Burtons Skyscraper

 art, blather, Crazy, history, Hmm..., projects, youtube  No Responses »
Nov 122020
 

An architect name of Charles Burton proposed a 1,000 foot tall skyscraper. Nothing newsworthy there, except that the proposal was made in 1851. The idea was to take the iron and glass from the Crystal Palace Exhibition and rebuild it all into what would have been the worlds first skyscraper.

It’s certainly cool and all, but I have serious doubts that Victorian materials and construction technologies could have built a survivable skyscraper a thousand feet tall. It just seems like it would have been an accident waiting to happen. Winds would have caused it to sway; wrought iron already under incredible load doesn’t seem like a good choice here. And the exterior cladding of 1850’s glass seems like it would have come shattering down onto bystanders. And come 1940, the Luftwaffe would have had a hell of a fun time trying to bring it down.

Like the video says, the construction of this thing would have had a major impact on the future of very tall buildings. Had it worked, skyscrapers would have been much more popular far sooner; better structural steels likely would have been invented and commercialized sooner as a result. The world today might be populated with structures that make the Burj Kalifa look like a townhouse. But had it collapsed – perhaps even during construction – it probably would have set back the idea of skyscrapers, so that today cities would have spread out more sideways than upwards. Perhaps vast structures ten stories tall and a mile long would fill the cities instead of fifty and hundred-story towers crammed next to each other.

A single architectural decision could ahve changed the face of the modern world.

 Posted by at 7:01 pm

STAR Clipper art

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Nov 112020
 

A black and white bit of concept art that was sold on ebay a while back showing the Lockheed STAR (Space Transport And Recovery) Clipper space shuttle concept from the late 1960’s. This was a promising concept that used a lifting body orbiter with a wide, flattened rear fuselage that was liberally covered with rocket engines (a large range of engines and layouts were considered, including liner aerospikes). The shuttle was filled with liquid oxygen tanks and some hydrogen tanks; the bulk of the hydrogen was stored in a large V-shaped drop tank. This component would have been larger but reasonably inexpensive, jettisoned after deletion to be destroyed during re-entry or splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The vehicle would have continued on to orbit using the propellant remaining in the internal tanks.

A vast amount of information on the STAR Clipper is available HERE.

The STAR Clipper lasted a lot longer than many contemporary designs and went through a multitude of design revisions. it always seemed like it should have worked reasonably well… and it had the benefit of being aesthetically beautiful.

 

 Posted by at 6:24 pm

Nothing newsworthy has happened this week. But *next* week…

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, history, Hmm..., news, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Nov 072020
 

SpaceX Starship SN8 to Make First Ever Historical Flight Test

Scheduled for November 9 to 11,  the first cosmetically-complete Starship is expected to make an attempt to reach an altitude of 15 kilometers. This isn’t very high as space launchers go – barely to the edge of the stratosphere – but it will be high enough that the Starship will attempt the “bellyflop” maneuver.

It’s probably rational to expect it to make a smoking hole in the water or the vicinity of Boca Chica. That is of course not a slam on SpaceX… they’re trying something new, and history has show that Rockets Are Hard. History has also showed that SpaceX is willing and, importantly, eager to learn from failures. So, while it is of course to be preferred that the test flight goes off without a hitch, if it doesn’t it’s just a step towards making it work.

 Posted by at 1:05 pm

C-130 AWACS art

 aircraft, art, projects  No Responses »
Nov 062020
 

A piece of art that was on ebay a while back depicting a C-130 Hercules converted into an AWACS-like aircraft by the inclusion of a radar rotodome to the top of the vertical fin. This may look a little odd, but it was a good position for such a radar system as it puts it above all aircraft components.

 Posted by at 11:30 pm

On other matters

 aircraft, art, blather, Book X, books, drawings, Hmm..., projects  No Responses »
Nov 052020
 

In the long long ago this blog focused far more on “unbuilt aerospace projects.” Last few years it has become far more about the culture war/war on western civilization/The Crazy Years.  This is not how I would have it… but then if it were up to me society wouldn’t be going crazy either, cities would not be getting trashed, Antifa and their violence and criminality promotion would be the stuff of alternate realities, the likely next President and the likely next *next* President would not be promising to toss me, my friends and family into federal prison. This sort of thing can kinda come to dominate a discussion.

All that said, aerospace is never far from my mind or my efforts. The thing is, though, my efforts have been devoted to a few books that I’ve got contracts to produce. This is a new sort of thing, and it is unsurprisingly a substantial time-sink. And since the publisher has not gone public with the books (they won’t until after the manuscripts are turned in next year), there’s not a lot I can say about them publicly.

*THAT* said, below is a render of a little CAD model I’ve recently made. The model is not the subject of the book; but it has been made for the purposes of making *one* diagram of a vehicle that incorporates this. One might argue that this is going a bit far for a small part of a diagram; this part of the diagram might be only an inch or so long. But while it is possible that these books might see a Second Edition, at this point I’m working under the assumption that I’m only doing this once, so I want to do it right.

So I still spend a whole lot of time with aerospace. It just doesn’t translate to blog postings right now.

 Posted by at 3:10 pm

APR: October 2020 Rewards

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, new products, news, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Oct 312020
 

Rewards have just been posted for APR Patrons/Monthly Historical Documents Program subscribers. Included:

1: “Manned Aerodynamic Reusable Spaceship (MARS) Vehicle Design” a 1962 Douglas report covering a single stage “orbital airplane” of impressive size and design.

2: “Pretest Information 3.3 Percent 624A Aerodynamic Heating Investigation, NASA Langley Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel.” A 1963 Martin report describing a test of the Titan IIIC/Dyna Soar configuration.

3: Official XB-70 General Arrangement Diagram

4: CAD diagram: a 1974 Lockheed concept for a subscale Space Shuttle Orbiter Mach 9 flight test model, to be dragged behind a YF-12C and booster by an “Avanti” rocket (modification of the D-21B’s booster) with an internal SRAM motor in the orbiter.

If this sort of thing is of interest to you, either because you’d like to obtain these documents or you’d like to help preserve aerospace history (or both) please consider signing on to either the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

 Posted by at 2:04 pm

DC-3 Artwork

 aircraft, art, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Oct 252020
 

An artists impression of the “DC-3” Space Shuttle concept. This was a two-stage system using two manned flyback vehicles with straight wings and turbofan engines. It was intended to be a low-cost approach, disdaining high performance for simple design and – theoretically – easy maintenance. The orbiter here had two jet engines in the nose for landing and flyback range extension; aerodynamic fairing would cover the inlets until after re-entry, jettisoned once the vehicles had decelerated to below Mach 1. The straight wings would be easy to build and low in weight compared to large delta wings, but of course they wouldn’t provide the same amount of lift. Consequently, the orbiter would less “glide” during the initial re-entry than “belly flop.”

I’ve uploaded the full-rez version of that to the APR Dropbox, into the 2020-10 APR Extras folder. This is available to any APR Patron or Subscriber at the $4 level and above.

 Posted by at 8:54 pm

Hiding a spacecraft

 Hmm..., projects, rockets, science, science fiction, spacecraft  No Responses »
Oct 222020
 

A post yesterday linked to a paper on space warfare. Relevant to that discussion is the concept of hiding spacecraft from detection. Space is obviously dark and the background radiation is cold, about 3 Kelvin. Compared to that, any spacecraft in the inner solar system, even one with no active power sources, is going to be something of a lighthouse in infra-red. Put a nuclear reactor or any kind of meaningful active propulsion system on it, and any spacecraft would stick out like a sore thumb. Stealth should be impossible.

But it is, in fact, possible. it’s hard, it’s limited and its often temporary, but hiding a spacecraft, even one with a functional reactor and running engines, should be possible. There are simply some limits to keep in mind.

In order to hide from radar or lidar, all your spacecraft needs to be is dark and preferably angled int he way we’ve come to understand from stealthy aircraft. This is relatively easy. But the real problem is infra red. Being dark makes your spacecraft both absorb and emit electromagnetic radiation; sunlight falling on a dark spacecraft gets absorbed, stepped down, and emitted back out as infra red. In order to hide your spacecraft, you need to either look like a space rock (probably easy to do, but a space rock that suddenly appears on the charts on a suspicious orbit will likely merit further attention), or you need to be roughly as cold as the background. Actually making your spacecraft 3 Kelvin is insanely unreasonable… but you *can* make a balloon filled with helium that cold. And if you put that dark, cold balloon between your ship and the enemies sensors, you shouldn’t show up

Teledyne got a patent in 1994 for sort of that sort of thing:

Satellite signature suppression shield

The invention here is an inflatable fabric cone that a satellite could hide behind. Coated with something reflective like aluminum or gold, you might think that it would be visible; but for the most part all that shiny reflective surface has to reflect is the black of space. Point the cone at the enemy, and all they’ll see is a dark reflection and if they point lasers or radar at it, the beams will reflect off into space and not back at the receiver. The surface will, however, emit IR, so it’ll be visible that way. But if you fill the balloon with helium *and* if you have an active refrigeration system on the far side, cooling the helium to below 3 Kelvin and directing the waste heat out into space the other way… the cone will be dark *and* cold. So from a narrow cone, your spacecraft will be effectively invisible. From every other angle, though, your spacecraft will be a bright hot target. So… pick your targets. A system like this would probably work well for missiles… only need to operate for a short period, and all they really care about is hiding from the target.

 Posted by at 2:43 am
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