched this very possibility; eg sub-orbital reconnaisance vehicles at a comparatively early date.
During the Second World War, German A-4 ("V-2") rockets routinely lifted their 1 ton payloads of explosive to 100 km altitude and could have bettered this if trajectories had been optimized for altitude rather than range. During research flights after the war, captured A-4s did in fact reach much higher altitudes.
The Redstone rockets that launched the first 2 American astronauts on their suborbital flights were advanced derivatives of the A-4. The Mercury capsule used on these flights weighed not one, but two tons. Redstone itself was an Army MRBM, designed for mobile field operation, and was succesfully deployed as such.

The first US reconnaisance satellite, Discoverer (actually KH 1-5) had nothing like the kind of optics that Reynaud descrives as necessary for this kind of operation. The system was quite successful in terms of its optical performance and was within the payload capacity of a Redstone.

The X-15 was probably not flexible enough for recce missions, but its successor, the X-20 Dyan-Soar, definitely was. It was intended for orbital flight, with a very large booster, the Titan 3C. A much enhanced Discoverer optical package was one of the intended payloads. In a suborbital mode, the X-20 would have required only the addition of a reusable engine (already available) and relatively modest jettisonable propellant tanks similar to those used on some X-15 flights. This would have been a modest re-arrangement from the orbital configuration (engine and tanks in a throw-away stage) shown at the links.
Sub-orbital missions would have been air-launched from a B-52, though ground launch was possible with a solid propellant booster of fairly modest dimensions. On steep trajectory oblique imaging missions, recovery would have been by a standard re-entry, followed by a spiraling glide back to the original launch point.

Additional link for X-20

Black Brant is a Canadian sounding rocket and its maximum payload is much greater than what a coffee can would hold, even if the can were filled with plutonium: 136 kg to 430 km or 408 kg to 230 km.

Posted by Atomic Conspiracy 2005-07-12 22:56|| 2005-07-12 22:56|| Front Page Top

#5 Hey AC!

The first US reconnaisance satellite, Discoverer (actually KH 1-5) had nothing like the kind of optics that Reynaud descrives as necessary for this kind of operation. The system was quite successful in terms of its optical performance and was within the payload capacity of a Redstone.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect this is because "Michelle" is meant to look fairly "off track" according to the article.

Posted by Phil Fraering 2005-07-12 23:14|| http://newsfromthefridge.typepad.com]">[http://newsfromthefridge.typepad.com] 2005-07-12 23:14|| Front Page Top

#6 I'm involved in the overhead imaging business myself.
A friend of mine is a professional photog and takes pictures of construction sites and the like. He uses a Grumman Lynx for this. We fly to the designated point at the specified altitude (ususally 1200 AGL), then he opens the canopy, leans out, and takes the pictures with a really fancy 35mm professional camera of some sort. My job is to fly the plane while he is doing this. It's a lot of fun and involves some pretty decent flying, to hold the needed altitude and bank angle while avoiding those annoying broadcast towers that seem to litter the ground around here like so many giant punji stakes.

Yesterday, this led to an encounter with probably the most careless Lubbock driver I have yet seen, and that's saying a lot.
A truck pulled onto the runway just as we were on final at the little country airstrip that serves as our base. We were a few hundred feet downwind and about 60 feet high when the truck careened off a taxiway and drove right into the middle of the active. I hit the throttle and went around. I think we cleared the heedless fool by about 30 feet. The canopy was closed or I would have given him the finger as we went by. I am sure we got his attention anyway. He had disappeared entirely by the time we came back around a couple of minutes later.
Not quite KH-12 stuff.

Posted by Atomic Conspiracy 2005-07-12 23:41|| 2005-07-12 23:41|| Front Page Top

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