Chrysler SERV

SERV, short for Single-stage Earth-orbital Reusable Vehicle, was a proposed space launch system designed by Chrysler's Space Division for the Space Shuttle project. It was radically different from the two-stage spaceplanes that nearly every other competitor entered, and it was never given serious consideration for the shuttle program. SERV was to be a single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft that would take off from the existing Saturn V complexes and land vertically at Kennedy for reuse. It looked like a greatly expanded Apollo capsule, 96 feet across and 83 feet tall, with an empty central core able to carry 125,000 pounds of cargo, and a separate spaceplane called MURP could ride on top for crewed missions. A twelve-module LH2/LOX aerospike engine circled the base, and forty jet engines fired just before touchdown to slow the descent. Chrysler Aerospace won the Phase A study contract in 1969, and the final report followed on 1 July 1971.