Bono Saucer

American manned spaceplane. Study 1963. In 1963 Phil Bono of Douglas Aircraft considered a lenticular configuration for a single-stage-to-orbit reusable booster. This was the largest application found to date for the lenticular concept.

The 108-m diameter saucer would have delivered a million pounds of payload to low earth orbit. It was assessed as having a slightly inferior mass fraction to the baseline cylindrical ROOST design (0.925 versus 0.930) and a significantly higher delta-V requirement due to increased drag (9450 m/s total impulsive requirement vs 9100 m/s for the preferred ROOST concept). This drove the gross lift-off mass at the assumed vacuum specific impulse of 410 seconds to 45 million pounds versus 25 million pounds for the ROOST baseline. The design evidently went no further than a notional concept in the trade study.

Spacecraft delta v: 9,450 m/s (31,000 ft/sec).