Tony Landis has just released – for free – his book on the F-16XL:
https://wss.apan.org/public/AFMC-History-Office/Shared Documents/F-16XL Book_Final-web (1).pdf
It’s a 285-page heavily illustrated PDF; highly recommended. It will soon also be available as a paperback through Amazon:
Neat.
Thanks to ebay and my fabulously lean bank account, I have recently procured a number of items of potential interest:
“NASA Earth Orbital Space Station,” a poster-sized lithograph from McDonnell Douglas depicting a space station that tumbles for artificial-G.
“Re-Entry Payload Launch Vehicle,” A *brief* General Dynamics presentation on a vehicle to launch re-entry vehicles such as MIRV warhead shapes
“Proposed Development Program on Rocket-Type Missiles,” a 1948 Convair report on early ballistic/boost glide missile concepts, that would lead to Atlas. Includes some fantastic large format layout diagrams.
“Detail Specification for Consolidated Vultee Model 117 Airplane Class VR Transport Flying Boat,” August 1950, all the details on the then-brand new Tradewind.
“Detail Specification for Class VP Long Range Patrol Seaplane,” Consolidated Vultee 1946, all the details on a proposed flying boat patrol/bomber
32 issues of “Astronautics” magazine from 1957 to 1969, mostly 57-59 and 63 or so.
The lithograph and the reports will be scanned and put forward for consideration for monthly rewards; the magazines will have the interesting bits scanned and made available to the subscribers/patrons.
A cutaway illustration of the Bell D188A VTOL strike-fighter from the late 50’s/early 60’s. This Mach 2 aircraft would have used 8 small turbojets… two lift/cruise in the tail, two vertically mounted in the forward fuselage for lift and two each in wingtip nacelles that could tilt for VTOL or horizontal thrust. Often referred to as the XF-109, it was only called that in Bell PR material.. it never officially received that designation. The artwork below was scanned years ago at the Jay Miller archives.
There is more available on the D188A in two sources I highly recommend (because I wrote them):
1: Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N4. Jam-packed with info, diagrams, artwork of this and several variants.
2: US Supersonic Bomber Projects Vol. 2, which uses the D188A as the cover image.
If you’d like the full resolution version of the cutaway artwork, it has been uploaded to the 2023-07 APR Extras Dropbox folder, available to all $4 and up Patrons/Subscribers. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
Spiffy CG animation showing what will *hopefully* appear in the sky soon… Starship hot-staging off of Superheavy.
Ryan released this piece of art in 1958 depicting a tailsitter fighter somewhat like their X-13. However, this was clearly a much larger vehicle, operational rather than experimental. More than anything it resembles a slimmed-down and stretched-out Avro Arrow. It’s unclear that this was based on an actual engineering study, rather than artistic license.
This would seem to be an interceptor, presumably installed somewhere in Europe within hidden underground bunkers. It’s not at all certain to me that in the event of all out war there’d be any real point in having these aircraft be able to land vertically as their bunkers would probably be radioactive glass by they time they got home… and without the dedicated equipment needed to catch the aircraft, they’d be unable to land.
A NASA article on the status of the X-57 “Maxwell” says that they’re wrapping up work on it, with no mention of it actually flying:
The X-57 is a modification of an existing conventional aircraft to be all-electric. Lots of new technologies were integrated and apparently some useful advances were made, but the real issue remains batteries. Until the energy density of batteries gets a *lot* better, electric-powered aircraft are going to remain pretty niche. Flying the X-57 would be nice, but with the existing batteries it’s kind of dead in the water.
What would be great is if NASA kept working on the X-57 at a low level. The technologies onboard would be occasionally upgraded, and when meaningfully better batteries – or perhaps some sort of modular fuel cell system, perhaps, or indeed a small nuclear reactor (a man can dream) – become available, integrate them into the vehicle and at last fly it.
I put one copy of each of my current books on ebay. They’re all in brand-new condition, and will be signed/dated when sold. They also come with bonus 18X24-inch prints… the “SR-71” book has two prints of the SR-71, the “B-47/B-52” book has one B-47 diagram and two B-52 diagrams; “US Supersonic Bomber Projects Vol. 1” has two B-70 Valkyrie diagrams. Take a look…
With the release of my latest book, I went to Amazon to see if my previous works are currently available (SR-71: yes; B-47/B-52: yes; Vol 1: currently no). In the process, I was surprised to see that there is a *hardback* version of my SR-71 book available. This is surprising for several reasons…
1: No mention of it was made to me by the publisher
2: It’s a relatively slim volume for a hardback
3: There has been some discussion, so far quite preliminary, of an expanded version of the SR-71 book at some point in the future, which would be more appropriate as a hardback.
Anyway, the listing looks like this:
“Huh,” sez I, so I click on the “hardback” link to see what it looks like. And… it looks like this:
Wait, what?
Now, that’s a perfectly fine book. I have a copy myself. But it’s not *my* book.
I also noticed that there are 187 reviews, which is substantially more than I recall there being. And that’s because the reviews for Goodall’s book are mashed in with reviews for mine.
Somebody hit the wrong button somewhere.
So if you want to get a copy or three of my book – an urge I wholeheartedly support – just make sure you order the right book. I’ve contacted the publisher about this and they’re baffled; they’ve contacted the people they need to to try to get this weirdness resolved.
Oh, and there’s this, for whatever it’s worth:
Woo, and, indeed, hoo.
My next book, released for pre-order and to be shipped in a few weeks:
“The threat posed by the Soviet Union throughout the postwar period coincided with an explosion of innovation and can-do attitude among America’s aircraft manufacturers. Challenging requirements and experimentation resulted in a huge variety of designs for aircraft powered by nuclear reaction, aircraft capable of flying faster than Mach 5, advanced bombers able to land and take-off from the surface of the ocean, VTOL fighters and bombers, and many others. Aerospace engineer Scott Lowther collects some of the most radical and beyond-the-state-of-the-art ‘secret projects’ in this – the second volume of his US projects series.”
Stratolaunch LLC announces it has successfully completed a separation release test of the Talon-A separation test vehicle, TA-0. The flight was the eleventh for the company’s launch platform Roc and the second time the team has conducted flight operations in Vandenberg Space Force Base’s Western Range off California’s central coast.
