A mid-1960’s North American Aviation concept for a sorta-lifting body spacecraft that would use deployable rotors for landing. Functioning as an autogyro, these rotors would be a more controllable alternative to a parachute, in principle allowing fairly pinpoint runway touchdowns. I had cause to go looking for information on this recently; i was fairly certain that I had a few reports on the subject, but could not find them. Grrr.
A few photos I found online a few years ago of a display model, presumably originating from an auction website such as ebay:
An unmanned test flight of the New Shepard suffered a catastrophic engine explosion. The capsule seemed to successfully separate and landed normally, but that would have been a *damned* rough ride, with a bunch of eyeballs-out G’s for a few seconds.
On other launch matters: Firefly is gonna try to launch again today, not sure what time:
I looked through a small fraction of my surprisingly vast pile of CAD diagrams for some I thought might look good in really large format. Some I’ve gone some distance towards formatting them that way already; some are still formatted for small sheets. There are more, of course. In no particular order.
Back in 2016 I released seven PDFs of CAD diagrams formatted for printing at 24X36 inches (those are shown after the break). This was another product line that didn’t exactly blow up the market, and no further diagrams were released. But now that I have two books of CAD diagrams released, and two more coming (and potentially more after that), I’m considering trying again. The Lockheed CL-400 Suntan, A-11, A-12, SR-71, YF-12, along with several B-47 and B-52 related designs are possible, as well as designs that aren’t from those books (X-20 Dyna Soar, several Orion vehicles, etc.). If this sounds interesting, let me know; if there is something specific you might be interested in, let me know.
Mortons has announced my “Book 3,” They list it as available September 30… but I would expect it to come out a bit later than that. Well before Christmas, though.
This is Volume 1. I’m hard at work on Volume 2. A Volume 3 is *possible,* though uncertain just yet. Volume 1 covers the evolution of and derivative designs from the “official” bomber programs… B-58, B-59, B-68, B-70. B-1, A-5 and F-111. This covers, where possible, designs that competed for the contract. As with all my works, this is heavily illustrated with line diagrams, as accurate as I can make them.
This will eventually also be available through Amazon. THIS appears to be a placeholder for the listing. When released, it should be available directly through Mortons first, but for US buyers Amazon will have lower shipping cost.
I’m all in favor of megaprojects. Hell, some years ago I made a pretty good stab at a book on the subject… half history of such projects, half illustrated manual of such projects, and half manifesto calling for mankind to plow ahead with such projects. Things like solar power satellites, O’Neill habitats, supra-mundane terraforming, orbital rings, terraformed asteroids (inside and out), Dyson swarms, all that. If mankind is going to make it long-term, we are going to have to do such things, and do rather a lot of them. We will eventually tear apart whole solar systems to rebuild them better. And to get from Here to There, we are going to have to do a lot of intermediate projects… and a lot of them will fail. I suspect that a fair proportion of the early space habitats will turn into disasters; early Mars colonies will be death traps; solar power satellites will fold up like origami. It’s sad, but it’s likely inevitable. It’s not like the history of Europeans colonizing the world was a history of unalloyed success from the get-go; there are whole colonies that just up and friggen’ vanished. But humans learn from such things and do better the next time… and soon enough, the same people who vanished like a fart in the wind at Roanoke have built New York City.
That said: not all megaprojects sound like good ideas. Some that seem like they are probably technically feasible sound like logistic or sociological nightmares. Such is the case with The Line, a whackadoo concept for a skyscraper taller than the Empire State Building… and hundreds of kilometers long. Worse, they want to build the thing in the desert. Worst, they want to build it in *Arabia.* No matter how bad your idea is, building it in a backwards theocratic superstitious cesspit will make your idea even worse.
Roscosmos showed a model of the new orbital station. At present, RKK Energia continues to work on the draft design of the station.#Roscosmospic.twitter.com/YaBMBLqrSR
Turns out that these two lithographs are, at least based on stains on the X-23 matting, the same two lithographs sold just a few months ago. I’m dubious of turning around two lithographs that sold for $384 together for a grand or more each. The seller has a *lot* of high-value items… celebrity autographs and such, so he’s presumably doing well, but normally a lithograph like this would sell for well under $100.
Shrug.
Anyway, the art depicts an HL-10 coming in for a landing. The configuration includes a raised cockpit and reaction control thrusters at the tail; the white paint seems burned off along the underside. This would indicate an orbital craft after re-entry. Given the lack of an apparent hatch in the rear, this would not seem to be an operational orbital HL-10 (depicted hereabouts many times in the past) but instead a slightly smaller test vehicle, probably with a single pilot, possible lobbed on a once-around flight.
Currently on ebay is a lithograph of the Martin X-23 PRIME (Precision Reentry Including Maneuvering reEntry) subscale lifting body, a mid-1960’s program to build small test vehicles for the full-scale X-24A lifting body. This depiction shows it without the “bump” on the forward fuselage simulating the contours of the cockpit canopy. The seller is rather optimistic with a $1875 Buy-It-Now price, although he will consider offers.
Another copy of the same lithograph, along with a lithograph of an orbital HL-10, sold a few months ago for less than $400. That was too rich for my blood for two lithographs, never mind nearly two grand for one. Shrug. But at least the listing provides a fairly decent photo of the art. I *believe* I’ve only seen it reproduced in B&W.
