APR – Page 3 – The Unwanted Blog

CL-1201

AARRRGH, aircraft, APR, drawings, Gah., history, Meh., nukes, projects, youtube, ಠ_ಠ No Responses »

Jan 202021

As is known far and wide, I’m not well known. What little fame I have is largely bound up is the aerospace history research and illustration I’ve done; I’m *hoping* that when the two books I’m working on now get published things will change a bit (well, I hope my *work* gains a bit of fame; I’ve little use for *me* becoming famous). Still: while I toil in obscurity, I find that the products of my labor do have a tendency to pop up here and there. Usually when the diagrams I’ve created are used by someone else there’s some sort of attribution… but not always. There’s little to nothing that can be done about that, of course. Just sorta grit my teeth and move on.

So I watched this video, gritted my teeth and will, I suppose, move on. Note that it uses diagrams I created for Aerospace Projects Review issue V1N3 and US Transport Projects #07. What I suppose was funny was that when I started watching the video I largely *expected* to see my diagrams to show up in it… and, yup, there they are. As of this writing, the video has had about half a million views, not a one of which read where the diagrams came from.

UPDATE: After comms with the video maker: it seems he received the diagrams from someone else claiming them as their own. There have been revisions to the description including proper attribution. If this all pans out, there may be collaborations in the future.

December 2020 APR Rewards

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Dec 312020

Just released, the December 2020 rewards for APR Patrons and Subscribers. Included this month:

Diagram: a large format diagram of a Lockheed cruise missile. The designation of the missile is not given, but this looks like a SCAD design.

Document 1: Consolidated Class VB Carrier Based Bomber, from 1946

Document2: “Economic Aspects of a Reusable Single Stage To Orbit Vehicle,” a paper by Phil Bono on the ROOST launch vehicle from 1963

Document 3: “Shuttle Derived Vehicles,” a NASA-MSFC briefing to General Abrahamson from 1984

CAD Diagram: XSM-64A Navaho, the configuration that would have been built as an operational vehicle had the program gone forward

If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

The Aerospace Projects Review Discord server

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Jul 092020

Several recommendations have come in over the years to set up an APR Discord server… which has now been done. I’m still in the process of configuring it and figuring it all out, but once it’s up and running it will serve as sort of a backup to the APR blog. It is something that seems to be available solely via invitation, so there will be some other little features it’ll have… such as, probably, even more restricted discussion forums specifically about Book 1 and Book 2 (“Book X” and “Book XX,” whatever) where I will describe them and post preview images such as representative diagrams, lists of vehicles to be illustrated, possibly early stabs at cover art, etc.

Subscribers to the APR Patreon and the Monthly Historical Documentation Program will all get invites when the time comes. I’m thinking of inviting the higher-level patrons/subscribers into the Book1 & 2 subforums. At the moment it’s pretty bare… there are channels for “Aircraft projects,” “spacecraft projects,” “aerospace news,” “aircraft – built” (as opposed to “projects), “general” (which is just for discussion of the APR Discord server itself) and “US Aerospace Projects,” which will go into further detail about the USxP issues I’ve released and plan to release.

If anyone has experience with such things, feel free to leave recommendations and suggestions in the comments.

That took longer than expected

AARRRGH, aircraft, APR, awesomeness, drawings, Hmm..., projects, US VTOL Projects No Responses »

Jun 152020

So after a long hiatus while I worked on The Book That Shall Not Yet Be Named, I started off a return to prior form by creating the diagrams for US Fighter Projects #4. That went pretty quickly, with some of the designs taking only a day to create the diagram. I then launched into US VTOL projects #3… and the going has been much slower. A single aircraft has taken the better part of two weeks to piece together the diagrams. This was due to the complexity of the design and the fact that it would undergo some fairly substantial configuration changes between horizontal and vertical flight.

Huzzah:

APR Monthly Historical Documents Program

aircraft, APR, art, drawings, history, Hmm..., Monthly Historical Documents Program, new products, news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Apr 052020

Once again Patreon seems to be becoming unstable. So I’ve got an alternate: The APR Monthly Historical Documents Program

For some years I have been operating the “Aerospace Projects Review Patreon” which provides monthly rewards in the form of high resolution scans of vintage aerospace diagrams, art and documents. This has worked pretty well, but it seems that perhaps some people might prefer to sign on more directly. Fortunately, PayPal provides the option not only for one-time purchases but also monthly subscriptions. By subscribing using the drop-down menu below, you will receive the same benefits as APR Patrons, but without going through Patreon itself.

Sea Dragon Launch

APR, art, awesomeness, Hmm..., projects, rockets, science fiction, youtube 1 Response »

Jan 052020

Apparently the Apple+ series “For All Mankind” ends with a post-credit scene of a Sea Dragon lifting off…

Giggity!

It’s an imperfect depiction (it’s far too submerged for starters), but it’s still spiffy as hell. If only it had an Orion as a payload, I *might* be tempted too plunk down the funds to spend on yet another unnecessary streaming channel.

If you are wondering just what the “Sea Dragon” was and whether it was a real concept… take a look at Aerospace Projects Review article on it HERE. That article was originally published as part of APR issue V4N6 and is available separately, or with a complete Volume 4 bundle.

Beam builder photos: 1983

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Oct 312019

In the mad dash to collect what I needed for shipment (and for a time storage… there was, until a late development, the full expectation that I and my cats would spend a good long while as officially homeless), I looked through a great many things I had not examined in a long time, and wound up throwing a *lot*of it into the garbage. My college aerospace engineering homework? Garbage. The vast majority of the photos I took in my pre-digital days? Garbage. This was aided in the fact that the vast majority of those photos had found themselves under a leak in the shop roof and had been welded together into an undifferentiated brick of paper. But a few random, scattered photos were found more or less intact… and even then, most wound up in the garbage because, come on, they were little better than garbage when they were fresh from the developer.

A few that were deemed worthy of scanning were three taken when I was in Space Camp in 1983. The three, which are technically *really* *bad,* show a Grumman “beam builder” that we space tykes got to see at NASA-Marshall Space Flight Center. A device intended to by launched by the Shuttle, it would be fed rolls of aluminum “tape” and would bend, cut and weld them together into structural beams, sure just the thing that would be needed by the early 90’s at the latest to help build the solar power satellites, space station and early space habitats that would certainly be under construction by then.

As my damn near 40-year-gone memory suggests, we were told that the device on display was a *real* beam builder as opposed to a mockup. But I can’t be sure about that.

I’ve uploaded the three photos scanned at 600 dpi, including some modest “enhancements,” to the 2019-10 APR Extras folder at Dropbox available to all $4 and up APR Monthly Historical Document Program subscribers & Patrons. Is it great stuff? Nope. But what do you really expect from one of these kids?

October 2019 Rewards

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Oct 312019

It was in some doubt on my end, but I managed to get the October rewards issued in the nick of time. I have been uprooted and moved well over a thousand miles into smaller digs; much of my stuff was abandoned or outright tossed but my files seem, so far, to have survived the journey intact and hopefully complete. I’m in the process of straightening that all out now, and with luck November will be more orderly.

The October rewards included:

Diagram: A very large format scan of the McDonnell Douglas Model D-3235 Supersonic Transport from 1988

Documents: The Boeing “Airborne Alert Aircraft”

A new scan of the Goodyear “METEOR Junior” report, this time scanned from a pristine original

A scan of a collection of JPL CAD diagrams of a Pluto flyby spacecraft circa 1994… sent to me during my college days with the hopes that I could make a display model of it (beyond my capabilities at the time)

In lieu of the CAD diagram usually created for $5 and up Patrons, which I had nowhere near the time to create, a scan of some North American Rockwell brochures on the HOBOS homing bomb system.

If this sort of thing is of interest – either in receiving these sort of rewards or in helping to preserve this sort of aerospace history – consider signing up for the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

Website trouble part 2

AARRRGH, APR, blather, Gah., US Bomber Projects, US Transport Projects, ಠ_ಠ No Responses »

Sep 092019

A few days ago I asked if people were having trouble accessing the other website, http://aerospaceprojectsreview.com. The responses were roughly split between “no problem” and “forbidden.” I’ve gotten a response from the tech support at the web host… the security software loaded onto the site that is designed to protect the site from malicious attacks needed to be reset for some reason, and in the meantime it’s become overly enthusiastic in blocking people. Resetting has been initiated, but it will apparently take 24 to 48 hours to fully take effect.

So if you’ve had issues accessing the page or one of the sub-pages, take a moment in a day or two to see if you can now access it. Let me know when things work or, come Wednesday or so, if you’re still having issues.

This is *not* the sort of thing I needed now. If someone goes to a website and the thing won’t load up, chances are fair they’ll never go back. Sales of USBP22 and USTP09, released after the site started blocking an unknown but non-trivial number of people, are substantially reduced from hat they should have been. This added stress and lessened finances right now is *not* friggen helpful.

Forthcoming updated

aircraft, APR, awesomeness, blather, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft, US Launch Vehicle Projects No Responses »

Jun 082019

Some further tinkering to the USLP06 diagrams. There will be further revisions (especially with Star Raker), but I believe this will be the complete set of vehicles shown. I had to split the set up into two separate files; the unified diagram set was causing my computer headaches. You might not think that 2D diagrams can overload computers that can render things in 3D, but you’d be wrong.

This latest effort has taken a *really* long time. Lots of work involved with this. As a result, it has been a long time since I’ve published anything else, and since my income is based on getting stuff published… yay, welcome to poverty. If you want to help out, consider Buying Stuff or subscribing to the Monthly Historical Documents Program. Even a buck fifty a month helps out.

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