Aircraft visionary Dee Howard proposed the DH-100 “DBA” in the 1960s, a valid but never-built giant transport aircraft designed to carry a 166-foot Saturn rocket inside its fuselage.
The Space Race drove rapid advances in rocketry and the need to move large vehicles, and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum notes transport initially relied on ships, barges, and trucks before aircraft were considered.
Physicist and engineer Robert H. Goddard pioneered liquid-fueled rockets, and rocket engineer Wernher von Braun’s V-2 work in World War II helped accelerate U.S. and Soviet programs; after the war the U.S. seized V-2 hardware and brought many German specialists to America under Operation Paperclip. Dee Howard’s DH-100 highlights inventive aviation approaches to space logistics, but the aircraft was never built at full scale and did not enter operation.
Read the full article at theautopian.com.
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