Lockheed NATF

 aircraft, art, history, projects  No Responses »
Mar 262021
 

In the long, long ago, Lockheed tried to sell the F-22 to the US Navy. In order to accommodate the needs of Naval aviation, the aircraft would have had to have been massively modified… most obviously by giving the aircraft variable geometry wings like the F-14’s. Clearly the Navy didn’t go for it: the cost of the program would have been immense, as would have been the risks. The F-22 ended up being troubled enough with materials and maintenance nightmares; add to that the rigors of slamming into carrier decks, constant humidity and salt air, all the other bothersome details of operating from ships at sea; and add to THAT the fact that while the NATF (Naval Advanced Tactical Fighter)*looked* like the F-22, it would have shared very few structures in common with its Air Force cousin and would have been basically a new aircraft… it would undoubtedly have been massively expensive to a degree that even the F-35 would have been hard pressed to match.

 

The fullrez scan of the artwork has been made available at 300 DPI to all $4/month patrons/subscribers in the 2021-03 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with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.



 Posted by at 2:08 pm

CL-1201: it happened again

 AARRRGH, aircraft, APR, drawings, history, Hmm..., Meh., projects, US Transport Projects, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 172021
 

Somehow or other, yet another YouTube video has been produced on the giant nuclear powered Lockheed CL-1201. Seems strange that after all this time this rather obscure design is suddenly getting traction… it’s almost as if YouTubers watch and copy each other. Wheird.

Anyway, *imagine* my surprise to find that the video has one of my copyrighted diagrams in it, without attribution, lightly modified and dumbified. Huh.

Video diagram:

My diagram, taken from Aerospace Projects Review issue V1N3 and US Transport Projects #4:

Yay, I guess? Would be nice if people made some effort to acknowledge where their stuff comes from.

 

 Posted by at 9:10 am

NACA SST

 aircraft, history, projects, US Transport Projects  No Responses »
Mar 102021
 

This design has appeared here before… once as a piece of art from Life magazine, and once as an issue of US Transport Projects. This was a very early, very preliminary notional concept for a passenger carrying supersonic aircraft; whether it would have technically worked is debatable, but almost assuredly it would have been a financial disaster. It would have consumed large quantities of fuel and dropped sizable rocket units to fly a small number of passengers a relatively limited distance at a relatively low supersonic speed. Still: everything has to start from somewhere.

 

 Posted by at 8:57 pm

MC-747

 aircraft, history, Hmm..., nukes, projects, rockets, US Bomber Projects, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 072021
 

A video (made with a few contributions from yours truly, and, yes, attributed as such within the video) describing the 1970s Boeing design for an ICBM-carrying airliner, the MC-747. This is described and illustrated in US Bomber Projects issue 21, AVAILABLE HERE.

An interesting idea to be sure, but an unsafe one. Were one of these aircraft to go down for whatever reason, the results would be No Damned Good. Almost certainly the warheads would not go nuclear, but it’s always possible that the combo of the crash, the burning jet fuel and the solid rocket propellant merrily burning away might cause the chemical explosives in the warheads to go off, potentially scattering plutonium all over hither and yon. Worse still would be if the plutonium got sprinkled with the solid propellant and the plutonium combusted, scattering not just chunks and bits of plutonium, which would be bad enough, but clouds of plutonium oxide or plutonium chloride.

Perhaps more dangerous would be the Soviet reaction. They’d be in a constant state of freaking out every time one of these took to the sky, and they probably would have difficulty telling an MC-747 from an E-4 or a civilian 747. And, of course, they’d have to have their own. the AN-124 would be the logical choice for an ICBM carrier, and chances are good they’d do as good of a job with it as they did with Chernobyl, the Kursk or the Polyus.

 Posted by at 12:58 pm

XB-58 Pods

 aircraft, history, nukes, projects, weapons  No Responses »
Mar 062021
 

From well before the B-58 program began, the Convair designers intended for their four-engined supersonic bomber to have a relatively gigantic pod underneath containing fuel and a nuke. The illustration below shows an early B-58 concept with the outboard engine nacelles located above the wing, together with a collection of potential bomb/fuel pods. “Freefall” contains an H-bomb; “Ferret” is electronic intelligence gathering; photo recon is obvious; and PPB is… hmmm. Note that none of these seem to have rockets in the tail, the ferret and photo recon pods doubtless were intended to return with the aircraft rather than be dropped.

 

 Posted by at 8:03 pm

Boost-phase interceptor

 art, awesomeness, history, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft, weapons  No Responses »
Mar 052021
 

An Aerojet concept for a boost-phase ICBM interceptor.

This would be a space-based anti-missile system composed of two high thrust solid rocket motors and a kill vehicle composed of a substantial set of optics, some impressive late 1980’s computers and most likely a hydrazine monoprop divert system. The missile would be meant to physically impact an ICBM while still being lofted by the first stage; this is an bigger, slower and brighter target than the later, faster, smaller stages and warheads, but you have to be *fast* to reach out and tag a missile in the first moments of flight.

 

 Posted by at 5:36 pm

Neutron

 awesomeness, blather, Hmm..., news, politics, projects, rockets, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 022021
 

Soon to compete with SpaceX, the Rocket Lab “Neutron.” Building on their relatively dinky Electron, the Neutron will be able to orbit 8 metric tons (including manned payloads) and will feature a reusable first stage much akin to the Falcon 9 first stage.

It looks to be substantially stubbier than Falcon 9 which should make it much more stable on the landing pad which will likely be a ship or platform out at sea.

Rocket Lab is technically an American company, but the founder is a New Zealander and many launches occur from there as well. Much of the Electron manufacturing occurs in New Zealand; the 3D-printed rocket engines are made in California.

Rocket Lab, like SpaceX before it, should cause many, MANY heads to hang in shame. Who? Well, let’s start with the likes of Boeing and Lockheed. Those titans of the aerospace world should have had this sort of capability *decades* ago. But they chose not to. And the best they’ve come up with is the as-yet unflown “Vulcan,” which is *lame* comparatively. Who else? Oh… how about the United Kingdom? They used to have a planet-spanning empire. They used to have a pretty snazzy launch vehicle of their own, the Black Arrow… which they abandoned fifty years ago. And now New Zealand has not only surpassed *all* of the British Empire with their Electron (dinky as it it, its payload still exceeds that of the Black Arrow), if the Neutron comes along – which there’s no reason to suppose it won’t, though the initial launch date of 2024 might prove optimistic – then the UK will look *even* *worse.*

If Neutron works, then there’ll be no excuses whatsoever. Every nation on the planet *should* have their own launch capability… and in a number of cases, such as the US, their should be *dozens* of new launch vehicles competing to prove who can launch the most for the least.

 

 Posted by at 2:25 pm

A recent crowdfunding success

 aircraft, art, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects  No Responses »
Mar 012021
 

APR Patrons and Subscribers today helped crowdfund the purchase of a Boeing blueprint, an inboard profile diagram of the 2707-300 SST. An overly expensive item became reasonably affordable, and will be provided to each of the funders as high resolution scans in full color (and cleaned-up grayscale).

If you’d like to be involved in helping to preserve this sort of aerospace rarity, consider singing up for the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon or the Monthly Historical Documents Program.

 Posted by at 8:21 pm

Fleet Ballistic Missiles

 drawings, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Mar 012021
 

From Polaris through Poseidon to Trident D-5:

Every one of those was proposed for alternate roles, from truck-towed and truck-launched land based strike missiles to air-launched and ground-launched satellite boosting systems. And they very likely *could* have done that. But they are just not really well suited for any role but sea launched ballistic missile due to the somewhat tricky propellants they use… high energy propellants so they can function adequately while still being able to fit in a small submarine. But for above-ground systems, they’d be somewhat dubious. The environment within a submarine is pretty consistent. For a missile stored in a warehouse and then hauled aloft by an airplane? The thermal and vibration environments will be highly variable.

 Posted by at 4:31 pm

Zenith Star Booster

 awesomeness, history, Hmm..., projects, rockets, spacecraft, US Spacecraft Projects  No Responses »
Feb 272021
 

This photo has popped up online before, but usually in pretty crummy resolution. It’s taken from “Aerojet – The Creative Company” and shows a mockup for a Titan-derived first stage booster rocket. It has double the engines of the standard Titan core stage, either two or four engines depending on how you want to count the LR-87 engines (one set of turbopumps, two combustion chambers) married to a 15-foot diameter core. This is described as a booster designed to loft the Zenith Star space-based laser weapon test system (the ZS was described and illustrated in US Spacecraft Projects #1). Documentation on this specific booster has always been somewhat lacking, though there have been quite a number of Large Diameter Core Titans designed by Aerojet and Martin over the years.

Higher rez scan in the 2021-02 APR Extras Dropbox folder for patrons/subscribers.

 

 Posted by at 8:29 am
 Older Entries  Newer Entries