Ready to be 3-D printed:
Sep 212012
Sep 202012
While work on the LK CAD model continues, a bit of a break in the process has allowed me to jam completion of the Tremulis Zero Fighter CAD model into the schedule. This will be a 1/48 scale kit from Fantastic Plastic, and will stand about 16.9 inches tall. Shown below are some renders with the Hydra Parasit (also 1/48) for scale.
Sep 172012
A 1959 design, produced by North American Aviation for Boeing, for a reusable Dyna Soar booster. The launch vehicle, powered by two Rocketdyne E-1 engines, could put this very early Boeing Dyna Soar vehicle into a 300 nautical mile polar orbit.
Sep 152012
As should be obvious, one of my jobs is that of “model maker.” This is a job title that I suspect is not long for this world; more and more it’s going to 3D CAD & 3D printing. Additionally, American craftsmen in areas such as this simply cannot charge the cheap prices that the Asian “genuine Philippine mahogany” sweatshop/slave labor firms do. So to compete, we’ve got to be *better* than the Asian crap and/or often touch on more obscure topics. I try to do both.
Ebay is a source for a lot of the cheap Asian models. I check in from time to time to see what thing they’re cranking out now. I saw a Project Orion model listed… and I gotta laugh:
Wow. That’s just so wrong on so many levels.
Sep 152012
A 1963-1964 design from TRW for a manned Mars exploration craft. It, like the NAA biconic design, used aerobraking at Mars. In TRW’s case, they used the same basic aerodynamic configuration that was used on early RVs for American ICBM launched nuclear warheads.
More on this design is HERE.
Sep 122012
The USAF understandably wants new weapons for the future. One such is the “High Speed Strike Weapon (HSSW),” which is to be an air launched hypersonic ground attack missile. A reasonable enough sort of thing for the USAF to want. well, they’re in the early stages of trying to work out just what they want, in cahoots with the aerospace industry. Behold:
High Speed Strike Weapon (HSSW) Demonstration Program Industry Day 1
Included therein is a link to a PDF file of a draft Broad Area Announcement. now, a perfectly reasonable approach would be for the USAF to basically say “We want a missile that weighs less than W pounds, will go X miles in Y minutes and carry Z payload,” and then detail stuff about cost and meaneuverability and schedules and whatnot. What the USAF produced starts off like this:
General Program Objectives: The overall objective of the High Speed Strike Weapon Demo program is to identify, assess, develop (increase the technology maturity level), integrate and demonstrate through modeling and simulation, ground and demonstration flight testing of an S&T technology demonstrator weapon system, technologies for a hypersonic, air-launched cruise missile. The scope of the demonstration flight(s) includes launching the S&T technology demonstrator weapon from either an F-15E or a B-52 at a tactically relevant altitude and airspeed.
Good so far. But then they totally screw the pooch with this:
The propulsion system for the S&T technology demonstrator weapon must include an air-breathing engine capable of supersonic combustion.
Oy vey.
Instead of asking for capability, they are asking for a specific technology… scramjets. A technology that has been in development for sixty years and still doesn’t work.
Who knows, solid rockets or maybe conventional ramjets might have worked, and relatively cheaply. But instead the USAF looks like it’s saddling itself with a science project. Which would be ok… but a science project is rarely a good basis for a production program.
What’s next? Is the Navy going to specify a fusion reactor powered attack sub?
Sep 122012
For several years I’ve been looking for a cost effective way to “gold plate” display models without actually plating them in gold. I know it’s possible…. cheap plastic toys are often “gold plated” by way of vapor-depositing aluminum on them, then putting a yellow-tinted clearcoat over that. The results can be quite successful. For example:
Aluminum plating these things is cost effective because it’s done on an industrial scale. Getting it done on an individual part scale? Meh.
I’ve tried every “gold paint” that I can find, and not a one of ’em actually looks like gold. The best of them looks like… gold paint. So, yellow-clear-coating “chrome” seems about the only way to go.
The closest you can come to “chrome” without actual metal plating is one of a few specialty paints. I’ve heard good things about “Spaz Stix Ultimate Mirror Chrome,” but have not tried it.
One thing I have used with some notable success is Alclad II Chrome in an airbrush. Applied properly, it’s not quite an actual mirror surface, but it looks pretty damned good. So, I decided to try yellow-clear-coating Alclad Chrome to see what I get.
First up… I took a 1/24 Dyna Soar display model and chromed it. This was a model built from all the parts that stink… the original body mold was seriously flawed (and has been replaced with a mold that’s great, producing awesome castings), and the smaller parts were early castings that were munged up in various and sundry way. It was assembled as a fit check, and to be used in sizing things like the display stand and the packaging. Since it is and always will be a serious mess, I didn’t go overboard in surface prep. When using Alclad Chrome, proper surface prep is vital, but this was just a test… and on the whole the results looked pretty good anyway:
I then oversprayed part of that with Alclad clear yellow. The results:
Well, it’s better than gold paint, but it’s still far from being mistaken for actual gold. The yellow seemed to dull the chrome… I wonder if the yellow ate into the chrome and fuzzed it out some. perhaps yellow dye (food coloring?) in something like nitrocellulose lacquer might do the trick…
In any event, I liked the chrome enough that I think I might make me a chrome Dyna Soar one of these days. I’ll be the only kid on my block with one.
——
———–
Sep 102012
From an ebay auction, a 1966 Boeing cutaway drawing of the early swing-wing version of the 2707 SST. While the wing would have made low speed flight, in particular takeoffs and landings, more efficient and comfortable, the technology of the time would have made the wing pivot and associated systems simply too heavy and complex for a commercial system such as this. Thus the final 2707-300 SST did away with the variable geometry wing.
But damn if it wasn’t sexy.
Photo of display models (from this auction)
Sep 082012
Found in a pile of ebay-obtained glossies – all the ones that could be identified were Boeing – was this one showing an armed and rather large hovercraft plowing over polar seas. No other data… date, identification, etc. all missing, just the image. What’s shown is a hovercraft propelled by six turbofan engines, with a very “Sea Shadow” type of semi-stealthy build, with a bunch of vertical launch tubes and what look rather like US Colonial Marine Corps sentry-guns scattered about the deck. The other artwork in the pile seemed to be from the 1970’s, so it’s a safe bet this design dates from then as well.
Sep 072012
From slides at the NASA HQ archive, two photos of a Convair “Triamese” space shuttle concept. See HERE for more on the Triamese.
