ASSET (spacecraft)

ASSET
Preserved ASSET vehicle at USAF Museum, Dayton, Ohio
Role Spaceplane research — never flew beyond Earth's atmosphere
Manufacturer McDonnell Aircraft
First flight September 18, 1963
Status Museum piece
Primary user United States Air Force
Number built 6
Developed from Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar
Variants Winged Gemini
ASSET pre-launch checkout.
ASSET-Thor combination on Pad 17B.

ASSET, or Aerothermodynamic Elastic Structural Systems Environmental Tests was an experimental US space project involving the testing of an unmanned sub-scale reentry vehicle.

Development and Testing

Begun in 1960, ASSET was originally designed to verify the superalloy heat shield of the X-20 Dyna-Soar prior to full-scale manned flights. The vehicle's biconic shape and low delta wing were intended to represent Dyna-Soar's forward nose section, where the aerodynamic heating would be the most intense; in excess of an estimated 2200 °C (4,000 °F) at the nose cap. Following the X-20 program's cancellation in December 1963, completed ASSET vehicles were used in reentry heating and structural investigations with hopes that data gathered would be useful for the development of future space vehicles, such as the Space Shuttle.

Built by McDonnell, each vehicle was launched on a suborbital trajectory from Cape Canaveral's Pad 17B at speeds of up to 6,000 m/s before making a water landing in the South Atlantic near Ascension Island. Originally, a Scout launch vehicle had been planned for the tests, but this was changed after a large surplus of Thor and Thor-Delta missiles (returned from deployment in the United Kingdom) became available.

Of the six vehicles built, only one was successfully recovered and is currently on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.[1]

Flights

Mission Launch Date Apogee Max. Speed Result Disposition
ASSET 1September 18, 196362 km4,906 m/sSurvived reentry; flotation equipment malfunctioned, preventing planned recovery.Sunk in Atlantic.
ASSET 2March 24, 196455 kmLaunch vehicle upper stage malfunction; vehicle self-destruct mechanism activated post-separation. Mission failed.Destroyed.
ASSET 3July 22, 196471 km5,500 m/sSurvived reentry; all mission goals met.Recovered 12 hours after launch. Preserved.
ASSET 4October 28, 196450 km4,000 m/sSurvived reentry; all mission goals met; recovery not planned.Sunk in Atlantic.
ASSET 5December 9, 196453 km4,000 m/sSurvived reentry; all mission goals met; recovery not planned.Sunk in Atlantic.
ASSET 6February 23, 196570 km6,000 m/sSurvived reentry; flotation equipment malfunctioned, preventing planned recovery.Sunk in Atlantic.

Specifications

ASSET 3-view

General characteristics

Performance

Related content

Comparable Aircraft

Winged Gemini

In the mid-1960s, McDonnell proposed a variant of the Gemini capsule which retained the original spacecraft's internal subsystems and crew compartment, but dispensed with the tail-first ballistic reentry, parachute recovery and water landing.

Instead, the vehicle would be heavily modified externally into an ASSET-like lifting-reentry configuration. Post-reentry, a pair of stowed swing-wings would be deployed, giving the spacecraft sufficient L/D to make a piloted glide landing on a concrete runway using a skid-type landing gear (reinstated from the planned, but cancelled paraglider landing system), much like the Space Shuttle.

According to Mark Wade's Encyclopedia Astronautica, the intent seems to have been to field a manned military spaceplane at a minimal cost following the cancellation of the Dyna-Soar program.[2]

References

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