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 aircraft, APR, art, awesomeness, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, new products, news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »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If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.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

XB-58 Pods

 aircraft, history, nukes, projects, weapons  No Responses »
Mar 062021
 

From well before the B-58 program began, the Convair designers intended for their four-engined supersonic bomber to have a relatively gigantic pod underneath containing fuel and a nuke. The illustration below shows an early B-58 concept with the outboard engine nacelles located above the wing, together with a collection of potential bomb/fuel pods. “Freefall” contains an H-bomb; “Ferret” is electronic intelligence gathering; photo recon is obvious; and PPB is… hmmm. Note that none of these seem to have rockets in the tail, the ferret and photo recon pods doubtless were intended to return with the aircraft rather than be dropped.

 

 Posted by at 8:03 pm

Boost-phase interceptor

 art, awesomeness, history, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft, weapons  No Responses »
Mar 052021
 

An Aerojet concept for a boost-phase ICBM interceptor.

This would be a space-based anti-missile system composed of two high thrust solid rocket motors and a kill vehicle composed of a substantial set of optics, some impressive late 1980’s computers and most likely a hydrazine monoprop divert system. The missile would be meant to physically impact an ICBM while still being lofted by the first stage; this is an bigger, slower and brighter target than the later, faster, smaller stages and warheads, but you have to be *fast* to reach out and tag a missile in the first moments of flight.

 

 Posted by at 5:36 pm

Fleet Ballistic Missiles

 drawings, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Mar 012021
 

From Polaris through Poseidon to Trident D-5:

Every one of those was proposed for alternate roles, from truck-towed and truck-launched land based strike missiles to air-launched and ground-launched satellite boosting systems. And they very likely *could* have done that. But they are just not really well suited for any role but sea launched ballistic missile due to the somewhat tricky propellants they use… high energy propellants so they can function adequately while still being able to fit in a small submarine. But for above-ground systems, they’d be somewhat dubious. The environment within a submarine is pretty consistent. For a missile stored in a warehouse and then hauled aloft by an airplane? The thermal and vibration environments will be highly variable.

 Posted by at 4:31 pm

Perseverance vids and images

 awesomeness, history, news, nukes, rockets, science, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Feb 222021
 

A NASA press conference livestream with some interesting vids. At 11:58 to about 15:00  you can see multiple camera angles of the actual landing… on the skycrane looking down at the suspended rover, on the rover looking up at the skycrane, on the rover looking down at the surface. Various still images start at about 28:44. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was able to image the rover, the skycrane, the heat shield and the parachute scattered on the surface at 37:25… but more interestingly, a still image of the actual landing in process at 38:07, where you can see the parachutes fluttering away and the rocket exhaust scattering dust on the surface. The first audio recording from Mars is at 41:21, with a cleaned-up audio at 42:26 giving the sounds of winds on Mars. It’s not spectacular audio, but it’s better than anything produced by astrologers, gender studies majors or critical race theorists. Engineering rigor for the win. AGAIN.

Nuclear powered cars, baby!

 Posted by at 3:31 pm
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