Customer Reviews

Dyna-Soar: Hypersonic Strategic Weapons System: Apogee Books Space Series 35

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Our friends at Apogee books continue to peel the cobwebs away from the history of the space program and provide us all with unique insights into the workings of these pivotal programs and vehicles.

The X-20 was one of the more interesting "might have beens" in the early days of the space race and that it was never built has more to say about the inability of the Air Force and the US government to agree upon its actual role than anything inadequate about the vehicle itself. Because it was never completed and, thus, never flew, information on the Dyna Soar has always been hard to come by with only small articles and snippets of information surfacing from time to time. Here in one book is a vast compendium of copied primary source material relating to this program. Copies of reports, drawings, photographs and even, on the DVD, movie film relating to the development of this intreguing vehicle.

Those who have seen and enjoyed other titles in the Apogee line of "NASA Mission Reports" will find the same format here. If you are looking for an analytical history of the program with learned discussions of the reasonings behind the political changes that ultimately killed the program, this is not the book for you. This book is really a collection of archival papers with no modern analysis added. In many ways this is the purest way to view history as it allows the reader to make up their own mind, at least regarding the material presented.

Very highly recommended to all space and technical history fans.

Way back in my college days, I first read of the Dyna-Soar project. Dyna-Soar was being pushed then as a Fractional Orbit Bombardment System (FOBS). It was to be launched by a massive booster, go into orbit, reach its target and drop an atomic bomb on it. Then the program got cancelled.

In this book it appears that the program had no real direction. It was a space plane, it was a research vehicle, it was recon vehicle, it was a shuttle, it was part of the Apollo program. The opinion is expressed that Robert McNamara cancelled the program because no one could tell him what he was getting for the money being spent. I suspect this is true, but I also expect that this was only part of the story. At the time there was a little thing going on called the Viet Nam war that was beginning to suck up a lot of money. The Apollo program was going strong, also expensive. President Johnson wanted money for his War on Poverty. Finally, one of the Anti Missile Treaties signed by the US and the USSR prohibited FOBS.

This book covers the Dyna-Soar program through reprinting the official documentation that flowed between the Air Force, NASA and the Contractors. There is very little analysis of what happened. As a collection of documents, this is the raw material that gives the unvarnished truth.

There's room here for another book that would give more of the political aspects. Could we have built it then? Could we build it now? Maybe we should give the project to Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites - The Dyna-Soar bird looked a lot like their Space Ship One.

Our friends at Apogee books continue to peel the cobwebs away from the history of the space program and provide us all with unique insights into the workings of these pivotal programs and vehicles.

The X-20 was one of the more interesting "might have beens" in the early days of the space race and that it was never built has more to say about the inability of the Air Force and the US government to agree upon its actual role than anything inadequate about the vehicle itself. Because it was never completed and, thus, never flew, information on the Dyna Soar has always been hard to come by with only small articles and snippets of information surfacing from time to time. Here in one book is a vast compendium of copied primary source material relating to this program. Copies of reports, drawings, photographs and even, on the DVD, movie film relating to the development of this intreguing vehicle.

Those who have seen and enjoyed other titles in the Apogee line of "NASA Mission Reports" will find the same format here. If you are looking for an analytical history of the program with learned discussions of the reasonings behind the political changes that ultimately killed the program, this is not the book for you. This book is really a collection of archival papers with no modern analysis added. In many ways this is the purest way to view history as it allows the reader to make up their own mind, at least regarding the material presented.

Very highly recommended to all space and technical history fans.

Well, as usual this Apogee Book is in line with the other products. This one includes a DVD which has some very interesting not to mention rare film of the cancelled Dyna soar project. Also interesting is the de-classified reports which the Nasa mission reports does not have.

This is the most comprehensive book I've ever seen on the X-20 Dyno-Soar. It has very detailed descriptions of the research and development that was done to make this space plane a reality. It contains very interesting charts & artists conceptions of what the vehicle would have looked like. There are many photographs of mockups, test articles, and the actual me who would have flown the Dyno-Sour. The included CD contains vintage footage of the development, as well as the United States Air Force documentary about the X-20 program. I found this book a invaluable resource in my life long studies of the history of manned space flight. It really makes you wonder what could have been.

If you want a collection of historical documents, this is the book. If you were hoping for some analysis and personal insight into Dyna-Soar, we will still have to wait. I personally was very disappointed in this book, however I understand that this type of raw detail may be entertaining to others.

If you had asked someone from the aerospace industry in the mid ninteen-fifties how they thought that manned spaceflight would evolve, it's likely that they would have described something like the X-20 Dyna-Soar program. It was the logical next step beyond the X-planes of the 1946 - 1968 period, extending their performance out to orbital speeds and altitudes as part of an incremental military development program. Under other circumstances, it might have happened just like that.

Instead, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in October 1957, and turned spaceflight into one of the principal `fronts' of the Cold War. Under these conditions, there wasn't time for the measured development that the X-20 program would have called for - Instead, a ballistic approach using existing missiles was used, to get things done quickly. Also, President Eisenhower decided that the primary thrust of the American manned space program would be civilian, through the agency of NASA.

The X-20 program wasn't immediately cancelled, as a parallel military space program continued, which the X-20 would have been the flagship of. Ongoing questions about exactly what the program was intended to accomplish eventually undermined the program with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who finally cancelled Dyna-Soar in favour of the Air Force "Blue Gemini" and "Manned Orbiting Laboratory" projects, which were themselves cancelled a few years later.

Until now, the X-20 program has been pretty obscure, without a lot of published information available. This volume addresses that need. Like many of the releases from Apogee books, this isn't specifically a history of the program - rather, it is a collection of rare documents relating the program, along with a DVD of rare film on the program. If you already know some history of the X-20 program, and want to know more, then this is for you -- like a trip to the archives!

This book is a natural for me - I'm both a space enthusiast, and an aviation buff with an interest in the X-planes of the 1946 - 1968 period. So it gets me on both fronts.

Being an absolute space nut in the nicest possible way, I am extremely pleased that my brother decided to spend as much time as he did on this book. The work and research that went in to it was at least three times more than any of our other Mission reports series. It has been a labour of love for Rob since last summer. I am personally going to ensure that copies of this book land on the desks of the Hon. Sean O'Keefe and the Hon. Donald Rumsfeld as I think they might be very interested in the contents. "Hey guys look what we could do back in the '60's. Cool huh?"
There is some amazing very clear video on the DVD of Neil Armstrong, Wally Schirra and Gus Grissom trying out simulators of the X-20. Stuff that I bet you haven't seen before. I know I'm biased, but this is one not to miss.

Being an absolute space nut in the nicest possible way, I am extremely pleased that my brother decided to spend as much time as he did on this book. The work and research that went in to it was at least three times more than any of our other Mission reports series. It has been a labour of love for Rob since last summer. I am personally going to ensure that copies of this book land on the desks of the Hon. Sean O'Keefe and the Hon. Donald Rumsfeld as I think they might be very interested in the contents. "Hey guys look what we could do back in the '60's. Cool huh?"
There is some amazing very clear video on the DVD of Neil Armstrong, Wally Schirra and Gus Grissom trying out simulators of the X-20. Stuff that I bet you haven't seen before. I know I'm biased, but this is one not to miss.

Being an absolute space nut in the nicest possible way, I am extremely pleased that my brother decided to spend as much time as he did on this book. The work and research that went in to it was at least three times more than any of our other Mission reports series. It has been a labour of love for Rob since last summer. I am personally going to ensure that copies of this book land on the desks of the Hon. Sean O'Keefe and the Hon. Donald Rumsfeld as I think they might be very interested in the contents. "Hey guys look what we could do back in the '60's. Cool huh?"
There is some amazing very clear video on the DVD of Neil Armstrong, Wally Schirra and Gus Grissom trying out simulators of the X-20. Stuff that I bet you haven't seen before. I know I'm biased, but this is one not to miss.