SASSTO_v_bw_o_n (ca. 1967, unnumbered prob. Douglas Aircraft Co. photo)
“A future “space taxi” capable of transporting “passengers other than trained astronauts” to earth orbital stations “or to any point on earth within 45 minutes” was described to 150 international scientists meeting in Palo Alto today.
The single-stage, multi-purpose rocket launch vehicle would be “recoverable and reusable,” Douglas Aircraft Company engineer Phil Bono said.
The week-long event is sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE).
He told the space scientists from Britain, France, Germany and Italy that by refueling in earth orbit, the Douglas designed satellite could also land passengers and cargo on the moon.
SPACE FIGHTER
Bono said the giant rocket could also have military applications including “the jet fighter of the space age…”
Unfortunately, the rest of the article was omitted when affixed to the verso.
8.5” x 11”, so likely original Douglas Aircraft Company-produced for professional presentation, and in this case, press purposes, hence it not being appropriately handled. Fortunately, and despite such, it’s still retained its gloss.
Gorgeous airbrush work by either "Pisakov" or "P. Isakov"...unfortunately, either way...nothing on him/her. Drats.
Also, from the excellent “ATOMIC ROCKETS” website:
“The Saturn Application Single-Stage-to-Orbit (SASSTO) is from Frontiers of Space by Philip Bono and Kenneth Gatland (1969).
In 1966, when winged space shuttle designs were being studied, the Douglas Aircraft Company was doing a cost-benefit analysis. They were comparing reusable space shuttle costs to throwaway two-stage ballistic boosters. Somewhere along the line they took a look at whether it was possible to make a reusable single stage ballistic booster. The SASSTO was the result. The payload was not much, but it was enough for a Gemini space capsule. A Gemini would transform the SASSTO into a space taxi or even a space fighter, capable of satellite inspection missions. Without the Gemini it could deliver supplies and propellant to space stations and spacecraft in LEO.
Bono pointed out how inoperative satellites could become space hazards (although the concept of the Kessler Syndrome would not be created until 1978). A SASSTO could deal with such satellites in LEO (Bono called this Saturn Application Retrieval and Rescue Apparatus or SARRA). Even better, such satellites could be grabbed and brought back to Terra for refurbishment and re-launch. This would be much cheaper than building an entirely new satellite from scratch, which would interest satellite corporations. Only satellites in LEO though, communication satellites in geostationary orbit would be out of reach.
The interesting part was on the base. Conventional spacecraft trying to do an aerobraking landing need a large convex heat shield on the base (for example the Apollo command module.). Unfortunately, a reusable spacecraft has a large concave exhaust nozzle on the bottom, exactly the opposite of what you want. Tinsley's artist conception for the "Mars Snooper" had petals that would close over the exhaust nozzle sticking out of the heat shield, but that was impractical.
Douglas' solution was to use an aerospike engine with the spike truncated (which they confusingly call a "plug nozzle", contrary to modern terminology). The truncated part became the heat shield, the untruncated part around the edge was the aerospike engine.”
At:
www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/surfaceorbit.php#sa...
Additionally, and more directly, from the equally excellent SECRET PROJECTS Forum website, posted by Donald McKelvy/user “Triton” on 24 August 2009, apparently taken from Mr. Bono’s document/presentation at the above referenced SAE Conference Proceedings:
“In late 1966, the vertical launch & landing SSTO proponents at Douglas Aircraft Co. carried out a study to determine whether ballistic VTVLs might be cost-competitive vs. winged VTHL TSTO vehicles in the small payload class. Previous NASA & USAF studies had generally assumed ballistic single-stage vehicles might make sense for unmanned heavy-lift payloads but winged TSTOs were invariably chosen for small manned near-term missions. Consequently, Douglas had to define a small VTVL SSTO manned "space taxi" to demonstrate the key elements of the concept (aerospike engine, lightweight structures, ballistic reentry, vertical landing, actively cooled heatshield etc.) The resulting vehicle became known as "Saturn Application Single Stage to Orbit". Notable design features included an aft-mounted liquid oxygen tank to reduce the difference between vehicle center of gravity & center of aerodynamic pressure, and a hydrogen cooling system for the main engine to provide thermal protection during reentry. Thermal analysis indicated that although the engine itself would be adequately protected by this system, the areas located above the exhaust nozzles would not. Consequently, the designers had to resort to an ablative, expendable material (200 kilograms of Armstrong Insulcork 2760) bonded to the aluminum structure although it would increase the maintenance cost. The oxygen/hydrogen mixture ratio was 6:1 rather than 7:1 since the designers felt a high oxygen ratio would degrade the exhaust velocity & payload capability. 50% hydrogen slush was used to reduce the volume of the fuel tank. The 36-segment plug nozzle propulsion system would have operated at a pressure of 1500psia. It would be used for ascent, orbit insertion, de-orbit and (beginning at an altitude of 760 meters-) the final landing burn. The vehicle would carry enough propellant for hovering for 10 seconds before landing at an unprepared site, if necessary. The estimated landing accuracy of 1853 * 3700 m was not regarded as a major concern since the Gemini 6-12 flights achieved an average touchdown dispersion of only 6.85km although the capsule had essentially no maneuvering capability below 30.5km altitude. The reentry cross-range capability was about +/-370km, permitting a safe landing at El Paso, TX or Wendover Range, UT after 2-3 orbits from Cape Canaveral. Wendover was the preferred emergency landing site since SASSTO easily could have been returned from nearby Hill AFB to Cape Canaveral in a "Pregnant Guppy" S-IV-B transport aircraft.
SASSTO had a payload capability of 3,629kg to a 185km orbit and the standard payload would be a 2-man Gemini spacecraft protected by a jettisonable fairing to reduce drag losses during ascent. This would provide a safe emergency escape system for the test pilots, and the Gemini ejection seats, heatshield, parachutes etc. (1542kg in all) could later be removed as the flight test program increases confidence in SASSTO reliability. Douglas envisioned this vehicle as a "space fighter" capable of satellite inspection missions, or space station resupply flights lasting a maximum of 48 hours. It could also deliver 2,812kg of liquid hydrogen to a spacecraft in Earth orbit.
Since SASSTO was loosely based on the Saturn S-IV-B rocket stage, Douglas also proposed an expendable version for use as a more capable upper stage with the Saturn IB and Saturn V launch vehicles. The expendable SASSTO stage would have had a burnout mass of 7,400kg and carried 85,729kg of oxygen + hydrogen propellant. The stage was thus of a much more lightweight construction than the standard S-IV-B (12,949kg + 104,326kg LOX, LH₂) and the new aerospike engine would have been more efficient as well (464s specific impulse vs. 426s for the J-2 engine). Consequently, the Saturn V's payload capability would have been boosted by 8-11t as well. The Saturn IB's basic 15876-kilogram payload capability to a 185km orbit would have increased to 23814-25855kg depending on whether SASSTO would be flown in expendable or reusable mode. The latter version was known as SARRA (Saturn Application Retrieval and Rescue Apparatus) and was intended for returning stranded Apollo crews from the lunar surface.
Finally, the Douglas design team also compared the cost of SASSTO with two different all-rocket VTHL TSTOs: a winged 1st stage plus lifting-body 2nd stage (center) and winged first & second stages (right). All three vehicles were designed for a 2,812-kilogram payload although the lifting-body TSTO only was able to carry 2,086kg due to center of gravity problems. No attempt was made to estimate the marginal launch cost since there were too many unknown factors. VTVL SSTO would however be expected to yield a significant operational advantage since only a single vehicle must be maintained and the VTVL SSTO does not require a landing runway. SASSTO was expected to cost $1.1. billion to develop (=$5.88B at 1999 rates). The winged VTHL TSTO would cost 2.2 times as much to develop as SASSTO while the smaller lifting-body TSTO variant would be 50% more expensive. The winged and lifting-body 1st unit production costs would be 4 and 2.7 times higher than the SASSTO 1st unit cost, respectively. The general conclusion was that the complex winged or lifting body TSTO shapes result in added liftoff and manufactured weights of a more expensive construction than ballistic wingless SSTOs. For example, the lifting-body TSTO dry mass (12,274kg + 2,086kg payload) is 2.4 times higher, and the winged TSTO weighs 3.6 times as much (18,176kg + 2,812kg P/L) as SASSTO at touchdown. The gross liftoff weights bear the relationships of 1.0 (SASSTO; 97,887kg GLOW), 1.25 (lifting body orbiter TSTO; 122,245kg GLOW) and 1.91 (wing-body orbiter TSTO; 187,020kg GLOW). In that case, is the combination of lower reentry g-loads, better maneuverability (landing go-around with jet engines) and improved cross-range really worth the cost of carrying wings...? Although TSTO thus appears to be uncompetitive vs. ballistic single-stage RLVs for small payloads, the authors admit that requirements for higher payloads (22.68-45.6t) may yield rapid increases in propellant mass fraction for winged two-stage vehicles, making TSTO more performance/cost-effective.
Liftoff Thrust: 1,232.655KN. Total Mass: 97,976kg. Total Length: 18.8m.
Payload capability: 3,674kg to a 185km low Earth orbit.
Stage Number 1: SASSTO. 36 x plug-nozzle engines (1500psia pressure, 1:6 mixture ratio). Gross Mass: 97,976kg. Empty Mass (core vehicle only): 6,668kg. Thrust: 1,232.65-1,557.5KN. Isp=367-464s. Length:18.8m. Width: 6.6m. Propellants: LOX/slush LH₂.
Bibliography:
"Enigma of Booster Recovery - Ballistic or Winged? -- Bono, Senator & Garcia, SAE Conference Proceedings 1967/0382/ p.57”
At:
www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/douglas-rombus.4577/#pos...
Further:
www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld017.htm
Credit: PMView Pro website
Finally...possibly the best write-up of Mr. Bono's career that I’ve come across:
"Philip Bono was a renowned space engineer who was probably 30 years before his time. He was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 13, 1921. He graduated from the University of Southern California in 1947 with a B.E. degree in mechanical engineering, and served three years in the U.S. Naval Reserves.
After graduation in 1947, Mr. Bono worked as a research and systems analyst for North American Aviation. His first "tour" with Douglas Aircraft Company was from 1949 to 1951, doing structural layout and detail design. From 1951 to 1960, he worked primarily in structures design at Boeing. Between 1947 and 1949, he worked at Northrop Aircraft R&D. From 1984-1986, he was general manager of Cal-Pro Engineering Consultants doing structures integration and subsystems stress analysis. From 1966 to 1988, he again worked at Douglas Aircraft after Douglas' merger with McDonnell Aircraft where he did the majority of his advanced space design work. He pursued single-stage to orbit space launch vehicles as being simpler and cheaper than conventional launch vehicles. He then proposed to make these vehicles reusable.
Among Mr. Bono's designs were: One Stage Orbital Space Truck (OOST) Recoverable One Stage Orbital Space Truck (ROOST) Reusable Orbital Module, Booster, and Utility Shuttle (ROMBUS), Ithacus, Pegasus, Hyperion, and Saturn Application Single Stage To Orbit (SASSTO). Although his visionary designs were never actually built, his contributions pioneered the advancement of the Space Shuttle, a vertical take off & horizontal landing version of the SSTO spacecraft. From his ROOST design onwards, Bono advocated space launch vehicles without wings, usually using rocket-assisted vertical takeoff and landing (VTVL) configurations. He patented a reusable plug nozzle rocket engine that had dual use as a heat shield for atmospheric reentry. In 1965 and 1967, he obtained two patents for a Recoverable Single Stage Spacecraft Booster. In 1969, he co-authored with Kenneth Gatland "Frontiers of Space," which was published in several languages. Less than three months after Bono's death, the first McDonnell Douglas launch vehicle based on his pioneering work on VTOL, a research test vehicle the DC-X (Delta Clipper), began a largely successful series of test flights.
Among his many awards and recognitions, the Council on International Nontheatrical Events recognized Mr. Bono for his motion picture, "The Role of the Reusable Booster." His ROMBUS design was featured in the "Flight to the Moon" attraction at Disneyland in Anaheim, California in 1967. He was granted Charter Membership in the International Astronautical Academy in 1960, and acknowledgment by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1963, 1965, and 1966 through 1968. He achieved Fellowship in The British Interplanetary Society in 1961, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1972. His wife of 43 years, Camille, died in November 2014. His son Richard and daughter Patricia, both live in Costa Mesa, California, and daughter Kathryn Hickman lives in Livermore, California. Philip Bono died on May 23, 1993 at the age of 72 in Costa Mesa, California."
From/at:
oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c88s4vjz/
Credit: Online Archive of California website
SASSTO_v_bw_o_n (ca. 1967, unnumbered prob. Douglas Aircraft Co. photo)
“A future “space taxi” capable of transporting “passengers other than trained astronauts” to earth orbital stations “or to any point on earth within 45 minutes” was described to 150 international scientists meeting in Palo Alto today.
The single-stage, multi-purpose rocket launch vehicle would be “recoverable and reusable,” Douglas Aircraft Company engineer Phil Bono said.
The week-long event is sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE).
He told the space scientists from Britain, France, Germany and Italy that by refueling in earth orbit, the Douglas designed satellite could also land passengers and cargo on the moon.
SPACE FIGHTER
Bono said the giant rocket could also have military applications including “the jet fighter of the space age…”
Unfortunately, the rest of the article was omitted when affixed to the verso.
8.5” x 11”, so likely original Douglas Aircraft Company-produced for professional presentation, and in this case, press purposes, hence it not being appropriately handled. Fortunately, and despite such, it’s still retained its gloss.
Gorgeous airbrush work by either "Pisakov" or "P. Isakov"...unfortunately, either way...nothing on him/her. Drats.
Also, from the excellent “ATOMIC ROCKETS” website:
“The Saturn Application Single-Stage-to-Orbit (SASSTO) is from Frontiers of Space by Philip Bono and Kenneth Gatland (1969).
In 1966, when winged space shuttle designs were being studied, the Douglas Aircraft Company was doing a cost-benefit analysis. They were comparing reusable space shuttle costs to throwaway two-stage ballistic boosters. Somewhere along the line they took a look at whether it was possible to make a reusable single stage ballistic booster. The SASSTO was the result. The payload was not much, but it was enough for a Gemini space capsule. A Gemini would transform the SASSTO into a space taxi or even a space fighter, capable of satellite inspection missions. Without the Gemini it could deliver supplies and propellant to space stations and spacecraft in LEO.
Bono pointed out how inoperative satellites could become space hazards (although the concept of the Kessler Syndrome would not be created until 1978). A SASSTO could deal with such satellites in LEO (Bono called this Saturn Application Retrieval and Rescue Apparatus or SARRA). Even better, such satellites could be grabbed and brought back to Terra for refurbishment and re-launch. This would be much cheaper than building an entirely new satellite from scratch, which would interest satellite corporations. Only satellites in LEO though, communication satellites in geostationary orbit would be out of reach.
The interesting part was on the base. Conventional spacecraft trying to do an aerobraking landing need a large convex heat shield on the base (for example the Apollo command module.). Unfortunately, a reusable spacecraft has a large concave exhaust nozzle on the bottom, exactly the opposite of what you want. Tinsley's artist conception for the "Mars Snooper" had petals that would close over the exhaust nozzle sticking out of the heat shield, but that was impractical.
Douglas' solution was to use an aerospike engine with the spike truncated (which they confusingly call a "plug nozzle", contrary to modern terminology). The truncated part became the heat shield, the untruncated part around the edge was the aerospike engine.”
At:
www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/surfaceorbit.php#sa...
Additionally, and more directly, from the equally excellent SECRET PROJECTS Forum website, posted by Donald McKelvy/user “Triton” on 24 August 2009, apparently taken from Mr. Bono’s document/presentation at the above referenced SAE Conference Proceedings:
“In late 1966, the vertical launch & landing SSTO proponents at Douglas Aircraft Co. carried out a study to determine whether ballistic VTVLs might be cost-competitive vs. winged VTHL TSTO vehicles in the small payload class. Previous NASA & USAF studies had generally assumed ballistic single-stage vehicles might make sense for unmanned heavy-lift payloads but winged TSTOs were invariably chosen for small manned near-term missions. Consequently, Douglas had to define a small VTVL SSTO manned "space taxi" to demonstrate the key elements of the concept (aerospike engine, lightweight structures, ballistic reentry, vertical landing, actively cooled heatshield etc.) The resulting vehicle became known as "Saturn Application Single Stage to Orbit". Notable design features included an aft-mounted liquid oxygen tank to reduce the difference between vehicle center of gravity & center of aerodynamic pressure, and a hydrogen cooling system for the main engine to provide thermal protection during reentry. Thermal analysis indicated that although the engine itself would be adequately protected by this system, the areas located above the exhaust nozzles would not. Consequently, the designers had to resort to an ablative, expendable material (200 kilograms of Armstrong Insulcork 2760) bonded to the aluminum structure although it would increase the maintenance cost. The oxygen/hydrogen mixture ratio was 6:1 rather than 7:1 since the designers felt a high oxygen ratio would degrade the exhaust velocity & payload capability. 50% hydrogen slush was used to reduce the volume of the fuel tank. The 36-segment plug nozzle propulsion system would have operated at a pressure of 1500psia. It would be used for ascent, orbit insertion, de-orbit and (beginning at an altitude of 760 meters-) the final landing burn. The vehicle would carry enough propellant for hovering for 10 seconds before landing at an unprepared site, if necessary. The estimated landing accuracy of 1853 * 3700 m was not regarded as a major concern since the Gemini 6-12 flights achieved an average touchdown dispersion of only 6.85km although the capsule had essentially no maneuvering capability below 30.5km altitude. The reentry cross-range capability was about +/-370km, permitting a safe landing at El Paso, TX or Wendover Range, UT after 2-3 orbits from Cape Canaveral. Wendover was the preferred emergency landing site since SASSTO easily could have been returned from nearby Hill AFB to Cape Canaveral in a "Pregnant Guppy" S-IV-B transport aircraft.
SASSTO had a payload capability of 3,629kg to a 185km orbit and the standard payload would be a 2-man Gemini spacecraft protected by a jettisonable fairing to reduce drag losses during ascent. This would provide a safe emergency escape system for the test pilots, and the Gemini ejection seats, heatshield, parachutes etc. (1542kg in all) could later be removed as the flight test program increases confidence in SASSTO reliability. Douglas envisioned this vehicle as a "space fighter" capable of satellite inspection missions, or space station resupply flights lasting a maximum of 48 hours. It could also deliver 2,812kg of liquid hydrogen to a spacecraft in Earth orbit.
Since SASSTO was loosely based on the Saturn S-IV-B rocket stage, Douglas also proposed an expendable version for use as a more capable upper stage with the Saturn IB and Saturn V launch vehicles. The expendable SASSTO stage would have had a burnout mass of 7,400kg and carried 85,729kg of oxygen + hydrogen propellant. The stage was thus of a much more lightweight construction than the standard S-IV-B (12,949kg + 104,326kg LOX, LH₂) and the new aerospike engine would have been more efficient as well (464s specific impulse vs. 426s for the J-2 engine). Consequently, the Saturn V's payload capability would have been boosted by 8-11t as well. The Saturn IB's basic 15876-kilogram payload capability to a 185km orbit would have increased to 23814-25855kg depending on whether SASSTO would be flown in expendable or reusable mode. The latter version was known as SARRA (Saturn Application Retrieval and Rescue Apparatus) and was intended for returning stranded Apollo crews from the lunar surface.
Finally, the Douglas design team also compared the cost of SASSTO with two different all-rocket VTHL TSTOs: a winged 1st stage plus lifting-body 2nd stage (center) and winged first & second stages (right). All three vehicles were designed for a 2,812-kilogram payload although the lifting-body TSTO only was able to carry 2,086kg due to center of gravity problems. No attempt was made to estimate the marginal launch cost since there were too many unknown factors. VTVL SSTO would however be expected to yield a significant operational advantage since only a single vehicle must be maintained and the VTVL SSTO does not require a landing runway. SASSTO was expected to cost $1.1. billion to develop (=$5.88B at 1999 rates). The winged VTHL TSTO would cost 2.2 times as much to develop as SASSTO while the smaller lifting-body TSTO variant would be 50% more expensive. The winged and lifting-body 1st unit production costs would be 4 and 2.7 times higher than the SASSTO 1st unit cost, respectively. The general conclusion was that the complex winged or lifting body TSTO shapes result in added liftoff and manufactured weights of a more expensive construction than ballistic wingless SSTOs. For example, the lifting-body TSTO dry mass (12,274kg + 2,086kg payload) is 2.4 times higher, and the winged TSTO weighs 3.6 times as much (18,176kg + 2,812kg P/L) as SASSTO at touchdown. The gross liftoff weights bear the relationships of 1.0 (SASSTO; 97,887kg GLOW), 1.25 (lifting body orbiter TSTO; 122,245kg GLOW) and 1.91 (wing-body orbiter TSTO; 187,020kg GLOW). In that case, is the combination of lower reentry g-loads, better maneuverability (landing go-around with jet engines) and improved cross-range really worth the cost of carrying wings...? Although TSTO thus appears to be uncompetitive vs. ballistic single-stage RLVs for small payloads, the authors admit that requirements for higher payloads (22.68-45.6t) may yield rapid increases in propellant mass fraction for winged two-stage vehicles, making TSTO more performance/cost-effective.
Liftoff Thrust: 1,232.655KN. Total Mass: 97,976kg. Total Length: 18.8m.
Payload capability: 3,674kg to a 185km low Earth orbit.
Stage Number 1: SASSTO. 36 x plug-nozzle engines (1500psia pressure, 1:6 mixture ratio). Gross Mass: 97,976kg. Empty Mass (core vehicle only): 6,668kg. Thrust: 1,232.65-1,557.5KN. Isp=367-464s. Length:18.8m. Width: 6.6m. Propellants: LOX/slush LH₂.
Bibliography:
"Enigma of Booster Recovery - Ballistic or Winged? -- Bono, Senator & Garcia, SAE Conference Proceedings 1967/0382/ p.57”
At:
www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/douglas-rombus.4577/#pos...
Further:
www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld017.htm
Credit: PMView Pro website
Finally...possibly the best write-up of Mr. Bono's career that I’ve come across:
"Philip Bono was a renowned space engineer who was probably 30 years before his time. He was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 13, 1921. He graduated from the University of Southern California in 1947 with a B.E. degree in mechanical engineering, and served three years in the U.S. Naval Reserves.
After graduation in 1947, Mr. Bono worked as a research and systems analyst for North American Aviation. His first "tour" with Douglas Aircraft Company was from 1949 to 1951, doing structural layout and detail design. From 1951 to 1960, he worked primarily in structures design at Boeing. Between 1947 and 1949, he worked at Northrop Aircraft R&D. From 1984-1986, he was general manager of Cal-Pro Engineering Consultants doing structures integration and subsystems stress analysis. From 1966 to 1988, he again worked at Douglas Aircraft after Douglas' merger with McDonnell Aircraft where he did the majority of his advanced space design work. He pursued single-stage to orbit space launch vehicles as being simpler and cheaper than conventional launch vehicles. He then proposed to make these vehicles reusable.
Among Mr. Bono's designs were: One Stage Orbital Space Truck (OOST) Recoverable One Stage Orbital Space Truck (ROOST) Reusable Orbital Module, Booster, and Utility Shuttle (ROMBUS), Ithacus, Pegasus, Hyperion, and Saturn Application Single Stage To Orbit (SASSTO). Although his visionary designs were never actually built, his contributions pioneered the advancement of the Space Shuttle, a vertical take off & horizontal landing version of the SSTO spacecraft. From his ROOST design onwards, Bono advocated space launch vehicles without wings, usually using rocket-assisted vertical takeoff and landing (VTVL) configurations. He patented a reusable plug nozzle rocket engine that had dual use as a heat shield for atmospheric reentry. In 1965 and 1967, he obtained two patents for a Recoverable Single Stage Spacecraft Booster. In 1969, he co-authored with Kenneth Gatland "Frontiers of Space," which was published in several languages. Less than three months after Bono's death, the first McDonnell Douglas launch vehicle based on his pioneering work on VTOL, a research test vehicle the DC-X (Delta Clipper), began a largely successful series of test flights.
Among his many awards and recognitions, the Council on International Nontheatrical Events recognized Mr. Bono for his motion picture, "The Role of the Reusable Booster." His ROMBUS design was featured in the "Flight to the Moon" attraction at Disneyland in Anaheim, California in 1967. He was granted Charter Membership in the International Astronautical Academy in 1960, and acknowledgment by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1963, 1965, and 1966 through 1968. He achieved Fellowship in The British Interplanetary Society in 1961, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1972. His wife of 43 years, Camille, died in November 2014. His son Richard and daughter Patricia, both live in Costa Mesa, California, and daughter Kathryn Hickman lives in Livermore, California. Philip Bono died on May 23, 1993 at the age of 72 in Costa Mesa, California."
From/at:
oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c88s4vjz/
Credit: Online Archive of California website