19571776 Club
Three Weeks After Sputnik, the Air Force Merges Three Studies Into One Space Plane Program
Three rival hypersonic studies are folded into Weapon System 464L, a winged spacecraft meant to succeed the X-15.
Sputnik had been circling the globe for three weeks, and the Air Force had no answer of its own yet in orbit. On October 24, 1957, the Air Research and Development Command consolidated three separate hypersonic studies, Hywards, Brass Bell, and Robo, into a single effort called Dyna-Soar, designated Weapon System 464L. The plan called for a piloted vehicle that could fly at ICBM speeds, reach orbit, and glide back to a runway landing like an airplane. It was conceived as the direct successor to the X-15 rocket plane program…
