Geek Trivia: Before the age of the Dyna-Soar

by Jay Garmon | Nov 08, 2005 6:29:00 PM

Tags: Jay Garmon, X-20 Dyna-Soar, Geek Trivia Newsletter

Takeaway: What World War II spacecraft concept served as the inspiration for the influential x-20 Dyna-Soar project?

So how many people out there are, like me, a big fan of the movie Real Genius, which starred Val Kilmer as a teenaged physics prodigy unknowingly working on a secret military super-weapon? For all those who raised their hands, do you remember the opening sequence of the film, where a bunch of shadowy government agents watch a demonstration film of the super-weapon�a one-man space plane called Crossbow�using a laser to vaporize a victim from orbit?

Here's the freaky factoid of the day: Take away the laser, and that whole scene stopped being science fiction sometime in the late 1950s. Why? Because the U.S. military was working on a multifunction rocket plane way back then�well before the civilian space shuttle was on the drawing board or NASA itself existed.

The United States Air Force launched the X-20 Dyna-Soar project on Oct. 24, 1957, almost a full year before President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, which created NASA. Conceived as a multifunction space plane, the Dyna-Soar (short for Dynamic Soarer) was capable of reaching the far side of the globe at record speeds and altitudes.

Launched vertically atop a Titan rocket, yet able to glide-land at any U.S.-controlled air base, such a craft could theoretically perform surveillance and attack missions against both orbital and surface threats, effectively making outer space the newest theater of operations in global conflicts.

Project Dyna-Soar continued for six years, absorbing competing U.S. military space plane efforts such as Project Robo (an orbital bomber) and Project Brass Bell (an orbital spy plane), all the while competing for funding and political backing with NASA's civilian space efforts. In late 1963, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara declared the winner of that contest by canceling the Dyna-Soar project, just as construction of the actual spacecraft had begun.

Many space aficionados still lament that decision. Much of the Dyna-Soar design was ahead of its time, and certain aspects of the research that went into the development of the X-20 influenced the design of the civilian space shuttle.

Yet for all the allure and influence accorded to the X-20 project, even the Dyna-Soar had an ancestor�a visionary World War II spacecraft concept that paved the way for almost every major military space plane project since the 1950s.

WHAT WORLD WAR II SPACECRAFT CONCEPT SERVED AS THE INSPIRATION FOR THE INFLUENTIAL X-20 DYNA-SOAR PROJECT?

What World War II spacecraft concept served as the inspiration and technical ancestor of the United States Air Force's unrealized X-20 Dyna-Soar space plane, the latter being in many respects a precursor of the modern space shuttle?

The German Silbervogel project, conceived by Eugen Sanger and Irene Bredt, is arguably the granddaddy of all modern space plane designs�and the unquestioned inspiration for the X-20 Dyna-Soar project. The Silbervogel (which translates to Silverbird) was one of several Nazi projects known as Amerika Bombers�long-range aircraft that could complete bombing runs on the continental United States from Germany.

The Silbervogel design was significant because it combined rocket technology with conventional lift-body aircraft principles. While the Silbervogel was neither the first nor only design to combine these two concepts, it is perhaps the most influential.

Under Sanger and Bredt's conception, the Silbervogel would have launched via rocket sled on a monorail track. Once airborne, it would have fired its own rocket engines to skip across the upper atmosphere, finally arriving above its target on the other side of the world. Though intended to be a reusable craft, the Silbervogel was in many ways an unofficial precursor of contemporary cruise missiles.

When Walter Dornberger, former head of the German army's World War II-era rocket program, emigrated to the United States and began work on America's military rocket program, he brought knowledge of the Silbervogel with him. His advocacy of a so-called antipodal bomber planted the seed for the Dyna-Soar project, and Dornberger himself was a key part of the Bell Aircraft X-20 design team, ensuring the Silbervogel influence.

While the Dyna-Soar would have launched vertically atop a conventional multistage rocket�rather than horizontally like the Silbervogel�both the X-20 and the Silverbird would have used passive glide reentry, a technique that the space shuttle eventually put into practice. (However, X-20 experiments suggested that 1960s-era rubber wheels wouldn't survive reentry heat, so the Dyna-Soar would have skidded to landings on retractable alloy skis.)

As such, you can follow back from space shuttle to Dyna-Soar to Silbervogel to trace out a general space plane ancestry�and some high-flying Geek Trivia.

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The Quibble of the Week

If you uncover a questionable fact or debatable aspect of this week's Geek Trivia, just post it in the discussion area of the article. Every week, yours truly will choose the best post from the assembled masses and discuss it in the next edition of Geek Trivia.

Once again, this week's quibble comes from the October 5 edition of Geek Trivia, "Full (moon) circle." TechRepublic member Hansenmic exposed my painful ministrations with the English language.

"The article describes the CEV as as-yet-built, which implies the vehicle has been built�to me at least. That should be as-yet-unbuilt, shouldn't it?"

Yes, it should have been, and I seem to remember writing it that way, so I'm going to blame this one on fat-fingering the spell checker. In any case, I do apologize, so keep those quibbles coming.

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The Trivia Geek, also known as Jay Garmon, is a former advertising copywriter and Web developer who's duped TechRepublic into underwriting his affinity for movies, sci-fi, comic books, technology, and all things geekish or subcultural.

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