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Originally Posted by Ez2cDave
The rest . . .
Dave F.
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Even today, the Do 122 (or a recoverable sounding rocket similar to it) would be be worth producing; with today's improved technologies, achieving more than six flights would not be very difficult. One change--to its empennage--would help:
Instead of having four regular-type fins (which would dig into the ground during a horizontal, gliding landing), a modern Do 122 could use an "H-tail" (similar to that used on the AQM-37 Jayhawk and AQM-81 Firebolt rocket-powered target drones, see both here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_AQM-37_Jayhawk ), to enable the vehicle to land on a dirt, grass, or even concrete airstrip. The vertical fins' (tip plates') bottom edges could have replaceable, X-15 / X-20 Dyna-Soar type flat metal plate (or metal "brush") main landing gear, with a deployable nose skid of similar design just behind the rocket's nose and payload cylinder. Also:
If only West Germany had had a larger space budget, or had succeeded in getting ELDO and/or ESRO (the European Launcher Development Organization and/or the European Space Research Organization, the two pre-ESA [European Space Agency] Western European space agencies) to adopt their proposed designs, ELDO and ESRO could have leap-frogged over NASA. The West German national space agency had many very talented and innovative engineers, and:
They even had designs (by Junkers and MBB ERNO, respectively)--which would work today (using today's rocket engines as "off the shelf" powerplants) for a fully-reusable, all-rocket powered, two-stage winged Space Transporter (Saenger 1, see:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Jun...sclient=gws-wiz ), and for a series of SSTO--Single-Stage-To-Orbit--spacecraft called Beta (see:
http://www.astronautix.com/b/beta.html and
https://www.google.com/search?q=MBB...sclient=gws-wiz ).