If you are a $10 and up Patron or subscriber, you should by now have received a link to this months catalogs for voting. If you haven’t, let me know. 
Oct 242021
Oct 192021
Almost four years ago I posted about a project known as “Flashback,” a vaguely-described mid 1960’s program to carry and drop a giant *something* from a B-52. What it was, exactly, was not described with any clarity, but there were enough clues that I tentatively speculated that it was a design for an American “Tsar Bomb” with a yield of fifty or more megatons. To my knowledge I was the first person to yap about it publicly. I sent what I’d found to a few atomic and aerospace researchers to see if they knew anything. At the time, they were as mystified as I was.
Today there’s less mystery. I was contacted by one of the researchers I had contacted back then, letting me know he’s writing an article to appear in a month or so in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, covering Flashback among other things. He has Found Some Stuff. In short… Flashback was a design for a 50 to 100 megaton hydrogen bomb.
Giggitty.
Oct 192021
I recently came across something on ebay that looked interesting; the buy-it-now price is a bit steep, so I googled it. Huzzah! It’s available online as a PDF. D’oh: my antivirus program freaked out that the connection to the university website is insecure. Huzzah! It has been archived on the Wayback machine.
This is a writeup, with photos and diagrams, of the July 11, 1962 news conference at NASA headquarters where the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous technique was described. prior to the the understanding was that the Apollo Command and Service Modules would land directly on the lunar surface; this sounds easy, but required a bigger booster than the Saturn V and would have put the astronauts far above the lunar surface (so far as I know, no determination of how exactly the astronauts were going to get some fifty or more feet down, and then fifty or more feet back up). LOR entailed the use of the Lunar Excursion Module,a small, lightweight spacecraft that could zip on down the the surface from lunar orbit and then hop on back up. Far less mass needed to go to the lunar surface, meaning the planned Saturn C-5 (later Saturn V) could take care of the whole mission in one shot. No need to assemble spacecraft in Earth orbit using multiple launches of hardware and propellant tankers.
Support the APR Patreon to help bring more of this sort of thing to light! Alternatively, you can support through the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
Oct 182021
Just a few months ago in February or so, I mentioned that I was working on a model of the “IXS Enterprise” warp drive ship for Fantastic Plastic. Currently planned for 1/288 scale, this is the most data-intensive model I’ve done so far… as shown below with only one of the two rings in place, the model is well over half a gigabyte, and my computer just laughs at me when I tell it to render the thing. The model nears completion; some “kitification” is needed on some parts and the two shuttles don’t exist yet.
In related matters, FP has released the model of the “Super Nexus” I CADded up a few years ago:
And the Convair “landing boat:”
And the Soviet LOK spacecraft:
That last one is of course in scale with the Soviet LK lunar lander I did for FP a while back:
Christmas is coming.
Oct 142021
Here are some screenshots snagged from a not-quite-final version of the book, showing the sort of content you can expect from the final product.
As before it is available for pre-order from both the publisher and from Amazon:
Oct 142021
Because of course I did, I’ve googled my own book to see where it might be available in the US for reasonable prices. I’ve not purchased from these sources, so YMMV. The prices and availability are as I type this, so they might vary.
Casemate Publishers: $12.99, but currently out of stock.
Book Despository: $17.01, free delivery worldwide.
World of Books: $14.39, but currently out of stock.
Books A Million: $16.84 (one copy)
Oct 062021
Yeesh. I continue to successfully get rewards out to Patrons and subscribers in a timely fashion… but I also continue to fail to publicize the fact. Last day of September, the rewards for that month were sent out. The September 2021 rewards included:
Diagram: “Early X-3 cutaway:” A large format cutaway illustration of a not-quite-final Douglas X-3 configuration
CAD Diagram: the command module of the Solem “Medusa” nuclear pulse propelled spacecraft
Document: a giant 1100+ page “Data Sheets for Ordnance Type Materiel,”1962 US Army “catalog”of pretty much all their stuff. Includes an illustration (often, though not always, including a basic diagram) and data for everything from trucks to tanks to bayonets to pistols to rockets.
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.
If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
Oct 042021
Early/mid 80’s artwork depicting an X-Wing vehicle (a helicopter with very rigid rotors that could stop in flight to serve as wings). The text attributes this to Boeing-Vertol, but I could swear I’ve seen it attributed to someone else (Lockheed? Grumman?).
The X-Wing concept seemed to have great promise, but testing showed that, perhaps unsurprisingly, it had severe problems during transition. Had it worked, though, it would hve provided the high speed and long range of a conventional aircraft with the hovering efficiency of a helicopter.
Oct 042021
In the 1970’s the CIA wanted to field recon drones that would be visually indistinguishable from birds (at least from a distance), under Project Aquiline. While Aquiline was *apparently* not successful, other bird-shaped drone have been developed over the years, with some crashed and captured examples shown to the press. Thanks to modern tech, the average citizen is now able to have a drone that would be just as good as Aquiline, at least from the design standpoint.
Oct 012021
A 1964 Boeing design for an orbital HL-10 derivative, to be used for space station logistics. This would be launched atop a Saturn Ib. Cargo would be carried up int he adapter, which would be expended; passengers would go up and down within the body of the spaceplane. A heat shield would cover the canopy until after re-entry.
