Forwards:
SpaceX stacked Starship onto Super Heavy:
Ship 20 and Booster B4 have been stacked!! 🤩🚀🔥@NASASpaceflight pic.twitter.com/Vm8Uqa1N1C
— Mary (@BocaChicaGal) August 6, 2021
Backwards: anything Boeing.
Forward: smaller private space enterprises:
A Grumman design from the 80’s (looks like 1980) for an advanced fighter. This was clearly from the era where fighters did not need to prioritize stealth over all else, though also clearly stealth aspects are included. The aircraft had missiles integrated onto the back surface, an unusual location; it appears that these are unpowered bombs, using wings to generate lift to fling themselves upwards. It’s not immediately clear what the purpose here is; chances are that these might be nukes, so flinging the bombs upwards would give the jet a few moments to gain some distance before the bombs glide down to the ground. Or it might be a low-observability feature… launching from the top would allow the aircraft to fly at a stupid-low altitude to avoid anti-aircraft systems.
UPDATE: Check comments… this is probably a Rockwell artwork, not Grumman.
Two boxes with fifty copies of “SR-71” showed up yesterday. Woo! These will be signed and with any luck at all sold.
As previously mentioned, I’m working on a pair of 18X24 prints to go with the signed copies. if you’re on the mailing list, you should have recently received a message (or three… email continues to be problematic) about this.
Here’s a glimpse of the work in progress.
The first SpaceX Super Heavy prototype fired three of its Raptor engines for what looks like about two seconds:
It’s a start.
One of the more imaginative and incredibly unlikely concept cars was the Ford Nucleon, a 1950’s idea for a nuclear powered car. Apparently this was pretty much a complete art and sales project, without much actual engineering; it was based on the notion that not only could nuclear reactors be scaled down small enough to fit in a car, they could be made not only wreck-tolerant, but that lightweight and virtually magical radiation shielding would be invented that would allow said reactor to hum away at full power mere feet from paying customers without roasting them or giving them explosive ass cancer. It was, let’s face it, wholly ridiculous… and entirely awesome.
Photos of models of the Nucleon have been available since the 1950’s, but diagrams have been lacking. An article posted online a few days ago included a few specifications for the proposed vehicle, finally nailing down some of the dimensions. And for reasons that seemed good to me (and which are probably obvious), I slapped together a quick side view. I think my side view is *reasonably* accurate based on numerous photos of the scale model Ford built and the dimensions given. What I’m not certain about is whether *Ford* truly understood their vehicle.
Here’s the side view using the 200-inch (16.7 ft) length specified by Ford, accompanied by two normal-sized humans:
The driver doesn’t even come *close* to fitting. So I scaled the Nucleon up until it seemed to look right, with the end result being that the car is now about 26 feet long:
That’s by no means a small vehicle… but then, it’s nuclear. Scaling it up by a factor of about 1.55 makes the cab big enough to fit actual full-size humans. But scaling it up that much makes the 77.4″ width (6.45 ft) into 120 inches, or ten feet. Good luck squeezing *that* onto the road; the Hummer H1, known as an uncomfortably wide vehicle, is a mere 87 inches wide.
Does anyone have any information to contradict and correct the Ford specifications? Or is it just another case of the art department kinda ignoring reality?
I’ve contacted the publisher and will get a supply of bookazines to be signed. However, since they’re being shipped from Europe, the costs are a bit high so I’ll have to charge a few bucks more than the basic cover price for them. In order to make it worthwhile for those who get them, I plan on including an extra or two. Currently planning on something like an 18X24 print or two of diagrams from the book, scaled up and tinkered with, also numbered and signed. It will be a while before the books get here, so I’ve some time to get the prints just right. And given that a box of books could get wedged into the Suez Canal or redirected into the Bermuda Triangle or impaled on some rebar, I won’t take orders until they are on hand.
I had a local print shop print up nine separate sheets… 2 SR-71A, 1 YF-12A, 1 M21/D21, 1 XF-103, 2 XF-108, 1 A-12, 1 CL-400 Suntan. I also printed up a test sheet with four copies of the same bit of an SR-71, but with the line weights and colors adjusted (I should’ve done that first. Ooops.). Along with adjusting the weights/colors, there will be improvements to the diagrams themselves, additional details and information added. The blue in the windows will be dispensed with… that tiny bit of color triples the cost. Most likely the “bonus” will be one or two sheets of the SR-71A, but if there is enough interest in the others, I’ll figure it out. The prints will also be numbered and signed, and will only be available along with the signed books. They will also be shipped fabulously folded into quarters (as seen in the “lineweight test print” in the photos below) in order to ship with the books.
Please note industry standard feline scale reference.
If you want on the list of people interested in ordering a signed copy when the time comes, send me an email: 
It is available directly through the publisher for £8.99 (Approx $12.41 or €10.34). It is also available through Amazon for pre-order for $12.99. Or it will be available through me for a little more, in a little while.
The idea has been floated of selling signed copies of “SR-71.” I’m currently checking into what I could get a box of issues for to see if it would make sense to try to sell a few copies my own self. Given that they’re coming from Europe, postage might be a concept-killer for this. If it’s close, what I might do is charge a bit more… and add a bit more. 11X17 or 18X24 prints of a few of the snazzier diagrams, perhaps.
Who would be interested? I’m not taking orders, just trying to judge interest. If interested at (handwave) $13-$15 plus postage, send me an email:
By the way: Amazon now says that this will be released on July 28, moved up substantially from September.
A 1980’s Boeing concept art depicting a passenger transport of 100 or so years in the future. It has a number of… interesting features including a front that opens up like an Arakeen Sandworm. The cockpit and a fair amount of space behind it hinge upwards to provide access to the sizable interior of the aircraft. The gigantic transparent canopies are certainly a remarkable feature. Even the passenger windows on the side are vast compared to the tiny human figures. The engines look somewhat small for the design, but at least they exhaust almost directly onto the vast canopy over the tail “lounge” area. Surely that’ll not pose any problems…
The full rez scan of the artwork has been made available at 300 DPI to all $4/month patrons/subscribers in the 2021-06 APR Extras folder at Dropbox. 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.
The June 1986 issue of “Air Force Magazine” had a cover article about the next big thing for the Air Force… aerospaceplanes capable of attaining orbit. Those who have been paying attention since 1986 might have noticed a dearth of aerospaceplanes, but at least the article has some spiffy cover art, along with interior art of what it claims is a 1965 McDonnell Douglas aerospaceplane. Two problems, though… McDonnell Douglass didn’t exist until 1967, and the art sure looks more like an SST to me. Shrug.
Anyway, I’ve uploaded a 300DPI scan of the article (and two ads… one depicting what appears to be a neutral particle beam space weapon, the other for a series of space-based nuclear powerplants) to the 2021-06 APR Extras folder on Dropbox, available to all APR patrons and subscribers.
The Short PD.16 was a circa 1957 design for a twin engined turboprop cargo/passenger plane. The configuration was similar to the Fairchild C-119, and would have been, by modern standards, an unusual passenger aircraft. Slow, voluminous, with (in one configuration) a cargo hold stuffed with cars and an upper deck filled with people in *luxurious* seating by modern standards, probably deafened and rattled. Half a dozen of one…
This was procured from eBay thanks to the contributions of Patrons and subscribers. The complete article has been sent to all patrons/subscribers at the more than $10/month level. 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.