BAC Mustard

Multi-Unit Space Transport And Recovery Device
Manufacturer British Aircraft Corporation
Country of origin UK
Size
Height 118 feet 0 inches (35.97 m)
Diameter 13 feet 1 inch (3.99 m)
Mass 424,270 kilograms (935,360 lb)
Stages 2
Launch history
Status Cancelled
Total launches 0
stage
Engines 1
Thrust 162,963 kilograms (359,272 lb)
Specific impulse 405
Burn time 215 seconds
Fuel LOX/LH2

The Multi-Unit Space Transport And Recovery Device or MUSTARD, usually written as Mustard, was a concept explored by the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) during the mid-1960s for launching payloads weighing as much as 2,300 kg (5,000 lb) into orbit. Operating as a multi-stage rocket for launch, the individual stages were near-identical modules, each flying back to land as a spaceplane.

History

British interest in re-usable space vehicles started life under English Electric at Warton, Lancashire, UK, as part of a government-sponsored series of wider studies into high-speed vehicles and sub-orbital spaceplanes. Their aerospace activities were later merged with other firms to form BAC. American influence had already been seen, but now BAC studied the various transatlantic projects with greater interest. The Douglas Astro in particular impressed them and around the beginning of 1964 they took it as the starting point for their own clustered design, which they called the Multi-Unit Space Transport And Recovery Device or MUSTARD, but it was usually written simply as Mustard.

The last major design study was drawn up early in 1967 and the project continued at a lower level until it was finally terminated in 1970 by the British government's decision to participate in the new American post-Apollo project. Key Mustard project staff spent the first two years of the 1970s at North American Rockwell contributing to the initial study which would eventually lead to the Space Shuttle. By then the prospect of collaboration had faded and, with UK government interest also gone, the Mustard project was terminated.

BAC was itself later merged into British Aerospace (B.Ae) and when the HOTOL project arose in 1984 it was moved to Warton to take advantage of the expertise built up during the Mustard project.[1]

Design

Modules

Mustard was a modular re-usable space launch system, comprising multiple copies of a single vehicle design, each of which was configured for a different role as a booster stage or an orbital spaceplane. The core vehicle design followed the Douglas Astro delta-winged reusable vehicle, as would the later US Space Shuttle, in being a vertically-launched rocket with integral wings so that it landed horizontally as an aeroplane.[1][2][3] The design team was led by Tom Smith, Chief of the Aerospace Department at BAC.[4]

The design evolved through a total of fifteen proposed variants or schemes, each typically comprising a deep-keeled lifting-body airframe with delta wings in a smooth blended wing body layout, with twin tail fins rising from the wing tips and canted outwards. Some early variants had a compound-delta wing with inboard tail fins. Power was provided by anything from one to four rocket engines in the rear fuselage.

There were two primary vehicle configurations, respectively for the orbiter and booster stages. The orbiter could be manned and had ducting to receive fuel from the boosters. The boosters were unmanned and incorporated systems to pump fuel across to the orbiter or to each other. In this way the orbiter could remain fully topped-up for its long orbital injection flight, while all the vehicles could have a standard design of fuel tank.

Clustering and stacking

Various clustering and stacking arrangements were explored. Where the Astro had launched as a two-stage step-rocket with the booster much larger than the orbiter, Mustard comprised from three to five similar-sized modules.

Early studies focused around a vehicle with a shallow 120° "vee" underside to both body and wings, so that three could be clustered in a triangle. Some included a fourth, orbital vehicle mounted on top of three boosters. The most efficient regime was to empty one booster at a time, keeping the others topped up for as long as possible, so that the first-stage booster could be dropped as soon as possible. The three boosters would be emptied in turn. But this led to an asymmetric mass loading which BAC believed to be a significant problem, so later designs used a sideways stacking system in which flatter modules were stacked more like sheets of paper.[1]

At 150,000 to 200,000 ft (46,000 to 61,000 m), at around 30 nautical miles, the last of the booster units would separate and land like aircraft.

The spacecraft would place its payload into orbit at around 1000 nautical miles, after 10 minutes from launch, and then return in a like manner.

See also

References

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Sharp (2016)
  2. ↑ "BAC MUSTARD Project Artwork Archive", Britain in Space, Archived 26 September 2012 at the Wayback Machine.
  3. ↑ "Space Transporters for Europe?", Flight International, 10 March 1966, p.402.
  4. ↑ "Economical Space Transport", Flight International, 24 March 1966, p.473.

Bibliography

  • Sharp, Dan; British Secret Projects 5: Britain's Space Shuttle, Crécy, 2016.
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