The rewards for November, 2021, have been sent out. Patrons should have received a notification message through Patreon linking to the rewards; subscribers should have received a notification from Dropbox linking to the rewards. If you did not, let me know.

Document: “Galactic-Jupiter Probe Program Concept:” 1967 NASA-Goddard brochure describing a Pioneer/Voyager type of space probe

Document: “Mixed Mode Rocket Vehicles for International Space Transportation Systems,” 1973 paper describing modified Shuttles and other launch vehicles

Document: “Nuclear Physics Made Very, Very Easy,”1968 NASA NERVA test operation publication that summarizes nuclear physics

Diagram: Navalized Advanced tactical Fighter (Northrop NF-23) general arrangement

CAD Diagram ($5 and up): “Disney Bomb,” British designed and built, American dropped rocket-boosted submarine pen penetrating bomb from the end of WWII

If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. *ALL* back issues, one a month since 2014, are available for subscribers at low cost.

Elon Musk tells SpaceX employees that Starship engine crisis is creating a ‘risk of bankruptcy’

Ummm…

“The Raptor production crisis is much worse than it seemed a few weeks ago,” Musk wrote.

UMMM…

Raptor engines power the company’s Starship rocket, with Musk adding that SpaceX faces “genuine risk of bankruptcy if we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year.”

UMMM…

A flight rate of once every two weeks within a year for a rocket that hasn’t flown yet? Ahhh… ummm…

If you look back to NASA in the mid-1960’s, it certainly seems like it was an organization filled with people who thought that the future was wide open. Apollo was merely going to be the first step; after some landings would come longer-term “camps” on the moon, with stays of a few weeks in temporary habitats; then would come bases that could be visited by multiple crews. Nuclear powered space stations with artificial gravity. There would be manned flyby missions to Venus and eventually manned landings on Mars; as propulsion systems inevitably grew vastly more capable, manned missions to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn would follow in due course.

By the time Apollo 11 actually landed on the moon, though, it was becoming clear that the future was not going to be what it should have been. As noted previously, the production line of the Saturn V was shut down a year before Apollo 11, not only limiting the possible missions of the Apollo program but ending hope for missions that would expand upon Apollo. Shortly after Apollo 11, it seems that morale at NASA was already in decline as the engineers, scientists, technicians and so on could see the writing on the wall. Not only was Saturn dead, but funding was in decline and it was becoming clear that there was minimal political interest in carrying Apollo forward… the job of beating the Soviets to the Moon was done, and the important scientific work, not to mention the prospect of carrying western civilization to the stars, was not that important to the political class who were far more interested in the “Great Society” spending programs. So in September of 1969 a “Seminar on Manned Flight Awareness” was held at the Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, to deal with the issue:

The successful lunar landing and completion of the flight of Apollo 11 achieved a national objective in this decade and is a significant milestone in man’s continuing progress in space exploration. Historically, achievements of such magnitude, requiring concentrated efforts over an appreciable time period, are followed by a letdown and general relaxation of the personnel involved. In addition, this letdown may be amplified by a serious morale problem when funding cutbacks are experienced. The result is n decline in the required attention to detailed workmanship which can cause a rise in accident rates and potential loss of life.

To counter these potential morale and complacency problems in the spaceflight program, this Government/Industry Manned Flight Awareness Seminar is being conducted. The objective of this seminar is the maintenance of high quality workmanship through effective awareness and motivational programs. We intend to do this by outlining NASA’s plans for future programs and the resources being made available to successfully conclude these programs. In addition, executives of various industrial firms deeply involved in space work will present their views of the future. In this way we can get the message from NASA Management to the individuals responsible for doing the work that is vital to assuring a high quality of workmanship in the aerospace force.

Not having been born yet, I don’t have any firsthand information on just what was going on at the time in NASA. However, one thing I *do* have firsthand information on was the end of the United Technologies Center/Chemical System Division facility south of San Jose, California, circa 2003-2004. That company was a manufacturer of solid rockets such as the booster separation motors for the Space Shuttle, booster rockets for the Tomahawk cruise missile, Minuteman ICBM stages and so on. It was a vital part of the rocket industry of the United States. And in 2003-2004, it was *obvious* to everyone there that the company was doomed. Things were going wrong left and right to the point that a lot of us were wondering if it was active sabotage; in reality it was merely management and unions working together to make things as ridiculous as possible. Coupled with the fact that the company could, at best, turn in a profit measured at a handful of millions of dollars a year while sitting on *billions* of dollars of prime Silicon Valley real estate, everyone there knew that the companies time was strictly limited. So, what did the USAF and NASA do about it?

The USAF/NASA told the rest of the United States aerospace industry to *not* hire any of us. We were embargoed from seeking employment elsewhere, at least at companies that received federal contracts. So we stayed on the job. Until, of course, the embargoes were lifted, then we fled like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

It seems that NASA in September 1969 was facing a similar predicament. Everyone there – scientists, engineers, technicians and subcontractors of all kinds – could see the writing on the wall. And when you know that the project you’re working on has a near-term end date, you look for somewhere else to be, preferably before all your co-workers get the same idea. This is sensible, but it’s also a problem. Yes, Apollo/Saturn had a distinctly limited lifespan. But the program still had a number of years left, and it would need the bulk of the staff to stay on the job to make sure that the spacecraft and launch vehicles were finished, maintained and prepared for their missions. If everyone at NASA fled for brighter opportunities elsewhere, the missions still funded would be unable to be completed. So NASA held a seminar that seemed to have the singular goal of convincing people just how bright NASA’s future really was. A space shuttle would be available by 1976 and a space station by 1979… as well as a polar orbit station and one in geosynchronous. A lunar orbiting station around 1976. Nuclear powered inter-orbital shuttles. Manned missions back to the Moon and on to Mars.

It was all wrong. Yes, the Shuttle finally arrived in the early 1980’s, greatly delayed and vastly and permanently over budget, each flight costing one to two orders of magnitude more than originally projected. yes, a space station did eventually arrive… in the 1990’s, handicapped by international politics, small, undermanned, under-capable. None of the rest of it even *tried* to happen. The seminar reads like desperation, or a rah-rah session at some multi-level marketing scheme; I had flashes to scenes in the recent Hulu series “Dopesick” where Oxycontin sales reps are getting the latest BS about how great the next dosage of the pill will be, so go out there and sell more.

*A* future does not mean *A* *GOOD* *FUTURE.*

No. It was the end, and apparently everyone involved could see it.

You can download a PDF of the 80-page seminar publication HERE.

A few weeks ago SpinLaunch managed to spin up their demonstrator and lob a projectile into the sky. I did not give it a whole lot of thought; it just doesn’t impress me a whole lot. There are easier ways to accelerate a projectile to the speed of sound.

However, Thunderf00t *did* give the concept a lot of thought, and he’s anti-impressed. One detail that I’d noticed was that the projectile emerges from the “muzzle” of the launch tube crooked. One thing I *didn’t* do was closely examine the faint and blurry in-flight footage of the projectile. And I should have, because the projectile is *tumbling.* In retrospect this makes sense: while attached to the rotating arm, the projectile is rotating at about three revolutions per second. Once released, it will retain that angular momentum; since it’s not touching anything – it’s not riding rails, or sliding down a barrel, nor at its fins reacting against air since it’s in a vacuum – there is nothing to arrest that rotation. So it leaves the “barrel” tumbling. This would be *disastrous.* Even if the fins could stabilize the projectile in flight, a massive amount of launch energy would be wasted in the process, the trajectory would be virtually randomized, accelerations would be massive and all over the place.

In short, this thing seems to be a whole lot of nothing as far as being practical.

Amazon currently has my “SR-71” bookazine for thirteen bucks, plus shipping. Woo. Get a few copies now, before Christmas comes and you fall short and you have to live in eternal shame that you did not have enough copies to gift to all your friends, family, co-workers, arch-enemies and random people on the street.

I say “that looks like a mockup.”

Hermeus Goes Full Throttle at Unveil of Quarterhorse Prototype

To me it looks like thin sheet metal riveted to some sort of structure. The vertical tail in particular looks… ummm…

The first test pieces of the SpaceX Starship also looked like cheaply constructed crap, so… maybe? But color me skeptical that this is an actual aircraft. That landing gear… yeesh.

I stumbled across some paperwork that for no readily apparent reason I’ve kept for a quarter century. Shown below are two correspondence that might be of some amusement. They deal with my very first “real” job after graduation, when I was hired to work on a The Next Big Thing project for Orbital Sciences Corporation.

First up (some personal data redacted):

Neato! I’m hired! So I packed up my stuff (including my baby archive, which fit in two boxes), drove from Illinois to Virginia right smack in the middle of the Blizzard Of The Century, spent a bucket of cash for an apartment, and started an exciting new adventure, sure to be filled with excitement, career fulfillment and fair and reasonable treatment from my employers. What could possibly go wrong?

Gee, that was fun.

It was a short, sharp shock that gave me a good solid look at the aerospace industry in the US. Unfeeling corporations, sociopathic bosses, incredibly blinkered, short-sighted management *and* self-serving unions, all beholden to quite possibly the *dumbest* politicians in human history.

I shoulda gone into art. I have no real talent for it… but then, I’ve seen “Star Trek: Discovery” and it’s clear that talent and skill are no longer important or even desirable in modern artistic endeavors.

I have not yet heard how much it will cost me to buy copies of my new book for signing. But for estimating purposes I think I’ll probably have to charge something like $50 each plus media mail postage. I don’t want to guess what it’d cost to ship them internationally. Yikes. But as I did with the SR-71 book, signed copies would likely have signed 18×24 prints as a bonus… in this case, probably 3 or 4. Subjects as yet undetermined. I’m far from taking orders, but I’m interested in getting a read on the level of interest. If spending $50 or more on a signed copy sounds like something you’d want to do, send me an email:

So today I signed the contract for my third book. This one will be a little different than the previous two: rather than covering one or two specific aircraft types and their evolution, competitors and derivatives, this one will cover a *category* of aircraft. Details later.