From Mike Lorrey, Director International Spaceflight Museum In 2005 Mike put together a business proposal to take a 106 hulk and rebuild it to be a launch vehicle, Called it the X-106. Took out the turbine, and put in a big LOX tank in the engine bay, with a SpaceX Merlin engine on the back. Took out all the old avionics and weapons system, replace the avionics with a modern, low mass glass cockpit, make the weapons bay and the air intakes into more fuel capacity. Replace the underwing tanks with some ramjets. The idea was to use the Eclipse Project gear to tow launch the X-106 with a C-141, fully fueled, to 35k ft, drop it and light up the underwing ramjets. The ramjets would use MIPCC injecting water and LOX into the intakes to cool the incoming air mass so the ramjets could function at much higher speeds, reach the Mach 5 speed the F-106X proposal in the 60's projected, then light up the Merlin to boost further, drop the ramjets at mach 7, and power up into orbit. The nose cone and leading edges would use hafnium diboride like whats used in steering fins for MIRVs, and titanium skin for the other surfaces. Reentry would have a very low wing loading, only 11 lbs/sqft,, which is 1/9th that of the Shuttle, so it would lose most speed far higher in the atmosphere, and would have far lower heating and wouldn't need the silica tile thermal protection like the shuttle needed. We didn't get funding for the project, but it was fun to design it We had two hulks lined up for purchase in a warehouse in Texas (El Paso birds), if we got funding. Unfortunately that option to buy expired when we failed to get funding.


Here's an article Mike wrote that excerpted some things from our business plan High Density Fuels, Boron-Gel Fuels and Diboride Thermal Protection Systems 3.12.2006