Given that it was successfully tested as far back as 1952,
should private aerospace firms be considering using “rockoons” as an economical
way to launch payloads into Earth orbit?
By: Ringo Bones
As far back as the end of World War II, every well-informed
rocketeer / aerospace engineer knows that it takes 100-lb. of fuel to put 1-lb.
of payload into Earth orbit. And rocket fuel didn’t get any cheaper since the
years when the U.S. government desperately wants to send the first artificial
satellite into orbit. Fast forward to the second decade of the 21st
Century where it is now economically viable for privately-owned aerospace firms
to play the role as contractors to send payloads to earth orbit – as into the
International Space Station – in an economically viable manner. Does this mean
that “aerospace contractors” should be considering a technique from the 1950s
to “cheaply” launch payloads into Earth orbit via “rockoons” or balloon-born
rockets?
Back in the early 1950s where the U.S. government was very
desperate to beat the then Soviet Union to be the first to launch the first
artificial satellite, various payload launching techniques from the whimsical
to the sublime, were considered. Among the many experimental rocket techniques
tried by the scientists who worked at White Sands at the time was the
adaptation of a proposal long discussed by rocket pioneers but never before
tested. Dr. James A. Van Allen revived the idea and proposed for actually
testing it. Dr. Van Allen proposed using a balloon to carry a rocket – or a
rocket-type launch vehicle – into the thin upper atmosphere, and launching the
missile from there. A rocket so fired would be spared the difficult flight
through the dense part of the atmosphere, and would therefore achieve a much
greater altitude. Dr. Van Allen assigned the name “rockoon” to this device.
Then in 1952, a test launch was performed that performed
extremely well and scaled-up rockets up to 13 feet long were launched in this
fashion. In fact it was so successful that for a time scientists seriously
considered using balloons to carry large three-stage rockets aloft for the
purpose of putting a satellite into orbit. By 1955, tenured “rocketeers” even
proposed a rockoon system that carried a 13,500-pound rocket to 15 miles via
balloon before firing the first-stage engines. The first stage would drive the
payload to 20 miles, the second to 200 and the third would put a 30-pound
payload into orbit. Sadly, the idea was dropped when better rocket boosters
were developed several years later. But does this mean that the concept is
flawed form an economic standpoint?
The two most iconic aircraft of historical significance in
the annals of aviation were carried to the upper atmosphere to lessen their
burden of achieving the speed records they are pursuing. The first aircraft to
break the sound barrier – the Bell X-1 – was dropped from a B-29 mother ship at
35, 000-feet before it can achieve the feat of flying faster than the speed of
sound; as with the X-15 which was carried to 35,000 feet by its B-52 mother
ship to 35,000 feet before it can achieve a speed record of flying six times
the speed of sound. So launching rocket-propelled payloads from the vantage
point of the upper atmosphere does make sense from both an engineering and
economical standpoint.
