That took longer than expected

 AARRRGH, aircraft, APR, awesomeness, drawings, Hmm..., projects, US VTOL Projects  No Responses »
Jun 152020
 

So after a long hiatus while I worked on The Book That Shall Not Yet Be Named, I started off a return to prior form by creating the diagrams for US Fighter Projects #4. That went pretty quickly, with some of the designs taking only a day to create the diagram. I then launched into US VTOL projects #3… and the going has been much slower. A single aircraft has taken the better part of two weeks to piece together the diagrams. This was due to the complexity of the design and the fact that it would undergo some fairly substantial configuration changes between horizontal and vertical flight.

Huzzah:

 Posted by at 1:20 am

Early Boeing jetliner designs

 aircraft, art, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects  No Responses »
Jun 142020
 

A piece of Boeing artwork depicting several early jetliner concepts. The B-47 design heritage is obvious. This piece was on ebay a while back, and while it wasn’t one that I won, I snagged a decently-high rez scan from the listing and have made it available to all $4 and up APR Patrons and Monthly Historical Document Subscribers. it has been uplosded into the June 2020 folder at Dropbox for those subscribers.

If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.



 Posted by at 2:34 pm

DC-3 launch stack

 aircraft, drawings, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 112020
 

In 1969, Maxime Faget of NASA-Manned Spacecraft Center (later renamed Johnson Space Center) produced a concept for a simplified version of the Space Shuttles then being designed. The idea at the time was that the Shuttle would be a two-stage vehicle, both being fully reusable manned flyback vehicles. The Orbiter would be much larger than the Orbiter that actually got built because it included substantial hydrogen/oxygen tankage. The boosters were generally *vast* vehicles larger than the C-5 Galaxy meant to fly higher and faster than the X-15. Optimistic to be sure. Faget’s “DC-3” design had the same basic architecture but attempted to produce a smaller, cheaper, less complex and more realistic design. The design, produced in-house at NASA, was picked up by both North American and McDonnell Douglas, who designed their own variations on the theme.

Here is the basic configuration of the NASA-MSC “DC-3:”

 Posted by at 1:31 am

Dyna Soar launcher options

 aircraft, history, models, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 092020
 

A photo montage of Boeing display models showing a range of launch vehicles intended to put the early (1959) Dyna Soar into orbit. The three at left are clusters of Minuteman ICBM boosters; the next two are larger solid rocket motor clusters. The next is a Saturn I booster, followed by an all-new recoverable liquid rocket booster, the Titan II and the Atlas/Centaur. The Titan II design was chosen, though it could not actually get the Dyna Soar into a true orbit. To do that, solid rocket boosters needed to be strapped to the sides of the Titan II… leading to the creation of the Titan III.

 Posted by at 6:51 am

Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) documents

 history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 062020
 

I thought sure I’d posted this before but… shrug. If’n yer interested in the manned Orbiting Laboratory program of the mid-1960’s, you’ll want to take a gander at the website for the National Reconnaissance Office, which has 825 documents with a total of 20,861 pages on the MOL project:

Index, Declassified Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) Records

 Posted by at 5:09 pm

Boeing Model 157B

 aircraft, art, history, projects  No Responses »
Jun 042020
 

A 1966 Boeing concept for a civilian version of the Chinook. Viet Nam veterans I’ve known who rode in Chinooks of that era have stories that make me suspect that *substantial* structural stiffening would have been required for such a craft to be fully accepted by the public; apparently, looking forward towards the cockpit and watching the while cabin twist back and forth was slightly disconcerting. A cruise speed of 200 mph seems slightly optimistic.

 Posted by at 7:11 pm

That there is a big ol’ airplane

 aircraft, art, history, Hmm..., projects  No Responses »
May 272020
 

Found on the Flickr account of the San Diego Air & Space Museum is this bit of concept art:

The description: “Flaunt Fleet Air Ultra Naval transport sitting 25 above waves on rsbs retractable spar buoy stabilizer concept and design by Thomas P. Faulconer artist Joe Ferrara date 1985 includes plaque and article by designer on back”

This came from an article published in the April 1985 issue of the US Naval Institute Proceedings by Thomas Faulconer, an article I don;t have. So… there ya go.

If you’ve got It, FLAUNT (fleet air ultra 
naval transport) It. Thomas P.Faulconer. tab 
lllus US Nav Inst Proc 111:135-139 Apr »85

 

 Posted by at 5:31 pm

A Flying Delorean

 aircraft, drawings, projects  No Responses »
May 242020
 

There have been a lot of “personal air vehicles” designed over the last decade, most designed for VTOL operations and many with purely electric propulsion systems. One such design – which I can’t vouch for on either technical or financial fronts – is the Delorean DR-7 from Delorean Aerospace, founded by the nephew of *that* Delorean.

Their website, lean on details:

http://www.deloreanaerospace.com/

An article from 2017:

A Flying Car From DeLorean Really Won’t Need Roads

And a patent (US9862486B2):

Vertical takeoff and landing aircraft

 Posted by at 9:09 pm
 Older Entries  Newer Entries