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to preserve this sort of aerospace rarity, consider singing up for the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon or the Monthly Historical Documents Program.
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.
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.
A video about the Boeing Resource Carrier designed to fly oil from far northern Canadian sites to ports. One wonders if this concept could be employed today to take the place of the recently cancelled Keystone pipeline…
More about the RC-1 is available in US Transport Projects #5.
Work on the “Enterprise” continues…
One of the things about art is… what’s the “right” version? These days most concept art is probably produced digitally so the colors are mathematically defined, at least in the original. They are of course easily tweaked… but the original can in theory be infinitely reproduced without alteration. But with old-school art, reproduction methods varied in accuracy. Photos would make paintings look different based on lighting and film stock and a myriad of other variables. And then simple *time* causes colors to change and fade in prints. So… what’s “right?” Whatever looks best, I suppose.
So here is a slightly differently version of a piece of art I posted about late last month. The colors are distinctly different: last months post was brighter and more vibrant; this one is more subdued. Click here for the full rez version.
As comparison, here’s the one from a month ago:
Recently for sale on ebay was a display model of the Saro “Princess” turboprop flying boat, as Convair planned to modify it into a nuclear-powered research prototype. This late 50’s design was ballsy if nothing else: a nuclear reactor would be installed within the fuselage, providing superheated air from the reactor to the inboard above-wing modified turboprops. Unlike the NB-36H, this aircraft would have been actually powered by the reactor.
A description of the concept was written up HERE. A set of detailed diagrams are available as Air Drawing 8.
Cruising along…
Recently finished, the CAD model for a 1/144 scale kit for Fantastic Plastic. This Convair idea utilized the same “landing boat” that Fantastic Plastic recently released in 1/48 scale. It’ll be a fairly simple kit. The design was illustrated in a number of renderings from the very late 1950’s/early 60’s, used often by or in conjunction with Krafft Ehricke as he tried to sell Americans on the future in space that they would soon have.
The vehicle had a landing boat at the top and a habitat module below it; below that is the stage with three RL-10 rocket engines, with six drop tanks around it. *Presumably,* the tanks, along with the landing gear, would be dropped shortly after launch from the Moon, with fuel in the main core providing not only the boost back to Earth but also a braking thrust to at least slow the ship, because I have *serious* doubts about that boat surviving a lunar re-entry.
It has been officially decided to go with 1/288 scale for the IXS Enterprise, making the model somewhat larger. Progress continues; the pylons have some more detail, the warp rings have been split into three inner segments, four outer segments, with a wall thickness of about an eighth inch and a hollow within, allowing lighting for those so ambitious.
