NASA Study Summary: "Performance of Low Cost S-IVB with UA-1207 SRMs LV"

[luke strawwalker]

Here's an interesting study in the "alternate Saturn derived vehicles" category from 1970 entitled "Performance of Low Cost S-IVB with UA-1207 Solid Rocket Motor for Interim Launch Vehicle" by Bellcomm, Inc. It proposed to use a cluster of UA-1207 Titan IIIC 120 inch SRMs for a first stage, but unlike many other proposals which used the S-IVB as a second stage, this one used either a single or pair of UA-1207 SRMs for a second stage, either underneath or flanking either side of the S-IVB used as a third stage. This could orbit some substantial payloads, upto over half that of Saturn V, and WELL beyond Saturn IB capabilities, if you could get past the clustering of massive numbers of large SRMs (and the infrastructure impacts, which weren't addressed at all). This vehicle was designed as a temporary stand-in from the termination of Apollo until the Shuttle became available, and presumably make it obsolete.

It's an interesting idea and would certainly make an interesting model, especially some of the larger versions, and especially if they were made with separable boosters... LOL:)

Enjoy! OL JR :)

[luke strawwalker]

Pic one is of the various configurations studied in this report. It shows the combinations of UA-1207 120 inch SRMs used to make up the first and second stages of the vehicle, topped by a 'cheap' version of the Saturn IB/V S-IVB stage acting as a third stage. Some of the configurations placed the second stage airlit SRMs on either side of the S-IVB, some placed them directly below it, surrounded by the first stage SRMs which would be dropped at staging from around it...
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Pic two is a closeup of configs 1-5... the configuration designations beside it, like 4+1, is the number of first stage SRMs and the number of second stage SRMs. How they figured on supporting nearly a million lbs each of SRM on either side of an S-IVB would have been interesting to see...
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Pic three is the larger configs 6-10... most of these exceeded the 740 psf max-Q limits of the S-IVB structure. No mention was made of structural beef-up required to the S-IVB to handle the thrust of this many SRMs at liftoff or the weight of a massively larger payload on top than the Saturn V stack handled...
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Pic four is a chart showing the performance of the various configs, and an "end view" of the stack showing how the first and second stage SRMs were to be arranged, along with the third stage S-IVB. Some of these were pretty impressive capability-wise, if the problems inherent in such designs could have been affordably overcome... Of course no mention or consideration of this problem was given in the report...
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Later! OL JR :)