ASSET ( Aerothermodynamic Elastic Structural Systems Environmental Tests )

Preserved ASSET vehicle at USAF Museum, Dayton, Ohio
Function	experimental US space project involving the testing of an uncrewed sub-scale reentry vehicle .
Manufacturer	McDonnell Aircraft
Country of origin	United States
Size
Height	5 ft 9 in (1.75 m)
Width	4 ft 7 in (1.40 m)
Mass	1,190 lb (540 kg)
Launch history
Status	Retired
Launch sites	Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 17
Total launches	6
Success(es)	1
Partial failure(s)	5 (vehicles not recovered though flights were successful)
First flight	18 September 1963
Last flight	23 February 1965
[ edit on Wikidata ]

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

Development and testing [ edit ]

Begun in 1960, ASSET was originally designed to verify the superalloy heat shield of the X-20 Dyna-Soar prior to full-scale crewed 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 (4000 °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 . ^[1]

Built by McDonnell , each vehicle was launched on a suborbital trajectory from Cape Canaveral's Pad 17B at speeds of up to 6000 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. ^[2]

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 . ^[2]

Flights [ edit ]

Specifications [ edit ]

• Manoeuvring controls: Hydrogen-peroxide reaction control thrusters
• Maximum Mach no.: M25
• Downrange: 27,000 mi (23,462 nmi; 43,452 km)
• Apogee: 50 mi (43 nmi; 80 km)
• Hypersonic L/D ratio: 1:1

Related content [ edit ]

Comparable aircraft [ edit ]

• Molniya BOR-4
• Martin X-23 PRIME

Winged Gemini [ edit ]

In the mid-1960s, McDonnell proposed a variant of the Gemini capsule that 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 lift-to-drag ratio 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 crewed military spaceplane at a minimal cost following the cancellation of the Dyna-Soar program. ^[3]

References [ edit ]