McDonnell Douglas Barbarian

The McDonnell Douglas Barbarian was a heavy-lift launch vehicle that McDonnell Douglas proposed in 1987 to lift large loads under the Strategic Defense Initiative. Its intended payload was the projected Zenith-Star space-based chemical laser, which it could have put into low Earth orbit. The design was a cluster built from existing hardware: three solid fuel booster rockets derived from the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster were attached to a ring of six Delta II main stages, and that ring surrounded a seventh Delta II main stage in the centre. The listed figures were a liftoff mass of about 2,500,000 kilograms, a length of 31 metres, liftoff thrust of roughly 35.8 meganewtons and a payload of 45,400 kilograms to a 300 kilometre low Earth orbit at 28 degrees inclination. It never went beyond the design phase.