The Chrysler Saucer

 aircraft, Crazy, history, Hmm..., nukes, projects, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft  4 Responses »
Sep 192016
 

There was a time when American auto manufacturers had important aerospace divisions. Chrysler, for example, was responsible for rockets such as the Redstone, Jupiter and the Saturn I and Ib first stage.

In late 1956, Lovell Lawrence Jr, an assistant chief engineer at the missiles division of Chrysler, publicized a concept for a nuclear-powered “flying saucer.” It seems to have been *partially* a reasonably rational concept for a long duration spacecraft for missions to Mars. It would spin like a frisbee to generate artificial gravity, though the relatively small radius would be likely to produce some harsh Coriolis effects. The saucer would be about 50 feet in diameter and only 6 feet thick.

Where the design goes a bit off the rails is that the performance expected of the craft was insanely impressive. It was a single-stage-to-solar-orbit craft, capable of taking off horizontally from a runway using nuclear-powered jet engines (note: “jet” in this case might mean “rocket.”) The craft would be capable of going from the Earth to Mars in 9 to 12 weeks.

Being that close to an atomic reactor (with a light enough shield to allow the thing to take off) would be a death sentence long before the craft would get to Mars.

After years of trying to research this concept, all I’ve managed to scrape up are three things from Ye Olde internet: two newspaper articles and one cover story from a UFO “fanzine.” I have tried over some years to obtain a copy of the “Saucer News” from August-September 1957 from sites like ebay, but without success. It seems like an original printing, or at least a decent scan, would provide a reasonably good version of the Chrysler saucer art. Anybody has more on this, I’m interested.

saucernews25-1957-aug-sep chrysler-saucer-2 chrysler-saucer-1

 Posted by at 11:29 pm

Avro “Big Wheel” mobile Minuteman launcher

 awesomeness, Crazy, history, Hmm..., nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets  3 Responses »
Aug 292016
 

Military hardware design programs often have code names that are random or nearly so, so you can’t figure out what they are if you overhear them. Concepts like “Have Blue” or “Copper Canyon” or “Science Dawn” or even “Silver Bug” are pretty opaque. But every now and then there are concepts like Avro Canada’s 1960 idea for a truck capable of carrying and launching two Minuteman ICBMs: “Big Wheel.” For once, the name matched the product.

bigwheel

One wonders what sort of career these might have had in the Monster Truck circuit after they became obsolete.

This is a document I scored off ebay a little while back; it arrived and I’ve scanned it and will include it in the very next APR Patreon catalog. If you’d like a copy, a monthly contribution of as little as $4 will get you the full-rez 300 dpi scan of each months reward documents and diagrams… currently, three documents, one large-format diagram or piece of artwork. That’s a buck an item. Give the APR Patreon a look.

bigwheel layout

 Posted by at 7:26 pm

Tinsley Nuclear Rocket in card form

 art, eBay, history, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, science fiction, spacecraft  5 Responses »
Aug 262016
 

Currently on eBay is a vintage Greek “Biscuit Card” featuring a simplified artwork replicating an internal-detonation nuclear pulse rocketship illustrated by Frank Tinsley. The original artwork was for a magazine ad for Arma Bosch in 1959 and is *not* any sort of official engineering design, just a magazine artists impression.

I’ve never seen the biscuit card version. I’ve no idea if this was a local Greek production, or the card was published in multiple languages.

Here’s the biscuit version:

ebay nuclear rocket tinsley 2 ebay nuclear rocket tinsley 1

Here’s the Tinsley original.

 

 Posted by at 10:42 pm

NASA nuclear fusion rocket

 history, models, nukes, projects, rockets, science, spacecraft  6 Responses »
Aug 242016
 

An early/mid 1960’s concept model of an interplanetary spacecraft using a nuclear fusion powerplant. Back then there was a LOT of faith in the idea of fusion reactors being just around the corner. One very obvious design flaw? No radiators. Any internal-fusion system (or internal-fission, for that matter) would need *vast* radiator surface area.

Details on the photo are unavailable. I originally downloaded this image from the GRIN (Great Images in NASA) website, which has now been closed in favor of a Flickr account that is difficult to search. Feh. If you want the full-rez version *another* Flickr account has it HERE.

GPN-2009-00027

 Posted by at 5:12 pm

B-58/ALBM progress report

 aircraft, history, nukes, rockets, youtube  4 Responses »
Aug 182016
 

The San Diego Air & Space Museum uploaded a 1958 Convair film showing tests of two air launched ballistic missiles carried and launched from B-58 “Hustler” bombers. The first test was a failure, the second a success. The ALBM is a capability we don’t have anymore, but could almost certainly use… prompt hypersonic strike systems are always going to be in fashion.

The video could use some TLC. The audio is rough and the film itself was old and faded, turning everything reddish. I suspect cleaning that up would require little more than pushing a few buttons now…

A similar report was produced a year later in 1959. This one is of better audio/visual quality.

 Posted by at 8:29 am

Thousand Astronomical Unit spacecraft

 art, history, nukes, projects, rockets, science, spacecraft  11 Responses »
Aug 112016
 

Starting in the 1970s and running through much of the 1980’s, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory ran numerous studies of Thousand Astronomical Unit (TAU) spacecraft. These were somewhat akin to Voyager class probes, but with important differences. instead of small RTGs for power, they would use SP-100 class fission reactors, mounted many dozens of meters away at the end of long booms. Located at the center of mass of the system would be a bank of ion engines; the nuclear electric propulsion system would operate for *years* to boost these craft to extremely high speeds. Still, it would take decades for them to travel 1,000 AU from the Sun, many times further than Pluto. There, large optical telescopes would take parallax measurements on distant stars; by positioning numerous TAU craft in every direction, the measurement baseline would be vast, and precise distance fixes could be made for stars on the other side of the galaxy.

A number of TAU designs were examined, but the one shown here in JPL art seems to be pretty representative. These probes would have to be engineered with a high degree of both reliability and autonomy as their main observation missions would only begin something like 50 years after launch. Diagrams of a different design and more information were presented in US Spacecraft Projects #3.

jpl tau

 Posted by at 1:54 pm

New (?) Nukes

 Hmm..., news, nukes, russian empire, weapons  5 Responses »
Aug 052016
 

US Nuclear Bomb Is Cleared For Production Engineering

The National Nuclear Security Administration has authorized the B61-12 warhead life-extension program to enter the production-engineering phase.

It’s not entirely clear if these are all-new nukes, or largely re-manufactured nukes. Anything is better than nothing, of course, but I see no reference to restarting nuclear *testing.* without popping off a couple of these, how can anyone be certain that they’ll work as advertised?

And of course, western NGOs and Russian media outlets are howling in rage that the US would dare to upgrade its creakingly old nuclear stockpile.

 Posted by at 1:47 pm

Turkey

 AARRRGH, dumbassery, Gah., history, Hmm..., news, nukes, politics, ಠ_ಠ  9 Responses »
Aug 012016
 

I’m sure Putin is rubbing his hand in giddy expectation over this…

Reports Turkish troops have sealed off Incirlik US/NATO nuclear air base

It’s sad that a NATO nation is falling into outright dictatorship. But as we’re on the one century mark from World War One, *perhaps* opportunities are arising to fix some of the geopolitical mistakes of that war. At the end of WWI, the victorious European allies chopped up the former Ottoman Empire (and other areas of the Middle East) into a ridiculous hodge-podge of borders that cut existing political/religious/ethnic groups apart and stuck the chunks together with other groups that hated each other. Perhaps weh  all is said and done, Turkish Kurdistan can be set free to join up with Iraqi Kurdistan. And Constantinople can finally revert to Greece. That’ll be fun.

 Posted by at 12:05 am

No, that’s *not* a Geodetic Satellite Model

 art, history, Hmm..., models, nukes, projects, spacecraft  6 Responses »
Jul 202016
 

Bonham’s just wrapped up another one of their “no you can’t afford these” space history memorabilia auctions. Among the interesting stuff I looked at, sighed over and wished I lived in a world where somehow I was rich enough to afford, there was this item:

Lot 75
GEODETIC SATELLITE MODEL

The other items listed all have their sales prices listed (like the $269,000 Sputnik model… yow), but this item seems to still only have it’s estimated price of  $1500-$2500. My guess is that that means it didn’t sell. And if it didn’t, maybe it’s because it was advertised as being something far less interesting than it actually is. Consider: the description goes thus:

GEODETIC SATELLITE MODEL

Large scale model of a Geodetic Satellite. 37½ inch tall plexiglass pole topped with 16½ inch tall conical satellite with ten 21 inch long folding blue panels.

Employed by the United States Navy, the GeoSat was an Earth observation satellite launched in 1985. The goal of the GeoSat mission was to provide information on the marine gravity field.

Which, yeah, I guess that’s nice, but it’s not really one of the more exciting satellites out there. By the way, here is a geodetic satellite rendering:

And here is the model that was up for auction:

sp-100 model

Are there similarities? Sure. But you know what that model *isn’t* a model of? A geodetic satellite. It’s a model of this:

Yup. That there is the business end of an SP-100 space nuclear reactor.

Now, I don’t know that the model is *really* anything special… the payload it’s attached to is dreadfully small and dull. It’s not like it’s attached to a neutral particle beam weapon or something similarly intriguing, and the SP-100 was hardly a classified program. But still a nuclear reactor powered spacecraft has *got* to be more interesting than a geodetic satellite, yes?

See also:

SP-100 art

 This is what happens when people and institutions do not contract with me to vet all their aerospace stuff. Reasonable rates, people!
 Posted by at 4:27 pm
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