Search Results : Shuttle

Shuttle Beam Builder art

 art, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 262022
 

Prior to Challenger, one piece of technology that was often touted as something that would be deployed by the Space Shuttle was the “beam builder.” This was a mechanism that would take rolls of aluminum “tape” a millimeter or less in thickness and automatically chop, bend, deploy and weld said aluminum into truss structure beams. These beams would be arbitrarily long… useful for building all manner of things, from space stations to radar satellites, on up to solar power satellites. The technology got fairly far along… but once Challenger exploded, the idea of actually using the shuttle to build vast constructs in space kinda vanished, with ISS being the only example of that. And in the case of ISS, very little actual “construction” was carried out, instead the ISS was simply assembled, with parts like the solar panels deploying rather than being built.

But while it lasted, beam builders featured in a lot of concept art, such as the one below depicting a beam being extruded from the Beam Builder in the rear of the Shuttle cargo bay. Irritatingly, I’ve misplaced the book I scanned this from and cannot immediately confirm who to credit it to.

 Posted by at 9:16 pm

Crowdfund: Shuttle II stuff: Success

 art, awesomeness, history, news, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Feb 082022
 

The package of Shuttle II stuff (actually, “Shuttle Evolved”) arrived today and has been scanned and uploaded to Dropbox (some 350 megabytes). Enough funders came on board to drop the per-funder price to a mere $13. The artwork was particularly nice; it was scanned in at 600 dpi and provided both as-scanned, and with some process to de-age and brighten the art. The documents have been turned into PDFs, as well as providing the raw scans.

The collection of stuff was expensive, but crowdfunding it made it inexpensive for everyone. If you see anything on ebay or elsewhere that might benefit from such an approach, don’t hesitate to point it out.

 

Funders who have paid the $13 should have received a Dropbox notification about the uploads providing access to the files.

 Posted by at 12:37 am

Crowdfund: Shuttle II stuff

 art, blather, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects, rockets, sales & specials, ships, spacecraft  No Responses »
Feb 022022
 

So a lot of “Shuttle II” stuff appeared on eBay for an exorbitant price. I’m becoming increasingly leery of plunking down excessive sums for this sort of thing… not only due to my own finances and the onrushing economic meltdown, but because doing so incentivizes sellers to slap even more exorbitant prices on things. But, I put this lot before my APR patrons/subscribers as a potential crowdfunding opportunity, and enough signed on that I went ahead and purchased the lot. It should arrive early next week.

As with all my APR crowdfunds, the cost of the item is split evenly among the funders; the more funders, the lower the price per person. Each funder will receive a complete set of high-rez (300 DPI, full color… higher rez if called for) scans of the items. Typically  these crowdfunded items then get sent on to appropriate archive, library or museum, though this time I’m not quite sure where they should go.

If you would be interested in signing on, send me an email    . There are currently enough funders that the per-funder price is ~$24 under $14; the more sign on, the lower it’ll get. If you have a price limit noticeably lower than $14, let me know in your email. This will remain open until the stuff arrives, presumably early next week. At that point it’ll be closed and the price set.

Additionally: the box shown below, loaded with blueprints/diagrams, is somewhere in the system headed my way. It was procured sight unseen; I have high hopes. This sort of thing is made possible by the APR Patrons/Monthly Historical Documents Program subscribers. If you want to help preserve aerospace history and get in on these goodies, please consider subscribing.

 



 

 Posted by at 5:19 pm

Time running out for Space Shuttle

 awesomeness, books, history, politics, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jan 072021
 

I communicated with Dennis Jenkins today. “Space Shuttle: Developing an Icon 1972-2013” had one single printing, there will be no more… and that one printing is finally nearly sold out. It is still available at the original retail price of $170. But once it’s sold out, the secondary market will be the only place to get it and the price will skyrocket… it’s already $228 to $448 on abebooks, a single $364 copy on ebay. Hell it might even be a good investment for resale. This three-volume set is a remarkable work and is worth every penny. Make sure to get a copy before the Green New Deal kicks in and it becomes difficult to ship things!

 

 Posted by at 5:53 pm

10-passenger shuttle: 1964

 aircraft, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jul 142020
 

In 1963-64, NASA was looking forward to a very bright future. Moon landings within a handful of years, a serious space station or two in the early seventies, manned missions to the vicinity of Mars and/or Venus probably by the early eighties, manned Mars landings not long after. Moon bases, Mars based, nuclear rockets, missions to the asteroids and the moons of Jupiter… in 1964, the rest of the 20th century must’ve looked *fantastic.*

In order to pull all that off, it was clear that NASA would need to launch a *lot* of astronauts. Consequently, a request for proposals went out to the aerospace industry to design the capability to do just that. Boeing, North American, Martin, Lockheed… a great deal of interest was shown and work accomplished. One design produced is illustrated below, a Lockheed design for a two-stage fully reusable spaceplane capable of transporting ten tons of payload or ten passengers to an orbiting space station. The booster stage had a cockpit about where you’d expect; the spaceplane, conversely, had an offset spaceplane so that the crew would have *some* sort of forward view during landing. Both stages used advanced rocket engines; the first stage also had turbojets to get it back to the launch site. As with all pre-Shuttle designs, estimates of turnaround time and minimal launch cost are impressive and a bit depressing in just how fabulously optimistic they were.

An earlier three-stage concept was shown in US Launcher Projects #5.

The future looked bright. And then… LBJ.

 Posted by at 6:32 pm

Early NASA Shuttle Art

 art, history, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Apr 182020
 

Sold on ebay a while back, a piece of NASA color art depicting a Shuttle orbiter dropping off a satellite (more likely a deep-space probe given the bizarrely-located RTGs). The orbiter, however, does not seem to be closely based on an actual design. It has some similarity to a North American Rockwell concept, but I’d wager that it’s mostly artistic license.

 Posted by at 1:31 am

“Almost” the Shuttle

 aircraft, art, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Apr 122020
 

Rockwell’s Space Shuttle design as of November, 1972. Obviously very similar to the final product, but a few notable differences, including the retro-rocket on the nose of the ET (meant to make sure the tank fell into the Indian Ocean), the sleeker OMS pods, fairings extending onto the cargo bay doors; the External Tank being about 2 feet narrow in diameter and this notably longer; the slightly repositioned boosters; and a myriad of slight differences in contours.

 Posted by at 2:52 am

Early North American Rockwell Shuttle

 aircraft, drawings, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Feb 232020
 

The North American Rockwell proposal for the Space Shuttle Orbiter. It is clearly *close* to what actually got built, but there are important differences. The airlock is in the nose and the OMS pods are lower on the sides of the rear fuselage and the rear portion of the cargo bay could be fitted with a pod that includes flip-out turbofan engines for range extension and landing assistance.

The full-rez scan of this diagram has been made available to all $4 and up APR Patreons and Monthly Historical Document Program subscribers. It has been uploaded to the 2020-02 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for Patreons and subscribers. If interested in this piece or if you are interested in helping to fund the preservation of this sort of thing, please consider becoming a patron, either through the APR Patreon or the Monthly Historical Document Program.

 Posted by at 6:21 pm
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