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ATV
Credit - Gary Hudson
Other Designations: ATV. Class: Manned. Type: Spacecraft. Destination: Maximum Payload Orbit. Nation: USA. Manufacturer: Huntsville.

George Detko of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center produced a design for a minimum SSTO VTOVL vehicle in 1972. The vehicle had a gross liftoff mass of only 22 metric tons, and could deliver a two-person crew to orbit.

Alternatively it could be used to deliver as a rapid response transport to deliver critical goods anywhere on earth within 30 minutes. The design was refined by Gary Hudson and Tom A Brosz and renamed the 'Aerospike Test Vehicle'. This was the precursor of Hudson's smaller Phoenix designs, notably the Phoenix L (light) and Phoenix L-Prime.

Crew Size: 2. Mass: 22,000 kg (48,000 lb).

Bibliography:

  • Hudson, Gary C, History of the Phoenix VTOL SSTO and Recent Developments in Single-Stage Launch Systems, AAS 91-643, included in Proceedings of 5th ISCOPS, AAS Vol. 77, pp 329-351, November 1991.
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