The art below is a Boeing concept from the late 70s or early 80’s depicting an almost certainly wholly conceptual “electric commuter jet” based on a rather dubious propulsion system: the ring-shaped aircraft would be equipped with massive counter-rotating flywheels which would be spun up to high speed on the ground (presumably with fixed electric motors). To fly, the flywheels would engage a compressor which would provide the jet thrust to fly. I haven’t done the math on this, but unless those flywheels are made of an adamantium-vibranium-uru alloy spun up to a few hundred thousand RPM, it seems unlikely to me that the wheels would store enough energy to provide for a meaningful flight. I doubt that this existed beyond the artists imagination… but if anyone has evidence to the contrary, I’d love to see it.
The full rez scan of the artwork has been made available at 300 DPI to all $4/month patrons/subscribers in the 2021-05 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with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
A piece of artwork (almost certainly a negative, based on the shading and the national insignia) depicting the Kaman K-16 deflected slipstream tiltwing VTOL flying boat project. The K-16 was actually built in 1959, but never flew and was cancelled in 1962.
The airframe somehow managed to survive and is on display at the New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks, Connecticut. I visited there a couple times years ago and took a number of photos, posted HERE (2001 visit) and HERE (2007 visit). The full rez scan of the artwork has been made available at 300 DPI to all $4/month patrons/subscribers in the 2021-05 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with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
Here is an incomplete look at the diagrams created for my first book, “Boeing B-47 Stratojet and B-52 Stratofortress; Origins & Evolution.” It can be pre-ordered either directly from the publisher (with publication expected in late September) or through Amazon (looks like they’ll have it two months later). It is also expected to be on certain store shelves… more on that when it’s confirmed.
A few of these diagrams will be compressed to several-per-page; a few of them here are already shown in multiple optional layouts. But there are also a dozen-ish diagrams *not* shown because they are incomplete as yet. This gives an indication of the size and scope of the project…
It is being published by Mortons out of Britain, is scheduled for release at the end of September, and is going to be around 250 to 280 pages (I’m still furiously working away at it). As those who have seen my work may assume, it will be loaded to the gills with diagrams, in this case covering the competitors to the B-47 and B-52, the original concepts, how the designs evolved and many of the proposed and built derivatives. You can pre-order at the link above. I’m getting confirmation on availability in the States… Amazon and Barnes & Noble and other sources. Will report back on that, but it does look like both outlets will carry it.
I will post more details – including glimpses of diagrams and some of the color art created for the book by Rob Parthoens – in the coming days. Feel free to ask questions.
Note: Book Two has not yet gone public. But Book Two should be published *first* since it is finished and edited; I’ve seen and approved the layout. All it’s missing right now is cover art, which is in process.
And…behold! An Amazon link, listing it as available in late November/early December. Just in time for Chrisnukkwanzayulmass! Note though that the “150 page” length listed there is incorrect… came from the original placeholder text.
Another Boeing concept for the recovery of an S-IC stage. This used large fins with deployable drag brakes to stabilize the stage nose-down, parachutes to slow descent and sizable rocket motors for terminal braking just before splashdown. Additional rockets arrest the stages “collapse” to the side.
Would a Falcon 9-style landing have been better? Sure. But that wasn’t going to happen with 1960’s technology. A splashdown, recovery and refurbishment would have been expensive, but likely not as expensive as a brand new stage, and as has been the case with Falcon 9, as time goes by and experience grows, everything would get better and cheaper.
NASA said it will award SpaceX $2.89 billion for development of the Starship vehicle and two flights. One of these missions will be an uncrewed flight test of Starship down to the lunar surface and back. The second mission will be a crewed flight—the first one of the Artemis program—down to the Moon.
Artemis is the NASA program that has been reliant upon the SLS. But by going with a Starship derivative… will SLS still be relevant? The plan apparently is to launch the Starship to lunar orbit unmanned, there to rendezvous with an SLS-launched Orion capsule to transfer crew over. But… if SpaceX has the ability to get a Starship to the moon, seems like they’ll have the ability to get at least a Dragon capsule there and back. I wonder what the payload capability would be for an Earth-to-lunar-orbit-to-Earth Starship might be given LEO refueling. Perhaps such a vehicle could send a couple dozen people to lunar orbit there to meet up with the Starship lunar lander; transfer four or five tot he lander and the rest stay in the transfer Starship, there to play tourist and pay for the trip.
A while beck someone sold a brochure about the Sukhoi-Gulfstrem supersonic business jet, the S-21. This concept, dating from the early 90’s, was a failed attempt to build a corporate-jet sized SST. While Gulfstream eventually dropped out, Sukhoi kept going until around 2012. The design changed substantially as time went by, but the realities of the economics of supersonic small aircraft around the turn of the century doomed the idea.
A YouTuber who has, ahem, come to my attention before has produced a video on the concept of the “Nazi Sun Gun.” In a nutshell, it’s the idea that the Nazis had plans to orbit a gigantic mirror in space; the mirror would focus sunlight to a point on the Earth and burn cities to ash. As a yarn it’s entertaining enough; as history it’s a bit dubious; as physics it’s laughable magical thinking up there with car engines that burn water.
There are two major problems with the “Sun Gun” story:
1: It is very poorly documented. There were a few news and magazine articles on the topic immediately after the war; both the New York Times and Life covered it. But none of these stories provide any documentary evidence for the claims. It *appears* that someone who didn’t know any better stumbled across Herman Oberth’s ideas for an orbiting mirror from the early 1920’s. And while his ideas were reasonable enough given the time, his ideas were to provide some illumination at night, not make cities burst into flames. In all probability, some reporter, or perhaps a military officer looking for some press, heard something they didn’t quite understand and, using the journalistic integrity that CNN has demonstrated so well, blew it far out of proportion for the 1940’s equivalent of internet clout.
2: The physics does not work *AT* *ALL.*
The difference between providing useful levels of illumination and light so intense that wood catches fire is many, many orders of magnitude. For example: on Pluto, the sunlight is about 1/1500 less intense than it is on Earth… and that’s still more than adequate to read by. The full moon, which is strong enough to do useful things in, is only 1/400,000 as intense as full sunlight. In contrast, starting a fire with light requires light *far* more intense than plain everyday daylight. Whether using a parabolic mirror or a glass lens, you have to focus a lot of sunlight into a small area to get fires going… and typically you have to hold it for a while to do that.
OK, so why is this a problem for a space mirror? Because the sun isn’t a point source of light. It is a distinct circular area, about one half of a degree in apparent diameter. This means a parabolic mirror or a lens can *not* focus the light to a point, but to a circle. This limits how intense the spot can be. To first approximation, the best you can do, given really, really good workmanship, reflectivity and aiming accuracy, is to make your mirror look as bright (from the viewpoint of the target) as the sun. If you do it right, and your mirror is as big in the sky as the sun, your target will receive the equivalent of full daylight. So if you aim this fantastic mirror at a city that’s currently in night-time – and it would be difficult to do so with a daylit city – you will provide the city with the equivalent of normal daylight. Blue sky, chirping birds, all that. But that is far, FAR from causing fires.
And even that would require a truly VAST mirror. If your mirror is orbiting at 200 miles, about ISS altitude, it would have to be 1.75 miles across to look as big as the sun. And think of the geometry: you’re trying to reflect sunlight down onto a city. But if you’re only 200 miles up, that means most of the time when you’d be in position to fry a city, there’d be a *planet* in the way. Your mirror would be in darkness. So, move it out to 5,000 miles, as the “Sun Gun” articles suggested the Nazis were planning. In order to be as big in the sky as the Sun now, since you are 25 times further away your mirror would need to be 43.75 miles in diameter. We’re getting on to about the size of the Death Star… and all you can do is turn night into a pleasant, brief day for some city or other. If you want to start fires, you need to be *hundreds* of times more powerful… which means you need to have tens the diameter. A 400+ mile diameter mirror is something that is beyond stupid.
This is not physics only discovered post-war; this has been known for centuries, ever since children discovered the psychopathic delights of frying ants with magnifying glasses. Imagine being that ant and looking up to see a magnifying glass being moved into position in order to burn you. In the moments before your compound eyes fail and your brain melts… just how much of the sky does that magnifying glass take up? A very large percentage of it. An orbiting mirror meant to burn cities would have to be equivalently huge.
This is not mysterious; this is basic. So whenever I see a discussion of the “Sun Gun” with no mention that the idea is simply unworkable fantasy that defies logic and optics, I get a little miffed.
This looks like it’ll be an impressive achievement. Let’s hope they use western imperialist math and engineering rigor rather than Other Ways Of Knowing to accomplish the task:
Just released, the March 2021 rewards for APR Patrons and Subscribers. Included this month:
Diagram/art: a large format scan of an artists concept of the XC-14. This was printed with a large number of signatures; they seem to be Boeing engineers.
Document 1: “Project Hummingbird.” An FAA document summarizing the characteristics of STOL and VTOL aircraft circa 1961, including bogh built and proposed types. This was scanned from a clean original!
Document 2: “The Thor Missile Story.” Old, old, incredibly old school media… a film strip propaganda piece about the statues of the Thor IRBM.
CAD diagram: the WWII era German DFS 228 rocket powered high altitude recon plane, proposed operational version.
