The X-20 and MOL CAD drawings shown together at the same scale. Neither is done yet, but I thought they look pretty spiffy together.
Nov 112013
Nov 102013
The final CAD model of the SR-72. Some further blending and surface detailing will be done on the 3D printed parts.
Nov 072013
Just about there except for some detailing.
Nov 052013
… that drive up processing time. All the little ridges, bumps and corrugations on the MOL model have turned this from a simple construction to something the computer has a fit trying to deal with.
Nov 042013
United Tech produced some spiffy propaganda/PR back in the day. One thing I have is a surprisingly large book on the UA-1205/1207 solid rocket motor, used on the Titan IIIC. At the back of it is some very 1960’s artwork of proposed uses of the solid motors on variants of the Saturn I and Saturn V.
Nov 032013
Selling this on eBay:
X-20 Dyna Soar Model 2050E diagram booklet
Here is a collection of 11X17 CAD diagrams of the X-20 Dyna Soar, specifically the final design, Model 2050E from 1963. These diagrams were created for issue V3N4 of Aerospace Projects Review; since this issue has not yet been published (and won’t be for a while yet), these will be the only copies of these diagrams out-and-about for some time. And if I get mashed by a Mack truck before V3N4… well, these will be the only copies out there, period.
These are bound in a 12X18 pressboard report cover with prong fasteners… outdated today, but appropriate for early 1960’s aerospace history. The collection currently has 25 pages, though this may change. Any additional diagrams that are finished prior to the end of the auction (I’d estimate one or two) will be added. The collection includes, but is not limited to: 1/48 scale 5-view diagram of the X-20 Dyna Soar, accurately showing the configuration of the metallic heat shields; several 1/72 layout diagrams of the X-20 with adapter and transstage; several 1/125 scale diagrams of the X-20/Titan IIIc launch vehicle, in different configurations; 1/175 X-20/Saturn C-1; 1/48 3-view of the “synergetic” configuration; numerous diagrams of various small space stations designed with operational Dyna Soar shuttle vehicles in mind; a scale comparison of the Dyna Soar with the ASSET test vehicle, the X-37B spaceplane and the HTV-2 test vehicle; separate 3-views of those other vehicles; and as a bonus, diagrams from issues V2N5 and V3N3 showing earlier versions of the Dyna Soar used as components of advanced launch systems such as the Aerospace Plane and the B-70 based Reusable Booster System.
Nov 032013
Maybe coming soon to Fantastic Plastic, the recently “unveiled” SR-72.
Oct 302013
Shazam.
The next issue of APR is still a long ways away. But I’m thinking of making the drawings available sooner.
Oct 302013
Artwork of a three-stage rocket designed by Krafft Ehricke around 1953. 126 feet tall, it would be capable of orbiting 11,000 pounds of payload into a 600 mile circular orbit. Liftoff weight would be 1.3 million pounds.
The first stage, here being shown dropped, would be parachute recovered. the second stage would be expended; the third stage would be used to built up a space station. If you can’t immediately tell where stage 2 ends and stage 3 begins, it’s because stage 3 is the central cylinder, with stage 2 being wrapped around it. This sort of staging arrangement was considered fairly often in the days before they actually had to build these things.
It would be able to land 3,000 pounds on the moon or shoot 5,000 pound probes past Mars or Venus.
Oct 292013
On the list of the hazards to manned spaceflight – and to photovoltaic arrays and integrated circuits – are the Van Allen radiation belts. These belts, from about 1000 km to 60,000 km above the surface, are the results of the Earths magnetosphere snagging energetic electrons blasted from the sun and protons that are the result of cosmic rays smacking the upper atmosphere. The electrons form a high beta radiation flux, enough to fry unshielded electronic and humans who spend too much time there. This flux is high enough that satellite being shot into higher orbits have a good fraction of the lifetime degradation of their solar arrays done just in the few hours it takes to transit the belts. The belts consume a vast volume of real estate that I’m sure a lot of satellites would love to occupy. But what can be done?
Well… drain ’em, apparently.
Tethers Unlimited, a company co-founded by the late physicist Robert Forward (who I had the chance to meet a few times), studied the use of conductive tethers to sweep out regions of the belts. By charging the tethers to a high voltage, electrons would be kicked away at high speed, enough to leave the belts permanently. I don’t know whether this would work, but it seems feasible, and I can’t see how it would have any real “environmental” effects. The only thing that occurs to me: it seems the electrons would be kicked away in essentially random directions, some up, some down. So… if they launched a couple dozen of these things, they’d be swinging through the sky, blasting electrons every which way. So at twilight, you could look up into the darkening (or lightening) sky and see a miles-long tether, brightly lit by the sun, cruising overhead. And deeper into darkness, after the tethers themselves are in darkness, might you still be able to detect them? Perhaps you wouldn’t see the tethers directly, but the electrons that they kick *down* would smack into the upper atmosphere and create faint aurora. A faint circle of auroral glow? A comet-tail? Dunno…
In any event, these things would not be in permanent operation, but periodic. The electrons that populate the belts are injected into it by solar flares and such; drain the belts, and it may well take a good long time for them to fill back up again.