Hermes at liftoff - 1979 Artwork

A beautiful artwork of Hermes on the launchpad taken from a October 1979 magazine .
The variant of the spaceplane depicted here is the original version presented by CNES at the Paris Airshow the previous spring.

Interestingly, the launch vehicle envisioned is an Ariane 1. The maiden flight of that rocket was just 2 months after the issue of the magazine and this may have influenced the artist.
However, in no way an Ariane 1 would have been able to throw Hermes in orbit. The first  operational rocket of ESA was designed to deliver payloads in GTO (1 800kgs) not to LEO. But even with a reduced 3rd stage, the booster capability would have never fit with the 10 tons mass of Hermes.

Instead, CNES planned to use an uprated version of Ariane 4, dubbed "Ariane 5" with an enlarged 2nd stage. That rocket would have been very different from the Ariane 5 that will eventually be built and fly 15 years later.

Source : Science et Vie #745, October 1979

Hermes spacecraft - 1979 early draft

I think that the Hermes program, that runs from 1977 to 1993, is one of the longest, most passionate and eventually the most frustrated development of a spacecraft ever started.

There was a lot of hiccups all over this project.
Some technical issues first, that added some weight constantly over the time. It gave challenges to both the airframe and the booster.
Some political fights then between the main fund-raisers of ESA the European space agency in charge of Hermes. The British, the French and the German strongly disagree on the direction to go.
And last, some financial issue that put a stop to the work when the budget over exceeded all initial forecasts and the fundraisers decided to close their wallets.

But let's go back to 1977.

That year while the space shuttle Enterprise underwent its first free atmospheric test flight, CNES, the French space agency initiated a pre-study of a tiny space plane that could carry  European astronauts into orbit.

The plane was to be launched atop an Ariane rocket à la Dyansoar/Titan booster. But while the Ariane 1 was at that time in its final development stage (its maiden flight was in 1979) CNES envisionned a much more powerful launcher variant, the Ariane 5/H, to lift off Hermes.

In 1979, CNES presented a set of blueprints and artist rendering to the press.
The plane was 12,5 meters long with a wingspan of 8 meters and weighted 10 tons. It could carry 5 astronauts or 2 astronauts and a 1,5 tons payload. While much smaller it had a similar double delta wing shape as use on the US space shuttle.

I based my CAD modelling on this 1979 material and tried to imagine what would be that small bird into orbit.

References :

• CapcomEspace (French) - Didier Capdevilla : capcomespace.net/dossiers/espace_europeen/hermes/
• Flight International 1979 - flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/
• Science et Vie Nr 745 - October 1979 pp113-117.
• Europe's Space Programme: To Ariane and Beyond - Brian harvey - 2003- books.google.fr/
• Credit background earth images : NASA 

Aerospatiale STS-2000

Back in the 80s, the future of space exploration seemed to lie in Single Stage to Orbit vehicles. Every design team around the world was working on various reusable spaceplanes in order to achieve SSTO and reach the ultimate dream : get a cheap, reliable and common way to access low earth orbit.

Aerospatiale, a french company that will later merged into EADS, came up with an elegant spaceplane concept study. Known as the Space Transportation System of years 2000 (STS-2000), it included a combination of air-breathing and rocket engines and was able to deliver 7 tons in orbit. The SSTO 73 meters long plane weighted 338 tons when taking-off horizontally.

I made a 3D model of the plane and pasted it over a high altitude pics of the earth.
Below is an original artwork of the plan.

 

References :

1. STS-2000 SSTO - Astronautix.com
2. DESMA - Défi Aérospatial Etudiant 2011 - http://www.studentaerospacechallenge.eu
3. Aerospaceplane technology - GAO - July 1991 - pp39 - http://www.dtic.mil
4. Earth background credit = http://space.1337arts.com/