Facebook. Advances, pictures, details, comments: https://www.facebook.com/orbiterfilmmaker American winged orbital launch vehicle. Lockheed ILRV design created for the USAF in 1966. X-24B lifting body configuration orbiter with linear aerospike engine and wrap-around drop tank. Related to Lockheed Shuttle LS200 proposal. Lockheed's "Star clipper" was designed under the supervision of one of the company's senior designer, Max Hunter, in 1966. The spacecraft was an elaboration of the USAF Flight Dynamics Laboratory's ILRV concept. The LSC-8MX spaceplane was 56.9 m long and had a 32.3 m wingspan. During ascent toward orbit liquid hydrogen fuel was drawn from two 7.22 m diameter drop tanks that were arranged along the leading edge of the sharply swept re-entry vehicle. A variable geometry wing deployed after re-entry to provide additional lift for subsonic cruise and landing. The high fineness lifting body vehicle's shape was based on the FDL-5LD and FDL-8H shapes developed at FDL through 1967. In his stage-and-a-half configuration, Hunter had only one rocket. However, no rocket of the era had the performance needed to reach orbit on its own with a useful payload, so some sort of staging was needed. Hunter's solution was to place just the fuel tanks in the "stage", which would be ejected during the ascent. This gave the vehicle the advantages of staging, but threw away only the tankage, returning all of the expensive parts for re-use. After landing the vehicle would be quickly refit, mated with another tank, and be ready for another mission. Hunter moved to Lockheed in the fall of 1965. On his first day he was asked if there was anything Lockheed should be looking at, and he immediately suggested development of his stage-and-a-half design. His suggestions caught the ear of Eugene Root, president of Lockheed Missiles and Space, who gave him the go-ahead to study what became known as the Star Clipper. The Star clipper had a gross lift-off mass of 1.6 million kg, and could carry 22,700 kg to orbit in its 6.7 x 18 m payload bay. Five engines provided 2.33 million kg of thrust at lift-off (in the publicly revealed alternative configuration). The Star Clipper was powered by three 1.5 million pound thrust M-1 engines. LOX and some of the LH2 fuel was carried in tanks in the fuselage, but most of the LH2 was carried in a large external tank. The external tanks were jettisoned at 97.5 km altitude and 21,800 kph velocity, then splashed down in the ocean 4000 km downrange. The re-entry vehicle had a hypersonic L/D of 1.8, while the swing-wings gave it a subsonic L/D of 8.1 and allowed it to land at 290 kph. It was equipped with an air-breathing engine to allow go-arounds and missed approaches during the airfield landing. Lockheed used this configuration as the starting point for its Space Shuttle studies in 1968-1971.