Blackstar (spacecraft) - The Blackstar System

The Blackstar System

Aviation Week describes Blackstar as a two stage to orbit system, comprising a high-speed jet "mothership" aircraft (which Aviation Week referred to as the SR-3). Its description of SR-3 is similar to the North American B-70 Valkyrie Mach 3 strategic bomber, and to patents filed in the 1980s by Boeing. The SR-3 would carry a second, smaller airframe, codenamed the XOV (eXperimental Orbital Vehicle) underneath, between its two laterally separated engine-banks, containing each 2 or 3 engines. This rocket-powered spaceplane, with similarities to the X-20 Dyna-Soar project, would be released by its mothership at an altitude of around 100,000 feet. The XOV would then light its rocket motor (aerospike engines, similar to those used by the Lockheed Martin X-33), and could achieve both suborbital and orbital flight; one source quoted by Aviation Week estimates the XOV could reach an orbit of 300 miles (480 km) above the Earth, depending on payload and mission profile. The XOV would then reenter the atmosphere and glide back to any landing site where it would land horizontally on a conventional runway. This combination of jet-powered mothership and a smaller rocket-powered spaceplane resembles the civilian Tier One spaceplane system as well as NASA's X-15, but capable of much higher velocities and of thus attaining orbit. Readers are cautioned to examine the challenges involved in supersonic separation of vehicles as opposed to the more common subsonic separation of ordnance from aircraft, but this separation from the belly might be easier than from the top, which proved to be problematic on the Lockheed D-21/M-21.