The Ford Nucleon was ridiculously *small*

 AARRRGH, art, awesomeness, blather, Crazy, drawings, Gah., history, Hmm..., nukes, projects, science, science fiction, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 102021
 

One of the more imaginative and incredibly unlikely concept cars was the Ford Nucleon, a 1950’s idea for a nuclear powered car. Apparently this was pretty much a complete art and sales project, without much actual engineering; it was based on the notion that not only could nuclear reactors be scaled down small enough to fit in a car, they could be made not only wreck-tolerant, but that lightweight and virtually magical radiation shielding would be invented that would allow said reactor to hum away at full power mere feet from paying customers without roasting them or giving them explosive ass cancer. It was, let’s face it, wholly ridiculous… and entirely awesome.

Photos of models of the Nucleon have been available since the 1950’s, but diagrams have been lacking. An article posted online a few days ago included a few specifications for the proposed vehicle, finally nailing down some of the dimensions. And for reasons that seemed good to me (and which are probably obvious), I slapped together a quick side view. I think my side view is *reasonably* accurate based on numerous photos of the scale model Ford built and the dimensions given. What I’m not certain about is whether *Ford* truly understood their vehicle.

Here’s the side view using the 200-inch (16.7 ft) length specified by Ford, accompanied by two normal-sized humans:

The driver doesn’t even come *close* to fitting. So I scaled the Nucleon up until it seemed to look right, with the end result being that the car is now about 26 feet long:

That’s by no means a small vehicle… but then, it’s nuclear. Scaling it up by a factor of about 1.55 makes the cab big enough to fit actual full-size humans. But scaling it up that much makes the 77.4″ width (6.45 ft) into 120 inches, or ten feet. Good luck squeezing *that* onto the road; the Hummer H1, known as an uncomfortably wide vehicle, is a mere 87 inches wide.

Does anyone have any information to contradict and correct the Ford specifications? Or is it just another case of the art department kinda ignoring reality?

 Posted by at 4:28 pm

General update

 aircraft, B-47 and B-52 Origins and Evolution, blather, Book X, drawings, history, Hmm..., nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
May 092021
 

Might have noticed that blogging has been reduced mostly to posting YouTube vids and very brief grumbles of late. It’ll probably be much the same or even less for the next month or two… I’m hard at work on “B-47/B-52” and that takes precedence. Just passed 200 pages of diagrams; a few more left to do, but text is the current priority and I’m a slower writer than draftsman (and I don’t draft that fast).

 

Side note: Amazon has decided that I might be interested in these. Amazing! How do it know?

 Posted by at 10:46 pm

Behold, Book One: Boeing B-47 Stratojet and B-52 Stratofortress; Origins & Evolution

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, B-47 and B-52 Origins and Evolution, Book X, books, drawings, history, news, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft, US Bomber Projects  No Responses »
Apr 272021
 

My publisher has gone public with Book One, entitled

Boeing B-47 Stratojet and B-52 Stratofortress; Origins & Evolution

Woo!

It is being published by Mortons out of Britain, is scheduled for release at the end of September, and is going to be around 250 to 280 pages (I’m still furiously working away at it). As those who have seen my work may assume, it will be loaded to the gills with diagrams, in this case covering the competitors to the B-47 and B-52, the original concepts, how the designs evolved and many of the proposed and built derivatives. You can pre-order at the link above. I’m getting confirmation on availability in the States… Amazon and Barnes & Noble and other sources. Will report back on that, but it does look like both outlets will carry it.

I will post more details – including glimpses of diagrams and some of the color art created for the book by Rob Parthoens – in the coming days. Feel free to ask questions.

 

Note: Book Two has not yet gone public. But Book Two should be published *first* since it is finished and edited; I’ve seen and approved the layout. All it’s missing right now is cover art, which is in process.

 

And…behold! An Amazon link, listing it as available in late November/early December. Just in time for Chrisnukkwanzayulmass! Note though that the “150 page” length listed there is incorrect… came from the original placeholder text.

 Posted by at 8:51 am

March 2021 rewards

 aircraft, APR, art, awesomeness, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, new products, news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Mar 312021
 

Just released, the March 2021 rewards for APR Patrons and Subscribers. Included this month:

Diagram/art: a large format scan of an artists concept of the XC-14. This was printed with a large number of signatures; they seem to be Boeing engineers.

Document 1: “Project Hummingbird.” An FAA document summarizing the characteristics of STOL and VTOL aircraft circa 1961, including bogh built and proposed types. This was scanned from a clean original!

Document 2: “The Thor Missile Story.” Old, old, incredibly old school media… a film strip propaganda piece about the statues of the Thor IRBM.

CAD diagram: the WWII era German DFS 228 rocket powered high altitude recon plane, proposed operational version.

 

 

 

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



Because I forgot to mention the January and February rewards… subscribers/patrons got these (new subscribers can order them as back issues):

January 2021: Titan IIIC/IIIM booster rockets; CAD diagram of Post-Saturn concepts; a Convair Heavy Bombardment Airplane brochure; a fractional XF-103 mockup review and technical description; a fractional Westland paper on VTOL; a General Dynamics report on a proposed turboprop transport for Saturn stages.

February, 2021: An Aerion SST brochure; a Lockheed SST diagram; Dornbergers report on a commercial rocket powered airliner (scanned from a clean vintage copy); an early Convair jet flying boat bomber brochure; a CAD diagram comparing General Atomics’ ten-meter Orions for the USAF and NASA.

 Posted by at 5:13 pm

I feel so much safer

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, news, nukes, politics, rockets, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 262021
 

Our futures are secure.

A new bill would defund new ICBMs to pay for coronavirus vaccine research

This new Congress wants to not only disarm the populace but the military as well… at least as far as strategic deterrence. I’m sure the Chinese are quaking in their boots.

If there is anyone in the FBI who’s actually interested in defending the US, I’d recommend they use the list of sponsors and supporters of this bill as the basis for an investigation into foreign influence in the US government:

The Investing in Cures Before Missiles Act, offered by Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif….

The proposed legislation has amassed some early support in the House and Senate. Co-sponsors include Sens. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; as well as Reps. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore.; Steve Cohen, D-Tenn.; Jesus Garcia, D-Ill.; Raul M. Grijalva, D-Ariz.; Jared Huffman, D-Calif.; Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas; Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.; Barbara Lee, D-Calif.; James McGovern, D-Mass.; Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C.; Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; Mark Pocan, D-Wis.; and Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.

Note that there are some of the *dumbest* members of Congress listed there.

 Posted by at 9:35 pm

Kinetic Kill Vehicle

 art, history, nukes, rockets, weapons  No Responses »
Mar 242021
 

An Aerojet illustration of an interceptor designed to take out targets such as incoming nuclear warheads by the simple expedient of ramming into them at several kilometers per second, the old “hitting a bullet with a bullet” cliche.

 

 Posted by at 2:06 am

MC-747

 aircraft, history, Hmm..., nukes, projects, rockets, US Bomber Projects, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 072021
 

A video (made with a few contributions from yours truly, and, yes, attributed as such within the video) describing the 1970s Boeing design for an ICBM-carrying airliner, the MC-747. This is described and illustrated in US Bomber Projects issue 21, AVAILABLE HERE.

An interesting idea to be sure, but an unsafe one. Were one of these aircraft to go down for whatever reason, the results would be No Damned Good. Almost certainly the warheads would not go nuclear, but it’s always possible that the combo of the crash, the burning jet fuel and the solid rocket propellant merrily burning away might cause the chemical explosives in the warheads to go off, potentially scattering plutonium all over hither and yon. Worse still would be if the plutonium got sprinkled with the solid propellant and the plutonium combusted, scattering not just chunks and bits of plutonium, which would be bad enough, but clouds of plutonium oxide or plutonium chloride.

Perhaps more dangerous would be the Soviet reaction. They’d be in a constant state of freaking out every time one of these took to the sky, and they probably would have difficulty telling an MC-747 from an E-4 or a civilian 747. And, of course, they’d have to have their own. the AN-124 would be the logical choice for an ICBM carrier, and chances are good they’d do as good of a job with it as they did with Chernobyl, the Kursk or the Polyus.

 Posted by at 12:58 pm
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