B-47/B-52: Signed copies!

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, B-47 and B-52 Origins and Evolution, blather, Book 3, Book X, books, drawings, history, Hmm..., new products, news, projects, rockets, secrets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jan 142022
 

A few boxes of books finally showed up, shipped from Britain. Not as many as I’d planned on getting; with luck, one or two more boxes are simply working their way through the system slower than the others. UPDATE: the rest showed up. However, I can only make firm plans for the books I actually have on hand.

I plan on selling signed, numbered and dated copies for $55 each plus shipping (cheap in the US, but doubtless ridiculously expensive elsewhere… international postage is nuts these days). To sweeten the deal, these will all come with three 18X24 signed, numbered and dated prints of the B-47 and B-52.

To start off, I will auction off the first five copies. To sweeten *that* deal, numbers 3,4 and 5 will have a fourth 18X24 print… from the currently in-progress Book 3. Numbers 1 and 2 will have an additional 18X24, also from Book 3. The subject of Book 3 has not been made public yet, but I trust that it and the diagrams will be of considerable interest to anyone who has purchased “SR-71” and “B-47/B-52.”

The auction will be simple: send me your bid (in excess of $55) and the highest bid gets #1, second highest gets #2, and so on. Send your bid to scottlowther@up-ship.com before the end of the day Sunday.

After that I will sell off the other signed copies, starting with those who signed up. Hopefully more will arrive by that point, but for right now it looks like There will be a grand total of only 18 23 signed and numbered copies on the entire planet. So… who knows. Collectors items.

 Posted by at 1:57 am

Behold: Books!

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, Book X, books, drawings, history, new products, projects  No Responses »
Jan 132022
 

Yesterday some boxes from Britain showed up with some copies of my new book:

I will be selling these as signed copies for $55 plus postage. My plan at this time is to sell a very limited number (I currently have a grand total of 18 copies on hand; I have hopes for a *few* more to show up) with three 18X24 prints. all singed and numbered. However, fiver copies, #’s 1 through 5, will be auctioned: the idea is that the highest bid gets #1, second highest gets #2, etc. As a bonus, #’s 3,4,5 will get one extra 18X24, which will be a diagram from the currently in-progress Book 3. #’s 1 and 2 will get *two* prints from Book 3. Pretty sure that these extra diagrams will be of considerable interest to anyone who bought my SR-71 book and the B-47/B-52 book. I will contact the list of folks who signed on in a day or two.

If you want to just go ahead and buy a regular copy, it’s available from Mortons in Britain and, in a few days, from Amazon.

 Posted by at 10:35 am

Lockheed AP-12

 aircraft, awesomeness, Book X, books, drawings, history, Hmm..., Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird Origins and Evolution, projects, rockets, spacecraft, SR-71 Origins and Evolution  No Responses »
Jan 042022
 

The Lockheed Skunk Works A-12 was the immediate predecessor of the SR-71, a single seat recon vehicle in some ways a bit superior to the SR-71, in others not as good. One of the odder ideas put forward was to use the A-12 to carry a modified Polaris missile with a recon satellite on a once-around mission… a way to turn the Mach 3+ A-12 into a global range hypersonic, nearly orbit-capable recon platform. It was bonkers, but the math checked out; nevertheless it was not built. It is described in greater detail in:

Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird – Origins & Evolution

Available either directly through the publisher or through Amazon.

 Posted by at 3:14 am

Argh

 AARRRGH, aircraft, art, B-47 and B-52 Origins and Evolution, blather, Book 3, books, drawings, Gah., Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird Origins and Evolution, Monthly Historical Documents Program, projects, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Dec 232021
 

I’m working on CAD diagrams for Book 3. As with the prior two books, this will be largely filled with diagrams of unbuilt aircraft, but also will have diagrams of real, flown aircraft. The diagrams of “real” aircraft take far longer than those of “project” aircraft for a few simple reasons: “real” aircraft have a lot more information, and a lot more accessible detail… and “real” aircraft are subject to critique by others to a higher degree than “project” aircraft. Couple that with an urge to craftsmanship, and “real” aircraft can be a real chore to diagram.

So the aircraft I’m working on now is pretty well known. Unfortunately, “well known” does not always (or even often) result in “well described and illustrated with official, large, high rez, precise and accurate diagrams” from which to work. I’m trying to reconcile official diagrams taken from blueprints and technical manuals, and it’s a massive pain in my keister: a diagram that at first seemed spectacular – showing the structural frames *and* their fuselage stations – turns out to be a mess, because the fuselage stations aren’t anything like to scale. None of the diagrams agree with each other or photos of the aircraft as far as the exact shape of the canopy. Gah.

So I hope y’all appreciate what I have to go through…

Buy my books!

Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird – Origins & Evolution.

B-47 Stratojet and B-52 Stratofortress: Origins and Evolution.

Subscribe to the Monthly Historical Documents Program!

 Posted by at 7:38 pm

PDF Review: After LM

 books, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects, spacecraft  No Responses »
Dec 082021
 

After LM: NASA Lunar Lander Concepts Beyond Apollo

As this document is being compiled in 2019, NASA is once again planning a return to the Moon, and new lunar lander designs are being generated. Compared to Apollo, crews are projected to be larger (at least four per mission) and stay times longer (beginning at 6.5 days). However, it is expected that the landers will look much like the designs in this document because, as stated in the introduction, lunar lander design is a response to the simple physics that governs the tasks they are asked to perform. Design is also a living thing. New crewed lander designs will continue to emerge up until the point that humans return to the Moon, and even beyond. New players from different countries and commercial providers will create new designs based on new technologies and new requirements. Until some breakthrough technology or new physics principle is created, each lander will respond to the current physics of lunar landing. There may come a time, generations from now, when future engineers are paging through a digital copy of this catalog and reflecting on the early work of lunar lander designers. “Those Apollo guys were really smart, given that they started with nothing as a reference. The Lunar Module – now THAT was a great lunar lander design.”

It’s an interesting, illustrated catalog of many lunar lander concepts, but it’s hardly comprehensive; it largely starts with the Space Exploration Initiative, largely ignoring concepts from the 70’s and 80’s, and of course focusing almost entirely on NASA_designed concepts rather than Lockheed, Boeing, Rockwell, etc.

 Posted by at 9:56 am

B-47/B-52 update

 aircraft, B-47 and B-52 Origins and Evolution, Book X, books, drawings, news, projects  No Responses »
Dec 062021
 

I hear tell that some copies of the book are to be shipped my way in the next few days, taking however long it takes to cross the Atlantic ocean. I would assume that customers who ordered directly from Mortons will get their copies shipped soon. Not sure about Amazon orders, though the listing currently says Feb 7.

I will have a limited number for signed copies (around 20). As with the SR-71 bookazine, I will include 18X24 prints made specifically for these signed copies; all copies will be signed and numbered. I expect that these will be $55 plus shipping, though I intend to auction #’s 1 through 5.

 Posted by at 3:32 am
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