An early/mid 1960’s NASA film about the design of the Apollo hardware. Includes simple schematics of both Direct mission hardware as well as Lunar Orbit Rendezvous hardware; also visible are more detailed diagrams of Apollo and Apollo-derived designs.
A Douglas concept from 1963 for a large space booster that was to use both chemical and nuclear engines. The first stage was to have chemical engines; when the booster reached sufficient altitude, it would stage off and a purely nuclear stage would deliver a one million pound payload to low Earth orbit (in this case, a million pounds of liquid hydrogen for a large interplanetary spacecraft). both stages would be recovered for re-use.
*Somewhere* I have a paper that describes this at least a little bit, with a minimal diagram…
I see your “modern art” and raise you…
New album just dropped at Starbase pic.twitter.com/3GACK66k9f
— Cosmic Perspective (@considercosmos) February 20, 2022
Family pic 👨👩👦👦 pic.twitter.com/qK5UTLiKt2
— Cosmic Perspective (@considercosmos) February 20, 2022
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Circa 1967, bell Aircraft produced a design for a tiltrotor VTOL aircraft that would be quite similar to the V-22 Osprey of 20 years later. the Model 266 had two T64 turboshaft engines, one at each wingtip. Each engine drove a three-bladed prop/rotor that could be tilted to provide vertical or horizontal thrust, with cross-shafts making it so that the aircraft could power both props in the event that an engine were to go out. The overall configuration was much like that of a spindlier V-22 with a conventional tail. The basic role was as a troop transport for the US Army.
The full-rez scan of the art has been uploaded to the 2022-02 APR Extras folder on Dropbox. This is available to all $4 and up Patrons and Subscribers. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
Elon Musk gives an hour-twenty update on Starship. Claims confidence of an orbital launch sometime in 2022.
One of the odder concepts from the 1950’s was this circa 1959 Bell Aircraft concept for a nuclear powered helicopter. Very little has come out about it in the decades since; some crude schematics of how the reactor and propulsion systems would be arranged, a bit of text, and this one piece of art. Supposedly this vehicle would have a fuselage some 300 feet long (including rotors, it would be much longer), have a top speed of 200 miles per hour and weigh 500,000 pounds. The artwork looks more like the result of turning the artist loose on the idea of “giant nuclear helicopter” than an interpretation of an engineering study; nuclear reactors powerful enough to lift a half million power helicopter and neither small nor minimally radioactive. A heavily shielded reactor would have to be fitted within this vehicle *somewhere,* and there would doubtless not be windows in that region. This design, though, has windows along the whole length of the fuselage, with little space for a shielded reactor. This design seems to have been designated D-1007.
The full-rez scan of the art has been uploaded to the 2022-02 APR Extras folder on Dropbox. This is available to all $4 and up Patrons and Subscribers. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
I have one last copy of B-47 Stratojet and B-52 Stratofortress: Origins and Evolution. It is signed, numbered (#23 of 23) and comes complete with three bonus 18X24 prints, also all singed and numbered. The total *including* shipping within the US (I shudder to think what shipping overseas would be as the book is honestly fairly massive) is $62. If you would like this copy, the very last of this batch (and there’re no plans for a second batch), send me an email and I’ll send you a paypal invoice. First come, first served…
Update: SOLD.
The package of Shuttle II stuff (actually, “Shuttle Evolved”) arrived today and has been scanned and uploaded to Dropbox (some 350 megabytes). Enough funders came on board to drop the per-funder price to a mere $13. The artwork was particularly nice; it was scanned in at 600 dpi and provided both as-scanned, and with some process to de-age and brighten the art. The documents have been turned into PDFs, as well as providing the raw scans.
The collection of stuff was expensive, but crowdfunding it made it inexpensive for everyone. If you see anything on ebay or elsewhere that might benefit from such an approach, don’t hesitate to point it out.
Funders who have paid the $13 should have received a Dropbox notification about the uploads providing access to the files.
So a lot of “Shuttle II” stuff appeared on eBay for an exorbitant price. I’m becoming increasingly leery of plunking down excessive sums for this sort of thing… not only due to my own finances and the onrushing economic meltdown, but because doing so incentivizes sellers to slap even more exorbitant prices on things. But, I put this lot before my APR patrons/subscribers as a potential crowdfunding opportunity, and enough signed on that I went ahead and purchased the lot. It should arrive early next week.
As with all my APR crowdfunds, the cost of the item is split evenly among the funders; the more funders, the lower the price per person. Each funder will receive a complete set of high-rez (300 DPI, full color… higher rez if called for) scans of the items. Typically these crowdfunded items then get sent on to appropriate archive, library or museum, though this time I’m not quite sure where they should go.
If you would be interested in signing on, send me an email . There are currently enough funders that the per-funder price is ~$24 under $14; the more sign on, the lower it’ll get. If you have a price limit noticeably lower than $14, let me know in your email. This will remain open until the stuff arrives, presumably early next week. At that point it’ll be closed and the price set.
Additionally: the box shown below, loaded with blueprints/diagrams, is somewhere in the system headed my way. It was procured sight unseen; I have high hopes. This sort of thing is made possible by the APR Patrons/Monthly Historical Documents Program subscribers. If you want to help preserve aerospace history and get in on these goodies, please consider subscribing.
Their plan is to launch a *studio* to the ISS in 2024, and then separate it from the ISS to become a free-flying platform in 2028.
How serious are they? Dunno. Will it come to pass? Dunno. Is it frivolous, compared to the likes of space telescopes, missions to the Moon, Mars colonization? Definitely. Is it a good idea? If it is carried out honestly, with a proper budget and engineering rigor… you damn betcha it’s a good idea. This sort of thing should help spur not only direct improvements in space technologies such as life support, launch and the understanding of how regular folk do in microgravity, it should also help spur general interest in space. If the “studio” mechanically works well, it could lead to practical space hotels and other space-based commercial enterprises.
Assuming, of course, it’s not a disaster. Videos of Tom Cruise turning various shades of green and spewing nonstop for weeks on end might not be so great. But say what you will about Cruise, man’s a consummate pro when it comes to acting; wouldn’t surprise me if he could act right through space sickness and make it look like he’s having a blast.
