A TL 7 drop ship of sorts

[Enoki]

Here's a proposed marine drop ship carrying 1200 troops proposed back in the late 60's to early 70's. It's the InterContinental Aerospace Range Unlimited System or ICARUS.

A scale model mock up of it

The idea that many of the troops would rappel down the sides of the craft is a neat scenario.

 

[Commander Truestar]

Wow..
That was a long time ago and oh, so many mistakes and assumptions...

Even as recently as last March, I was emailing engineers about the Boeing Starliner and being told to relax because I was wrong...
....Turned out, I wasn't wrong

We need to work harder to learn more of what we don't know
No matter what we do, we will lose lives but I still don't accept the idea of simply killing people off because we accept being stupid

(RIP my friend Judi Resnik, who - with her crew was murdered by Morton Thiokol)

 

[mike wightman]

The US Space Force is investigating using Space X Starship for a similar mission...

 

[Condottiere]

You really need command of air/space.

And, you certainly won't be able to land it in a hot zone.

It's why the Americans invested so much into tilt rotors.

 

[Commander Truestar]

The US Space Force is investigating using Space X Starship for a similar mission...

Yep.
I'm currently engaged with Ms. Gwen Shotwell, COO of SpaceX in discussions related to Project SailBeam, as proposed by the late Dr. Jordin Kare
Should SpaceX take up SailBeam, it would be in the best interests if the project if SpaceX can successfully get the idiotically named "Starship" space flight system certified both as a cargo lift system and for Human Flight operations.

Of course, the interests of Project SailBeam fall much shorter than NASA/US Space Command's needs to get "Starship certified as part of the planned manned Luna-Return missions. Sadly, the Artemis program is rife with more political issues than was Apollo and we all know what happened to Apollo 1. And that forced an "every wire, nut and bold" review of the program before new manned flights were authorized.

We also recognize that the political issues related to the Challenger and STS-51L, where political stupidity led the US Space program on January 28, 1986 when my personal friend Dr. Judi Resnik was murdered.

 

[atpollard]

More ITHACUS:









From

http://www.astronautix.com/i/ithacus.html